The Sudden Departure of the Frasers (25 page)

‘That must have been horrendous,’ I said.

‘To put it mildly.’

I placed my fingertips at the pulse in his neck, felt its livid beat. ‘Thank God it didn’t go anywhere. There can’t have been any physical evidence, presumably? You can tell if there’s been force, right? Bruising, that kind of thing.’

‘I suppose she could have done that to herself if she wanted,’ Rob said, and I sensed the power she still had over him; it was quite clear that, unknown to me till now, this girl had been – and remained – his Achilles heel. ‘But she admitted she’d made it up. I think she got scared when the police started interviewing our friends and she knew she might have to be cross-examined in court, which is frightening enough if you’re telling the truth. I was lucky, though, in the end. Some people would go through with the false claim rather than admit they lied. As it was, she ended up being cautioned.’

‘Wow.’ Between us the air felt thin and deoxygenated, burned hotter than five minutes ago. ‘You hear of women doing that, but why? I know you said revenge, but if what she actually wanted was to get you back, then it’s a terrible tactic.’ I didn’t add that all this girl had needed was a hotel room, an oiled body, an insistence on victory. ‘Who would forgive something like that?’ I asked. ‘You’d never trust her again.’

‘It’s not a rational strategy. It’s spite and cruelty and
they’re not rational things. Lashing out when you’re wounded, it’s a kind of self-preservation.’ His voice was hard, splintering the tender silence of the cabin. ‘Accuse someone you know of rape or abuse and it’s your word against theirs. It’s one of the best ways to destroy an innocent person’s life. People think there’s no smoke without fire. Often there isn’t.’

I considered this. ‘Maybe when you make an accusation like that you start to believe it yourself.’

Rob narrowed his eyes, the lashes almost meeting, and yet the intensity was undimmed. ‘I imagine you do. Which makes it even worse, because if
you
believe it you’re so much more likely to be able to convince others.’

‘Were you thrown out of college?’

‘I was suspended for those few weeks, but reinstated as soon as I was in the clear. She decided to transfer to another university for her final year.’

‘And there’s no police record? It didn’t affect your finding work or anything like that?’

‘No.’

I suppose I could have felt threatened, up in an isolated tree house with a man who’d once been accused of rape, but for someone who’d often made poor choices in her men I’d always had keen instincts about my own safety – and I knew I was safe with him. Not only did I believe he was telling the truth, but I was also moved by it, by his unprecedented display of vulnerability, which may sound distasteful given the subject matter, yet – I feel the need to repeat this – I was utterly convinced of his honesty. He was hardly a noble man, but he was certainly not a vicious
one. As far as I was concerned, he was no more capable of rape than Jeremy was.

A thought occurred, a loose end that needed tying: ‘She’s not that girl who turned up at Kenny and Joanne’s? The one who got upset and left?’

‘What on earth makes you think that?’

Because there’d been that implication of brutality, of a full story best left untold. ‘It’s just that there was obviously history between you,’ I said evenly.

‘I told you,’ he said, irritated, ‘she was just a one-night thing from a few years ago. She was embarrassed to see me, I think, not very good at forgiving and forgetting.’

‘Right.’ I burrowed into him, hoping that my demonstration of unconstrained trust might be a source of comfort to him. ‘After this college girl, it must have been a while before you could get close to someone again?’

Did
he get close? I thought. Was this the reason for his keeping women at arm’s length, for his hot and cold handling of them, for his not feeling towards Jeremy the jealousy I had felt towards Pippa?

‘I suppose it was,’ he said, finally. ‘But it’s a long time ago now, and since then I’ve been a lot clearer about asking.’

‘Asking? You mean you ask permission?’

‘Every girl, every time.’

‘What do you say, exactly?’

‘I don’t know. “Do you want it?” Something like that.’

‘Even if it’s someone you’ve been seeing for a while?’

‘
Especially
if it is,’ Rob said. ‘Given the history.’

‘So you’ll still say, every time, “Do you want it?”’

‘Or words to that effect. It’s not that hard to work into the scenario.’

I was fascinated by the idea of formally asking permission to take someone to bed. ‘And when you ask, do you record the “yes”?’ I was relaxing into our more usual playful repartee, but he resisted the gear change, answering me quite curtly.

‘No, that wouldn’t be permissible in court – unless I get her consent for the recording, as well. Let’s not joke about this, Amber. I hate being thought of as a rapist, however falsely, however briefly.’

‘No one thinks that,’ I assured him. ‘I’m sure no one ever did. You need to forget it ever happened.’

‘I thought I had. Until your stupid game.’

‘Hey, don’t be cross with me.’ I pressed against him, pliant, ingratiating. ‘Or only a little bit, anyway.’

‘A little bit?’ He began caressing me with the backs of his fingers, a feather-light skimming contact that produced an unbearable sensation just short of tickling, but every time I shifted from them, the fingers tracked me.

‘You don’t ask
me
every time,’ I pointed out.

‘Because you’re different. You’re exempt. You’ve never felt a split second of uncertainty in your life.’

‘Haven’t I?’ Not the uncertainty
he
meant, no.

His fingers continued to toy with me in their slow, indifferent way, making my breath come faster, my thoughts draw closer to my tongue. But even as I missed my chance I knew I had always been going to miss it; some unnameable emotion held me from exposing myself, something
between self-pity and melancholy. Did he
really
not feel an inkling of what I did that night? This simulation of the connection between a man and a woman when they have forsaken all others – this counterfeit that was so convincing it was impossible to tell it from the original? Who but true soulmates exchanged confidences like ours?

‘Ask me anyway,’ I said, at last. ‘Ask me if I want it.’

And so he did ask me, to his credit waiting for me to say yes before he began. ‘Do you remember this from before, Amber?’ he murmured, and kept on murmuring that night. ‘Do you remember?’

‘I remember,’ I lied.

In the morning, breakfast was delivered by dumb waiter, the empty bottles and other detritus of our night’s debauchery dispatched by the same method. We lounged in front of the polished picture window, drank coffee, picked at the papers. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, patterning Rob’s torso as if with a giant stencil. I sat in the shade, sated and content.

‘You have an uncharacteristically romantic expression on your face,’ he said. After last night’s intensities, he was back to his wry best, it seemed. I wondered if he regretted his confession. ‘Don’t forget your rules,’ he added. ‘No love.’

Taken off guard, I impressed myself by not even flinching. An expectant moment passed between us that I told myself meant nothing, gave nothing away. ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ I told him.

Looking back, I think we should have ended it then, that morning, when we were up in the tree house in that secret suite, immune from earthly promises. When we were as high as we were ever going to go.

For there was only one way to go now.

‘You’ve got one as well,’ Christy said.

It was the first thing her eye went to when she stepped into the room, a small square space with painted panelling and a shuttered sash overlooking the side return.

‘My sanctuary,’ Liz had said, explaining that it was the only downstairs territory her sons had not ‘marked’. Indeed, there was an air of feminine defiance about its contents, all pink glass bowls and decorative silver knick-knacks. On a vintage sideboard, next to a jug of sweet-smelling stocks, stood the hourglass bottle.

‘What, the room scent? Pretty, isn’t it?’ Liz said, sipping her Lady Grey. She’d served the tea in bone china painted with polka dots and daisies, the first time Christy had used a cup and saucer in about a decade. Having seated her guest on a rose-coloured velvet chaise longue under the window, Liz perched on an adjacent armchair upholstered in a gold fabric printed with butterflies and birds. Of the Lime Park Road women, she was the first to have returned from her August break. Lacking a husband and therefore the holiday home that apparently came with one, she had instead taken the boys to her parents’ place in Cheshire,
where they remained to give her ‘a few days’ grace’, as she put it.

‘Caroline has one,’ Christy said, tracing the curved glass with her fingers, ‘and I remember seeing one in Felicity’s flat before she moved.’

‘I should think the whole street has one,’ Liz said. ‘Amber gave us them. It was her signature gift when she came over for dinner or, I imagine in the case of Felicity, when she wanted to say sorry for the building noise. You can only get them from Liberty, apparently.’

Of course
Amber Fraser would have a signature gift that you could only get from Liberty. Christy could not imagine what
hers
was: supermarket tulips, perhaps, the Sainsbury’s stickers removed in an attempt to make them look like she’d bought them from the florist on the Parade; or some sort of biscuit offered less out of consideration for her hostess than for herself (unless their children had baked, the women of Lime Park Road
never
offered sweet treats).

‘She had a few things she liked to give. There was a particular candle, as well – amber-scented, of course – and a little book from the fifties, I’ve got it somewhere …’ Liz put down her cup and extracted from the bookshelf a small pink hardback with curved corners; the title, in silver lettering, was
The Art of Being a Well Dressed Wife
. ‘Of course, I told her that as far as
that
was concerned it was a case of closing the stable doors after the horse had bolted, but she said to me, “No, Liz. We’re thinking ahead.”’ Liz chuckled. ‘We used to call her little gifts “Amberbilia”.’

Christy thought of her own Amberbilia, not just the bangle and the key ring and the blue Moroccan bowl, but
also the sun-loungers and other objects she’d liberated from the garden shed: a French grey enamel watering can that now took pride of place in the Davenports’ hallway; a pale green linen sunhat that Christy had taken to wearing in the garden.

‘She was obviously very generous,’ she said.

‘Oh, she was. I guess it helps to have plenty of cash. But then again I’ve known wealthy people who are shockingly tight-fisted – my ex-husband, for one.’

Remembering Liz’s tears at the book group, Christy did not pursue this. Besides, she had not finished with their previous subject. ‘The way Caroline talks about Amber, it’s like she was some sort of divine being.’

Liz smiled. ‘She certainly had her worshippers. I was happy to be one myself, in fact.’

Christy waited for the customary gush of compliments, the established phrases of glorification, but instead Liz narrowed her gaze with revisionist care: ‘You know, I always thought there was something not quite right about Amber, charismatic though she was.’

Christy’s eyes flew open in astonishment. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, she had this recklessness about her. She kept it under control of course, everyone took it to be nothing more than a delightful free spirit, but I sensed it sometimes and it was almost a self-destructive force.’

‘Caroline said she had a bad-girl past,’ said Christy, by nature wary of those who spoke of sensing others’ forces.

‘Yes, she told us a bit about that. She’d done a lot of drugs. She still drank, but that’s pretty much compulsory
on this street. She was certainly not the worst on that score.’

Christy thought briefly of Joe, of the wine that was demanded almost faster than it could be supplied.

‘Jeremy was very good for her,’ Liz continued. ‘She’d made an excellent choice there. In other hands, she might have missed her chance for rehabilitation.’

Drugs
,
self-destructive, rehabilitation
: these were not terms Christy had heard applied to Amber Fraser before.

But Liz’s thoughts had moved on. ‘You know, I’m going back to work when the school term starts. With Rupert going into Reception, it’s the right time.’ She placed her polka-dot cup aside, as if formally renouncing such domestic baubles.

‘What will you be doing?’ asked Christy.

‘I used to be a management consultant,’ Liz said, to Christy’s surprise. (Somehow, she had expected holistic therapy or soap-making.) ‘But I need flexible hours now, so I’ve taken a part-time role in the finance department at the council. I’ll be earning about a tenth of my salary before I had the boys. Seriously, Christy, take my advice and make as much money as you can before you start a family.’

‘I’ll try.’ Christy thought of the mounting number of bank statements in which the ‘Income’ column failed to contain a single penny’s contribution from her.

‘You’re covered in dog hair,’ Liz exclaimed as her guest stood to leave, and she used her hand briskly to dust the back of Christy’s trousers as if she were a child.

‘You don’t have a dog,’ Christy said stupidly.

‘I know, but I always invite the neighbours’ in, and even
the dogs that aren’t supposed to moult still do, don’t you find?’

Dogs: another Lime Park specialism in which Christy found herself utterly ignorant. She had no idea which were moulters and which not, let alone which defied the conventions of their breed. It amused her to think of some Lime Park mutt luxuriating in the very sanctuary where Liz’s own sons were forbidden to tread.

As she departed, Liz made her farewells with a certain remorse. ‘What I said about Amber, I don’t want you to think that I was in any way suggesting that she –’ Inevitably, she stopped herself before the ‘suggestion’ could be stated. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ she said in resignation. ‘She’s gone now.’

‘Gone but not forgotten,’ Christy joked.

‘Oh, never that,’ said Liz.

How peculiar it was to be back in the classroom, that same scuffed, scruffy zone of juvenile odours and images, its staff the all-too-familiar double-edged symbols of safety and ennui. The children, seated in groups of four or five, seemed as easy to label as if they had badges pinned on their pullovers: the restless one who wouldn’t be able to hold down a job; the evasive one who wouldn’t be able to
get
a job; the pretty one who would breed early; the watchful one who’d go far … and so on.

Which had she been? Christy wondered. She liked to think she’d been the watchful one who’d go far, but that looked ambitious at this moment in time. A mile and a half east, that was how far she’d gone of late, to the
borders of Lime Park and its more downmarket neighbour, where the junior school that wasn’t Lime Park Primary was situated. Lime Park Primary, it transpired, had an outstanding rating and more than its share of volunteers among the well-educated community, including her neighbours and fellow book group members Joanne and Sophie. St Luke’s was not so well supplied, its rating the rather less desirable ‘requires improvement’.

‘Are you sure you should be influencing young minds?’ Joe had teased that morning. ‘You are a bit of a conspiracy theorist these days.’

‘Oh, shut up and go to work,’ she’d said, markedly better humoured now that she had a destination of her own, a role. And better rested, too, unlike Joe, who was now working so late she no longer heard his taxi pull up in the dead of night, only to have him complain in the morning that he hadn’t slept a wink. What was the point in dropping off, he said, when he was only going to have to be awake again in an hour or two? It was as if their long weekend by the sea had never happened or, worse, had been counterproductive, its contentments serving only to accentuate the woes he’d met on his return.

The literacy programme co-ordinator had asked only for a commitment till half-term and Christy had given this willingly, fairly certain that no fairy godmother would be appearing with her magic wand any time sooner than that. Her only interview the previous month had gone encouragingly, only for the role to have been eliminated before any offer could be made, and there had not been, as yet, the stampede she’d been promised the moment August
gave way to September, and she knew she had to ease her anxiety down a gear. Yes, she and Joe had less cash at their disposal than at any time before, but they were not – yet – homeless. They’d survived for nearly six months on their tightrope; they could survive a couple more.

‘Right, let’s start,’ she told her first designated child, Sam (the restless one), who was nervous of meeting her eye. They were alone at a desk in the corridor outside the classroom, all other spaces in the school fully occupied. ‘Do you like reading?’

‘Not really.’ Sam beheld the page in front of him as if it were an open fire that would singe his eyelashes if he leaned too close.

‘But do you like stories?’

‘I don’t know.’ He looked suspicious of a trap: was she going to reveal that ‘story’ was another way of saying Spelling Test?

‘Stories can be in a book, a film, a play, even a song,’ said Christy. ‘People tell them to each other all the time. I bet your mum tells you stories about things her friends have done.’

‘She talks about people behind their backs,’ Sam said hopefully.

Christy giggled. ‘Well, that’s a kind of story. I’m sure you
do
like them. So how about I start and then you join in when the action gets going?’

A cautious nod.

Guided reading: it was simple enough. (Guided
living
, that was what adults needed.) The child read aloud and she corrected any mistakes, noting difficult words in a little
book and trying to get a discussion going about characters and plot. She’d been pleased to be allocated older children, Year 5, nine- and ten-years-olds, rather than the very young ones who stirred the reproductive urge in her most strongly.

‘Brilliant,’ she told Sam, at the close of the chapter. ‘You’re going to be the best reader in the class soon! Who’s your favourite character so far?’

‘I like the yak,’ he said shyly.

‘What would you name him if you were the author?’

‘Jack,’ he said at once, ‘Jack the Yak,’ and they were still laughing when the teacher came out with the next pupil.

‘Have you worked with children before?’ Mrs Spencer asked her at the end of the morning. ‘You’re very enthusiastic, exactly what we need.’

Christy waited for the inevitable question of whether she had a family of her own, fearing what she might hear herself divulge in the sheer relief of having been useful when she had not been useful in so long. He wanted a baby when I didn’t, and now he doesn’t I do, and we never see each other because he works so late, and anyway we seem to be on the verge of bankruptcy so the last thing we need is another mouth to feed, perhaps? But Mrs Spencer’s attention was seized by an outbreak of cries in the corner of the classroom – ‘Amy’s crying!’ ‘Jess won’t be her partner even though she promised!’ – and she went off to investigate before Christy had the chance to embarrass herself.

As she left the premises, she felt the opposite of embarrassment, she felt an emotion she had sorely missed these last months: pride.

So filled was she with a sense of reward that by the time she reached Lime Park Road she’d fantasized herself through teacher training and up the career ladder to Secretary of State for Education. How susceptible she was these days to wild dreams, and lengthy ones too, inviting them to fill whatever time she had to spare (which was plenty); she supposed their false pleasures replaced the smaller exhilarations of day-to-day accomplishment you had at work.

Whatever their purpose, this one filled her with a euphoria so overpowering it caused her to forget everything she thought she knew about Lime Park Road and accept an invitation to have a coffee with Rob Whalen. Or – it would require some reflection that evening to be clear on this –
might she have invited herself
? Deep in that ecstatic reverie, when she’d seen him at his window, hand raised in acknowledgement, had she not reacted mistakenly, as if he’d gestured for her to come up, pacing to the door and ringing his bell, her mouth hovering over the intercom in readiness to announce her name? This must be how it felt to be dosed up on happy pills, she thought; to be emboldened, uninhibited, to misread signs in
favour
of your own popularity and desirability. Was this how it felt to be one of the Amber Frasers of the world? Well, if so it was marvellous.

Rob’s voice came promptly down the line: ‘Yep?’

‘It’s Christy. Can I come up?’

He buzzed her in and she bounced noisily up the stairs. ‘I thought I’d drop by and tell you how my first session at the school went,’ she blurted, even as the door was opening. ‘But only if you’re not in the middle of something.’

Surprised, but commendably quick to adapt, Rob ushered her in. ‘No, I’m interested to hear,’ he said, and he led her into his living room, returning to close the door, which in her haste she had left wide open.

‘Please, sit.’

The flat was more recognizably the pair to number 40 than Steph’s and Felix’s, the proportions and features of the living room – which doubled as an office, judging by the desk of disarrayed documents and electronics – identical to those in her abandoned master bedroom. It struck her that getting from her side of the wall to his, from scourge to casual caller, was a journey far more incredible than any daydreamed career rise.