Our House(108)

Fi stares at her, struggling to keep up. ‘Thank you.’

‘The point is, you didn’t touch the wine or the pills. And anything else in this place with your prints on it is purely because you live here half the time. This stuff is yours.’

‘I wore gloves to break up the medication and push it through the neck of the bottle,’ Fi tells her.

‘Good.’

‘But I searched through some of the boxes without wearing the gloves, and they’ve only been here since Thursday. But that’s okay, isn’t it? I needed to find financial records to show the police and the lawyers about the house.’

‘Exactly. It’s natural to look for essential things Bram packed without your consent. You might need stuff for the boys as well. But you do that when you come back later today, all right? That’s when you touch things. Last night, you stayed with me, then this morning I took you to Bram’s mum’s to pick up the boys, which I’ll do at, what, eight o’clock? Nine? Let’s go back to Trinity Avenue until it’s time to leave.’

‘I can’t bring the boys back here,’ Fi objects in horror.

‘Of course not,’ Merle agrees. ‘We’ll go straight on to your parents, shall we? You’ll want to tell them about the house, get their advice. Focus on that. You haven’t been here since . . . when?’

‘Wednesday. I picked up some shoes.’

‘Good. Adrian’s back today, so he’ll look after Robbie and Daisy when I come back to meet you later. Lucky I was too tired last night to speak to him. Shall we go then? Fi?’

Go? Fi is rooted to the spot, staring at him. Is he really cooling and stiffening, existing for the first whole day as a thing, an entity that is finished with life for ever? How can it have been so easy to do this? How could he have drunk the wine with all those pills dissolved in it? Didn’t it taste bitter? Poisoned?

Her heart stops. ‘I googled the medication. On my phone, when I was here on Wednesday.’

Merle frowns. ‘Okay. Well, just because you saw it and wanted to know what it was, it doesn’t mean you took it. Keep this simple, Fi, in your head. Keep it as simple as possible.’

‘Yes.’ How unfaltering Merle is. She has all the answers, all the lines. She is Fi’s saviour, her all-seeing angel.

But there’s something else. ‘Lucy saw Bram’s pills. She saw them today, in the kitchen. They fell out of my bag.’

‘Did you tell her they were Bram’s?’

‘No, she thought they were mine, she kept saying it.’

‘Good. Have you had any other prescriptions recently?’

‘No.’

‘Has anyone in the family?’

‘Only Leo. He has those allergy tablets. It’s a repeat prescription, we use them as needed. But we haven’t had a new batch for ages.’

‘That doesn’t matter. Do they come in a packet like Bram’s?’

‘Maybe a different colour. I can’t remember.’

‘Show me,’ Merle says.

‘I can’t, I don’t know where they are.’ Fi hears the panic in her voice, the sense of salvation slipping from her grasp. ‘They were at the house, in the bathroom cabinet.’

Together they survey the mass of identical boxes, not a single one labelled.

‘This isn’t everything,’ Fi says. ‘There’s another lot in storage.’

‘Then we look.’ Even Merle’s sigh is abbreviated, efficient. ‘And we do it quietly. We can’t have anyone in the block hearing us bumping around.’

It takes over an hour to find the boxes containing the items from the family bathroom, but Leo’s tablets are among them. There is one half-used blister pack and one intact, still in its box. Fi puts this into her handbag. ‘I always carry a box with me in case Leo develops symptoms when we’re out?’

‘Excellent.’

At last, they leave, Fi with her overnight bag, the carrier containing Toby’s phones in Merle’s coat pocket. The fog has lifted but still the morning feels gentle, supportive of their cause, delivering them back to Trinity Avenue under its protection. The script continues to be written as they walk back, Merle speaking in low tones, not quite murmuring.

‘Did any of your neighbours in the building ever see you and Toby together?’

‘I don’t think so. I’ve hardly ever bumped into anyone, even on my own. When he arrived, I buzzed him in and he usually let himself out, so anyone who saw him wouldn’t necessarily have known it was me he was visiting, not Bram.’

‘Excellent. And when he came to my place yesterday, he said he’d already been to the flat, didn’t he? He’d got a neighbour to let him in and then he’d hammered on the door. I bet he was pretty unpleasant about it, probably made it clear he was angry with Bram.’

They are almost at Merle’s house, just passing Fi’s – the Vaughans’ – and her peripheral vision registers only stillness.

She stops dead, clutches Merle’s arm. ‘The Vaughans, Merle! The Vaughans saw him.’

‘Keep moving,’ Merle says. ‘Yes, they did, but he was looking for Bram, not you. Remember, he was shouting for Bram, and David said something like, “Join the queue.” Then I went out and invited him in. So the Vaughans have no reason to think he’s connected to you. They might have seen you leave with him, but I doubt it, they were camped out in the kitchen. We can deny that, anyway.’