Our House(69)

‘See anyone you knew there? Talk to anyone?’

I narrowed my eyes as if straining to remember. ‘I was on my own, like I say, and it’s not really a regular haunt. I flicked through the Standard, probably. Oh, that’s right, I chatted to a guy at the bar for a bit. He seemed to be well known there, was a bit of a character.’ Don’t give any more detail – too obvious! ‘Then I had to get home. I take over with the kids at seven o’clock.’

You’ve already said that. Calm down.

‘When you got home, do you remember seeing your car parked in the street?’

‘I don’t. I mean, that doesn’t mean I didn’t see it, it’s just I’ve walked home from the station a thousand times, I can’t remember every distinct occasion. I do remember I’d cut it a bit fine, so I probably wasn’t noticing much, just rushing to get there. Sorry, I know that’s not very useful.’

He nodded. ‘Okay, well, perhaps we’ll have something more useful for you when your car is found.’

Useful for me? Or for him? I could hear my pay-as-you-go start up in my pocket, felt the Pavlovian opening of my pores as I began to sweat. My thoughts turned wild: I can’t let them find the car! Maybe I should go back to it, move it out of London. Where’s the second key? Has Fi still got it?

Then: No, no, if you do that, you might get stopped. Remember the police use Automatic Number Plate Recognition, you see those ANPR signs all over the place. Maybe—

‘Your phone’s ringing,’ the detective said, rising. ‘I’ll let you take it.’

I recovered myself. ‘No, it’s fine, I’ll see you out.’

And that was it. Bar my needless reference to the pub and that last-minute attack of nerves, it had gone as well as I could have hoped.

I waited a safe half hour before checking the phone and finding news from Rav: there were two offers on the house.


‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:07:21

You asked when it was that I got properly worried about Bram. Well, it was in early November at about the time of an upsetting incident with Toby, which I’ll tell you about now. I remember thinking I had absolutely no idea what he was going to do next, that I’d lost the natural instinct I’d always had for his actions, his reactions. For him.

Toby had been consumed by work and had seen his kids the previous weekend, so when he told me he was free only in the early part of the week I made the decision to relax – all right, break – the bird’s nest rule about third parties at Trinity Avenue and invited him for dinner there on the Tuesday. I asked him to arrive at 8.30 p.m. so the boys would already be asleep. I wasn’t ready yet for introductions.

‘Nice place,’ he said, following me into the kitchen and, as I took his coat and handed him a glass of wine, I was more than usually charged by his presence, as if I were the forbidden guest and not him.

‘Thank you. It’s a shame you can’t see the garden properly.’

He moved to the kitchen window, wine glass in hand, and peered out. At the bottom of the garden, fairy lights traced the roofline and doorframe of the playhouse like lines iced on a gingerbread house.

‘Is that the famous playhouse?’ he said. ‘Looks innocent enough.’

‘It does.’ It surprised me sometimes how much I’d told him about my break-up with Bram. The traumas of marriage, like those of childhood, are a permanent point of reference, I suppose. They hoard themselves within you, fuse into your body tissue.

‘Want to get even?’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You, me, the bottom of the garden . . .?’

‘Seriously?’ I was genuinely nauseated by this idea, not because of the discomforts involved in al fresco intimacies in November, but because of the thought of Leo and Harry upstairs, trusting in the protection of their mother while she sneaked out to their den like some primitive woman in heat . . . What Bram had done that night in July was and remained unconscionable, whatever impulse I’d had to the contrary that night in Kent, whatever my mother hoped I might come to excuse.

‘It’s a bit damp out there. I think I’d rather stay in the warmth and have another one of these,’ I said, raising my glass, and Toby accepted my demurral with an easy laugh. Interesting, though, to know that he had this daring in his personality, when I’d taken him to be a conventional, risk-averse sort of person like me.

Anyway, it wasn’t long after, just as I was serving dinner, that the doorbell rang.


Bram, Word document

Though I’d invited Saskia to the house, I’d reasoned that it had been in the boys’ absence and so not strictly breaking the bird’s nest rules. What was breaking them, however, was my decision to visit Trinity Avenue on one of Fi’s nights.

The impulse had been gathering since the police interview that morning and my state of distraction had become noticeable enough for Neil to send me home from work early. ‘Sort it out,’ he said, not without feeling.

And then there was that message from Rav. In spite of Mike’s frequent texts pressing me for updates, I’d decided not to tell him about the offers on the house, not yet. Instead, agitation grew into a mania to jump off the ride – or at least to dangle myself over the edge – my thinking being that if I could keep his repulsive face from my mind, his serpent murmurs from my ear, and focus instead on Fi, I might be able to do it. I might be able to confess, do the right thing before the wrong one possessed me entirely.