‘Do you remember where you were on Friday sixteenth September, Mr Lawson?’ he asked.
My pulse quickened. ‘Yes, that was the day of my work sales conference.’ Silly to pretend I didn’t remember when I’d already suggested I’d discussed details of Fi’s interview with her.
‘It took place here?’
‘No, it’s always off-site. This year it was at a hotel down near Gatwick.’
‘What time did it finish?’
‘It would have been about five, maybe a bit earlier.’
‘That was when you left?’
Don’t second-guess him. Just answer each question as it comes.
‘Yes. Some people stayed on for drinks, but I had to get home.’
‘You drove yourself in the Audi, did you?’
‘Actually, no.’ I pulled a sheepish expression, hesitated as if embarrassed to admit the truth. ‘I didn’t drive at all around that time.’
‘Why was that?’
I sighed. ‘If you’re investigating our car, then you probably already know, do you?’
‘Know what, Mr Lawson?’
‘I’ve got a driving ban. It happened back in February. I was caught speeding a few times. So my wife has been the only driver since then.’
He did not react, which encouraged me to continue.
‘She didn’t mention it when you spoke to her, did she? That’s because she didn’t know. She still doesn’t, I hope.’ I paused, as if taking a moment to grapple with my own shame. ‘We’ve split up, you see, and I’ve found it’s not always helpful to tell her everything I’ve done wrong. And if you’re speaking to her again, I’d be grateful if you didn’t let on.’
It was too much to expect a law enforcement officer to collude with me in marital subterfuge, but I thought I detected the faintest flicker of sympathy.
‘I don’t expect to have to speak to her again,’ he said, and I felt like punching the air. This could only be routine, then, part of the police’s painstaking process of elimination.
Get through this and you’ll be off the list!
‘So how did you travel home that Friday, Mr Lawson?’
‘I got the train. The station was right near the venue.’
True.
‘Which station?’
‘I can’t remember the name, one or two before the airport, on the slow line. But the hotel was called Blackthorn something. I can look it up if you like?’
He didn’t ask me to do so, which I took to mean he did not intend to waste manpower on this particular line of inquiry.
‘So, you left before five and were home by, what, six o’clock?’
‘No, I had to change trains at Clapham Junction, so I stopped for a couple of pints. I was desperate for a drink, to be honest, it had been an exhausting day. I was due at the house at seven, so I got the connecting train at about six forty. It’s only a couple of stops from Alder Rise.’
‘Which pub did you drink in?’
This seemed less good. If he accepted that I’d taken the train, then why probe the drinking? Perhaps because it was extraneous detail I had introduced. Why would I feel the need to say I’d been desperate for a drink? Stop asking why and just answer the bloody questions! ‘The one right next to the station. Is it the Half Moon, maybe?’
‘See anyone you knew there? Talk to anyone?’
I narrowed my eyes as if straining to remember. ‘I was on my own, like I say, and it’s not really a regular haunt. I flicked through the Standard, probably. Oh, that’s right, I chatted to a guy at the bar for a bit. He seemed to be well known there, was a bit of a character.’ Don’t give any more detail – too obvious! ‘Then I had to get home. I take over with the kids at seven o’clock.’
You’ve already said that. Calm down.
‘When you got home, do you remember seeing your car parked in the street?’
‘I don’t. I mean, that doesn’t mean I didn’t see it, it’s just I’ve walked home from the station a thousand times, I can’t remember every distinct occasion. I do remember I’d cut it a bit fine, so I probably wasn’t noticing much, just rushing to get there. Sorry, I know that’s not very useful.’
He nodded. ‘Okay, well, perhaps we’ll have something more useful for you when your car is found.’
Useful for me? Or for him? I could hear my pay-as-you-go start up in my pocket, felt the Pavlovian opening of my pores as I began to sweat. My thoughts turned wild: I can’t let them find the car! Maybe I should go back to it, move it out of London. Where’s the second key? Has Fi still got it?
Then: No, no, if you do that, you might get stopped. Remember the police use Automatic Number Plate Recognition, you see those ANPR signs all over the place. Maybe—
‘Your phone’s ringing,’ the detective said, rising. ‘I’ll let you take it.’
I recovered myself. ‘No, it’s fine, I’ll see you out.’
And that was it. Bar my needless reference to the pub and that last-minute attack of nerves, it had gone as well as I could have hoped.
I waited a safe half hour before checking the phone and finding news from Rav: there were two offers on the house.
‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:07:21
You asked when it was that I got properly worried about Bram. Well, it was in early November at about the time of an upsetting incident with Toby, which I’ll tell you about now. I remember thinking I had absolutely no idea what he was going to do next, that I’d lost the natural instinct I’d always had for his actions, his reactions. For him.
Toby had been consumed by work and had seen his kids the previous weekend, so when he told me he was free only in the early part of the week I made the decision to relax – all right, break – the bird’s nest rule about third parties at Trinity Avenue and invited him for dinner there on the Tuesday. I asked him to arrive at 8.30 p.m. so the boys would already be asleep. I wasn’t ready yet for introductions.
‘Nice place,’ he said, following me into the kitchen and, as I took his coat and handed him a glass of wine, I was more than usually charged by his presence, as if I were the forbidden guest and not him.
‘Thank you. It’s a shame you can’t see the garden properly.’
He moved to the kitchen window, wine glass in hand, and peered out. At the bottom of the garden, fairy lights traced the roofline and doorframe of the playhouse like lines iced on a gingerbread house.
‘Is that the famous playhouse?’ he said. ‘Looks innocent enough.’
‘It does.’ It surprised me sometimes how much I’d told him about my break-up with Bram. The traumas of marriage, like those of childhood, are a permanent point of reference, I suppose. They hoard themselves within you, fuse into your body tissue.
‘Want to get even?’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You, me, the bottom of the garden . . .?’
‘Seriously?’ I was genuinely nauseated by this idea, not because of the discomforts involved in al fresco intimacies in November, but because of the thought of Leo and Harry upstairs, trusting in the protection of their mother while she sneaked out to their den like some primitive woman in heat . . . What Bram had done that night in July was and remained unconscionable, whatever impulse I’d had to the contrary that night in Kent, whatever my mother hoped I might come to excuse.
‘It’s a bit damp out there. I think I’d rather stay in the warmth and have another one of these,’ I said, raising my glass, and Toby accepted my demurral with an easy laugh. Interesting, though, to know that he had this daring in his personality, when I’d taken him to be a conventional, risk-averse sort of person like me.
Anyway, it wasn’t long after, just as I was serving dinner, that the doorbell rang.
Bram, Word document
Though I’d invited Saskia to the house, I’d reasoned that it had been in the boys’ absence and so not strictly breaking the bird’s nest rules. What was breaking them, however, was my decision to visit Trinity Avenue on one of Fi’s nights.