Our House(110)

‘I told you,’ Merle says. Not impatient, but focused on the day’s demands. ‘You know why.’

‘No, I mean you and him. You’d known each other for so long. That was the only time, wasn’t it?’

Now Merle follows. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

‘Who initiated it? Was it him?’

A pause. ‘No, it was me. That’s the truth. He didn’t invite me over. He wasn’t expecting me. He had no choice but to ask me in.’

Fi holds her eye. ‘He had a choice about fucking you, though.’

Merle does not flinch. ‘I’m not sure he did, Fi. I was on a mission.’

‘Why? Why would you do that?’ She can’t argue that it was out of character because Merle’s character was not known to her until yesterday, this morning, not truly. ‘You knew how upset I was about what he’d done before. You comforted me, you advised me to give him another chance.’

‘I know,’ Merle says, her voice low. ‘There’s no excuse. No justification. I still can’t believe it myself.’

To her credit, she does not try to diminish it. Sex, adultery, the institution of marriage: their importance is diminished now, to the point of irrelevance – how can it not be? – but Fi still has to know. She still has to understand.

‘Was there always an attraction, then?’

A pause. Merle’s fingers grip the edge of the leather seat. ‘I think there was, yes, but neither of us were ever going to act on it.’

‘So why did you act on it that night? If you’d managed not to for years before? What was this mission?’

Now Merle’s fingers touch her mouth, as if monitoring her own words. The car is sealed and silent; there is the sense that its atmosphere will tolerate nothing but the truth. ‘That evening, I had a babysitter at my place, I was meeting Adrian at La Mouette. A belated wedding anniversary dinner. We hadn’t been getting on that well, I probably told you that at the time. I’d had a few drinks at the bar when he texted and said he couldn’t come. It was one of those quick texts, not even sorry, just “Can’t make it, working late”. I was so angry with him, how casual he was, no thought to the arrangements I’d made with the babysitter, all the hoops you have to jump through just to get the kids sorted and get yourself out the door, let alone dressed up and in the mood for being an adult, a wife. It was like this one cancellation was an accumulation of all the cancellations, all the wrongs. I remember sitting there fuming, literally plotting to divorce him. There was a guy at the bar and I tried flirting with him and he just rejected me, he wasn’t even tempted.’ She flushes at the memory. ‘It was so humiliating. It felt like the most humiliating moment of my life. Like a turning point.’

Merle takes a breath, stares through the windscreen at the green beyond. ‘So I walked back down to the house and I felt so reckless. I wasn’t in my right mind, that’s the only way I can describe it. Something hormonal was going on, I suppose. I felt like my life was just sliding towards the end, you know, picking up speed, completely unstoppable, and I needed . . . I needed to make something happen to keep myself alive. Even if the only thing I could think of was completely self-destructive. Destructive to you. Both of you. Leo and Harry too, God. So I walked past my door and I went on to yours.’

Fi absorbs this. If she understands correctly, it was a disposable moment of marital crisis, a rush of mid-life hormones, that set this apocalypse in motion. Would it feel any different if it were something more recognizably momentous? A diagnosis of terminal illness, the loss of a parent, a career-ending degradation? It is impossible not to draw a parallel between Merle’s crime and her own, not least because they have a cause in common: a reaction against humiliation.

Fat old Mrs Holier-than-thou, I don’t know how Bram stood it all those years. No wonder he played away . . .

There had still been time to stop it when he said that to her. She could have poured the wine down the sink. Instead, she poured it into him. She killed a man.

I killed him!

They sit for a minute in silence.

‘Merle?’

‘Yes?’

Fi feels emotion welling like liquid, swallows before she speaks. ‘I want to make it clear that if the police come after me, if there’s some forensic thing I can’t possibly deny, I’ll keep you out of it. You’ve had no part in this at all. You didn’t come to the flat with me this morning. I turned up and asked you to drive me to Tina’s, that’s it. You had no idea what I’d done.’

Merle shakes her head. ‘It won’t come to that.’

‘But if it does, if I’m arrested, will you look out for Leo and Harry? I mean, my parents will take them in, they’ll be the best guardians I could wish for, but will you keep the friendships going? Be there for them too? They’ll need another family that feels like theirs. Not straight away, I know you’ll be busy with the new baby, but later. I could be gone for years.’

Merle straightens her shaking shoulders, refastens the seatbelt over her swollen body, starts the car. ‘Of course I will.’

*

Fi had guessed after the Kent weekend, of course – that flippant excuse for not drinking, and had sought Merle out at the gym the following Sunday. They each had their regular class now: Pilates for Fi, yoga for Merle.