The Sudden Departure of the Frasers (28 page)

They stared at each other.

The children returned from inside with their selections. ‘Mummy,’ Rosie said, edging onto Caroline’s knees and slotting the coins of her change between her mother’s fingers, ‘I chose a cinnamon bun and Lucas has got a cookie with Smarties on it. Can we eat them now?’

‘Of course you can, sweetie, but don’t get any on your uniform, OK? I really need to get the kids back,’ Caroline told Christy. ‘Amelia will be home soon.’

‘I’ll walk with you,’ Christy said. ‘You must tell me how she’s getting on in her first week at senior school. Does she walk or get the bus?’ The elder Sellers girl’s new school
was in the same neighbourhood as St Luke’s, and Christy had seen the girls the previous week in their black blazers and rolled-up skirts, their serious little confabs at the bus stop about what could only be minor scrapes next to the heart-stopping crises of adulthood.

‘No,’ said Caroline. ‘A few of us on the street have put together a rota for driving them.’

‘The bus isn’t safe?’ Even Christy knew that secondary-school children made their own way to and from school; surely it was overprotective to chauffeur them so short a distance? But she knew better than to voice this opinion and jeopardize the good feeling so diligently built with Caroline.

An account of the Sellerses’ glorious four weeks in France sustained them for the stroll home, only the pinched skin between Caroline’s brows belying her earlier chagrin. For her part, Christy told her about the bank holiday weekend in East Sussex, Joe’s work stresses.

‘I don’t think we’ve ever needed a change of scene more,’ she said, as they reached their houses.

‘I know the feeling,’ Caroline said. ‘I’ve only been back five minutes and I already feel ready to leave again.’

It was only after they’d parted that this last remark stirred a memory in Christy, one she was aware had floated close to the surface before, but remained inaccessible. That was right: it was something Steph, in their first conversation over the garden fence, had reported Caroline as having said:
If it weren’t for the great schools, they’d have moved on by now
.

That
was how much Caroline Sellers ‘loathed’ Rob
Whalen. She loathed him as much, perhaps, as had the two sets of neighbours who
had
moved on – the two who had not shared her use for Lime Park’s outstanding schools.

Caroline was not the only one to voice concern that Christy was on coffee-slurping terms with Rob Whalen: there were also, apparently, objections on the part of his girlfriend. These she discovered only by accident, or rather by eavesdropping, old habits having died hard – and in brazen disregard of those avowals she’d made to her new friend about minding her own business.

She didn’t mind admitting that she’d become quite fascinated by Pippa. That seductive drape of smooth blonde hair over her bare right shoulder (always the right one, never the left); the painstaking grooming that spoke of a strict desire to please; the slowing of her step as she approached the gate to number 38, followed by a visible, almost therapeutic, bout of deep breathing: what was she preparing herself for?

Hi you
, he’d said, and those words, leavened with lust, had lingered in Christy’s imagination rather longer than was decent. She supposed it was because Rob and Pippa were unlike any other couple on the street: not only were they younger and electrically attracted, there was also something oddly clandestine about them. Other than the occasion when he’d chased after her and seized her arm, Christy had never seen them together in public, their meetings apparently confined to his flat. Pippa arrived and then Pippa left, a girlfriend who was not exactly kept hidden, but not exalted from the rooftops either. Rob had
not even wanted her
name
known, presumably because it elicited reactions like the one from Caroline:
She must be crazy if she’s still hanging around.

One evening, passing the door of her deserted master bedroom, Christy became aware of raised voices on the other side of the wall. It was unusually humid for the time of year, and both her window and the one to Rob’s living room were open, meaning she didn’t have to step far into the room to be able to hear every word being said; evidently she’d learned nothing from his previous reprimands.

‘I can’t handle this any more!’ Pippa was saying, audibly riled. Christy had not heard her voice properly before, and it came as a surprise that she was so well spoken, much more so than Rob. ‘Seriously, if I find out it’s happening again …’

‘“Seriously”?’ Rob echoed in a humourless tone. ‘All this because I’ve
shaved
? That’s insane.’

Shaved? Did that mean that horrible thatch of a beard had been washed down the plughole?

‘Not just that, no.’ Pippa’s voice was sulky, her position oversensitive even to a stranger’s ear, causing Christy to feel a twinge of sympathy for Rob. Was this how women sounded? Was this how
she
sounded in discussion with Joe? She had a sudden disagreeable image of him pulling the duvet over his head to blot out her unwanted complaints.

‘What then?’ Rob said.

‘You
know
what.’

‘I assume you mean the new neighbour, do you?’

Christy’s nerve endings sizzled: which new neighbour? Felix, Steph, Joe … her?

‘Come on, I thought we’d been through this the other day? You can’t jump to conclusions every time a woman calls round. It’s untenable.’

She gulped. That meant Steph or her, and Steph had just had a baby, which presumably exempted her from the sort of conclusions a live-out lover might have jumped to.

‘I’m not jumping to conclusions,’ Pippa said, ‘I’m just saying
if
it happened again, then I don’t think I could handle it.’

‘“If”?’ There was an increased sourness in Rob’s irritation. ‘You don’t mean
if
, you mean
when
. Come on, admit it: you’re fucking
willing
it to!’

Christy’s jaw fell open. Quite apart from the unpleasant way Rob was addressing his girlfriend, this ‘conclusion’ Pippa had jumped to – and what was it if not the obvious, infidelity? – evidently had roots in some historic transgression. Here we go again, she thought; if this became any more circular she would go dizzy and fall to the ground. As a precaution, she dropped into her stake-out chair, its back to the window these days in mimicry of Rob’s, but still in excellent range of the private conversation she monitored. Both shameless and ashamed, she closed her eyes, lost to the drama.

‘You’re putting words in my mouth,’ Pippa protested.

‘But you obviously don’t trust me, do you?’

‘I don’t know what to trust any more.’

‘Does it not occur to you that it might be quite nice for
me to have a coffee with a neighbour? Especially a woman? That it might be quite nice to be treated normally again?’

‘
Does
she treat you normally then? Not so long ago you were saying everyone was still giving you the cold shoulder.’

‘That’s the point,
she
doesn’t. And nor does the husband – he’s a really decent guy, actually, a lawyer, I like him a lot.’

Christy swallowed.

‘Seems like lawyers are the only people I can trust these days,’ Rob sniggered. ‘Who’d have thought?’

‘We’re not talking about the
husband
,’ Pippa said sullenly.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, listen to yourself. Do you have any idea how unattractive this is? This petty jealousy? Fine, if you want to talk about her, then let’s talk about her. She’s a bit dull, to be honest, though as I say I hardly know her. I’m not sure there’s that much
to
know.’

Christy flushed deeply, felt a wobble in her legs.
A bit dull
,
not much to know
: how humiliating (and no less than the eavesdropper deserved).

‘Not so dull she wasn’t trying to dig up the dirt a few weeks ago,’ Pippa said.

‘I don’t blame her for that. It must be pretty mind-boggling to have been dropped into the atmosphere around here. It’s fucking
joyless
. People dropping hints, making little remarks about what might or might not have happened. I’m amazed she hasn’t been told outright by someone by now.’

‘I assume none of them would dare,’ Pippa said, sounding somewhat chastened (and no wonder, given his damning appraisal of her ‘rival’).

There was a silence. ‘Yeah, well, for how long?’

‘You know
I
haven’t done anything like that, don’t you?’ Pippa’s voice sang out in indignation. ‘I’ve never discussed it with anyone.’

‘Then what’s this conversation about? Why are we even having it? Don’t you see this is not like before? You’ve got nothing whatsoever to be jealous about. I’ve chosen
you
.’

‘I’m just … I suppose I’m still upset about the overlapping.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, not that again! I’ve told you a thousand times, Pippa, I ended it as soon as we got serious. I asked you to move in with me, and you did. You’d still be here now if you believed me in the first place.’

‘I did believe you. I do.’

‘Well, it doesn’t sound like it.’

There was another silence. Christy wondered if they were eyeing each other or avoiding the other’s gaze. How close were they standing? Was this one of those arguments that was going to end in intense reconciliation? (
Still
she didn’t move out of range; it was deplorable, pitiable. She did herself a far greater disservice than she did them.)

‘I think I just need some time to think about it,’ Pippa said, at last.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake …’ Rob was explosive now, his fury acute enough to cause Christy – not before time – to get to her feet and shuffle a step or two away. ‘Go ahead,’ he sneered. ‘Take all the time in the world.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I’m sick of this crap. I’m sick of having to
plead my case over and over again, account for every move I make. Can’t you understand that I want to forget all about that nightmare, not rake over it constantly? It’s bad enough having to deal with the neighbours, without getting it from my own girlfriend.’

‘I’m not –’

‘Let’s forget this, eh?’ Rob’s voice was receding; he must have begun walking away from the window, deeper into the flat.

Christy strained to hear. ‘It’s obvious you can’t forget a part of it, so I think we’re going to have to forget the whole thing.’

‘I can’t believe you’re willing to end it,’ cried Pippa, distraught. ‘You just said you chose me!’

‘Well, I
un
choose you.’ Rob’s voice, cold and mean, was closer again; he must have returned to face her. ‘Go, Pippa. I’m serious. I’m not interested any more.’

‘But, Rob –’

‘Just go. It’s over.’

Seconds later, the door banged shut. When Pippa appeared on the path below, her back was to Christy and her head held low, so it was impossible to see if she was crying. And though she lingered for almost a full minute, Rob did not come after her.

The next day, as she left the house for her latest session at St Luke’s, Christy saw a young male figure stroll along the pavement towards her house, earphones in, head nodding faintly to the rhythm.

It was only after he’d turned into number 38 and gestured vaguely in her direction that she understood who
it was. The difference was truly arresting. Not only had he shaved off his beard but he’d also cut short his hair, revealing the forceful, eye-catching bone structure of a hero, a leader.

So this had been the catalyst for his row with Pippa the previous evening, and Christy could understand why. A bold unmasking like this, it said something. It sent the message that the old Rob, the Rob in Caroline’s photograph, he was back.

I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m psychologically prepared for the next section. Not yet. I will get to it, I promise – otherwise, there’s no point in this exercise – but not straight away, not in sequence. My trauma counsellor told me that in order to truly understand what has happened you sometimes have to break the chronology in its retelling, and while I’ve discounted almost everything else that woman has said, I
do
think that’s true.

The thing is, the aftermath is going to be hard enough to reconstruct without my first having to relive the worst day of my life (and there’ve been some bad ones to choose from, I think you’ve gathered that).

What I will say now is that I
never
expected us to finish the way we did. I’d imagined a lingering farewell, a parting no less erotic than the body of the affair itself. But when the time came, there was no kiss goodbye.

All along, I’d been the innocent one, the fool.

Because I
never
expected his anger, his malice, his cruelty. The way he behaved, it was so wholly inexplicable to me that there was even a moment that day when I wondered if he’d been holding a grudge against me since the beginning, that there might have been some unguessable
slight on my part during our night together all those years before, that I’d hurt his male pride. But I know now that can’t possibly have been the case.

And finish we did.

It was the 15th of January 2013 when it happened, a date I would not forget. As I say, the worst day of my life.