‘This isn’t everything,’ Fi says. ‘There’s another lot in storage.’
‘Then we look.’ Even Merle’s sigh is abbreviated, efficient. ‘And we do it quietly. We can’t have anyone in the block hearing us bumping around.’
It takes over an hour to find the boxes containing the items from the family bathroom, but Leo’s tablets are among them. There is one half-used blister pack and one intact, still in its box. Fi puts this into her handbag. ‘I always carry a box with me in case Leo develops symptoms when we’re out?’
‘Excellent.’
At last, they leave, Fi with her overnight bag, the carrier containing Toby’s phones in Merle’s coat pocket. The fog has lifted but still the morning feels gentle, supportive of their cause, delivering them back to Trinity Avenue under its protection. The script continues to be written as they walk back, Merle speaking in low tones, not quite murmuring.
‘Did any of your neighbours in the building ever see you and Toby together?’
‘I don’t think so. I’ve hardly ever bumped into anyone, even on my own. When he arrived, I buzzed him in and he usually let himself out, so anyone who saw him wouldn’t necessarily have known it was me he was visiting, not Bram.’
‘Excellent. And when he came to my place yesterday, he said he’d already been to the flat, didn’t he? He’d got a neighbour to let him in and then he’d hammered on the door. I bet he was pretty unpleasant about it, probably made it clear he was angry with Bram.’
They are almost at Merle’s house, just passing Fi’s – the Vaughans’ – and her peripheral vision registers only stillness.
She stops dead, clutches Merle’s arm. ‘The Vaughans, Merle! The Vaughans saw him.’
‘Keep moving,’ Merle says. ‘Yes, they did, but he was looking for Bram, not you. Remember, he was shouting for Bram, and David said something like, “Join the queue.” Then I went out and invited him in. So the Vaughans have no reason to think he’s connected to you. They might have seen you leave with him, but I doubt it, they were camped out in the kitchen. We can deny that, anyway.’
There is not long to wait before it’s time for Merle to gather her car keys and Fi to text Tina, and then they are retracing their steps towards Wyndham Gardens, where Merle’s Range Rover is parked.
‘So, tell me what’s going to happen later.’
Fi recites the plan: ‘You’ll phone me at four and suggest we go to the flat and see if Bram’s left any documents to do with the house, any clues that might help us with the police and solicitor on Monday. We’ll discover the body together and say we think he might be the same man who came to Trinity Avenue last night looking for Bram. We looked in his wallet to find some ID.’
‘Perfect. They’ll see the wine, check Bram’s phone, start to make their own connections with the house theft.’
The mist has turned to drizzle and the wipers swing back and forth across the windscreen. ‘And how do I explain that the man I’ve been dating has disappeared?’ Fi asks.
Merle glances in the rear view. ‘Easy. He made himself scarce when he discovered you’d lost the house. Only interested in your money.’
‘I think he might have been married,’ Fi says. ‘He never took me to his place or even told me his full address. My sister was suspicious from the start.’
‘Exactly. You’d be happy to have the police track him down, but to be honest it’s the least of your worries given the fact that your ex-husband has just killed someone and stolen your house.’
The more they look into the details, the better it becomes. It is self-supporting, it has a central strength.
Then Fi remembers Alison. ‘Oh, Alison.’
‘What about her?’
‘She saw him. She saw Toby the night we met.’
In the bar at La Mouette, all those months ago.
Well, you certainly have a type.
‘Alison won’t say anything,’ Merle says. ‘She may not even be questioned. If she is, it was how long ago?’
‘September.’
When it all began. Her new dawn.
‘So ages ago. She’d had a few drinks, the place was dark, a total mob scene. It’s not a deal breaker, Fi. If it came to it, she wouldn’t testify against her best friend. I know I wouldn’t.’
They hit a succession of red lights. The engine turns itself on and off. Stop start, stop start. Question answer, question answer.
Fi sinks into the seat, wishing herself invisible, an apparition detectable only to the woman next to her. ‘Merle, you’ll really do all this?’
Red light. The engine stops.
‘I really will,’ Merle says.
‘Why?’
‘Come on, Fi, you know why.’ She smiles at her, sideways, wry, a little sad. ‘I didn’t envisage this to be what got you talking to me again, but there you go.’
Amber light. The engine starts.
Fi knows why.
54
Saturday, 14 January 2017
London, 8 a.m.
It has not been easy, co-existing in a close community with a friend and neighbour who betrayed her in the most fundamental of all ways. The knee-jerk desire to punish subsided soon enough, but it left Fi with something bleaker and more enervating: a double bereavement. Bram and Merle. And the fact that life in Alder Rise is so tribal made it all the more painful, because now there were subdivisions of people who knew, people who didn’t, and people who she wasn’t sure knew or not.
Kent was a particularly painful exercise. She’d thought repeatedly of pulling out, but in the end, she didn’t want to let Leo and Harry down – or the other kids in the group. They were a tribe of their own. Surviving it (half-enjoying it, if she was honest) made her appreciate the importance of appearances in neighbourhood life, of personal sacrifice. The greatest happiness of the greatest number and all that.
In the days after the playhouse affair, a plea arrived. Handwritten and hand-delivered, pushed through the letterbox with stealth, so as not to make a sound.
‘There’s a card for you, Mummy,’ Harry told her. ‘Even though it’s not your birthday.’
‘People send cards for other reasons,’ she said.
She read it just once before destroying it and so can remember only fragments now:
Crazy and despicable . . .
I will never forgive myself . . .
Is there any chance we can be civil, for the sake of the kids . . .?
I need you to know that I would do anything to repay you . . .
The word ‘repay’ stuck in her craw. As if Fi had lent her something, given of herself freely. Issued her with a permission slip to sleep with Bram. The evening of your choice, my friend, the venue that works best for you. I’ll make myself scarce.
In a funny way, she can imagine Bram rewriting the episode that way. He has a knack for repurposing his own misadventures.
But not Merle. Problem solver extraordinaire, strong and spirited Trinity Avenue wife and mother.
You name it, she wrote, and I will do it.
*
It is only after Merle has stopped the car on the way to Tina’s flat to dispose of the phones that Fi asks why a second time. They are in the car park at Crystal Palace Park and Merle has just returned empty-handed from the boating lake, when it occurs to Fi that she might never see her accomplice again – at least not until they appear in the dock and the witness box respectively.
‘I told you,’ Merle says. Not impatient, but focused on the day’s demands. ‘You know why.’
‘No, I mean you and him. You’d known each other for so long. That was the only time, wasn’t it?’
Now Merle follows. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
‘Who initiated it? Was it him?’
A pause. ‘No, it was me. That’s the truth. He didn’t invite me over. He wasn’t expecting me. He had no choice but to ask me in.’
Fi holds her eye. ‘He had a choice about fucking you, though.’
Merle does not flinch. ‘I’m not sure he did, Fi. I was on a mission.’