Trying, trusting, believing: a thousand times more appealing than the alternative when you share two young children. And he was faithful after that, I’m certain he was – until that evening last July.
Was I faithful to him? Very funny. Of course I was. I refer you to the two small children. Even if I’d had the desire to stray – which I didn’t – well, I didn’t have the time.
And no, Polly isn’t married.
Bram, Word document
If you haven’t been told already then you will soon: there had been a prior extramarital lapse. I won’t dwell on that here, because as I say this isn’t about the sex. Love and fidelity are not the same thing, whatever women say. (Again, there’s no need for names. She was a girl at a work event, a one-night thing. She left the company soon after.)
Why did I cheat on the woman I love? The best way I can explain it is that it was not an addiction or even an itch, but more like the memory of hunger after years of good eating. The belief that I was better when I was desperate, my senses sharper, pleasure more intensely taken. A kind of egomaniac’s nostalgia.
I won’t go on. I have no doubt you’re already rolling your eyes. You’ll show your colleague that last bit and you’ll say, ‘I’ve heard it all now.’
‘Fi’s Story’ > 00:24:41
By the way, don’t think I don’t know that after that fling with the girl at work Polly called him ‘Wham Bram Thank You Ma’am’.
Pretty clever, I have to admit.
What she called him after the playhouse incident is too shocking for broadcast.
Bram, Word document
When the boys were little and Fi was on the warpath, we used to call her Fee Fi Fo Fum. Affectionately, of course, though it became less so on my part once I’d realized that nine times out of ten the Englishman’s blood she smelled was mine.
6
Friday, 13 January 2017
London, 1 p.m.
The number you have dialled is no longer in service.
‘Any luck?’ Lucy Vaughan asks her.
‘No.’ She needs to get rid of this woman with her fake emails and fantasies about owning someone else’s home. Should she call the police straight away? Or wait till she’s located Bram, so they can tackle this outrageous invasion together? And now that so much of the Vaughans’ furniture is installed, do they qualify for squatters’ rights? Are they, technically, occupiers?
The questions have no answers. They feel as unreal as the images in front of her eyes. The whole experience is hallucinatory, not to be trusted.
She tries Bram a second time. A third.
The number you have dialled is no longer in service.
She can’t even leave him a voicemail. ‘Where the hell is he?’
Lucy watches, her own phone in her hand. ‘You have two children, don’t you? Could he be with them?’
‘No, they’re in school.’ How does Lucy know things about her when she didn’t know Lucy even existed until a few minutes ago?
Mum, she thinks. She’ll ask her to pick up the boys from school and take them back to her place. They can’t come here, they’d be distraught to find their bedrooms gutted, their precious possessions spirited away.
Spirited away where? Owning the house might be this stranger’s delusion (she continues to cling to the notion of a practical joke), but its rightful contents are starkly, incontrovertibly missing. Someone has physically removed them.
This is when it occurs – not a thought so much as an unleashing, a surge of foreboding that breaks into consciousness in the form of full-blown terror: if her property could vanish during her two-day absence, could her children? ‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘Please, no, please . . .’ With trembling hands, she scrolls through her phone contacts.
‘What is it?’ Lucy asks, agitated. ‘What’s happened? Who are you calling?’
‘My children’s school. I have to— Oh, Mrs Emery! This is Fi Lawson. My son Harry is in Year Three and Leo in Year Four.’
‘Of course, how are you, Mrs—’ begins the school secretary, but Fi interrupts.
‘I need you to check on them for me – urgently.’
‘Check on them? I’m not sure I understand.’
‘Can you just make sure they’re where they should be? In their classrooms or the playground, wherever. It’s really important.’
Mrs Emery hesitates. ‘Well, Year Four will be in the lunch hall, I think—’
‘Please!’ Stronger than a wail: a shriek, offensive enough to cause Lucy to flinch. ‘I don’t care where it is, just check they’re there!’
There’s a shocked pause, then, ‘Would you mind holding a moment . . .?’
Fi strains to follow a background exchange between Mrs Emery and a colleague, ten or so agonizing seconds of low-voiced back and forth, and then Mrs Emery comes back on the line. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lawson, but I’ve just been told your boys aren’t actually here.’
‘What?’ Instantly, a terrible smacking starts up in her ribcage and her stomach threatens to empty itself.
‘They’re not in school today.’
‘Where are they then?’
‘Well, with their father, as far as we’re aware. Look, I’m going to put you through to the head . . .’
She is shaking now, the convulsions out of rhythm with the heart-smacking. She is a machine that has lost control of its functions.
‘Mrs Lawson? Sarah Bottomley here. I can assure you there’s absolutely nothing for you to worry about.’ The head teacher of Alder Rise Primary has a bracing manner, confident of order at all times, with just the subtlest sense of offence at Fi’s current suggestion of disorder. ‘Your husband requested permission to take the boys out of school for the day and I agreed to give it. Their absence is fully authorized.’
‘Why?’ Fi cries. ‘Why did he take them out of school? And why would you agree to that?’
‘Pupils are taken out of school for all sorts of reasons. In this case, it was to do with pick-up being difficult, what with neither of you being in London today.’
Neither of you? Bram was supposed to be here, in this house, two streets from the school! ‘No, no, that’s wrong. I’ve been away, but Bram has been working from home.’
The home that continues to be stocked with a stranger’s belongings.
‘Is there a chance you might have got your dates muddled?’ Mrs Bottomley suggests. ‘When I spoke with your husband a few days ago, I got the impression you knew all about the request.’
‘I knew nothing. Nothing.’ This is followed by a ghastly animal wail and it is only when Lucy takes the phone from her that Fi understands she has become too unmanageable to be allowed to continue.
‘Hello?’ Lucy says. ‘I’m a friend of Mrs Lawson’s. Of course, yes, leave this with us, we’ll try to track down the boys’ father. I’m sure it’s just a case of crossed wires and the children are quite safe. Mrs Lawson has had a bit of a shock and isn’t herself. Yes, we’ll let you know as soon as we locate them.’
As the call ends, Fi attempts to seize back her phone, but Lucy resists. ‘Would it be best if I tried your husband for you?’ she asks mildly.
‘No, it wouldn’t. This is nothing to do with you,’ Fi snaps. ‘You shouldn’t be here! Give me my phone and get out of my house!’
‘I really think you should sit down and take a deep breath.’ As Lucy pulls out a chair for her at the kitchen table, the dynamic is one of patient–nurse. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
‘I don’t want tea, for God’s sake!’ Her phone returned to her, Fi tries Bram again – The number you have dialled is no longer in service – before placing it face down on the table. Something horrific is taking place, she thinks. Knows. Knows in her bones. This confusion with the house, this brazen Lucy woman, is only a part of it: something has happened to Bram and the boys. Something very bad.
And in that instant, her waking nightmare becomes something so terrifying it has no name.
Geneva, 2 p.m.