The Fence (18 page)

Frankie's December

Frankie parks the Volkswagen multivan as far to the right of the driveway as possible. Although the picket fence has finally been disposed of and they can technically park in the garage again, the multivan and the BMW convertible don't fit. She hadn't thought of that when they'd traded the Merc for the Volkswagen. Every time the kids slide open the car door, they tumble into the convertible. The problem is, parking in the driveway means the kids have to climb out the driver's side as there is no room with the new fence.

After Amber and Silver clamber out the rear passenger door, Frankie climbs in and undoes Marigold's seatbelt, then crawls over to Bijoux to undo hers as well. She seats the baby on the floor of the van until she has wiggled out and can lift Bijoux to the ground.

‘I don't know how much longer I am going to be able to do this, Joux-Joux. You're getting so big and I'm getting so fat.'

Bijoux giggles, as though Mummy wriggling around is a huge lark.

Amber and Silver run over to where Brandon is building garden beds out of railway sleepers. Frankie ignores him and takes the two youngest up to the house.

‘I want a divorce,' she'd told him after that fiasco with the pregnancy and the telephone bill and the kids escaping next door.

Brandon looked ready to cry. ‘Frankie, I'll end it with Camilla, I promise.'

Frankie snorted. ‘Heard that before, Brandon.' She tapped her head as if trying to recall exactly where and when. ‘Oh wait, yes, it's coming to me. Sixteen months ago when I walked in on you having sex with her on our marital bed.'

‘Frankie, I'm sorry, okay?' Brandon pleaded.

‘Sorry you have been unfaithful or sorry you got caught? Because from where I'm standing, continuing the affair after we moved here would indicate you aren't sorry at all.'

Alone in their bed that night, she'd reviewed her options. Brandon's snoring kept her company. He'd proceeded to drink himself stupid after they'd rescued the children, sitting on the couch staring morosely at repeats of
Peppa Pig
, much to the children's delight. The inevitable conclusion was that she could not live with a man she did not trust. Once trust went, everything went with it. To continue as they were was to perpetuate a farce.

She pretty much said those exact words to Brandon. ‘What's in this for me, Brandon? My value to you is that I bring in the money, full stop. In return, I come home, the house is a mess, the kids aren't fed or they're eating cereal for dinner. We have seven, count them, seven baskets of washing on our bedroom floor waiting to be folded. The lawns aren't mowed and I'm still waiting for you to paint the bathroom. The list goes on and on.'

Despite everything – the weight of Frankie's unending disapproval, the brittle shell she has erected around herself to close him out – Brandon does not want his life to change. Frankie has no idea how many times he's told Camilla, ‘This has to end', but she keeps turning up on the doorstep and insinuating herself into his arms. She is the well he fills with his frustration all the time knowing she is worth less than his love for his family. ‘I'll change, Frankie. We can't get a divorce, think of the kids. They can't grow up in a broken home.'

But she looked at him as if he were the smallest bug in the room. Where was the girl who'd ring him from work to whisper that she was not wearing any underwear? Once, they used to make love every day, but now she acts as if his touch revolts her. Why can't she see how miserable he feels?

Frankie bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from crying. Brandon didn't want them to stay together for their sakes, but for the children. She just came with the package. They rarely made love. She obviously wasn't attractive to him anymore. Work has become an escape from the chaos of home, and the chaos of life with four children is a wall of noise behind which they both hide. Swallowing her pain, she had said, ‘Our home is already broken, Brandon.'

As Christmas creeps closer, they slip further apart. Brandon tries to prove his worth. Each night Frankie comes home to a cooked meal. The baskets of washing diminish. As she eats roast lamb on a bed of chickpea mash, she can't stop herself saying, ‘It's amazing how much more you achieve since you're not banging the barista.'

Brandon flinches because he knows what she's really saying. She's saying this fixes nothing. When he'd told Camilla, ‘This time it's really over', she yelled and screamed at him in broken English but as frightening as her anger was, it is nothing compared to the sickening wrench when he glimpses how broken Frankie is. His anger, his weakness has done this.

Frankie calls her mother. Though she knows she'll receive little sympathy from that quarter, at least Noelle won't gossip. She pours out the whole sorry story, concluding, ‘We can't stay together, Mother. You said get him away from temptation, keep him busy, but it hasn't worked.' Frankie checks that Brandon is still outside vacuuming the pool.

‘Are you sure that's the right answer, Francesca? If Brandon goes, you will have to replace him with a nanny, possibly two, and you've been down that path before. What alternative do you have?'

The other option is long day care, five days a week, but Frankie can't bear the thought of Bijoux starting childcare so young and, more importantly, she is now four months pregnant.

Noelle reads her mind. ‘The baby's due in early May and you'll need time off. It seems to me you can neither afford nannies nor kindergarten fees. Perhaps you should not have spent a small fortune on that fence.'

Frankie flinches. Noelle spends some minutes expounding on her theory that they must work things out before Frankie cuts her short, ‘Brandon's coming. I'd better go.'

He isn't coming. He's still faffing around with the pool but Frankie cannot listen to another word her mother has to say. Because if Noelle is right, she is stuck with Brandon as well as a fence she hates. It's a cruel irony that if they hadn't built the fence, she could afford to throw Brandon out. Now she has the ugliest fence on the north shore, a philandering husband, another baby that was certainly conceived whilst he was busy with Camilla and the prospect of enduring his presence until at least three months after this baby is born. The rock of economic necessity wins over the treacherous moral high ground.

Sitting at the computer, Frankie stares at the screen. In the meantime, the first hurdle is to get through Christmas. In happier years, they'd discuss what gifts to buy in great detail, working out which ones were from Santa, which ones from them. This year Frankie hasn't bothered consulting Brandon. It's her money, she'll spend it how she likes. It's quite liberating dropping the pretence they are equals. No more avoiding words like ‘breadwinner' and ‘house husband'. No more involving him in decision-making because that's what couples do. Theirs is a marriage in name only.

She flicks to a screen filled with skateboards. Another issue caused by the neighbours.

‘Mummy, Mummy, I want a skateboard,' Amber pleaded the day after Diane Slaughter's eldest daughter rode her skateboard up and down the drive a million times. The noise was relentless, giving Frankie a cracker of a headache, which of course she couldn't take anything for because she was pregnant.

‘You're too young for a skateboard,' she'd told Amber.

‘No, I'm not.' Amber had stamped her foot. ‘I'm almost five.'

‘And that little girl looks like she's at least eight.'

Amber changed tack. ‘Please, Mummy, I really, really, really want one.'

Amber has a nasty stubborn streak. When she really, really, really wants something, she digs her heels in.

The kindergarten had sent home copies of the children's letters to Santa. They sit in a file on Frankie's desk. She retrieves Amber's, which is a long argument as to why she wants a skateboard but also includes requests for a microphone and a bikini.

‘Over my dead body, sweetheart,' Frankie says aloud. No four year old of hers will wear a bikini, especially one as precocious as Amber.

Silver wants a drum kit, a Wii U and a big boy's bike. Marigold wants that Grow Up Daisy doll she keeps seeing on the tellie so she can have her own baby like Mummy. Frankie smiles. ‘You can have this one if you like, sweetie,' she says, rubbing her hand across the tightness of her stomach. Marigold is the only one thrilled there will be a new baby in the house. Although she ignores Bijoux, Marigold likes snuggling up to Frankie's belly and chatting to her baby sister.

‘It might be a boy,' Frankie tells her, but Marigold is adamant that it's a she and has already named her Ruby.

*

Thanks to Klaussman & Sons' policy that all staff must take annual leave the week of Christmas, Frankie is home when Eric Hill knocks on her door. Though it is well past nine o'clock, she is still in her dressing-gown, eating the crust of Bijoux's Vegemite toast. She opens the door to find Mr Hill standing there with an enormous dollhouse at his feet.

‘Can I help you?' she says, suspicious of the neat old man and his little house.

‘Good morning, Mrs Desmarchelliers. I come bearing gifts,' announces Eric. It'll be fine, he'd told Gwennie when she questioned his confidence that the neighbours would accept the gift. Once she sees it, how could she possibly say no?

Frankie glances at the dollhouse, which she notices has an enormous rosette stuck to its roof.

‘Is that for me?' Amber slides around Frankie's bulk and kneels in front of the manor house.

‘And me,' Silver adds, elbowing Amber aside.

‘It's for both of you, remember?' says Mr Hill. ‘That's what we agreed.' He smiles at Frankie. ‘Amber and Silver asked me to make them a dollhouse for Christmas. It's a little early.'

The old man's audacity amazes Frankie. Does he really think he can buy her children's affection? That making them a dollhouse will undo the last six months? Some people will stop at nothing. Wrapping her dressing-gown tighter, she says, ‘You shouldn't have.'

Mr Hill plays with the lid of the small box he is holding. ‘It's my pleasure. They saw it in the garage and asked if they could have it. It's based on a house I saw on
Grand Designs
. The chimneys were a right fiddle but I like a challenge.'

‘Can we take it inside, Mummy?' Amber tugs on Frankie's sleeve. ‘I want to open it.'

‘I haven't put the furniture in yet, Amber. That's in this box.' Mr Hill offers Amber the box and she takes it as if it holds precious jewels.

‘I'll carry it in for you, if you like,' Mr Hill suggests, eyeing the mound of Frankie's stomach.

‘I don't,' Frankie is lost for words. Turning, she sees Amber and Silver scrabbling through the box, making admiring noises as they handle tiny pieces of furniture, showing each other miniature beds and dressers and a ceramic toilet. Mr Hill has already lifted the dollhouse and is waiting for her to step aside. She has been ambushed. ‘On the bench will be fine,' she manages.

She clears a space at the end of the kitchen counter and Mr Hill deposits the house.

He lowers the front facade and Amber and Silver finger the carpets and wallpaper. Against their obvious delight stands their mother twisting the cord of her dressing gown as if trying to tie up all the sadness that leaches out of her. Such a beautiful woman, such an unhappy family.

A strong urge to fix the problem overwhelms him. He likes fixing things. Gwennie always tells him he's the handiest handy­man she knows. Withdrawing five figures from his pockets, Eric hopes to distract her from her melancholy. ‘I've brought you the dolls too,' he says passing the twins a doll each. ‘They're you, see? Amber and Silver.' Pressing two others into their sad mother's hands, he says, ‘And this one with the red hair is Marigold. And here's baby Bijoux.'

Frankie is overcome by the urge to cry. This perfect little house with its model family. When Silver prises Bijoux from her grip and puts the doll in the cot in an upstairs bedroom saying, ‘Night, night, Bijoux. Sleep tight,' she bites her lip.

‘And here's Mummy and Daddy.' Eric passes Amber the dolls, which she discards in preference for setting up the kitchen.

Frankie watches her children play. Mr Hill is showing Amber how the door of the oven opens, Frankie watches Amber ooh as she opens the pantry door to see rows of tins and packages painted onto the shelves. Silver lifts the toilet seat and whistles as his doll self has a wee, making Mr Hill laugh. In the face of the old man's generosity Frankie finds it hard to reconcile how at ease with him her children are when his presence in her house makes her stiff with displeasure.

Eric Hill beams. ‘I've never met a child yet that doesn't like a dollhouse,' he says.

You have now, thinks Frankie. She never liked dolls when she was a child. Probably because she had real ones in the form of her siblings to dress and feed.

‘Gwennie said you wouldn't like me bringing the children a gift but I said, “No, Gwennie, I can't break a promise.” I knew you wouldn't mind,' he says, placing a hand on her arm.

Frankie stares at it and pulls away, making as if to get a better look at the house. To his credit, it is well made, she thinks, but nothing will compensate for the abominable way the Hills have behaved since they moved here.

‘Children, thank Mr Hill. He has to go now,' she says.

Eric Hill looks surprised at this but Frankie sweeps him out the door, manufacturing a shopping trip to Rosedale Square.

After she locks the door behind him, she turns to find Silver's male doll pushing tiny clothes into a toy washing machine. Amber's doll holds a phone to her ear and Amber transacts a gruff conversation with whoever is on the other end of the line.

She allows them to play with the dollhouse all day, although its presence, their obvious joy at it, makes her feel as if the Hills have invaded her home. In light of the recent Camilla revelations, she wonders whether the Hills have become a convenient scapegoat for all the words she and Brandon should have shouted at each other. Perhaps it's not the Hills, not the fence, she thinks, staring at the perfect miniature home, but us. The thought lodges in Frankie's brain where it festers. When the children are tucked in bed, Frankie packs the dolls and the furniture into the house and locks it. Though she is not supposed to be climbing ladders at her stage of pregnancy, she balances on a chair and clears a space in the cupboard above the linen press and shoves the dollhouse inside.