Lily shut herself in their bedroom, leaving Freddy slumped in the kitchen. They had run out of things to say, because Lily didn’t know what to ask. The problem seemed so massive, the shock so great, that her mind was blank.
Now she was pacing the large room like the proverbial headless chicken. She didn’t know whether to get dressed, fall back into bed and cover her head with the duvet, go out, call someone, cry, beat the life out of her husband. She was shivering, wired to the hilt, and completely baffled.
She thought she should be scared, but she wasn’t sure what to be most afraid of. A sudden and complete absence of money? Her husband’s lies and secret addiction? Her marriage? Her son’s wedding fiasco? How, in God’s name, was she going to tell Dillon and Gabriela that the wedding was off? Sitting down on the bed, she realized she was having trouble believing what Freddy had said. The whole thing felt like a hoax, a ridiculous novelizing of their lives, and any minute now he would appear at the bedroom door to tell her it was nothing more than a bad joke.
Just now, in the kitchen, Freddy had kept asking her why she wasn’t angrier with him. But how can you be angry with a situation you don’t understand? Yes, the facts were there, but getting her head round the destruction of the whole edifice of her life surely took longer to digest than a mere hour. She would be angry; other people would be angry too, she anticipated that. But right now she just felt crazy.
*
Hating to be alone in the debris of the bomb just detonated, Lily went to find her husband, even though Freddy had been the cause of the explosion. He was exactly where she’d left him, his head sunk on his arms at the kitchen table, eyes shut. Is he asleep? she wondered, incredulous that anyone could find even temporary peace in his situation. But he lifted his head when he heard her bare feet on the tiles, staring at her with his dark eyes, now bleak with misery. She wanted to shake him, to make him tell her he was mistaken, that no such preposterous nightmare existed. She waited, absurdly, in vain.
Freddy got up, came round the table and took her in his arms. He was warm and felt safe and strong as always. She allowed herself to wallow in his embrace. They stood pressed together for a long time, neither wanting to let the other go.
When finally they pulled apart, she said, ‘We’d better tell Dillon.’
‘I’ll do it,’ he said.
‘What about the rest?’
‘I don’t know, Lily. I don’t know.’
She went to sit down, resting her elbows on the table. ‘Won’t it just mean bankruptcy?’ She looked up at him, willing him to engage. ‘That’s only for a year, I’m sure. We can survive it, can’t we?’
Brushing his hair off his face with both hands, combing his fingers through the waves, he shook his head. ‘It’s not as simple as that. The Chinese guy who lent me the sixty thousand won’t be pleased. He’s not the type to go for a CCJ. Then there’s Barney. I don’t know what he’ll do, but he has some distinctly villainous sidekicks.’
‘What are you saying? That someone will send the heavies round to rough you up?’ She was joking, but he raised his eyebrows.
‘Something like that.’
‘Seriously?’
‘I owe a lot of money to a lot of people, Lily. They’ll be angry. And they’ll think I’m hiding stuff, that if they threaten me I’ll cough up.’ He sighed. ‘I get it. How would I feel if someone owed me such a huge amount of money?’
‘So . . .’
Freddy, leaning against the work surface, his hands in his pockets, didn’t speak for a while. Lily was someone who liked to have a plan. She had always been of the opinion that any problem had a solution if you looked hard enough. And she felt he wasn’t looking hard enough. ‘For God’s sake, Freddy. You must have worked out this would happen sooner or later. Don’t you have a Plan B?’
Not looking at her, he said, ‘I always thought the next spin would sort things out.’
Throwing her hands into the air, Lily said, ‘But that’s ludicrous. How could you be so stupid?’
‘All I can say is that it felt possible at the time.’ He met her eye. ‘In fact, it still seems possible. If I had enough stake money, I would try again.’
Lily didn’t know how to respond. ‘How much have you got left?’
‘About a thousand.’
‘How long is this flat okay?’
‘Till the end of April, but the landlord might kick off once he hears about the bankruptcy.’
Silence.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked, for what must have been the tenth time that morning.
Her husband didn’t reply at once. Then he said, ‘Can you go and stay with someone? Prem, maybe.’
‘Me?’
‘Lily, look, I’m a liability. You mustn’t be around me right now. It not only might be dangerous, but I have to sort this out on my own. You don’t deserve any of this. The best plan is that we separate. Let me deal with my appalling mess.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Plan B, if you like.’
Lily’s heart lurched. Through the gruelling morning of revelations, not once had she imagined that they wouldn’t work it out together. ‘Separate? You want us to separate?’
Freddy grabbed her hands. ‘Listen to me, will you? You need to understand. I don’t want to. You know the thought of being without you tears my heart out. But it’s not fair on you. I can’t do what I have to do and expect you to stand by and watch.’
‘What is it you have to do?’
‘I’ve told you. I don’t know exactly, but it won’t be pretty. And I don’t want you to be part of it.’ He looked away. ‘Anyway, I can’t understand why you’d want to be with someone who’s done what I’ve done to you.’
‘I love you?’ She gave him a puzzled frown, wondering, after all they’d shared, that she needed to say it.
A look of frustration, presumably at her stubbornness, crossed his face. ‘But I’ve fucked up. I’m not that man you say you love. I’m a fraud, a liar . . . a compulsive gambler. You don’t love this version of me, Lily. How could you?’
Lily didn’t know how she could either. She only knew that she did.
‘It’s only bullied politician’s wives who stand by the garden gate, holding hands and smiling at their scumbag husbands,’ Freddy added. ‘You don’t have to do that . . . You mustn’t do that.’
Lily’s phone, sitting on the kitchen table, buzzed. It was Dillon. She showed the screen to Freddy, who took the mobile, pressed it to his ear and walked quickly out of the room. She didn’t follow, having no desire to hear what was said. She was suddenly overwhelmed by a rare cowardice in the face of her son’s inevitable distress. I’ll speak to him later, she told herself, feeling sick at the thought.
Shut in the bathroom, the shower on full, she crouched in the wide stall hugging her knees, warm water pouring down on her bent head.
Freddy doesn’t mean it, she kept telling herself. He’s falling on his sword, trying to protect me after the event. Trying to do the decent thing, even if it’s a bit late in the day. Separation would break his heart – he told me that. He just thinks he ought to leave. He’s pre-empting what everyone else will say.
An anguish akin to the grief she remembered after Garret’s death assailed her, made her gasp for breath. No, no, please . . . Her words were silent. I can’t lose him, please, I can’t. Not Freddy as well. Please, not Freddy. She did not know or care to whom this plea was addressed. Not a believer in the God her parents had introduced her to in Sunday school, and subsequently at the church they attended every week without fail, she found herself, nonetheless, at moments of crisis, reverting to her childhood training and saying prayers to the heavens, putting her fears out there, seeking help from an undefined higher being.
*
Her hair damp, skin glowing from the heat of the shower, she automatically rubbed cream into her face, spritzed her arms and legs with body oil, as she did every day, pulled on a pair of black jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt over her underwear. She opened the bedroom door and listened. Was Freddy still talking to her son? But there was silence in the large flat. She padded along the corridor to the sitting room. Freddy was not there, only her mobile lying on the coffee table.
She called out to him, went back along the passage to the kitchen, called again. She could hear the note of panic in her voice, but the fear that he had already left her dissolved her guts, made her heart wild in her chest. There was a silence in the empty rooms she found eerie and threatening.
With shaking hands, she pressed Prem’s number. Her friend answered immediately.
‘Hey, you must be psychic, I was just about to phone you. Do you and Freddy fancy supper on Saturday? Raj and Hal are over and I know they’d love to see you. But no doubt you two are gallivanting off somewhere smart, as usual.’
Lily found she couldn’t speak.
‘Lily? Are you there? Hello?’
A sort of strangled sob escaped her.
‘Lily . . . say something, for God’s sake. What’s happened?’
Words tumbled out through her tears.
‘Slow down, take a breath. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’ Prem’s voice was urgent. ‘What was that about Freddy?’
‘He’s . . . he’s . . . lost all our money, every . . . penny. Gambled it . . .’ Another bout of sobbing drowned out the rest.
‘That’s insane.’ There was a shocked silence. ‘Listen, Ian’s gone to lunch and I can’t leave the shop till he comes back. But—’
‘No, it’s okay, I know you’re busy. I just . . . I just . . .’
Lily had a moment of surprise that it was only lunchtime. It felt as if a whole day, a year, a lifetime had passed since she’d woken that morning, so oblivious to what was about to happen.
‘I’ll text him right now, get him to come back. Stay where you are. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
Prem hung up, leaving Lily to give full vent to her tears.