‘Well, almost submissive.’
‘Submissive? Bram?’ She gave a shout of laughter. ‘No, that can’t be right. That must be the good twin he never told you about. They’ve swapped identities. The real Bram will be at a beach party in Goa. Or at least down the pub.’
‘I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. When he came to the house on Wednesday he looked, I don’t know, grateful. I think he might really be appreciating what a lifeline this is.’
‘I should hope so!’ Polly exclaimed. ‘Even he must realize how close he came to losing everything. And would have with any other wife.’
Even now I’d split from him, even now scar tissue hardened my heart, I was deemed too soft on him. (How easy it was to imagine Polly telling her friends: ‘Get this, she’s finally sent him packing – to the room across the landing!’)
‘The thing is, Fi, this bird’s nest set-up all sounds great on paper, it’s very fashionably liberal and all that, but do you trust him to do his share? Every Friday and Saturday, sole charge? You’d have no problem getting full custody, would you? You could be in the house seven days a week and he could be here. Why throw him a bone like this?’
‘Because he’s the centre of the boys’ world – in many ways, he’s a better parent than I am. He makes them laugh and shout and dash around like mad things.’
‘That’s a good parent? I think I prefer the boring kind that keeps them quiet – oh, and protects them from the effects of adultery.’
I smiled. ‘Well, they’ve got one of each. And the boring one wants them to be able to stay in their home and sleep in their own beds every night, not on camp beds somewhere like this. She wants them to have what they’ve always had: football in the garden with their dad, building dens for the dog we’ll probably never get . . .’
‘Hmm.’ Her nephews’ welfare held Polly’s interest only so far. A year into her current relationship and not yet a parent, she was doubtless thinking she would never be foolish enough to find herself in my predicament. ‘How does it work if you or Bram start dating someone new?’
‘There’s no rule against it, obviously, but we’ve agreed no third parties at Trinity Avenue.’
‘Third parties?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s not what they call them on Tinder.’
‘Well, whatever they call them, I’m too old to find out, so it’s not going to be an issue.’
‘You’re only in your early forties, Fi.’
‘I feel in my early hundreds.’
‘That’s what marriage to Bram does to you. He won’t have any qualms about bringing people back here.’
‘And I won’t have any qualms about him not having any,’ I insisted.
My sister considered her verdict, which, when delivered, was in my favour only by chance. ‘I have to say, it really is the most perfect solution. You get the best nights here: Friday and Saturday. The grown-up nights. You can have a private life and keep it completely separate from him and the kids. From everyone.’
I laughed. ‘Did you not just hear me say there isn’t going to be a private life?’
‘Maybe not at first. I give you a month.’
That’s Polly’s way: she’s so certain she knows what’s going to happen before it does. She thinks she’s seen it all before.
But even she admits now that she could never have predicted this.
#VictimFi
@LorraineGB71 Something really horrible is going to happen in that flat.
@KatyEVBrown @LorraineGB71 There’s a reason why no one stays longer than six months . . . *turns on menacing soundtrack*
13
Bram, Word document
Right, enough scene setting. Lies, infidelity, best bird’s-nest intentions, you get the picture: I was already a fucking moron before we even get to the main event. To the tragedy that should never have happened. The grave I dug for myself.
(Second thoughts, maybe that’s not the best metaphor.)
It was the third Friday of the new custody arrangements and I had a company away-day at a country house hotel near Gatwick. I was second on the bill to present, along with another sales manager, Tim, who, conveniently for me, had written the thing. It was a complicated journey involving a change of trains at Clapham Junction and a taxi at the other end and when I missed the first train from Alder Rise, even before the ‘Delayed’ sign flashed up for the next, I calculated that I wasn’t going to get to the venue in time. Standing there on the mobbed platform, I found it impossible not to think of the Audi parked a minute away on Trinity Avenue, especially when the calendar app showed no activities that might require its use after school. Best of all, Fi was not at home, as she usually was on a Friday, but had left early with Alison to go to some antiques fair in Richmond, driving in Alison’s Volvo, which meant I could nip to the house and get the car keys without running into her.
So I slipped from the station and took the back route past the school and along Wyndham Gardens to the house. I considered texting Fi that I was entering the property without prior agreement, but I couldn’t spare the half-minute that would take.
Thank God I didn’t. A message stating my intention to drive that day could have buried me.
Speeding only when I knew for certain there were no cameras, and with the last of the rush-hour traffic against me, I reached the hotel with minutes to spare, co-presented the mumbo-jumbo Tim had strung together and then suffered the demoralizing tedium that is a full day’s programme of strategic team building.
(Basket-making. I’ve just remembered. After lunch – at which I restrained myself and had only two glasses of wine – we did a basket-making workshop. For fuck’s sake.)
Now fast forward to the drive back home. Not only was I exhausted, but I was antsy as well, thanks partly to the need to get the car back and partly to the darkening of my door by a new HR executive called Saskia. She’d been emailing me for the last few weeks about the firm’s reissued contracts following our merger with a competitor earlier in the year, contracts that required disclosure, among other things, of any motoring convictions. (Did I mention I hadn’t yet declared my driving ban to work? Even at this stage, the blunders were stockpiling.) I’d stalled her for as long as I could, avoided eye contact during the day’s activities, but just before I’d left the venue, she’d materialized by my side.
‘Everyone else in sales has got their contract back to me,’ she said. ‘I just need yours. Can you make sure you bring it in on Monday?’
She was young and attractive and aware of it and somehow this only added to my agitation.
‘If not, I’d be happy to reissue a new one and find you a quiet spot to read it through during office hours?’ she offered.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘No problem.’ And I hung back so she wouldn’t see me walking to my car, which I’d parked in a different car park from the assigned one just in case the ban came to light and someone like Saskia remembered seeing me driving off.
I can’t go on like this, I thought. The constant ‘just in case’ precautions. I have to tell people. I have to tell Fi. Without a doubt, she would consider the lying as egregious as the ban itself, so perhaps I could present it as a brand-new development? A six-month ban that began in August, when we were out of touch? What was the worst she could do?
Well, she could pull the plug on the bird’s nest, keep herself at Trinity Avenue with the kids and consign me to the flat fulltime. Maybe not even that. Once the need to economize lost its appeal, I’d be out of there too, just another sad fuck living with his mates or parents. Penge. Childhood meals. Godliness.