Our House(93)

‘I’ll change at Clapham Junction for Alder Rise, so I should be able to get the file to Clara by one-ish, which will be in good time for the briefing. I suppose I should be grateful she’s only spotted it now and not earlier. It’s been a great few days, Toby. Really. Let’s do it again.’

‘Definitely,’ he agreed. ‘Text me that you’re home safely.’

Really, it was sweet how dejected he looked.

*

The gods were on my side and my train connections were smooth, getting me into Alder Rise Station before 12.30 p.m. I texted Bram to say I was coming, but the message was undelivered, thanks to the out-of-service line. Not ideal if the school needed to get hold of him, but it didn’t matter, I was back in Alder Rise, back in charge.

I turned into Trinity Avenue with a smile on my face. The sunlight was unusually rich and golden for January. Lovely, truly lovely. Focusing on the van about halfway down, I thought, I must be mistaken, but it looks exactly as if someone is moving into my house . . .

#VictimFi

@Leah_Walker Here we go . . .





47


Friday, 13 January 2017

London, 7 p.m.

They are no longer in her house (correction: the Vaughans’ house), but in Merle’s. They’ve finally spoken to Graham Jenson and informed him of the situation, though Fi became too distressed to reason effectively and when Merle put the call on speakerphone, her accusations about identity theft and fraud sounded wild even to Fi.

‘I’ve been through this with the buyers’ solicitor and with Mrs Lawson herself,’ Jenson said, ‘and I’ve explained there has been no error on our part. Beyond that, I cannot discuss this. I have to respect client confidentiality.’ He has, however, agreed to a meeting on Monday morning.

They’ve spent the last hour ringing the hospitals of South London and beyond and drawn blank after blank, which is, they repeat to each other, good news, good news.

And now they’ve come into the living room at the front with large drinks. It’s a bit of a mess, as Merle’s place usually is. There are pine needles by the skirting board, the loose ends of Christmas that never got vacuumed away, and Fi stoops to collect one, pressing its point into the flesh of her index finger. It feels crucial that she see a bubble of her own blood, just one drop, to prove that she is still alive and this is really happening, but the needle bends before it can puncture the skin.

She has not been in this room since the meeting with the community officer back in September, when those forensic pens were handed out (she should have used hers to mark the house itself). They thought they were being so clever, the ladies of Trinity Avenue, to inform themselves about cybercrime, to pledge to protect one another from invaders and scammers. It hadn’t occurred to them that the enemy might be within. ‘You don’t seem very interested in this,’ she’d complained to Bram when he’d dismissed poor Carys’s suffering. Irony wasn’t strong enough a word.

‘Should I get Alison to come over? Rog can stay with the kids,’ Merle suggests, but Fi thinks not. She doesn’t have the energy to explain her catastrophe an additional time, or to hear poor Alison’s apologies – for she has confessed to Merle she saw Bram moving their things out yesterday, that he spun her the same redecorating line he did Tina. He’s taken them all in, every last one of them.

It is hard enough talking to Tina again, which she does next. ‘So you agreed with Bram you’d keep Leo and Harry tonight as well?’ This is helpful. She’s in no condition to see the boys, must sustain herself on the hope that their sleep tonight is innocent. ‘Things are a bit behind schedule here.’

‘But you’re pleased?’ Tina says, eagerly. ‘Is Bram there with you?’

‘I’m not sure where he is right now,’ Fi says, truthfully.

‘When are we coming home?’ Leo asks, when she has a word with him.

‘Probably tomorrow.’

‘Will we be back in time for swimming?’

‘No, I think it’s been cancelled. You and Harry just have a nice lazy morning.’

Already she is thinking, One lie at a time.

‘I feel really terrible,’ she tells Merle. ‘The vodka isn’t working.’

‘You’re exhausted,’ Merle says, and she too looks bone-tired. ‘It’s been like a hundred days rolled into one. Sleep will help.’

Fi chuckles mirthlessly. ‘There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep tonight.’

‘I can help you there.’ Merle has a few sleeping pills, she remembers, and fetches them from upstairs. ‘They’re from last year when I had a bout of insomnia, but they’re still in date. You might need them over the next few weeks. Take them, just in case.’

‘Thank you.’

They become aware of squealing brakes in the street, of a car parking with much noisy revving and a door crunching shut.

‘What’s that shouting?’ Merle goes to the window. ‘I think it might be someone at your place, Fi. It’d bloody better be him.’

It won’t be, Fi thinks, but she shows willing and follows Merle to the front door. She’s glad she does: swallowing the night air, feeling the sharp chill penetrate her lungs, she gets the bodily pain she’s been craving. It’s dark in the street, a night frost forming on the car windscreens, and as they peer out to the left, across the Hamiltons’ front garden towards hers (correction: the Vaughans’), a male voice carries through the stillness, brittle and hostile: