Our House(66)

‘That’s unbelievable! We thought we were going to get, what? Twenty thousand? Even ten would have been something. What now? We’re just supposed to magic up the funds ourselves after years of paying premiums?’

‘Or do without.’ I couldn’t have felt more wretched. She’d been right when she’d suggested there was a required period – twenty-eight days in our case – before the adjustor released payment. The policy was in my name and the cheque had been issued to me.

‘Those bloody keys. If we’d known, we could have got our stories straight about them,’ she railed. ‘I bet they talked to that detective who questioned me. I made it sound like we had no clue who had them and when, like we just handed them over to the first passing criminal.’ In her eyes, distress hardened into determination. ‘Let’s take it to the ombudsman, shall we?’

‘To be honest, Fi, I don’t think there’s much they could do.’

‘You don’t want to at least give it a try?’

‘I don’t, no. It’s all in the small print, we haven’t got a leg to stand on. And don’t forget there’s always a chance the car will still turn up, in which case we can get it fixed at our own expense. Better than nothing.’

Fi nodded, still very agitated. ‘When do we have to return the courtesy car?’

‘Tomorrow. I’m sorry. I’ll come over and take care of it.’

‘So soon? This is crap timing with Christmas coming up – money’s getting so tight. And it’s all going to be so much more of a pain in the dark and cold, schlepping around on packed buses with the boys.’

‘They won’t mind,’ I said. ‘Kids just accept whatever grown-ups say is normal. The main thing is they have two parents who love them and are there for them. It’s not about money or presents or new cars.’ While this didn’t sound at all like me, it benefited from being exactly the sort of thing Fi might say herself.

‘That’s true,’ she said, reaching for a sense of humility. ‘We have our home. We have our health.’

I tried to agree, but struggled to yield any intelligible sound.

She gave me a concerned look. ‘How long have you been sitting on this, Bram? Have you been worrying about telling me?’

‘A bit.’

‘Is that why you bought the flowers? There’s absolutely no need to shield me from this sort of thing. Where the kids and the house are concerned, we’re still a team, remember?’

The fierce loyalty in her expression was almost too much to contend with; I had a ghastly kaleidoscopic flash of Mike, of Wendy, of Rav, of the couples who had viewed her beloved house.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I’m really sorry.’

*

- No offers yet, I take it?

- No. Three second viewings booked for Saturday.

- Why not sooner?

- Not my days at the house, so too risky. I have no control over Fi’s schedule.

- Just make sure the place is looking its best, eh?

- No, I thought I’d get all the neighbourhood dogs in to piss on the walls.

- You’re a funny man, Bram. Bet you make Leo and Harry laugh, do you?





I turned off the phone. It was my policy now, whenever he mentioned the boys.





35


Bram, Word document

I was starting to loathe my time at the flat, to associate it with booze-drenched, dread-filled solitude and with ugly, inescapable meetings – not all of them with Mike and Wendy. There was also one other, a few days after the open day, that I would have preferred to shirk.

When the buzzer went at about 8 p.m., my natural thought was that it was the police.

This is it, Bram, you knew it was coming.

There was a shocking moment of regression to childhood, a flood of that half-resentful, half-grateful feeling you get when a parent collars you for some dishonesty. At least I don’t have to lie any more, you think. At least I don’t have to hide.

Before I went to answer, I turned down the volume of the music, too sorry to interrupt my task to turn it off completely. I know it will sound crazy, but I’d been compiling the playlists I would take when I had to disappear. Yes, I know I should have been devoting my time to strategizing some twist-in-the-tale defeat of Mike and Wendy, but I’d found that small, mechanical jobs, especially those that allowed me to sink into memory, were the only way my sanity could be salvaged from one day to the next.

‘Hello,’ I said into the intercom. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Bram?’ The voice was female, low and indignant.

An arresting officer wouldn’t call me Bram, I reasoned. It must be Wendy, she and Mike come to harass me about the second viewings of the house on Saturday. Slightly, marginally, better than the police.

‘Bram? What’s the matter? Buzz me in!’

Not Wendy, I realized. Saskia? The absence of any follow-up text or visit to my desk since our weekend liaison had encouraged me to assume she’d done the sensible thing and quit while she was ahead.

Then I registered who this actually was. ‘Ah. Come up.’

I waited at the door, exhausted and confused. Constance from the playhouse. Her arrival reminded me that I’d not responded to a voicemail from her some time earlier – when? Last week, perhaps. I admit I considered her small fry in the context of the circling sharks, our original encounter, so catastrophic at the time, now almost quaintly sinful in the light of intervening events.