It will be a while before news reaches Merle about the loss of the house, but once it does she certainly won’t be gloating about it. Their liaison in the playhouse had never been about her coveting what Fi had, because she already had all those things herself – more, in fact, since her husband had been faithful, if sometimes a little disinclined to appreciate what he had, in Bram’s opinion. No, for her, that night had been about doing something reckless to force a moment of crisis. To remind your blood that it still has a reason to circulate, even if the body it flows through is ageing faster than you’d prefer. To restore your conviction that you still have something good to give.
That was the difference between Merle and him. She had faith that she made life better for those around her, whereas he had no faith that he did.
Or at least what little faith he’d once had, he’d lost.
55
Saturday, 14 January 2017
London, 5.30 p.m.
The worst moment, she thinks, the most heartbreaking moment of the whole thing, is when she and Merle walk back through the door to the flat – worse, even, than when Harry asks her if she is happy with Daddy’s surprise and faith shines from him in rays. The belief that his father has succeeded, that his mother is pleased.
‘Did he paint the right colours? Did it dry in time? Were you really surprised?’
She can do nothing but hug him, tell him everything is lovely, that the only thing that matters is her being with him and his brother because she’s missed them, and the two of them haven’t got a fraudster for one parent and a murderer for the other.
She extracted them with relative ease from Tina’s, not staying long enough to be tempted to blurt the news about Bram’s departure and suspected embezzlement. She feared the more complex strain of being with her own parents for the rest of the day, not least for the fact that, if Merle’s plan is to work, they would be called upon to vouch for her state of mind in the aftermath of a crime.
But, as it turns out, the effects of severe trauma are the same whatever their origins. Losing your mind because you’ve killed someone does not differ vastly from losing your mind because your husband has stolen your home and absconded. If anything, the managing of her parents’ bewilderment and anger about the house sale is a welcome focus, their fiercely protective stance regarding the boys a reminder of how the authorities will be expecting her to present herself. It is agreed that Leo and Harry should remain in Kingston for the time being, a fib about delays with the decorating used to explain the impossibility of a return home. They’ve never been to the flat and it would be unsettling to take them there now.
(To put it mildly.)
As Merle has instructed, she showers, puts both the clothes she wore yesterday and those from her break with Toby through the wash, then changes into the jeans and jumper Merle has lent her. At 4 p.m., as agreed, Merle phones and Fi announces to her parents that she needs to go to the flat. ‘Merle thinks Bram’s probably stored some of our stuff there and I think she might be right. I need to find all our mortgage and banking paperwork so I can start to talk to a lawyer.’
The reappearance of Merle in Fi’s life is met with raised eyebrows but no special interrogation: extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, is the message. Whatever – whoever – helps her untangle this unholy mess. Her mother agrees to drive Fi to the flat, a journey lengthened painfully by rain and Saturday traffic, and when they pull up at Baby Deco, Merle is already waiting outside.
‘Shall I come in and help?’ her mother asks, turning off the engine.
‘No, no, you go back to the boys. Thank you, Mum. Thank you so much.’ Fi wants to say more, she wants to say, ‘Take care of Leo and Harry, because I might be arrested in a few hours.’
‘It will all work out fine,’ Merle says as they wait for the lift; no need now to skulk in unlit stairways. ‘Adrian’s just back from skiing, he’s with the kids at home. I’ve filled him in – on Bram and the house, I mean. He’s completely appalled, as you can imagine. And Alison has given me a recommendation for a lawyer, by the way. She and Rog think we shouldn’t deal directly with this Jenson character because his loyalty will be to his client, not us.’
Us. We. It’s still evident in Merle’s words, in her manner: the unconditional fidelity.
‘Seeing them hasn’t . . . hasn’t changed your mind? About helping me?’ Fi speaks in gulps. ‘I’d understand if it had.’ Who, even the most guilt-stricken, would want to get embroiled in this? ‘You’ve already helped me enough, Merle. You need to concentrate on yourself and the baby.’
‘Here’s the lift,’ Merle says, firmly.
Inside the flat, nothing has changed from the scene they abandoned that morning, except the smell, which has grown richer, more fetid. It must be the vomit . . . unless he is starting to decompose: is that possible?
Fi eyes the body as if for the first time. It’s not the way she’s read a decaying corpse is supposed to make you feel, that profound sense of the departed, an empty vessel, the soul stolen.
Maybe because he didn’t have a soul.
Merle strides forward, thinking aloud. ‘What would we do first if we were just finding him now? One of us needs to check his pulse. Best it’s me – you’re still very distressed after what happened yesterday with the house.’ She touches his neck and wrist with her fingertips. ‘I don’t think anyone would expect us to try CPR or anything, would they? I think I’d be sick if I had to put my mouth on his.’
Fi hangs back, avoiding looking at his face. ‘Is he cold?’ she asks, shivering.
Merle takes her hand, passing on the touch of his skin. ‘Yes, but I think he’s warmer than you are. Can’t you feel the heating in this building? It’s suffocating. I’ll try to get through to the balcony doors, let some air in. Otherwise I’m going to throw up.’
‘Careful,’ Fi says. As Merle squeezes between the towers of boxes, she runs her icy fingers under the hot tap in the bathroom. She does not look at the murderer in the mirror.
When she returns, Merle has succeeded in opening the balcony doors and has her mobile phone in her hand. ‘Right. Shall I call, or will you?’
Fi says she will do it. Her hand trembles as she uses the phone; her voice is dull with shock. ‘Hello? Please, I need someone to come to my flat . . . There’s a man here . . . My friend and I have just arrived and there’s a body. We think it’s someone my ex-husband knows. We think he’s dead.’
‘Good,’ Merle says, when she’s finished. ‘That sounded exactly right.’
Because she’s not acting. That’s the unintended beauty of this plan of theirs: none of it has to be manufactured. The feeling that she might sob or be sick or wail and wail until someone puts a needle in her arm and blacks the world out: it’s all real.
Lyon, 6.30 p.m.
It is evening now and he is smoking a cigarette, ready to begin. He is not a fluent writer and he expects it to take him weeks, perhaps even as long as a month. When it is done, he will collect up his remaining antidepressants, plus any other medication to be had over the counter from the French pharmacies, and he will swallow them in fistfuls with the strongest vodka he can find. And he will die. He will go where he put little Ellie Rutherford.
He writes: Let me remove any doubt straight away and tell you that this is a suicide note . . . And at once, he understands why he is doing it, why he is delaying the inevitable. He wants to spend his last weeks with them, with Leo and Harry and Fi. Writing about them is not the same as being with them, in the flesh, in the house, but it’s still time together, isn’t it?
He can give them that, if nothing else.
London, 6 p.m.
While they wait, they retrieve the paperwork Fi unearthed the previous night and dig through some of the boxes to assemble the rest she might need to start investigating Bram’s embezzlement.
‘Would we do this?’ she asks Merle. ‘Would we not be too shocked by what we’ve discovered to want to go hunting through files?’
Merle considers. ‘Maybe, but the whole place is going to be sealed off, so now’s your only chance to take your passports and financial stuff. Like we said, we might need to explain why your prints are inside some of the boxes.’
Fi nods. ‘Do you think there’ll be sirens?’
‘Yes, I think an ambulance will come first. They won’t just take our word for it that he’s dead. We’re amateurs. They’ll want to see if he can be revived. Then they’ll bring in the forensics people.’