Our House(53)

As he exits, he tries not to think of Samson’s end, how he brought down the temple, killing not only himself but everyone in it.





28


Bram, Word document

Are you beginning to see how appalling it looked on paper? How trapped I felt, how terrorized? The confessed – and recorded – guilt to the Silver Road crash, the driving ban, the suspended sentence for assault, not to mention a conviction for possession . . . the last was ancient history, but what did that matter? As Mike said, it all counts when the time comes.

Counts against me.

I can only defend myself by saying these have been my only crimes in forty-eight years and I believe that there are very few people who haven’t committed some variation of at least one of them, even police officers themselves. Seriously, have you never gone over the speed limit? Have you never tried drugs or got a bit lairy outside a pub? I didn’t say did you get caught doing one of these; I just asked, did you do it?

Well, I got caught for all of them. Which meant that there could be no barrister in the land convincing enough to argue that Silver Road was a one-time mistake. Not when the record showed that I was someone who was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Doing the wrong thing.

Okay, so the fight at the pub was pretty damn serious. I didn’t start it, but I certainly finished it: the guy was hospitalized, off work for weeks. I was lucky the sentence was suspended and that, miraculously, I managed to hide the prosecution process from Fi. I won’t go into the labyrinthine logistics of that (it helped that there were renovations going on at the house and, the boys not having started school yet, she had based herself with them at her parents’ place, leaving me to my own devices). Nor will I explain what I imagined would happen if my remorse had not convinced the court and I’d been sent down (‘Fi? I’m calling from a prison payphone. I need to tell you something . . .’)

‘In return for a guilty plea, was it?’ Mike said that night at the flat, his gaze voyeuristic, as if he was able to see into my soul and measure my pain. And his instinct was sharp, I’ll give him that. I would have pleaded guilty to far worse if it meant avoiding jail time. I won’t say prison is a phobia of mine, because that would make it irrational, all in the mind.

Whereas it is rational, real. So real that I would have done anything, sacrificed anyone, to avoid it.

‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:37:11

I really hope I’m not giving the impression that I allowed a new relationship to distract me from what was, in retrospect, taking place right under my nose, but I’m sure you’ll understand that it was an exciting time. We all know the beginning is the best bit – who would begrudge a woman that? Especially one whose marital breakdown had left her with no heart for anything more than beginnings.

Even beginnings came with a level of weirdness. It was maybe our third weekend of seeing each other, the first time Toby had stayed the night at the flat, when I had a completely unexpected fight or flight reaction. Waking to find him in bed next to me, I got trapped in the delay of recognizing him, of recognizing the bed itself, the four walls around us. Why am I not in my home with my family? I thought. What is this sordid set-up? Even when my brain caught up, I was convinced I couldn’t sleep with Toby again. Not here, with Bram’s clothes in the wardrobe, his shaving gel in the bathroom, the air still fresh with the breath from his lungs. It was almost as if he were in the room with us, watching us.

Toby stirred then, and I slipped from the bed to make coffee.

Of course, by the time we were up and I was walking him back through the park to the station, I was myself again and he was oblivious to the episode.

‘So do kids not play with conkers any more?’ he said. ‘Or are they all too busy indoors bullying one another on social media and self-harming?’

‘Not all of them,’ I said, laughing. ‘Some still venture into the real world now and then.’ But as the spiky fruits rolled in our path, no children scampered forwards to claim them. It was possibly the most beautiful day of the month too, when the fire of autumn had not yet faded to ash. Leo and Harry should be here, I thought. ‘Maybe there’s some mass maths tutoring event I don’t know about. I’m going to get my two out here this afternoon. Enforced outdoor fun.’

‘Quite right.’ Toby had two almost grown-up children, Charlie and Jess, who he saw every few weeks; relations with the ex were fraught and she’d moved to the Midlands to be close to her parents.

‘You mustn’t have been much older than a teenager yourself when you had your kids,’ I said to him. He was in his late thirties, almost a decade younger than Bram. ‘I can’t imagine not talking about Leo and Harry the way you don’t talk about your two.’ Hearing myself, I laughed my apologies. ‘That sounds bad. What I mean is I’m impressed how you’ve let go.’

Toby examined the path ahead. ‘Just because I don’t talk about them doesn’t mean I don’t think about them,’ he said mildly.

‘I know, of course. I didn’t mean you aren’t a fantastic dad.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’ he said, smiling. ‘You just do the best you can, don’t you?’

‘You do.’

I remember thinking, Bram would fight harder than this to be in his kids’ lives. Then, Stop comparing!

(Comparison is the thief of joy: that’s one of Merle’s favourite sayings. So true.)