Our House(83)
‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:37:08
By the morning, I’d decided it was inevitable. A necessary memento.
‘Listen, I don’t want Toby finding out about this,’ I told him. Woman asks husband not to tell new boyfriend she’s slept with him: I wasn’t sure if it was low-rent or aristocratic, but I was fairly certain it was not an exchange taking place anywhere else on Trinity Avenue that Boxing Day morning.
‘You’re still seeing him?’ he asked. ‘I thought it wasn’t serious.’
‘It’s not serious. But it’s also none of your business.’
I was relieved when he made his departure at the prearranged hour, in good time for me to organize the boys for our visit to my parents.
As the taxi drove through the eerily empty streets of South London, the thought of that First World War football match lingered in my mind. The way those poor men cleared the bodies from No Man’s Land so they could play, and then the next day the horror resumed as if there’d never been any pause.
#VictimFi
@themattporter Not sure #VictimFi is quite in the trenches of the Western Front, but she’s got herself a bit of closure there.
@LorraineGB71 @themattporter Lawson vs Lawson’s not over yet, remember?
Bram, Word document
On Boxing Day morning, she kissed me goodbye and I could smell the detachment on her skin. It was like laying flowers at a grave when the grief is no longer fresh.
A tribute in my memory.
43
Friday, 13 January 2017
London, 5 p.m.
The kitchen door flies open and David draws himself to his full height before making his announcement: ‘The title is in our name. Ownership has been transferred. It’s definitely ours.’
To be fair, he speaks with less exultation than he might. There is no victory salute.
As Lucy cries out her thanks, Merle’s face expresses all the devastation that Fi’s own must – or should, if she were not too winded to react. The other three adjust their expressions and gaze at her with varying degrees of the same emotion: pity.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Fi whispers, finally, almost experimentally, as if the news might have robbed her of her voice as well as her property. She has the faint thought that even a judgement against you is preferable to the purgatory of not knowing, though she’ll think differently tomorrow, she knows, when the shock has lifted, when the true magnitude registers.
David resumes his update: ‘Emma is going to phone Dixon Boyle now and get to the bottom of where the money is, but it’s an incontrovertible fact that the required amount left her client account this morning and was confirmed as clearing theirs before noon. If someone got a digit wrong in sending it on to the Lawsons, that will of course be followed up and rectified – realistically, on Monday.’ He meets Fi’s eye, his compassion deepening. ‘In fact, this could be your chance to jump in and get them to ring-fence the funds while you sort out your situation? Or if it’s too late for that, Emma suggests you continue talking to the police and find a lawyer to help you with any fraud claim against your husband – or whoever the guilty party is – and try to recoup what’s owed to you that way. We’re all really sorry you’re having to go through this ordeal.’
When Fi fails to find any words, he looks to Merle for a response.
‘It’s not the money,’ Merle says in a new tone, no longer adversarial but as one equal to another, resident to resident, ‘it’s the house. I’m sure you understand that. This is Fi’s home, her children’s home, and it has been for a long time.’
‘I’m sorry, I really am, but it isn’t any more,’ says David.
There’s a silence.
‘We need to leave,’ Fi tells Merle, numbly.
‘You said there’s a flat?’ Lucy says. ‘Could you stay there tonight?’
‘We’ll go to mine,’ Merle says. ‘We need to be on the spot in case anything else happens.’
‘Perhaps we should meet again on Monday morning, like you suggested, try to make some more sense of it all? Whatever we can do to help unravel this, we will, won’t we, David?’
‘Of course,’ he agrees.
It’s already unravelled, Fi thinks, picking up her handbag. She remembers her overnight bag, on the floor in front of the oven, the only tangible evidence that her life before existed.
As she and Merle leave, it seems to her that the mood of the house has changed, as if it’s accepting the fact of its new owners. The Vaughans will soon start unpacking, treating it as their own, this mesh of complications slowing their transition, but not stopping it. She doesn’t allow herself thoughts of Leo and Harry, how they might never again come tumbling down the stairs, arguing, yelling, demanding to stay up late; how they’ve been deprived of the right to say goodbye to their bedrooms, to their first home. She does not allow those thoughts, but she is aware of a lurking instinct that they will arrive. Adrenaline will burst through the dam and drive her back to this door, fists beating.
It occurs to her that the Vaughans have not asked her for her keys; she wonders if they will change the locks for fear of her letting herself in in the days to come (she could camp out in the playhouse, perhaps, closing the circle that began that evening last July).