The Sudden Departure of the Frasers (19 page)

Instead, it was the back of Pippa’s head that Rob steadied with his left palm as he leaned to kiss her hard on the lips, Pippa’s hips his fingers kept straying to, Pippa’s arched feet and tensed calves on which his eyes lingered.

My only private exchange with him that evening was anticlimactic, to say the least.

‘I can’t do next week,’ he told me, as I refilled his glass at exactly the moment someone had caught Pippa’s eye and bombarded her with more breathless questions about where she had ‘popped up’ from. I misjudged and the champagne foamed onto his hand; as I watched him splash the drips to the ground before bringing his fingers to his lips to lick them, I felt a lurch of lust at my deepest core.

‘That’s a pity,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

‘I’m out of town for a few days.’

‘Then we’ll have to debrief another time.’

He looked directly at me then and that, at least, was a personal look – as if his definition of debrief was to strip you of your clothes and burn off the top layer of your skin – and a source of consolation I only realized I craved as badly as I did once I’d been given it.

All this considered, and not to mention what came after, I was admirably in control of myself that night. I refused on principle to be ambushed by unseemly emotions. With the carousel still turning and ridden now to illegal weight levels by the adults (Liz was, indeed, back in the saddle), the laughter growing louder, the late night and bottomless wine bottles drawing confidences from all directions, I remained, on the surface, measured, gracious, discreet. I was as deserving of Jeremy’s devoted gaze as I was the flow of compliments about my beautiful dress, accepting of the knowledge that it was he, my legal mate, my original choice, who would later remove it.

She’d finally made it to the second round for a job, a buying position at a media agency, not her established area but a junior enough role for that not to worry her. The woman who conducted the interview and would be her manager was younger than Christy and had a suppressed indignation about her, as if she’d expected to be doing something rather better at this stage in the game but understood that such desires were best masked. Especially when an ageing candidate who would have killed for her job sat in front of her, trying to remould her unrelated experience into something highly relevant.

That was life, Christy thought: you didn’t appreciate the value of a decent mid-level job until it was suddenly impossible to get one. But she knew she shouldn’t use words like ‘impossible’; that was not can-do, that was can’t-do. With nervous fingers she touched the silver bangle on her wrist, ran her thumb over the clasp. She couldn’t explain why she was wearing Amber Fraser’s jewellery to this interview; for the same reason that she’d appropriated the dragonfly key ring, she supposed, because it was costly and beautiful and she wanted such things to belong to her.

‘The salary is a
lot
less than you earned in your previous
job,’ her interviewer said matter-of-factly. It was commonplace for candidates to be casually demeaned like this – to expect anything more would be to arouse suspicion.

Christy agreed, it
was
less. All she could think of was the column of debits she saw when she pulled up her and Joe’s bank details online, that mortgage payment jumping out so horrifyingly it might have been scrawled across the screen in blood.

‘I don’t mind taking a cut in the short term,’ she began, but that sounded wrong. She feared that these occasional forays into the real world exposed her as slow-witted, a relic from a lost generation. In a matter of months the world had got younger, its cultural references a puzzle. To combat the effects of isolation, she’d begun walking to the train station most days for her copy of the free titles commuters read on the train, the daily bibles of office managers like this one. ‘I mean, I’m more interested in finding the right company than the right salary.’ That was a little better, if somewhat uninspired. ‘It’s lucky for me you had someone leave.’

‘Yes, well, babies will be born, won’t they?’ her interviewer said. ‘And in this case she’s decided not to come back.’

Something in her expression suggested that it was she who would have liked to have left and not come back, and Christy thought, How awful, all of these people wanting to live each other’s lives. Was it only women, or did men do it, too? Look how Joe had chased and chased his partnership; he’d seen it as a one-way ticket to Arcadia, only to
suddenly declare his disillusionment because it did not resemble the destination of his dreams. And this was
Joe
, the man who never admitted defeat, Jermyn Richards’ ebullient ‘cheeky chappie’. If
he
was disenchanted, then what chance did the rest of them have? Overwhelmed for a moment with the insoluble sorrow of it all, she felt her features droop.

Evidently suspecting pitying thoughts in
her
direction, her interviewer flung her an insulted look and Christy knew then she wouldn’t get the job.

‘We’ll be in touch via the recruitment agency,’ the woman said, checking as they said their goodbyes that she had the contact details she needed to dispatch her rejection in all available formats. All of a sudden her interest was rekindled: ‘You live on Lime Park Road, do you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How funny. I know someone who used to live there. She worked here, in the same team, in fact, but she left about eighteen months ago.’

‘Who?’ Christy asked, though she was already making the connection herself – media buyer, a husband she’d met through this agency’s branding partner: who else?

‘Amber Fraser.’

‘I live in her old house,’ Christy said, smiling. ‘Small world, eh?’

‘Not a small house though. I went there a couple of times. It’s stunning.’

Salvation beckoned: might Amber be useful in the form of a little reflected glory? For she would undoubtedly have worked the same magic over colleagues as she
plainly had neighbours. ‘I’m not sure it looks so stunning now,’ Christy said truthfully. ‘I don’t have Amber’s taste.’

‘I’m not sure
Amber
had Amber’s taste,’ the other woman said, and Christy thought she detected the faintest of sneers in her tone. As unobtrusively as she could, she pulled her sleeve over her wrist: it would look weird if this woman saw the bangle and recognized it as her friend’s – almost as if Christy had looted her dead body. ‘You know she used an interior designer, right?’

‘I heard that …’ Christy tailed off, having been about to add ‘from the plumber’ and deciding against it. Tittle-tattling about Lime Park when she was supposed to be interviewing for a job: she must be, as Joe had said,
obsessed
– obsessed enough to hear herself continue, ‘Where does she live now? No one in Lime Park seems to know.’

‘Me neither. I haven’t seen her since before Christmas; she’s totally dropped off the scene.’ Though this acquaintance expressed neither Caroline’s melancholy nor Imogen’s anxiety at the Frasers’ removal, she was nonetheless considerably more engaged than she had been at any time during their formal interview, her eyes alight with interest, her skin gently flushed. ‘If you see her, tell her Gemma said hello.’

‘Of course.’ Encouraged, Christy went on, ‘You don’t think … ? No, that’s silly.’

‘I don’t think what?’

‘Well … you don’t think something bad has happened to her, do you? It’s just that there seems to be such a mystery about her and her husband leaving. Even our solicitor
doesn’t know where they’ve gone. It’s like they’ve vanished into thin air.’

To her surprise, this was met with unrestrained laughter – and not in an altogether pleasant spirit.

‘Oh, believe me,’ Gemma said, ‘bad things don’t happen to Amber.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. If that’s what you think, then don’t waste your energy.’ And she shook her head to show how foolish that would be. ‘Wherever she is now, it will be because she wants to be there.’

And when they parted company at the reception doors, Christy saw that her eyes had gone quite cold.

Two days later she heard officially of her rejection. The successful applicant was younger and cheaper, said the consultant; no doubt she’d said the right things because they were true as opposed to creating a false impression out of desperation.

‘It’s not desperation,’ her mother said on the phone. ‘It’s necessity.’

‘Same thing,’ Christy sighed. However positive she succeeded in remaining, she found that each rejection brought a short period of negative thinking, even apathy.

‘You need to find a voluntary job, get a sense of purpose from something else. Don’t let this plunge you into a gloom.’

‘I won’t.’ We can’t both be in one, Christy thought, Joe’s stricken face and slumped shoulders in mind.

And then there was the ultimate voluntary work, of
course, the most vocal advocate of which now continued in her ear with what was starting to sound like the righteousness of a crusade. ‘You
really
should think about a baby, you know. Dad and I were just saying this morning, with this career break you’re having, the timing is ideal.’

‘We’ve already had this conversation, Mum,’ Christy protested, but with sympathy because she was well aware how ‘ideal’ her situation looked. And how seamlessly redundancy had become ‘career break’, as if it were a lifestyle choice of her own making.

‘I know we have, but the longer it goes on, the more it makes sense to use the time constructively.’

‘The longer it goes on the less we can afford to start a family. Not on one salary.’

‘But Joe’s a partner now,’ her mother said, and Christy could clearly picture her baffled frown. ‘If a partner in a law firm can’t afford to have a baby then I’d like to know who can.’

‘He’s not with one of the big firms,’ she said patiently, because, as ever, her mother’s questions only echoed her own. ‘You know that, Mum. They’re really struggling in Mergers & Acquisitions and he’s just a salaried partner, he doesn’t get a share of the pot. Anyway, he’d need to be a partner in the Saudi royal family to afford this bloody house.’

‘Christy!’ her mother exclaimed, sounding personally offended (she had, after all, lent her daughter and son-in-law money to buy it). ‘I thought the house was your pride and joy?’

That
took Christy aback because she hadn’t realized
quite the extent to which that pride and joy had been eroded. Perhaps that was why she still sometimes thought of it as belonging to the Frasers, in spirit if not in name. The Frasers’ en suite, the Frasers’ garden shed, the Frasers’ quartz worktop. The Frasers’ social panache. Her memory of their first Sunday in the house, when their families had descended and she and Joe had been as besotted as new parents, seemed to exist now in a glass jar, miniaturized and fragile, utterly inaccessible.

She pulled herself together. ‘Of course it is. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. But the fact is, Mum, it’s expensive to run, and starting a family would push us to the brink. I need to be earning again before we can take a step like that.’

‘Well, if the financial situation is really so bad that it’s stopping you from having a family, perhaps you should think about selling up. No house is worth that sacrifice.’

Christy’s recognition of the truth of this took her breath away and it was a long moment before she could reply. ‘It’s not stopping us, it’s
delaying
us. It has to be me – Joe and me – who want a baby, not you.’

But it frightened her how her mother’s words had stirred her. It
was
the right time to have a baby, it was the right time in every respect but financial, and yet that was the concern that overrode all others. They were defined by their crippling debt. Emotions, desires, instincts: they couldn’t be allowed to come into it.

On Saturday morning, alone in the kitchen – lately, Joe had established the habit of sleeping till noon at the
weekend – and settled with her laptop and coffee, she found that Caroline Sellers had reached out to her a second time:

Hi Christy, it was good to meet properly the other day. I wondered if you would like to come to our book group on Thursday the 18th? 8 p.m. at my place. We’re doing ‘Madame Bovary’.

Only when Christy saw a further email from Caroline sent soon after and requesting she ignore the previous one while containing exactly the same message did she understand that the first included a long trail of correspondence between the regular members of the book group – correspondence that Caroline evidently preferred not to share. Christy probably wouldn’t have noticed it had she not been asked to disregard it, but of course she read it now with relish.

It began with suggestions for the month’s choice of title,
Madame Bovary
having been proposed by the girl in the bookshop on the Parade and an offer of discounted copies accepted (amazing how these wealthy women rejoiced at a saving of £1). Then came a message to all from Caroline:

I think the new owner of the Frasers’ house has been quite upset by how unwelcoming we’ve all seemed and so if everyone agrees I thought we could invite her to our next gathering. She knows nothing and I suggest we keep it that way – for her sake. It’s a good opportunity for us to avoid a certain subject and try to move on.

For her sake? What did
that
mean? Judging by the replies, everyone else knew what the certain subject was, just as Caroline had admitted in their conversation in Christy’s kitchen (‘we co-ordinated’).

‘Good idea, we got a bit out of control last time,’ Liz wrote, and someone called Mel added, ‘It was starting to feel like a witch hunt, not very healthy!’

‘At least it was behind closed doors, eh?’

‘Can’t fault us on that.’

What
was
going on in this street? The witch being hunted was Rob, she was clear on that, but what he had done to offend the women remained the $64,000 question. Scrolling down, Christy could find not the scantest suggestion as to the nature of his transgression, which somehow made it both more tantalizing and more threatening. It crossed her mind – indecently briefly, shamefully rare – that it was none of her business, none whatsoever, and she should respect the group’s desire to ‘move on’, not to mention heed Rob’s personal warning.

Then her eye was caught by another familiar name:

‘No one’s heard from Amber, I assume?’

A host of negatives followed. She remembered what the woman at the agency had said:
Wherever she is now, it will be because she wants to be there
. Well, this was certainly not the position of the group.

‘If she doesn’t want to keep in touch, that’s fine,’ Sophie wrote. ‘I respect that. But if we just had news she’s safe I’d feel a lot happier.’

‘I know,’ Liz replied. ‘Just one text or email would be such a relief.’

Then it was Caroline again: ‘Richard’s going to call Jeremy’s office and talk to one of the other partners, try and find out exactly when he’s due back. It’s his company, he can’t stay away forever.’

‘Look at this,’ Christy said, taking the laptop up to the bedroom, where Joe still languished under the duvet.

But he had no interest in trawling through the thread. ‘I hate it when people do that, just tag you onto a group conversation. This is why we all feel so totally crushed: no one can get through this stuff.’

‘
I
did.’

‘Yeah, but you don’t get thousands of work mails. You’ve got the time.’

‘Thanks for reminding me,’ said Christy, but not crossly. Plainly he had woken in the doldrums (
totally crushed
?). Any minute now he’d be rummaging for his BlackBerry so he could begin checking emails of his own. ‘The point is, Caroline sent it by mistake. She didn’t
want
me to read it. Look what she says about a witch hunt.’

Joe gave the email a cursory glance. ‘It could be anything, Christy. It’ll be about schools, I bet. One of them had a go at the lollipop lady and now they feel a bit bad. Or something to do with the council – the new recycling bins, maybe.’