‘When do you think they’ll pay up?’ I asked him, when he reappeared from the study. It was now two weeks since the Audi had been reported stolen and it had still not been recovered. I’d heard nothing more from the police officer who’d come to the house. ‘Is it like missing persons, a certain period has to pass before you can be declared dead?’
He looked so suddenly, so inexplicably sad, that I reached to put a hand on his arm. Normally, I was careful to avoid physical contact with him, but this was instinctive, almost maternal. ‘I know you loved that car. Leo’s upset too. But we’ll get a new one or, as you suggested, try managing without one for a bit. We could spend the insurance money on something else? You know I want to have the house repainted. It’s been years since we did upstairs. Whatever happens, I’ll definitely need to keep the hire car for the half-term trip to Kent,’ I added. This was a long weekend at Alison’s holiday home on the coast, an end-of-October tradition for mothers and kids now in its fifth year.
‘I didn’t think you’d go to that this year,’ Bram said.
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
He grappled visibly with a response before saying, finally, ‘I don’t know, Fi. It’s entirely up to you.’
Well, not entirely, I thought. Bird’s nest custody was about give and take and I needed his co-operation just as much as he needed mine. ‘When we’re away, you should just decide yourself where to hang out,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know if you prefer to be based in the house or the flat? We didn’t discuss this with Rowan, did we?’
It was clear he couldn’t remember who Rowan was. ‘Our bird’s nest counsellor? Are you going to the rugby with Rog and everyone on the Saturday?’
Traditionally, the husbands marked the same weekend by going to Twickenham or, if the dates didn’t fit, to Crystal Palace for the football. In previous years, Bram had been in the thick of it, leading the pub crawl, censoring the war stories (I usually got the more colourful details care of Merle or Alison).
‘I’ll probably stay in the house,’ he said, continuing his new habit of conversing at a half-minute delay. ‘I might have some friends from work over. A few of the guys and their wives.’
‘Good idea, you’ve looked a bit stressed out lately.’ I thought about the previous time I’d seen him, when his face had begun twitching uncontrollably. ‘And I realize you’ll be missing two nights with the boys, so we can swap with some weekday nights, if you like? When would be good for you?’
The way he looked at me then was so grim, he might have been a man who’d just been diagnosed with an incurable illness.
‘Sooner rather than later,’ he said.
Bram, Word document
Her passport was exactly where it was supposed to be, with the rest of the family’s in the drawer of the filing cabinet at Trinity Avenue, where they’d remained, I suspected, since our return from our last family holiday. A week at Easter on the hot volcanic beaches of Lanzarote: it might have been a submarine trip to the bottom of the Mariana Trench for how fantastical it seemed now.
The drawer was marked ‘Confidential documents’ and had I still had a sense of humour, I would have pointed out to Fi the helpfulness of this to the tsunami of criminals who’d swept Alder Rise. But I did not, possessing only the sick, humourless knowledge that I was the most wicked criminal of them all.
The enemy within.
*
I sent the photos to Mike by the deadline and received an immediate acknowledgement:
- That’s better, Bram. Your next job is to ring this estate agent and make an appointment to get the house valued.
He added the details of the private sales arm of a branch of
Challoner’s Property in Battersea.
- Are they in on your plan?
- NO. You, me, Wendy, NO ONE ELSE. Understand?
- Yes.
The thought of a normal person, a third party, becoming involved in this insanity made me nauseous. What if this agent grew suspicious of me and came back to the house when Fi was in to double-check?
Just as I was about to shut down the phone, a final text popped up:
- Don’t fuck this up or you know who will pay.
30
Bram, Word document
Act natural. Normal. Just be yourself.
I opened the door, smiling as I would with a new client. ‘Hello, I’m Bram. You must be Rav?’
‘Challoner’s Property. This is a beautiful house, Bram.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is. Come in and see it properly.’
Mike had done his research and found that Challoner’s in Battersea was one of the foremost staging posts for buyers priced out of more central areas and open to migrating to the next zones out, to neighbourhoods that included Alder Rise.
I’d arranged the valuation for Wednesday morning, when the shared diary showed that Fi was leaving early for a trade show in Birmingham and I could claim easily enough to be working from home. I wasn’t worried about neighbours mentioning my presence to Fi – most who knew us well enough to have been briefed on the custody arrangements were at work, and even if the odd one was at home, she (it would only be a ‘she’) was hardly likely to know I didn’t have Fi’s consent to be there or that my guest was an estate agent.
Still, letting myself into the house had felt exactly like the violation it was, even before I’d made a cursory sweep of the place, picking up clothes from the floors and removing – at Mike’s instruction – all photographs of Fi. At least he had not insisted that images of Wendy be inserted in their place or, worse, that she should be by my side for this meeting. ‘You’ll be fine on your own,’ he said, magnanimously, the subtext being, I’ll be the first to know if you’re not.
If Rav picked up on my subdued mood during the tour, it was to interpret it as reluctance of a more conventional kind. ‘How certain are you and your wife that you want to sell?’
‘Oh, one hundred per cent certain. As quickly as possible, that’s why we want to price realistically. And we want to be discreet to the point of secrecy, that’s why we’re doing it through your private sales department. We don’t want neighbours to know we’re selling, so there mustn’t be details in the shop window or online. We can’t have people here on weekday evenings, either. The boys have an early bedtime on school nights.’
‘Understood.’ Clearly Rav, noting this last request in his obliging, attentive manner, had met more troublesome sellers in his time. ‘I would propose an open house. Get everyone in and out in one fell swoop. Anyone who needs a follow-up viewing can come at a time convenient for you or perhaps when you’re at work?’
I told him the day that suited us best was a week on Saturday – 29 October.
‘That’s the last weekend of half term,’ he said. ‘Not ideal, some of my candidates will be travelling back from holiday and won’t be able to come.’
It had been a jolt when Fi had started talking about arrangements for half term, as if the world held a future to be anticipated with pleasure, while I was living – breathing – by the day, my only emotion towards tomorrow abject dread. But from a fraudster’s point of view the timing was helpful: half the street would be away on holiday or visiting relatives, including those who would be with Fi at Alison’s place in Kent.
Admittedly, the husbands would be left behind, but in my experience men noticed very little.
‘There’s no other day that works for us,’ I told Rav.
‘Then that’s the one we’ll go for. There’ll still be plenty of interest. A lot of people have younger children, not in school yet, so half term won’t be an issue for them. They’re after the catchment for Alder Rise Primary, of course.’
‘Of course,’ I agreed.
I didn’t think about my own boys and whether they would continue at the excellent state primary with the pet guinea pigs and the teaching assistant whose eyes teared up when her class sang to their parents at the end-of-year concert. I didn’t think about them as I discussed commission percentages and, when an agreement was produced on the spot, signed my name. I told myself that the legal system, law and order, morality, something would intervene to bring an end to the lunacy into which I’d plunged. To stop Mike holding my head underwater until my lungs burst.
‘As soon as I get back to the office, I’ll start calling my candidates,’ Rav said.