Our House(19)

I could see him trying to summon something as he gazed down at his fistful of cutlery. Perhaps he just wanted to please me. I had no idea if he thought of me as being a victim to be supported or as an instigator to be resented. Neither, perhaps.

At last his face cleared. ‘Why do we have so many spoons?’ he said.

He was so happy when I burst out laughing.

Oh, Leo. My Leo. I pray he hasn’t been permanently scarred by all of this, though it’s hard to imagine how he hasn’t.


Bram, Word document Bless his heart, Harry cried his eyes out when I talked to him about the new set-up and he never cries. He’s the family Stoic.

‘Are you and Mummy still married?’

‘Yes, absolutely. For now.’

‘Then why won’t you be in the house together?’

‘It’s a peace process, mate. We will be in the house together, just not long enough to argue. Because arguing’s not very nice for anyone, especially you and Leo.’

‘Will we still go on holiday together?’

‘Probably not for a while. We won’t have as much spare cash.’

‘Mum said we can still go to Theo’s house in Kent at half term. We always do that.’

‘Well, there you go.’

Theo was Rog and Alison’s kid. It was inevitable, I supposed, that Team Fi was assembling, the women, the mothers, closing ranks around her.

‘Will you get a new wife?’ Harry asked. ‘Will she move into the house as well?’

‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘Mummy’s my wife. We’re not getting divorced.’

I should have said ‘yet’ out loud rather than just mouthing it when he’d already looked away. It was wrong to give him hope, but I couldn’t help it, because I was already suspecting that it was my hope too.

Which, if it’s true, may prompt you to ask why I destroyed my marriage in the first place. I suppose because I didn’t know how much I wanted it until after I’d destroyed it. I suppose I must have had a death wish.

Hence the suicide note.





12


‘Fi’s Story’ > 00:46:21

So, back to the bird’s nest.

The first Friday handover was casual to the point of anticlimax, especially as the main event appeared to all intents and purposes to be Bram moving back in. As if we were reuniting, not separating. The sight of his clothes draped on the gingham-covered armchair in the spare bedroom was not so different from the times when he’d slept there after a night out, not wanting to disturb me with his snoring.

‘Can we camp out in the playhouse tonight?’ Harry suggested, the new favourite way to mark a special occasion (they sometimes lit a campfire), and I saw the quick look Bram sent my way.

‘It’s a bit wet out there,’ I said. There’d been rain for days and by now the drains had overflowed, the lawn become spongy. Streams ran down the slide and puddled at its foot, and when the boys took off their shoes after playing outside their socks squelched on the kitchen floor.

‘Maybe we can put up a tent inside?’ Bram said, and my departure was lost in the outbreak of excitement that this provoked. Still, that was the point of this set-up, wasn’t it? For the boys to scarcely notice who was there and who was not. Continuity.

I walked slowly through the park to Baby Deco. At dusk, with its windows alight, it was seductive, a white and gold confection against the pink-blushed sky. But when I let myself into the lobby, I found it all much smaller and blander than I had remembered from the viewing. The lift was claustrophobic, the corridor narrow, and I had the peculiar feeling of being an intruder, here without permission or purpose. There was the chemical smell of just-dried emulsion, far removed from the Trinity Avenue aroma of muddy trainers and leftover bolognese.

As for the unit itself, the space was so small, more like a hotel room than a flat. You could see everything it contained without turning your head: bed (three-quarters, not a full double), coffee table, shelving unit, two snug little armchairs. No dining space, only a short breakfast bar with the pair of cheap stools Bram had picked up at IKEA.

The shower ran cold and the fridge’s purr grew into a jet engine as the hours passed, but I did not phone Bram for instruction. Except in the event of an emergency, we’d agreed on a single text each night after the boys were tucked up in bed. Nothing more.

At least I had no trouble working the TV – it was an old one of ours, the small screen suiting the compact space. With an old episode of Modern Family to entertain me (the aptness did not pass me by) and a bowl of ravioli on my lap, I downgraded my earlier disquiet to the temporary flatness you feel in one of those corporate serviced apartments.

‘It will take a bit of getting used to,’ Rowan had warned. ‘You’ll wonder what on earth you’re doing on your own, how you can possibly spend a day there without the kids to run around after. Just go with your feelings. Don’t be hard on yourself for finding it strange. What you’re feeling is natural.’

Was this how Bram had felt these previous few nights, not to mention during his month of banishment to his mother’s? Isolated from the pack, a solo pilot forced into a holding pattern.

I added my toiletries to the few he had assembled in the shower room, using the shelf he’d left free. As agreed, he had put his bedding in the washing machine and, as agreed, I hung it to dry on the small clotheshorse in the kitchen.