Our House(111)
She’d need to switch to pregnancy yoga soon.
‘Fi?’ Merle was startled by her approach. ‘I didn’t think . . .’
Didn’t think Fi would address her outside of the group, outside of the agreed civilities of child delivery and collection.
‘I have a question,’ Fi said.
Merle waited. Two women arriving for her yoga class greeted her, beating a retreat when they saw her stricken expression.
‘Is it Bram’s?’
Fi saw that Merle was considering denying the pregnancy itself, but decided there was no sense in that. You could deny new life for only so long and in any case in her yoga kit she was starting to show.
‘No,’ Merle said, at last. ‘It’s Adrian’s. It’s due in May.’
‘You swear that’s the truth?’
‘I swear.’
‘Then I won’t ask you again,’ Fi said, simply.
Not even if the baby comes in April, not May? she thought, walking away. Maybe. She would certainly keep an eye on events.
But all sorts of things could happen before then.
Lyon, 2 p.m.
He has made his final move and is settled now in the aparthotel. His new accommodation is not unlike the studio in Baby Deco, as it happens: hardwearing and neutral, designed with a sense that the bare minimum deserves as much respect as deluxe – hell, you might even make a virtue of it. Yes, exactly right for Custer’s last stand and a decent writer’s base, besides: well heated and sound-proofed; there’s a Nespresso machine with a collection of pods and some of those individually-wrapped teabags the French go in for. A fridge for his beers. The reassuring trace of previous smokers’ cigarettes.
The most important thing is that he has destroyed the information sheet with the WiFi password and he is certain his willpower will not fail him. He would only be tempted to google the collision investigation, the components of his old existence. To email Fi and start explaining about the money, begging her to forgive him, even advising her how to go about reconstructing the family life he has destroyed.
Unforgivable, that was what Merle called him. Just another unforgivable man.
It interests him that even with his whole story ready to be told, the emphases and nuances entirely his, he does not expect to devote much of it to her (he’s already decided he’s going to give her a pseudonym). In the end, she hasn’t mattered; she hasn’t played a part. He’s gathered that Fi chose to sweep it all under the carpet for the sake of the children’s friendships (Leo and Robbie are thick as thieves, always have been), for the sake of neighbourhood harmony, for the sake of continuing to live in the house. Not once did she mention Merle to him after they separated and if she could exercise that sort of blank restraint with one guilty party then she probably could with two. And she went off to Kent, didn’t she? No one came back with stab wounds.
It will be a while before news reaches Merle about the loss of the house, but once it does she certainly won’t be gloating about it. Their liaison in the playhouse had never been about her coveting what Fi had, because she already had all those things herself – more, in fact, since her husband had been faithful, if sometimes a little disinclined to appreciate what he had, in Bram’s opinion. No, for her, that night had been about doing something reckless to force a moment of crisis. To remind your blood that it still has a reason to circulate, even if the body it flows through is ageing faster than you’d prefer. To restore your conviction that you still have something good to give.
That was the difference between Merle and him. She had faith that she made life better for those around her, whereas he had no faith that he did.
Or at least what little faith he’d once had, he’d lost.
55
Saturday, 14 January 2017
London, 5.30 p.m.
The worst moment, she thinks, the most heartbreaking moment of the whole thing, is when she and Merle walk back through the door to the flat – worse, even, than when Harry asks her if she is happy with Daddy’s surprise and faith shines from him in rays. The belief that his father has succeeded, that his mother is pleased.
‘Did he paint the right colours? Did it dry in time? Were you really surprised?’
She can do nothing but hug him, tell him everything is lovely, that the only thing that matters is her being with him and his brother because she’s missed them, and the two of them haven’t got a fraudster for one parent and a murderer for the other.
She extracted them with relative ease from Tina’s, not staying long enough to be tempted to blurt the news about Bram’s departure and suspected embezzlement. She feared the more complex strain of being with her own parents for the rest of the day, not least for the fact that, if Merle’s plan is to work, they would be called upon to vouch for her state of mind in the aftermath of a crime.
But, as it turns out, the effects of severe trauma are the same whatever their origins. Losing your mind because you’ve killed someone does not differ vastly from losing your mind because your husband has stolen your home and absconded. If anything, the managing of her parents’ bewilderment and anger about the house sale is a welcome focus, their fiercely protective stance regarding the boys a reminder of how the authorities will be expecting her to present herself. It is agreed that Leo and Harry should remain in Kingston for the time being, a fib about delays with the decorating used to explain the impossibility of a return home. They’ve never been to the flat and it would be unsettling to take them there now.