It’s one of the well-known ironies of parenting, isn’t it, that to arrange time away alone with someone who isn’t your spouse is a thousand times simpler than with the one who is. In the old days, a trip with Bram spanning three school days would have called for Churchillian cunning and an army of helpers, but now he was my ex all I had to do was issue a five-minute briefing and I was free as a bird.
On the Wednesday morning, after school drop-off, I popped into the flat to retrieve a pair of boots I’d left there at the weekend and needed for Winchester, assuming, correctly, that Bram would already have departed for work. Given the strict rules regarding access to Trinity Avenue on an ‘off’ day, there were laughably few, if any, for Baby Deco. Why would we want to go there unless ejected from the house? That had been the original thinking and yet this tiny studio flat had, in its own way, become a home.
Letting myself in, I was struck immediately by the smell of cigarettes. Bram was still smoking, clearly, and must be going to some lengths to air the place each time he left since I never noticed the smell on my Friday arrivals. The bathroom door was open, water pooled on the tiled floor from his shower, and worn clothes scattered on the floor by the unmade bed. On the nearby table lay a green-and-white paper bag from the pharmacy on the Parade.
I shouldn’t have looked inside, you don’t have to tell me that – it was both an invasion of privacy and an act of hypocrisy – but I did. In it were half a dozen identical boxes of prescription pills and I slipped one out to take a closer look. I didn’t recognize the name of the medication – Sertraline – which Bram was being directed to take in a 50 mg daily dose, and of course by the time I’d reached for my phone I’d convinced myself that he was gravely unwell. The lies he’d been telling, his excessive anguish when confronted: had he been protecting me all along from something far, far worse than fecklessness?
And that remark I’d made at the concert about him acting like he was terminally ill! How could I have been so callous?
I googled ‘Sertraline’, thinking that if I was right I would cancel this break with Toby and wait for Bram to arrive, as planned, to pick up the boys; we’d talk through how we were going to manage the situation, get through this together.
The search results were up: it was an SSRI, an antidepressant used to treat anxiety and panic.
I sat on the bed for a moment, immobile. Anxiety and panic caused by what? My having left him? I have to say the thought provoked feelings of sadness rather than guilt; after all, he’d brought his losses on himself, as I’d rather cruelly emphasized on Christmas night, and he’d been lucky to be forgiven that fracas with Toby. But he was still a human being and we all made mistakes, we all hurt.
I decided there was no need to cancel the break, but I’d talk to him on Saturday, as scheduled. I’d subtly discover if there was anything I could do to help lessen his load.
By now I was running late. I gathered up my things and headed for the door, abandoning the pharmacist’s bag on the table where I’d found it.
Bram, Word document
On the last Wednesday, the day before I cleared the house and – unbeknownst to my colleagues – my final day in the office, I had a call on my mobile from an unknown number.
‘May I speak to Mr Abraham Lawson, please?’
It was mid-morning and I was at my desk. I wasn’t hungover, at least not notably, and my brain was sparking normally. Abraham: no one used my full name, so this meant someone in an official capacity. It had to be the police. The caller was female, so not the detective who’d come to see me back in—
‘Hello?’
Speak, Bram!
‘I’m afraid he’s not in this week,’ I said in my own voice, casual, courteous. ‘Who’s calling?’
‘This is Detective Sergeant Joanne McGowan of the Serious Collisions Investigation Unit at Catford. So this isn’t his mobile I’m calling?’
‘It’s his work mobile,’ I said. ‘Company policy is to hand in your phone when you go on holiday.’ A lie – what company in 2017 would require that? ‘I can leave a message with his team, though, and have someone call you if they have another contact number for him?’
Don’t give her the landline at the house: Fi might still be there!
‘We have his landline number, but there’s no reply at the moment.’
‘I guess they’re not at home,’ I said with a polite sympathy that belied the succession of terror and relief her last remarks had caused. ‘Maybe his wife’s mobile?’
Quick thinking, Bram. If she believes Fi’s away with you, she might delay any plans to phone her separately.
‘Thank you. We have her mobile number already. How long is Mr Lawson away for?’
‘I think someone said he’s back on Monday.’
‘Is he in the UK, do you know?’
‘Er, Scotland, maybe?’ Best not to give a destination that might send them checking the airlines’ passenger manifests.
‘Thank you.’ She hung up.
I remained calm. They knew nothing, I reasoned. At most, they’d discovered the car and had a few additional questions for me – few enough to ask over the phone. Even in the worst-case scenario, they’d give me till Monday. They’d wait till I was back from the Outer Hebrides before clapping handcuffs on my weather-beaten wrists.
*
‘Why are you putting everything into these boxes?’ Harry asked on Thursday morning when he and Leo came downstairs for breakfast. I’d got them up early so I could prepare them for the arrangements ahead.
‘I’m about to tell you, but only if you can keep it a secret?’
They gave their word.
‘I’m arranging a surprise for Mummy.’
If I’d anticipated that this would be one of the most unbearable moments, when I tricked my two sacrificial lambs into expressing delight at the prospect of slaughter, I needn’t have worried.
‘She doesn’t like surprises,’ Leo said, pouring his Shreddies into a bowl. ‘I wouldn’t do it, Dad.’
‘She hates them,’ Harry agreed. ‘Unless it’s when we’ve made her a cake with caramel icing.’
‘She’ll like this one. I’m going to have the house redecorated.’
‘When?’
‘Today and tomorrow. So you’re going to stay at Grandma Tina’s for two nights and – this is the best bit – you get to have tomorrow off school!’
Now they were pleased, or at least Leo was.
‘Did Mrs Carver say it’s allowed?’ Harry asked. For one so raucous, he was oddly keen on permissions.
‘Yes. I spoke to Mrs Bottomley and everyone is fine about it. So when I pick you up from school today, we’ll go straight to Grandma’s on the bus. We’ll call Mummy on the way, but remember, don’t say anything about the surprise. Or about having Friday off school. I don’t want her to worry.’
I had booked my mother a week or so ago to (unwittingly) abet me these next days. Wholly approving of my decorating scheme, she’d offered to take care of the school run on Friday so the boys wouldn’t have to miss their lessons, but I’d fobbed her off. I couldn’t risk her dropping by the house and finding strangers moving in. Not with the boys. That was not how they should find out.
After breakfast, I suggested Leo and Harry pick their three favourite things to take to Grandma’s. ‘I’ll bring them after school with your pyjamas and a change of clothes for your day off tomorrow.’
Though it was an irregular request, they rose to the challenge, not noticing their father watching dismally from the door.
‘I need more than three,’ Leo complained.
‘I’ve only got two,’ Harry said.
So I said Leo could have Harry’s extra one, Harry protested that he’d use his selections after all, Leo called him a selfish pig and I brought a halt to the argument by proposing we leave for school immediately and call into the bakery on the Parade for chocolate croissants.
Just ignore how bleak and depraved and heartbroken you feel, I urged myself.
It’s not real.
*