My phone pings as I’m spooning ground coffee into the machine and I jump so much I spill it everywhere. I’ve blocked Ellis’s numbers, but she could be using yet another burner phone, like Jam said.
It’s Alice. Relief loosens my shoulders.
Are you free for a call at 10?
I press the button on the coffee machine, water starting to gurgle.
Yes! xox
The dots oscillate as she replies.
Dad too?
I don’t have a clue where he is. I drum my nails, thinking how to respond.
Hopefully xxx
I have two hours to find him. Phoning him, it goes straight to voicemail. I don’t leave a message. Clearing the spilled coffee granules off the counter, I get my mental house in order, thinking how quiet everything is now, compared to what Saturday mornings used to be like. It’s the last day of the month; somehow I’ve made it to the end of September without getting too scratched by my empty nest, probably because there’s so much else competing for my attention.
As much as I didn’t want to take advice from Shaun, I did as he said and checked my bank balance on my phone. Four times already this morning, twice in the middle of the night. But it looks fine. No strange transactions from jewelers.
I should be seething, but I’m too upset. My self-esteem has shrunk to a speck, barely visible. Somehow, I’m going to have to stop myself from disappearing all together.
One thing’s for sure: Fred must be getting money from somewhere other than our joint bank account.
There’s only one way to find out.
I creep downstairs to his basement, thinking of bunkers, how they’re supposed to keep soldiers and civilians safe but how they’re often somewhere where nasty crimes are committed. It occurs to me that if someone—Ellis—were to kill me, down here would make an ideal setting. The smack of a spade on my head, then using it to bury me deep, underneath the floorboards.
My blood running cold, I turn every light on, propping the door open with one of Fred’s design books. There’s no way I’m dying down here, among all this metal and wire.
Shuddering, I sit down at his desk, the seat giving, bouncing. Stuck around his screen are curly Post-Its, the ink faded. None of them make any sense. Emptiness is dynamic; Alphonse Mucha Job 1898! But there’s one that does.
I peel it off, gazing at his handwriting. AP North, our investment broker. I didn’t realize he took that keen an interest in them? Trying to stick it back in place, it flutters onto the keyboard. I debate whether to leave it, decide I shouldn’t, so I tape it into place, returning upstairs.
Opening my laptop, I go to our joint bank account where I can look at it properly, on a bigger screen. I’m not great at monitoring our finances; Fred isn’t either, that I know of. The passwords and security checks always bug me.
By the time I’ve remembered my password and entered security codes, I’m on my second cup of coffee. And then I’m in, scrolling down slowly. Money arriving from our salaries at the end of each month, then going to AP North. An electronic relay.
I click on the payments to AP North, sitting forward to read them. One was set up a year or so ago, a thousand pounds a month. And then last Christmas, as a gift to Will and Alice, five hundred each a month to their investment funds, to be continued as long as we could afford it.
Two thousand pounds is leaving our account every month, going to AP North.
I go to their website. More security checks. More coffee. Finally, I’m able to access the inquiry form, where I write:
Please could you confirm to me in writing the details of my monthly transactions?
As I press Send, Alice messages again.
Can we make it 10:30?
I’d make it on the moon if she asked.
Yes xox
I try Fred again, but this time I leave a voicemail, telling him his daughter wants to see us both, that it’s important or she wouldn’t be asking.
I hope he doesn’t show up, but if he does, then I hope he doesn’t look like a dirty stop-out. Or maybe he should. I’m not going to cover for him anymore. If he looks bad, that’s on him.
* * *
“So how’s it going?” I ask.
“Fab,” Alice says. She looks so well. My hands ache with the longing to reach forward and touch her—smooth her hair, press a kiss onto her nose.
I distract myself with practical matters. “Are you eating well?”
“Yep. All good. The cafeteria food’s a bit nah. But it’s edible.” She frowns, looks to the side of me. “Dad not there?”
“Sorry. He’s at work.”
“Really?” she says, hurt registering on her face. “Again? Is he always there or something?”
Or something.
“Sorry, sweetheart.”
“That’s okay.” She turns sideways, laughing, tugging at someone. And then a face appears beside her. “Mom, this is Josh.”
I’m taken aback, only because I wasn’t expecting him. But there’s something else too, which I don’t have time to process because she’s expecting me to say something—anything. “Hello, Josh.”
He smiles. “Hello, Mrs. O’Neal.”
“Oh, please—call me Gabby.”
Out in the hallway, a door slams; Fred’s back.
He breezes into the kitchen, sitting down next to me, completely ignoring me. “Hi, honey,” he says to the screen. “How’s it…? Oh, hello!” He clocks Josh, laughs in embarrassment, ruffling his hair, glancing at me then.
I keep my eyes on the screen. “This is Josh,” Alice explains, looping her arm in his. “He’s on my course.”
“Hello,” Fred says, his voice slightly flat.
“We met on our first day.” And then she turns to smile at him and I realize: she’s in love. I well up again, looking down at my lap.
“How is the course?” Fred asks, steering the subject back to something he can handle.
“It’s great,” they both reply at the same time and then look at each other and burst out laughing. It’s adorable and tragic because she’s truly gone, someone else’s now more than she’s ours. I can’t look at Fred, but I know he’s thinking the same thing. We’re both very still, quiet.
The call doesn’t last for much longer. Alice has laundry. She says goodbye and it’s only as Josh goofily says what an honor it was to meet us that I realize what it was that struck me about him.
He looks like Fred. Whether or not she knows it, she’s chosen someone who resembles her father. But then she would; she thinks he’s wonderful.
As the screen goes blank, I want to turn into pixels, dive into the screen, join her there. Fred opens a cupboard, removes an energy bar, slipping from the room.
I call after him. “That’s it? You have nothing to say? So this is, what, a hotel now?”
In the doorway, he stops, hanging his head like a guilty man, except it’s not guilt but intolerance. I’m making him suffer unnecessarily. “No,” he says, his voice waspish, “because a hotel’s a pleasurable experience.”
“Well, you would know.”
He tuts, smiles, as though I’m the most tedious person in the world. He hasn’t shaved for days, looks jaded, gray. There’s a stoop to his shoulders that isn’t usually there and he’s still wearing his work chinos. I worry momentarily about his mental health, but then he says, “I knew you’d get like this. I don’t even want to look at you right now.” And all sympathy for him fades away.
“Well, that suits me just fine.”
“And yet you just said you wanted to talk to me. Yet another example of your impossible demands. You’re up and down, all over the place. You really should get some help with that.”
I’m not taking the bait, even though my inner voice is screaming at me to take it, run with it and drag him into the pool. He’s going to do everything he can to make me look irrational, difficult. His parents and his lawyer will be advising him to do this.
“I’m just thinking of the kids, Fred, even though that must be a stretch for you because you’ve clearly got other things on your mind. But they’re still your responsibility.” I set my hand on the cool marble counter. The meals I’ve prepared here, no matter how tired, ill, frazzled. “I think we need a plan regarding how we’re going to tell them.”
He laughs. “A plan? We could always roll in the whiteboard, get out the marker pens, brainstorm it.”
My cheeks flush. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, isn’t that how you treat everything, like a work project?”
“That’s not true!” I push back my barstool, standing up. “Is that what this is about—the fact that I earn more than you? Or is it because the house’s mine? Is that why you cheated, Fred, to prove you’re still the man around here?”
“Don’t be so stupid! Anyway, the house isn’t yours. It’s mine too, remember?”
“And there’s not a day I don’t regret doing that! Because now whoever you shack up with can run off with half of what’s mine!”
“So you do think it’s yours, no matter what that piece of paper says!” he shoots back, his jaw tightening.
I sit back down. I’m still in my pajamas—didn’t know I was going to be seeing anyone but Alice. “Why are you doing this, Fred?”
“You know why.”
I wait, my stomach doing an unhappy dance. He sets his eyes on me and for a moment I see the man I once loved—the man in a The Who T-shirt who bought me half a lager and lime at the King’s Arms a million years ago.
“Because we turned fifty and realized we hated each other.”
The air in the room is so sharp I feel it stabbing my temples.
He hated me too? Somehow that hadn’t occurred to me before.
His posture loosens, one leg set against the wall. This is his resting pose. He’s done fighting for now. “Why aren’t you ready for mediation?” he asks quietly.
“I will be. I need a little more time.”
“For what?”
“Nothing. I just don’t see why there’s a rush.”
“And what about a decision on a sole or joint application?”
“Oh, yes. Go for sole.”
He frowns suspiciously. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing. I’m up to nothing, Fred.” I wipe crumbs from the countertop, gathering them in my hand, getting up to brush them into the sink. Alice’s cereal bowl is still there. I’ll remove it soon, but not yet. “You still haven’t answered my question about the kids. I want to know when we’re telling them. I won’t let anything derail Alice.” I gaze out the window at the cedar trees lining the side of the house.
“This isn’t the same as what happened to you, Gabby. Nothing will derail her.”
I can remember those trees being planted—ten feet apart, the trenches eighty centimeters wide, forty centimeters deep. Some people remember facts like that; I’m one of them.
“Do you really think I’m all whiteboards and marker pens?” I can hear the victim in my voice, the neediness, but can’t stop it.
“Not really.”
I want to sob, but somehow manage to keep a hold of myself.
“This thing with Ellis…” he says.
I hold up my hand. “I don’t want to know, not now. I can’t—”
“It’s not what you think. I care about her. And she cares about me.”
“I hope for your sake that’s true,” I reply softly, “but that plays differently to me, Fred—sounds different to my ear…as an older woman…” I trail off, unable to explain—unwilling to confide how my poor tired heart is interpreting his sexual preferences.
I open the fridge, even though I couldn’t think about eating. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. The Stilton must be bad by now; that cheesecake’s surely off. There’s one small piece gone which Alice cut the night before she left. I stare at that missing portion, a neat triangle, my eyes filling with tears.
“How many others have there been?” I say, closing the door. “Besides her and Daisy?”
“Just a couple,” he says with enough shame to lower his voice.
“Do your parents know?”
He shifts his feet, checking his watch. “Actually, I’m due there now.”
“For lunch?”
“No. I’m staying with them awhile. I’m finding it…difficult being here.”
Something about this reassures me. At least he’s with family, not roaming the streets. “What about the kids? Should we schedule a conversation?”
“I’ll be happy with whatever you decide, Gabby. Just let me know.”
I nod, watching him leave the room, anxiety tugging at me, urging me to say something—to tell him I’m scared of Ellis, scared that she’s following me, going to do something terrible to me.
He’s halfway down the hallway when I run after him. “Fred?” He stops, turns, one foot on the stairs. “How much do you know about her?”
My heart is doing all kinds of funny things, none of them natural.
“Ellis?” He shrugs with his mouth. I used to like that mannerism. Thought it made him look suave. I don’t think people even say suave anymore. Everything about our relationship is out-of-date.
“I know enough,” he says. “It’s all good.”
“Are you sure?”
He smiles. “One hundred percent.”
“How long have you known her, exactly?”
He wavers, just like I do now before answering any questions. “We met just before Christmas.”
“Christmas?”
This fits what I’d already deduced and yet bowls me over just the same. I wrap my arms around me, trying to make sense of the facts without looking as though I’m doing that.
How can this be?
The night Ellis approached me, she’d known Fred for…eight months? Yet, she offered to help me. Why?
I retreat to the kitchen, needing to get away from him. He can’t find out about that night at Rumors. There’s too much that I can’t remember.
“Why do you ask?” he calls, but I’m already closing the door, standing with my back against it.
What if they planned this together, to get the house? What if they’re trying to get rid of me?
Staring fearfully around the room, I take in the knife block, wondering if I’d be capable of defending myself—if I’m even capable of getting out of my pajamas today. Upstairs, Fred’s opening and closing doors loudly, slamming them.
And then my laptop trills the arrival of an email, cutting through my mental noise. Grabbing my reading glasses, I peer at the screen. It’s from AP North.