The Sudden Departure of the Frasers (36 page)

‘I can’t rest until I know it’s sold,’ I told Jeremy. Now, in my mind, the house on Lime Park Road became a symbol of the mess I’d created, its rooms, some of which I’d hardly set foot in, the beautiful smooth shell inside which I’d allowed myself to turn bad. ‘I need to know we’re not linked to it legally. I need to forget we ever lived there.’

‘It will be done within a month,’ he promised.

All concerned agreed that whoever the buyers turned out to be, they’d be getting the bargain of their lives.

The day after she opened the letter from the police, Christy emerged from the Frasers’ state-of-the-art thermostatically hypersensitive rain shower to find Joe still sleeping. She woke him in alarm.

‘You’re going to be late for work. Shouldn’t you call in and let them know? Where’s your phone?’

He flinched at the brightness of her voice, as if at the sudden application of searchlights. ‘I’m not going in.’

‘What do you mean? Oh. Rob.’

When Joe had come home yesterday it had been to a wife who had locked herself in the house for fear of reprisals at the hands of the predator next door. Later, the two of them had spent an hour in conversation with that predator, the upshot of which was that Christy was now expected to accept as final the excellent reasons why the criminal legal system was predicated on the presumption of innocence.

‘Imagine if I were him,’ Joe had said, when Rob had gone, but the fact that she could
not
imagine it only confirmed her belief that the existence of doubt worked both ways.

‘Imagine if I were
her
,’ she replied.

The truth was that only two people knew what had happened in Rob’s flat on the afternoon of the 15th of January and Christy was not one of them.

‘You don’t need to stay at home on my account,’ she told him now. ‘I admit I was a bit hysterical yesterday, but I know he’s hardly likely to do it again so soon after –’

‘He didn’t do it the first time,’ Joe interrupted, unequivocal in his support of Rob even as he rubbed sleep from his eyes, the day hardly started. ‘I think that’s been established.’

‘It’s been
presumed
,’ Christy said. ‘And you know what I’m saying. If he
did
do it then he wouldn’t be likely to do it again, because he’d know this one would stick.’

‘I see you’ve continued to embrace the language of the TV cop. Maybe that could be your new line of work. A scriptwriter for a crime series.’

‘Maybe it could. I’m open to ideas. But either way, you’re still a lawyer at Jermyn Richards and should go to the office.’

Making no move to leave the bed, Joe was at least sitting up now. ‘I didn’t mean I’m not going in
today
,’ he said. ‘I meant I’m not going in ever.’

Christy gaped. ‘What are you talking about, “ever”?’ She sank onto the edge of the bed, water from her hair turning cold on her bare shoulders. ‘Did something happen when you left yesterday? You told them it was an emergency, didn’t you?’ She’d come to imagine JR as a team of tyrants branding and whipping their slaves, Joe somehow remaining one of the latter group even when he had – nominally, at least – switched sides.

‘Something happens every day, Christy,’ he said, ‘it’s called fear and loathing. I’m phoning in sick, I’m getting the doctor to sign me off, and then I’m resigning.’

Christy could scarcely absorb this. It was, in its way, as shocking, as destabilizing, as yesterday’s news: neither of them working, neither of them earning, a mortgage that sucked at the neck of their bank account with vampiric appetite … ‘Shouldn’t we discuss this properly before you make a decision like that?’

‘We’re discussing it now and I’m telling you I can’t go on. Another day of that hell and I’m going to jump under a train. Resign or commit suicide: they’re my choices, and I’m happy to debate them with you if you think there might be pros and cons to weigh up. Me, I’m fairly clear which way I want it to go.’

As bailiffs and bankruptcy notices began inevitably to surface in front of her eyes, she noticed, to her horror, that Joe had tears spilling from his. She clutched him to her.

‘Don’t be upset. Of course you must leave if it’s that bad. At the very least you need time off …’ His frame felt slighter as she held him: he must have lost weight in recent weeks without her having noticed. Nausea rose as she recognized that she had not cared for him as she should have; she had not taken his unhappiness at work seriously enough. There’d been days – weeks – when she had given the man next door more thought than she had the one in her own house. And the tragedy was that still, even at this juncture, the balance was awry.

When he stopped crying they agreed they would not talk about it for the rest of the day.

‘A twenty-four-hour amnesty,’ she said. ‘We need to take stock. What shall we do instead? What do you feel like doing?’

‘You really want to know?’ Joe said.

‘Of course.’

‘I just want to be alone.’ And he sighed with a yearning so deep it moved her, shamed her afresh. ‘I can’t remember the last time I was alone.’ His glance moved about the bedroom as if its corners were unfamiliar to him. ‘I don’t think I’ve
ever
been on my own in this house.’

Christy swallowed and nodded simultaneously. ‘OK,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I understand you need time, but I’m not sure it’s the right thing to leave you on your own.’

He gave a half-grin. ‘Don’t worry, Rob won’t come and get me.’

‘You know what I mean. To decide to leave your job’ – she didn’t say career, that would be overstating it (wouldn’t it?) – ‘it’s a traumatic thing, Joe.’

‘No, it’s a wonderful thing, believe me.’ And it was true that he looked convincingly contented; the tears had served their purpose. But still, as mood swings went, this was a violent one by anyone’s standards – it was only a matter of minutes since he’d mentioned suicide.

Seeming to follow her thoughts, he reached for her hand, his grip steady, reassuring. ‘I just want to be alone in an empty house. No phones, no voices, no emails, nothing.’

‘OK,’ she said again, for she
did
understand. He needed the cure of silence, seclusion, sleep. ‘I’ll go out for the day. I’ll call and check on you,’ she promised.

‘Thank you.’ And as he slid back under the duvet, his eyes were already glued shut.

‘I’ve got things I can do,’ she added, to herself.

One such thing was to ring Identico.UK and verify Caroline’s suggestion that Jeremy Fraser had returned to the office from his sabbatical. She studied once more his staff photograph on the company website before travelling into town and stationing herself,
Standard
in hand, outside his building near London Bridge station in good time for the evening office exodus.

When he appeared, thirty minutes later, it was as much of a shock as any other she’d encountered these last days; in fact, she was immobilized by a surge of adrenalin at the sight of his lean, silver-haired figure detaching itself from the clot of workers exiting the revolving doors and striding in the direction of the station. After months of embedding herself in the Frasers’ mystery, she carried with her a healthy reserve of credulity, a readiness to accept anything about them, however outlandish: a change of appearance or even identity, as if they were MI6 operatives kidnapped by the enemy and not, as had emerged, an unusually popular couple of Lime Park residents who’d happened to have a neighbour from hell.

For Jeremy Fraser had re-entered the world physically unaltered by the crisis, his well-cut lightweight navy coat falling elegantly over his suit, his gait erect, almost noble, which helped keep him in view once she’d stopped gaping and started following. But as he moved with the homebound herd towards the Underground entrance, through
the barriers and down to the platform, it became clear that she was woefully out of practice in the choreography of the London rush hour, had completely forgotten her steps. Reaching the Northern Line platform in time to see him swallowed by the doors of a northbound train, she was lucky not to be trampled underfoot.

When the train slid by, she snatched a glimpse of him in profile, still and expressionless.

Returning home, there were no signs of life in the houses on either side of hers, all the windows cold and unlit. The mood on the street was reminiscent of nothing so much as the day she’d arrived, when she’d almost felt the dust settling around her – from an explosion she had not yet dreamed of. Letting herself in, she felt sudden fright at the wholeness of the quiet, and with it incredulity at herself for having taken Joe at his word and left him for hours in some post-traumatic fugue. But, dashing upstairs, blood pounding, she found him just where she’d left him, in their bed, unconscious and serene. He was breathing quite normally, even snoring a little, and she leaned to kiss him very softly on the forehead.

Downstairs, she cooked herself a plate of pasta and watched television alone, much as she had every weekday night for the last six months.

The next day, up, clothed and apparently untroubled, Joe announced that he wanted to visit his parents to tell them his news. Once more, he preferred to be without her company. Christy phoned him three times to assess his mental state before, judging it sound (sounder than
hers
), she
applied herself to her own errand. Returning in good time to the Identico.UK office building, she was determined to stalk more effectively this time. She’d been too self-conscious yesterday; given the rush-hour multitudes, she could tail Jeremy Fraser at quite close quarters and remain undetected. She’d dressed this time in work clothes and felt herself moving differently in them, striving to belong once more as she attached herself to her mark, matching her pace to his and keeping him always within touching distance. In the confines of the Northern Line train, the two of them stood in the same aisle, not quite close enough for her to read the emails he thumbed through on his phone. When the train was held in a tunnel, her own impatience escalating with that of the collective, he remained utterly cool, almost grave. As others turned and sighed and complained, he was fixed on his task, a man who had learned not to look up. She glimpsed the background image on his screen: a smiling redhead.

At King’s Cross, he left the Northern Line and switched to an overland commuter train. It was uncomfortably crowded and, separated from him by almost the full length of the carriage, Christy feared she would miss him making his exit. But several stops up the line, the crush subsided, he was still there and when at last he stepped towards the doors, she did the same.

They were about as far away from Lime Park as you could get within the limits of the city.

He walked from the station through a succession of residential streets at a pace far faster than her natural one, clearly a man with something – someone – to hurry home
to, before at last approaching one of a row of pretty workman’s cottages on a road so far from the station it must have been equidistant to the next one up the line.

As he let himself into number 223, she cursed the lengthening nights, for the moment the door closed again there was nothing to see, only curtains drawn at every window.

After waiting half an hour or so, she returned to the station and made the long journey home. Joe, in front of the television with a beer, was happy to see her. He told her that his parents had reacted to his news with a compassion that had surprised him. Christy, however, would have expected no less: when your parental ambitions were exceeded to the extent that theirs had been, there was likely an element of relief in being presented with evidence of ordinary human frailty. (‘It’s not like I’m
really
in trouble,’ Joe said. ‘Not like Rob.’)

In turn, she told him that her meeting with a new headhunter had gone well and that she’d met Ellen for a quick drink after work. In truth, of course, there’d been no meeting and Ellen had scarcely been in touch since the two women had ceased to occupy adjoining desks. Christy would be lying if she said she hadn’t – predictably, no doubt – contrasted that indifference with the concern of Amber Fraser’s former colleague Imogen, who long after the two had parted ways professionally had crossed town with a young baby in search of her missing friend.

‘Perhaps today’s meeting will lead to something and you’ll be earning again soon?’ Joe said. She could not begrudge him his air of joyful abdication; she could not protest the logical equation of one Davenport’s
unburdening of responsibility with the other’s stepping forward to claim it.

‘I hope so.’ And fictitious meeting or not, she
was
hopeful about a final-round call-back, even if it did involve psychometric and aptitude tests (these, she feared).

She fetched herself a beer and joined her husband on the sofa.

‘There’s been more drama here,’ Joe said.

‘What, with Rob?’

‘I haven’t seen him all day. No, a huge argument in the street between Joanne and Liz, in front of the kids and everything.’

‘Joanne and Liz? But they’re really good friends.’

‘That’s what Joanne thought too, but it turns out Liz has been having an affair with her husband.’

Christy was flabbergasted. ‘
Kenny
.’

‘You won’t believe how it came out. Their dog had been hoarding some piece of underwear, a bra I think, and, here’s the scandal:
it wasn’t Joanne’s
. She confronted Kenny and he confessed. Seriously, you couldn’t make it up.’

Christy recalled her visit two days earlier:
Poppy! There’s no one there!
Had Liz been in the house then? (Perhaps Christy’s interruption had led to the stealing of the bra.)

‘Do people really do this?’ she asked Joe. ‘Have affairs in their own homes, right under their partner’s nose?’ She remembered too the dog hairs on Liz’s chaise longue; no doubt there’d been plenty of clues if she’d been following that particular whodunnit.

‘Maybe they use the spare room? I don’t know. But anyway, Joanne’s thrown him out – or at least he left. And
Caroline knew, from what I could gather, so Joanne is upset with her as well. I watched it all from the window upstairs, like Jimmy Stewart. I was just going up for a nap after I got back from Mum’s. I had a superb view. I can see now why you got so obsessed.’

‘I got obsessed because there was something serious going on,’ Christy reminded him, but not sharply. ‘I can’t take all of this in,’ she said, and sighed, emptying her lungs of another day’s emotions. They sat for a minute or two without speaking, faces turned to the TV screen. Then she said, ‘Do you sometimes think, Joe, that if you compare the contents of your mind now with the days before we moved in, there’s nothing the same? It’s like everything we used to know was deleted and a whole new life’s worth of stuff entered in its place.’