Our House(73)

‘You didn’t think he’d actually answer?’ David says. ‘She must have been trying it all day.’

She. Who is this rival, this usurper with whom Bram would share the Lawson fortune? Is it a case of bigamy? He’s married a second wife and together they’ve conspired to steal the house belonging to the first? (He has children with her too, perhaps, half-siblings for Leo and Harry.) Or is it the other extreme and she is merely an actress he hired for the transaction? The ‘Mrs Lawson’ who phoned the solicitor could be anyone; the Vaughans didn’t meet her, the legal process not requiring buyer and seller to be in the same room at the same time. Perhaps he simply photocopied Fi’s passport and submitted it online? The police officers openly acknowledged how faceless the conveyancing process has become, how fraudsters are slithering through loopholes unchallenged.

And if not to fund a new relationship – new love – then why? Why does Bram need such a sum of money? What could be worth sacrificing both his children’s security and his own relationship with them? A huge debt from a gambling addiction? Drugs?

She massages her temples, failing to dim the ache. How much easier it was to imagine him as the victim, just like her. Swindled or threatened or brainwashed.

‘So we just sit it out, do we?’ Merle says. ‘Still not knowing who is entitled to stay and who has to leave?’

‘According to Rav,’ David says, ‘there’s a simple way to settle who legally owns the house and therefore has occupation rights: the Land Registry. There are no physical deeds any more, but if the house has been registered to us, then we are the owners. If it hasn’t been transferred for whatever reason, then the Lawsons’ names will still be registered and they remain the owners. Emma will be able to tell us.’

The Vaughans’ solicitor, Emma Gilchrist, is finally out of her external meeting and a colleague is alerting her right now to the crisis in Alder Rise.

‘Don’t worry,’ David reassures Lucy. ‘There’s no way Emma would have paid out two million pounds without the sale being registered.’

‘Really?’ Merle says. ‘It wouldn’t be the only disastrous error in this situation, would it? Look, I’m sick of waiting for solicitors. Can’t we check the Land Registry website?’

‘It takes a few days to appear online, apparently,’ David says. ‘We do need Emma or this Graham Jenson character to confirm the exact position. And this might be Emma now . . .’

As his phone rings, he draws it from his pocket like a firearm. To a person, the others stiffen in their seats, electrified.

‘Emma, at last!’ David cries. ‘We’ve got a very worrying situation here and we need you to resolve it as quickly as possible . . .’ Catching Fi’s eye, he looks unexpectedly embarrassed and opens the kitchen door to take the rest of the phone call in the garden. Icy air flows into the room like a threat as he treads off down the path towards the playhouse.

This is it, Fi thinks. My future, Leo’s and Harry’s too: it all comes down to this.


Geneva, 5.15 p.m.

He is aching when he reaches Gare Cornavin, his hips and knees, even his shoulders, as inflamed as his feet. His mind, however, is numb: the city’s streets have gifted him the balm of anonymity and, as he draws to a halt to survey the bustle of the station concourse, it is almost as if he has forgotten why he is here.

A group of young female travellers pass him, faces turned to one particular figure at their centre, and as he watches he is speared with the knowledge that Fi will cope just fine. She will have her women around her.

The knowledge is clean, painless, absolute.

He always used to find the way the women of Trinity Avenue talked to one another exhausting. Even when you couldn’t hear what they were saying, you could tell from their body language, their facial expressions, that it was all so intense. They acted like they were discussing genocide or the economic apocalypse and it turned out it was just about little Emily having been moved down a maths set or Felix not making the football first team. The plot of a TV drama or some outrage on The Victim.

Then, when really terrible things happened, like a sudden death in the family or a destroyed career, and you expected mass hysteria, they were a SWAT team, immaculately organized, focused on resolution.

‘They’re the worms that turned,’ Rog said once at the bar in the Two Brewers. ‘Remember the old comedy sketch called that? About women taking over the world? The Two Ronnies with Diana Dors, wasn’t it? It was supposed to be a dystopia.’

‘Sounds a bit un-PC,’ Bram said.

‘Oh, completely. Wouldn’t be allowed now,’ Rog agreed with pretended regret.

Funny that he should think of that now, under the departures board at a train station in Geneva, but he’s glad he has because it makes him think things might not be so atrocious in London, even today, the day of discovery. Because it is Fi in charge now and not him. When the dust settles, the boys will be better off without him.

For the first time since he left Trinity Avenue he feels something closer to peace than turmoil.

And there’s a train to Lyon leaving at 5.29 p.m.





38


‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:22:12

This may come as a surprise to you, but there’ve been times when I’ve felt sorry for him, I really have.