The Sudden Departure of the Frasers (37 page)

‘I know what you mean, yeah,’ Joe said.

She waited. The next suggestion could only come from him.

‘We’re going to have to sell this place, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘It was lunacy to buy it. Someone must have been spiking our food.’

Christy took a mouthful of beer. ‘I’ve been thinking about that today. I wondered about a lodger, like Dad joked about in the beginning? But then I thought that wouldn’t bring in enough money. So why don’t we rent out the whole house for six months, or even a year, while we decide what to do?’

Joe cocked his head, interested. ‘That might work. Rent somewhere ourselves for half of what we get for here, so we’re covering mortgage and rent?’

‘I think we’d be lucky just to cover the mortgage – think how enormous it is. Why don’t we see if we can move in with my parents for a little while? We could leave the furniture, lock up all our personal stuff in one of the rooms at the top. It wouldn’t be for long. I could commute in for interviews and the rest of my St Luke’s sessions. I don’t want to let them down.’

What she was suggesting was humiliating, but she, for one, was becoming practised in the absorption of humiliation. In the end, the world didn’t stop turning because you’d lost. Perhaps it had always been inevitable, she thought; perhaps the house was destined to be one of those cursed plots, the ones you found on every high street where businesses came and went and nothing ever seemed to stick. ‘It’s not like either of us is never going to work again,’ she added. ‘It’s just short term.’

‘It would buy us a few months,’ Joe agreed, readily enough for her to know that if he’d take the in-laws over the law then he really wasn’t going to return to corporate life. ‘I’ll phone some lettings agents tomorrow.’

It might be a relief to leave, she thought. If the Frasers could downsize to a small cottage in the back of beyond, then so could they. Lime Park Road was for families, stable families in which the adult roles were clearly defined and the life philosophies undivided (the occasional extramarital affair notwithstanding).

‘Joe, I think having a family is more important to me than having this house,’ she said, surprising herself as much as him with her directness. It was heartbreaking to think how long she’d not said it when in the end it was
only a few words, just one short statement of preference. ‘I know you don’t agree, and that’s fine, and I know there are more important things for us to worry about …’ She paused, corrected herself: ‘Maybe there
aren’t
more important things to worry about, maybe that’s what I’m trying to say. Anyway, it’s only fair that you know how I feel.’

Joe was silent, his fingers toying with the remote control. He did not look at her. ‘All of the partners at work, the married ones, they’ve all got the house
and
the children. I’m not sure how it hasn’t worked that way for us.’

‘I don’t know. But I don’t think it matters; we don’t have to be like them and do everything in the right order. This is us. This is our order.’

He was nodding again, in the committed way of a man hoping to convince himself. ‘They’re all captive, Christy, every single one of them. I don’t want to breed in captivity like them.’

‘Breed in captivity or breed at all?’ she asked, her heart quite still.

‘Breed in captivity,’ he said. He paused, at last looking at her. ‘But in the wild, sure.’

Christy smiled. She wondered at her own lack of anxiety today in this perilous situation of theirs. Perhaps it was because of Joe’s obvious equilibrium, the sense of peace that – unhelpfully – could only properly be identified as having been missing now it was restored. Or perhaps it was because of her other unresolved preoccupation, the second reason why a departure might be required. The question was, would that departure be temporary or permanent?

Well, tomorrow she would know, one way or the other.

‘When did you change your hair?’ he asked.

‘Oh.’ She touched the ends, faded now according to the Frasers’ all-seeing mirror to an undesirable shade of washed-up crab. ‘I did it myself to save money.’

Joe shut down the TV and flung the remote to the far corner of the sofa. ‘Let’s go out for dinner,’ he said. ‘To Canvas. We haven’t been there since the first week. It’s a disgrace.’

Her eyes bulged as her stomach responded with a groan. ‘I’m not sure that’s the most appropriate option for two unemployed debtors.’

‘I don’t think another hundred pounds is going to make much of a difference, do you?’

‘That’s exactly the sort of thing bankrupts say,’ she said, but she was smiling as she went upstairs to change.

The following morning at eleven, when Joe was making his first enquiries at the rental agent on the Parade and when Jeremy Fraser would be well into his second meeting of the day, Christy retraced the route to the far-flung suburb beyond the North Circular and presented herself at the Frasers’ door. Of course Amber Fraser might very well be out at work herself – who knew what had changed in their circumstances besides their address – but Christy understood by now that it didn’t matter, because she would keep on coming until she had the answer to her question. She would buy herself a season ticket.

As she raised her hand to ring the bell, she felt on her
wrist the reassuring weight of the bangle, worn on this occasion to remind her to give it back to its owner; out of sight, in her bag, it would more likely be forgotten.

The door opened and Christy drew breath. Finally. The woman standing before her was incontrovertibly Amber Fraser, you could tell by the long strands of glossy red hair that had freed themselves from her ponytail and by the smooth milk-pale face that had only lucky angles to it, the bone structure of the born beautiful. She’d gained a little weight since Caroline’s photograph had been taken, and was casually dressed in leggings and a ribbed grey sweater, her skin devoid of make-up. Having always pictured her as she’d looked in the photo, painted and bewitching, Christy took a moment to adjust to the more workaday version in front of her.

‘Hello, can I help you?’ Her voice, pitched low, was small and wintry, with no discernible accent. Her large eyes remained narrowed. There was the curious sense of her having made efforts to minimize her own impact on the senses of others.

‘I’m Christy Davenport,’ Christy said, too nervous to smile. ‘My husband and I bought your house on Lime Park Road back in March.’

While not having expected to be welcomed with open arms, she was genuinely startled by Amber Fraser’s reaction: aversion, fear, the undisguised impulse to slam the door in her caller’s face. It made Christy think of Felicity’s friend, the way the door had come towards her even as she continued to speak. March? It might have been the
nineteenth century for how removed it felt from the here and now. She felt a tug of sorrow for the lost promise of those few short months.

Impressively quickly, Amber recovered control of her facial muscles. The door remained open. ‘Can I ask how you found me?’

‘Through your husband’s work.’ Christy was reluctant to admit that she’d tailed the man in the manner of one of those people you read about in the papers who ended up having restraining orders taken out against them, and was grateful that Amber accepted her answer in its abbreviated form. She did not, however, go so far as to invite her visitor in, apparently determined to conduct this conversation on the doorstep, which brought to mind Christy’s other recent doorstep exchange with Rob.

Rob and Amber: now she was face to face with Amber she could see it, how they might be considered similar, how they might be mutually attracted; in fact, it was so
easy
to see as to have been predetermined, written in the stars.

‘What can I do for you?’ Amber asked. ‘Is there another problem with the roof?’

‘No, nothing like that. I’m really sorry to bother you, but I wanted to ask you about a situation with a neighbour.’

Amber’s already defensive bearing clenched visibly. ‘Which neighbour?’

‘Rob Whalen.’

‘I don’t want to talk about him.’

‘I know, I understand. But I believe you made an allegation against him?’

‘I have no intention of getting into that.’ Amber’s
words came with a formidable firmness for someone so quietly spoken.

‘Please.’ Christy wrung her hands, her face, in the habit now of supplicating herself. ‘
Please
. I swear I’ll keep coming back, you won’t get rid of me.’

‘Is that some sort of threat?’ If Amber perceived it as such, then she made it clear with her eyes that she would meet it head-on. Christy remembered one of Caroline’s confidences:
It wasn’t like she’d led a charmed life
. She’d had her adversities, had seen off challengers before.

‘It’s a vow,’ Christy said earnestly. ‘Please, just talk to me now, just this once, and I promise you won’t hear from me again.’

Amber frowned, closed her eyes and exhaled heavily as if to rebalance herself by some learned ritual. Only when she opened her eyes again did she part her lips to speak. ‘Wait here.’

As she turned into the hallway, evidently to pluck a jacket from the hook and slip her feet into boots, she was silhouetted in profile and Christy noticed an unmistakable swelling of her abdomen. Then she was pulling the door closed and ushering Christy back down the path. ‘Let’s go somewhere where we can talk privately.’

‘Your husband’s at home?’

‘No, at work.’ Amber did not explain from whom then the conversation was to be concealed (or, more likely, admit that in taking her visitor into her house she feared she might never get her out again), but marched briskly ahead, her tread light, sheepskin boots silent on the pavement.

Never quite allowing Christy to draw level, she led the way to a café on the nearby main road, a colourless, down-at-heel place, and though it was barely half full she chose a booth right at the back, far from the window. ‘It’s too cold to sit near the door,’ she said by way of explanation. It didn’t seem like the sort of place Amber Fraser would choose in any weather, but that hardly mattered. To be eye to eye with the woman who had eluded her for so long and yet been impossible to get from under her skin, who had bequeathed her the keys to her house and yet never truly vacated it: she would have faced her across a nest of vipers.

They ordered tea.

‘You know what happened then?’ Amber said. Somehow, already, Christy had conceded the lead to her.

‘Yes.’

She did not ask how and oblige Christy to mention the letter, which eliminated one of her larger fears. Seated, Amber seemed less sure of herself: jittery, blanched, under-slept … was this what a victim looked like? It was almost nine months since the alleged attack, and Christy wondered what that represented to her: an eternity or no time at all? When you disappeared yourself like this, did life stretch or shrink?

She realized that she wanted more than anything for them to be on the same side.

‘I’m really sorry … about what you’ve been through,’ she said. ‘It’s honestly not my intention to pry into a private incident.’

This was one of her rehearsed lines and, inevitably, it
did not wash. Amber looked unconvinced to the point of disdain. ‘You do know that I retracted my statement?’

‘Yes, and the police closed the inquiry.’

‘Exactly. Months ago. So what is there to discuss? It’s done and dusted, ancient history.’ Unyielding, tight-lipped – plainly she would have ended the exchange there and then had Christy let her – she began casting frequent glances at her watch, an expensive-looking bejewelled item on her slender wrist. Already she had checked her phone once, too.

‘Well, not
that
ancient,’ Christy said. Not yet daring to pose the question she’d come to pose, she could only play for time. The arrival of two mugs of unappetizingly grey tea aided her cause, though she doubted Amber would touch hers, judging by the way she looked askance at it. ‘Why didn’t you declare it on the forms?’ Christy asked, finally.

‘What forms?’ Amber glanced a second time at her phone.

‘To do with the sale of the house. You’re supposed to say if there’s been a dispute with a neighbour.’

Amber’s eyes flashed with heat and Christy knew she deserved the contemptuous response she got. ‘You call something like that a
dispute
? As if it’s some squabble over a garden fence? Are you crazy?’

Christy flushed. ‘Of course not. I’m sorry.’

Amber composed herself once more, lowered her voice to a pitch that half swallowed every second word. ‘As it happens, my husband handled all the paperwork, not me. We were both a little preoccupied at the time and
you’re just going to have to find it in your heart to forgive us.’ She paused, focusing on Christy fully for the first time; her irises were the most beautiful colour, a feline golden green. ‘Besides, the “dispute”, as you call it, was completely resolved before we left. There was no way it could have impacted on you.’

‘But –’

‘Look, I really don’t see how this concerns you. As you said yourself, it’s a private matter, a very sensitive private matter. Why are you here? Is there anything wrong with the house itself? Are you not happy you bought it?’

There was a challenge to her manner as she discharged this round of queries, a trace of superiority that riled Christy in spite of her avowed compassion. ‘But it
does
concern us, Amber.’ No need to confess that she and Joe would soon be moving out, having both proved unemployable; the issue was whether they could ever return. ‘It concerns the whole street. There’s a culture of fear there now. There are kids not allowed to go to the park on their own or get the bus to school because their parents think there’s a rapist living a few doors down. And the way you’re talking makes me think they’re right.
Are
they?’

Amber gasped, her eyes becoming unsettlingly wide and unblinking. ‘You can’t seriously be asking me that question?’

Christy held her gaze. ‘I am. I’m sorry to be so frank, but I don’t want to waste your time and you’re the only one who knows. Are we safe living next door to him? Raising a family on that street?’ With this, she gestured to the other woman’s stomach. ‘
You
made the decision not to, after all.’