Bram, Word document
And then finally, finally, the pharmaceuticals took effect. Oh my God, the beautiful mood-influencing neurotransmitter that is our friend serotonin, and not a moment too soon, either – it felt like a Christmas miracle. Gone was the perpetual agonizing, the cartoon pumping of my heart, forceful enough to move the shirt on my chest, whenever the buzzer or the doorbell went. The twisting pain of panic when I weighed up my options (give myself up for one crime or persist with a second that I hoped – but had no guarantee – would camouflage the first?).
No, now I was quiet, optimistic, back to my short-termist, compartmentalizing best.
Thank you, Father Christmas.
Thank you for the hours spent making a Star Wars Clone Turbo Tank out of Lego; playing ‘retro’ Pokémon games on the Nintendo and having a heart light enough to joke that I was more vintage than they were; eating sweets from a glass jar of old-fashioned pick ’n’ mix the size of Harry’s torso. Thank you for Fi smiling constantly – even at me, because I was pleasing her in my own right, not just as her sons’ father.
‘It’s like Richard Curtis is directing us,’ I said, as all four of us assembled in the kitchen to peel sprouts, baste the turkey and stir gravy, though we all knew it was Fi who was directing us, that this slice of old times was her Christmas gift to me.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘either that or we’re the England–Germany football match during the First World War. You know, the Christmas Day truce.’
I laughed (I hadn’t laughed in a long time). ‘A war analogy, hmm. Is it that bad between us?’
I interpreted her silence as a ‘no’.
I waited for the boys to pass out for the night before presenting her with my gift.
‘We said we wouldn’t do presents,’ she chided me, but she didn’t utter the words ‘car insurance’ or ‘lies’ – hadn’t all day – and that was an expression of grace in itself.
‘It didn’t cost much,’ I said.
‘Well, in that case . . .’ She slid a fingernail under the flap of the envelope and removed the card. ‘An adoption certificate for a tree in the royal parks? What a lovely idea!’
‘Well, I know how much you love the magnolia.’
And will miss it when I’ve—
Stop. Seal the thought in its tomb and turn back to the living world. Stare directly at bright light, if necessary, whatever it takes to erase the image of Fi admiring her beloved tree only from the other side of the gate, the new owners watching from the window—
I said stop.
‘Thank you, Bram.’ She was about to kiss me on the cheek, but then she remembered it was different with me. No longer a husband, but not a friend either.
I wanted to ask what he’d given her. Underwear, I guessed. Something that looked expensive but was actually cheap. Something fake or stolen. Something he’d got his sister to choose for him. If only someone could administer electric shock treatment to the pair of them, void their wicked scheme, their memories of all contact with me: what a gift that would be.
‘Look how sad you are,’ Fi said, with old tenderness, and then, in sudden wonder: ‘Wait, is this how it works?’
I blinked, returned my attention to her. Her skin was flushed, her posture slack from the labours of the day – and the alcohol. She’d drunk too much and, believe me, it takes one to know one. ‘How what works?’
‘You. I bet you’re not the predator at all.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.
‘Women, Bram. I’m genuinely interested. Now you’re free to do exactly what you like – who you like – do you actually have to pursue them? Or do you just look all sad and appealing like you’re the prey?’
I didn’t answer, but the question remained between us as her face came closer.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, but not in protest. Let her prove her point. Our mouths met. They knew the other’s shape and flavour, the way the muscles and nerves responded. I’ve always thought rediscovery is sweeter than the original discovery: you notice more without the distraction of novelty. Why else would people return to the same place on holiday or remarry the same wife or move back to their childhood street when they can choose any other in the land?
‘You’re very drunk,’ I pointed out, gently.
‘Thanks for the heads-up,’ she said.
No, it’s not just the sense of coming home; it’s the understanding that what or where or who you love is only ever borrowed. There is no permanent ownership, not for any of us.
‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:36:52
Christmas en famille. Our last – at least I assume now that it was.
To cut a long story short, I drank far, far too much and we slept together. I really let myself down, I know that.
#VictimFi
@KatyEVBrown Well, I saw that coming a mile off #ThrowbackSex
Bram, Word document
It transpired that the Christmas miracle had deprived me of neither bodily function nor hormone-drenched post-coital optimism. This business with Mike and Wendy, I could make that go away, surely? Tomorrow, yes, I’ll sort it and look back on this period as a blip, a quirk in the space–time continuum, a horror experienced by a parallel Bram, a hapless, unlucky version of this one.
‘What are you thinking?’ Fi said. Not a line I welcomed as a rule, but that night, with her, in the bed that used to be ours and was now hers, it was exactly what I wanted her to ask me.
‘You really want to know?’
‘God, maybe I don’t, but go on, tell me anyway.’ She was completely relaxed, her guard down, her heart . . . open?
‘I’m thinking, is there really no chance?’
‘No chance for what?’
‘For us,’ I said, smiling. And I thought, in a simple, almost dreamy, way, that if she said yes, I’d confess everything here and now, because it would mean she loved me no matter what and when you love someone that much you do everything in your power to save them. But if she said no, then I wouldn’t, and nothing would be lost that hadn’t been already.
‘Us?’ The abruptness of her distaste shocked me. She all but physically recoiled, pulling herself upright, her shoulders tense with indignation. ‘You’re in a dream world, aren’t you?’
I sat up too, feeling the drench of humiliation, the loss of hope. ‘I’m not in a dream world. If you must know, I’ve been in complete hell.’
‘If I must know? What do you expect me to say, Bram? Poor you that you don’t like being on your own, that you fucked up your marriage by fucking other women? If it’s hell it’s because you’ve created it, no one else.’
And she reached for the nearest item of clothing and covered herself, not only withdrawing the goods but doing so with an air of great regret that she’d offered them in the first place.
‘Fi’s Story’ > 02:37:08
By the morning, I’d decided it was inevitable. A necessary memento.
‘Listen, I don’t want Toby finding out about this,’ I told him. Woman asks husband not to tell new boyfriend she’s slept with him: I wasn’t sure if it was low-rent or aristocratic, but I was fairly certain it was not an exchange taking place anywhere else on Trinity Avenue that Boxing Day morning.
‘You’re still seeing him?’ he asked. ‘I thought it wasn’t serious.’
‘It’s not serious. But it’s also none of your business.’
I was relieved when he made his departure at the prearranged hour, in good time for me to organize the boys for our visit to my parents.
As the taxi drove through the eerily empty streets of South London, the thought of that First World War football match lingered in my mind. The way those poor men cleared the bodies from No Man’s Land so they could play, and then the next day the horror resumed as if there’d never been any pause.
#VictimFi
@themattporter Not sure #VictimFi is quite in the trenches of the Western Front, but she’s got herself a bit of closure there.
@LorraineGB71 @themattporter Lawson vs Lawson’s not over yet, remember?