‘I still don’t understand how an agent managed the sale,’ Merle says. ‘I’ve never seen this house listed on any of the property sites. I look regularly.’
‘It was done through the private sales department,’ Lucy says. ‘We were registered with another agent there and Rav just phoned us out of the blue, said a new property on Trinity Avenue had come up.’
I had a chance to stop this, Fi thinks. She uses the downstairs bathroom, her fingers touching the smooth lip of the basin, the shiny curves of the taps. The toilet roll is patterned with a puppy motif, Harry’s choice, but the soap and hand towel are the Vaughans’. Afterwards, she lingers in the hall, which is stacked with boxes and fold-up chairs, and runs her hands over the chalky walls, the polished banister rail. The lights are out in all rooms except the kitchen; if you walked by the house now, you wouldn’t know it has changed hands. You wouldn’t know one family had been replaced by another. She has a strange thought then: does the house still mean to her what it used to? Hasn’t she already started to think of it as disputed territory? Hasn’t she known, subconsciously, that in the end the bird’s nest would topple and someone, if not all of them, risked being wounded? Maybe the fall has simply come sooner than she imagined.
In the kitchen, their war room, there is a temporary armistice between Merle and Lucy, a regathering of energies as they await the news from David’s phone call. Lucy has produced biscuits and is eating one with nervous speed. Fi sees her eye Merle’s clothing, consider making a comment, decide against it. She takes a biscuit too, chews, tastes nothing.
In the lull, Merle’s phone pings constantly with updates (Alison has collected Robbie and Daisy from school for her and taken them home for tea. Adrian is away on a skiing holiday with old university friends). In contrast, Fi’s has not rung once since she arrived. The only incoming communications have been texts from her mother asking after the boys and one from Clara at work, who reassures her the presentation document has been found after all and there is no need to go out of her way to send it. (‘Sorry to interrupt your romantic break!’) Whatever the presentation was, Fi’s brain has erased it, Clara’s words as unintelligible as if they were from some lost tongue.
When David returns, he looks for the first time quite shaken. ‘This is getting out of control.’
‘What, it wasn’t before?’ Merle says, straight back to her feet, punches ready.
‘What do you mean?’ Lucy asks. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Rav says Mrs Lawson has been on the phone in a panic. She says the funds haven’t arrived in her account, even though we all had confirmation from both solicitors that completion took place, which was why he released the keys to us this morning.’
Fi stops breathing.
‘She’s spoken to Graham Jenson, so at least we know he’s back in contact, but he’s insisting everything’s gone through okay and she just needs to keep checking her account. Apparently, she hasn’t been able to track down her husband—’
‘Bram’s not her husband,’ Merle corrects him. ‘Can we please all agree on that? Whoever this woman is, she has absolutely no claim to this house.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Lucy says. ‘What does that mean in terms of the money?’
David turns his palms upwards. ‘Well, it means either there’s been some technical glitch with the transfer and, like Jenson says, it will resolve itself any minute . . .’
‘Or?’ Merle prompts.
‘Or – and this seems more likely since we had confirmation of completion hours ago – the money’s been transferred to the wrong account. And that means yet more complications.’
Fi makes a choking noise.
‘Fi?’ Merle says. ‘Are you okay?’
Still she can’t seem to breathe. Mrs Lawson, David said. She called the agent. She can’t get hold of her husband. She needs to check her account.
Whatever Bram’s done, he’s done it with another person. A woman.
At last, she exhales.
Of course a woman.
Geneva, 4 p.m.
Though the train station for services to France is seven kilometres from the hotel, he has decided to walk. This way he can weave and dive and double back, shake off any interested party. Exhaust himself too, with any luck.
Instinct causes him to reach for his phone for navigation before he remembers he has no connectivity, having disabled every digital means of drawing the authorities to him. What he does have, however, is an old-style fold-out map; he did not arrive here a free-and-easy tourist, content to go with the flow. He knows from his research – indeed, it is one of the reasons he chose Geneva as his starting point – that passports are not checked at railway stations here because all countries that border Switzerland are in the Schengen Agreement.
Countries like France. Cities like Lyon, where he’s never been before but which he has earmarked as being sizeable enough to absorb him, easy enough to shop for food and drink in bars without standing out from the crowd. It’s not what you’d call leading the police a merry dance, but it’s a decent attempt at misdirection: if some observant soul at Gatwick recognized his mugshot, if he were to be traced to Geneva, the trail would be suspended here while he slipped away there. It might buy him a few weeks.
‘Hideout’, ‘mugshot’, ‘police trail’: these are the sorts of words he used to use with his sons in their elaborate set-ups in the garden – cops and robbers, spies and double agents – but there’s no fun to be had now.
He’s fairly certain he’s thrown off his pursuer – if there ever was one.
Soon, the chill from Lake Geneva meets his newly cropped head and the fact that he is even registering the pain of a late afternoon in sub-zero winter feels perversely like progress.
34
‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:59:07
Did no one else suspect Bram of anything criminal back then, even if I did not? That’s right, my mother helped us with childcare and was probably in and out of Trinity Avenue more than anyone else, but certainly not her, no. I would go so far as to say that not only was she oblivious to any illegalities but she also privately wished for a reunion between us. Not that she had any desire to see her daughter humiliated, of course, it was just that she regarded his second infidelity as I had regarded the first: not excusable, but maybe, just possibly, pardonable.
‘It seems to me he’s going out of his way to make things nice for you,’ she said. ‘The lilies he left for you were beautiful.’
This was undeniable. After the Kent weekend, he’d left a huge and stunning bouquet for me, even using my favourite vase. The last time he’d bought me flowers, well, I couldn’t remember; before the betrayal, certainly. He’d been too exposed afterwards, risked being accused of empty symbolism.
(You’re probably thinking, God, the poor man can’t win, but I think we already know that he found a way.)
‘You’re obviously on his mind,’ Mum added. He still loves you, was the subtext.
I don’t say any of this in order to criticize her. No one could be more grateful to a parent than I am to her. It’s more to try to show you that we were all susceptible to Bram’s charms one way or another. (Alison always said this included Polly, whom she suspected disliked him because she feared an attraction.)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he was psychopathically charismatic or anything like that. He didn’t set out to use his powers for evil.
More likely, his powers were no match for the evil he chanced upon.
*
I’m bracing myself now, because I know that more than any other scene I’ve described this next one will make you question my intelligence. I mean come on, you’ll think, how could you possibly not have suspected?