‘Bram’s phone has been out of service all afternoon,’ Fi says.
But when they check the number, they find it is not Bram’s official one, the one paid for by his employer and used by Fi to contact him day to day. Blood pulses through her head at the discovery, but when she tries phoning the unfamiliar number, the line rings on and on.
‘You didn’t think he’d actually answer?’ David says. ‘She must have been trying it all day.’
She. Who is this rival, this usurper with whom Bram would share the Lawson fortune? Is it a case of bigamy? He’s married a second wife and together they’ve conspired to steal the house belonging to the first? (He has children with her too, perhaps, half-siblings for Leo and Harry.) Or is it the other extreme and she is merely an actress he hired for the transaction? The ‘Mrs Lawson’ who phoned the solicitor could be anyone; the Vaughans didn’t meet her, the legal process not requiring buyer and seller to be in the same room at the same time. Perhaps he simply photocopied Fi’s passport and submitted it online? The police officers openly acknowledged how faceless the conveyancing process has become, how fraudsters are slithering through loopholes unchallenged.
And if not to fund a new relationship – new love – then why? Why does Bram need such a sum of money? What could be worth sacrificing both his children’s security and his own relationship with them? A huge debt from a gambling addiction? Drugs?
She massages her temples, failing to dim the ache. How much easier it was to imagine him as the victim, just like her. Swindled or threatened or brainwashed.
‘So we just sit it out, do we?’ Merle says. ‘Still not knowing who is entitled to stay and who has to leave?’
‘According to Rav,’ David says, ‘there’s a simple way to settle who legally owns the house and therefore has occupation rights: the Land Registry. There are no physical deeds any more, but if the house has been registered to us, then we are the owners. If it hasn’t been transferred for whatever reason, then the Lawsons’ names will still be registered and they remain the owners. Emma will be able to tell us.’
The Vaughans’ solicitor, Emma Gilchrist, is finally out of her external meeting and a colleague is alerting her right now to the crisis in Alder Rise.
‘Don’t worry,’ David reassures Lucy. ‘There’s no way Emma would have paid out two million pounds without the sale being registered.’
‘Really?’ Merle says. ‘It wouldn’t be the only disastrous error in this situation, would it? Look, I’m sick of waiting for solicitors. Can’t we check the Land Registry website?’
‘It takes a few days to appear online, apparently,’ David says. ‘We do need Emma or this Graham Jenson character to confirm the exact position. And this might be Emma now . . .’
As his phone rings, he draws it from his pocket like a firearm. To a person, the others stiffen in their seats, electrified.
‘Emma, at last!’ David cries. ‘We’ve got a very worrying situation here and we need you to resolve it as quickly as possible . . .’ Catching Fi’s eye, he looks unexpectedly embarrassed and opens the kitchen door to take the rest of the phone call in the garden. Icy air flows into the room like a threat as he treads off down the path towards the playhouse.
This is it, Fi thinks. My future, Leo’s and Harry’s too: it all comes down to this.
Geneva, 5.15 p.m.
He is aching when he reaches Gare Cornavin, his hips and knees, even his shoulders, as inflamed as his feet. His mind, however, is numb: the city’s streets have gifted him the balm of anonymity and, as he draws to a halt to survey the bustle of the station concourse, it is almost as if he has forgotten why he is here.
A group of young female travellers pass him, faces turned to one particular figure at their centre, and as he watches he is speared with the knowledge that Fi will cope just fine. She will have her women around her.
The knowledge is clean, painless, absolute.
He always used to find the way the women of Trinity Avenue talked to one another exhausting. Even when you couldn’t hear what they were saying, you could tell from their body language, their facial expressions, that it was all so intense. They acted like they were discussing genocide or the economic apocalypse and it turned out it was just about little Emily having been moved down a maths set or Felix not making the football first team. The plot of a TV drama or some outrage on The Victim.
Then, when really terrible things happened, like a sudden death in the family or a destroyed career, and you expected mass hysteria, they were a SWAT team, immaculately organized, focused on resolution.
‘They’re the worms that turned,’ Rog said once at the bar in the Two Brewers. ‘Remember the old comedy sketch called that? About women taking over the world? The Two Ronnies with Diana Dors, wasn’t it? It was supposed to be a dystopia.’
‘Sounds a bit un-PC,’ Bram said.
‘Oh, completely. Wouldn’t be allowed now,’ Rog agreed with pretended regret.
Funny that he should think of that now, under the departures board at a train station in Geneva, but he’s glad he has because it makes him think things might not be so atrocious in London, even today, the day of discovery. Because it is Fi in charge now and not him. When the dust settles, the boys will be better off without him.
For the first time since he left Trinity Avenue he feels something closer to peace than turmoil.
And there’s a train to Lyon leaving at 5.29 p.m.
38
‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:22:12
This may come as a surprise to you, but there’ve been times when I’ve felt sorry for him, I really have.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not excusing what he’s done – obviously I despise it: he’s stolen from me, he’s stolen his own children’s future – it’s just that a part of me understands how the situation might have become as extreme as it did. You know, an escalation of events, a momentum that couldn’t be halted. A sense of cosmic irresistibility. A problem shared is a problem halved, we all know that, but isn’t it also the case that a problem kept to yourself is a problem multiplied many times over?
And that’s what he did, I’m convinced – in my calmer moments, anyway. He kept it to himself. Had he confided in someone, anyone, he’d have been dissuaded from his actions. Instead, he’s wanted for fraud and maybe even worse, maybe even—
No, I won’t say it. I won’t say it until – unless – it’s been proven in a court of law.
No, honestly, I can’t make any statement about it. I’d get in trouble with the police myself.
What I will say is that Bram was not the blithe spirit people thought he was. He had his depressive moods, more so than most of us, which stemmed from his father dying so young. Not to criticize his mother – she’s an amazing woman – but parenting a bereaved child isn’t easy when you’re grieving yourself.
I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that it’s hard sometimes to tell the difference between weakness and strength. Between hero and villain.
Don’t you think?
*
Timing was not on Bram’s side, I admit that. In fact, it couldn’t have been crueller.
Though I’d intended heeding Toby’s advice and reining in my outrage about the attack, by the time Bram returned the following evening for his regular Wednesday visit with Leo and Harry, there’d been a development he could not have foreseen. I waited for him to come down from putting them to bed, led him into the living room and closed the door – I didn’t want the boys hearing a word of this. As we settled on the sofa, wood burner glowing across the room, I thought how couples up and down the street would be doing the same, precious few caught in a fray like ours.
‘About what happened last night,’ he began. As Toby had predicted, he was bashful, full of remorse. ‘I’m really—’
‘I know.’ I shrugged off his apologies. ‘Toby doesn’t want to escalate it. You’re very lucky, he could have gone to the police. But he understands why you lost it like that.’