Our House(87)
It’s not real was my new mantra.
*
The next day, my final Sunday morning at the house, Sophie Reece came to the front gate as I was letting the boys back into the house after a bike ride in the park.
‘Everything all right?’ I said, approaching.
‘Yes, fine. Except I almost called the police yesterday!’
Why the fuck would you do that? ‘Why?’
‘There were some people standing right in your front window and I knew you were out at swimming. They looked innocent enough, but burglars are very sophisticated now, aren’t they? Carrying tools as if they’re on a plumbing job, pretending to measure up for curtains, that kind of thing.’
I smiled at her. ‘That must have been my friend Rav. He runs a decorating business. He’s doing some work for me next week, so you might see some of his team then as well. He was here with some other clients, talking them through his plans.’
‘Ah, that makes sense. Just as well I left it, then. They say you can’t be too careful, but actually you can, can’t you? He’s very well-dressed for a decorator,’ she added.
‘Yes, isn’t he?’ Decades of sales work had taught me that there was no more efficient way of shutting down an unwanted line of enquiry than to agree. ‘He’s more of a creative director, he doesn’t get his own hands dirty. By the way, I wanted it to be a surprise for Fi, so if you don’t mind . . .?’
She did that wide-eyed thing women do when a secret is spilled, breathed a little ‘Ooh!’. ‘Of course. I haven’t bumped into her for ages. You know how it is.’
‘Everyone’s so busy,’ I agreed.
*
All that remained was to book the storage space and removals service and pack up our lifelong possessions without the other members of my family, or my colleagues, knowing anything about it.
Though I did my best to be discreet, Neil overheard me taking a call and hovered by my desk, waiting for me to finish. ‘What’s this? You’re not moving house, are you?’
‘No, no, just helping my mum out. She’s putting some stuff in storage.’
Might the police interview him, I wondered, and discover there’d been no such arrangement? It didn’t matter. He could tell them what he’d heard verbatim; I’d be long gone.
‘Might as well bin it,’ he said. ‘I know that sounds harsh, but apparently the vast majority of people who put stuff into storage never bother getting it out again. Surprised she doesn’t donate it to charity, a good Christian woman like her?’
‘It’s just knick-knacks,’ I said vaguely. ‘No one would want it.’
‘Is that why you’re taking Thursday and Friday as holiday?’
‘Partly.’
He narrowed his gaze. ‘Nothing wrong, is there? I mean health-wise.’
‘No, she’s fine. Other than the delusions of eternal life, of course.’
‘Not her, you mug, you. And I don’t mean this mystery virus.’
What he did mean was the booze, I supposed. The loose jowls and bloodshot eyes, the afternoon beer breath. ‘No, I’m much better now,’ I said.
He was keeping an eye on me, that much was clear, and not only as a revenue-protecting sales director, but as a mate. The fact that I was going to let him down on both counts was somehow worse for knowing that he would bear no malice. He might even find a way to grant me pardon.
45
‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:41:48
It’s one of the well-known ironies of parenting, isn’t it, that to arrange time away alone with someone who isn’t your spouse is a thousand times simpler than with the one who is. In the old days, a trip with Bram spanning three school days would have called for Churchillian cunning and an army of helpers, but now he was my ex all I had to do was issue a five-minute briefing and I was free as a bird.
On the Wednesday morning, after school drop-off, I popped into the flat to retrieve a pair of boots I’d left there at the weekend and needed for Winchester, assuming, correctly, that Bram would already have departed for work. Given the strict rules regarding access to Trinity Avenue on an ‘off’ day, there were laughably few, if any, for Baby Deco. Why would we want to go there unless ejected from the house? That had been the original thinking and yet this tiny studio flat had, in its own way, become a home.
Letting myself in, I was struck immediately by the smell of cigarettes. Bram was still smoking, clearly, and must be going to some lengths to air the place each time he left since I never noticed the smell on my Friday arrivals. The bathroom door was open, water pooled on the tiled floor from his shower, and worn clothes scattered on the floor by the unmade bed. On the nearby table lay a green-and-white paper bag from the pharmacy on the Parade.
I shouldn’t have looked inside, you don’t have to tell me that – it was both an invasion of privacy and an act of hypocrisy – but I did. In it were half a dozen identical boxes of prescription pills and I slipped one out to take a closer look. I didn’t recognize the name of the medication – Sertraline – which Bram was being directed to take in a 50 mg daily dose, and of course by the time I’d reached for my phone I’d convinced myself that he was gravely unwell. The lies he’d been telling, his excessive anguish when confronted: had he been protecting me all along from something far, far worse than fecklessness?