How could I have explained to a four-year-old what I was doing – or to anyone? Dominic was working in the lounge, which was next to the kitchen in our old house. He’d have been horrified. I remember holding my breath, praying that my unnaturally high-pitched ‘Of course’ hadn’t aroused his suspicions. Four-year-old Zannah looked doubtful, but she didn’t ask any more questions.
The photograph she’d caught me holding was of the Braid family: Lewis and Flora and their three children – Thomas, Emily and Georgina. A happy family portrait, taken in the back garden. Flora had included it with their Christmas card. She always sent a photo, just as she always signed the card ‘Lewis, Flora …’ His name had to come first because it was traditional, and the Braids cared about things like that. Dominic and I discussed it once. He said, ‘There’s no way Lewis has ever said to Flora, “Make sure to put my name first”. He’d totally leave the Christmas card sending to her, wouldn’t he? I can’t see him giving it a single second’s thought.’
‘True,’ I said. ‘But he also would never have ended up married to the kind of woman who wouldn’t automatically put his name first on all correspondence.’
So often over the past twelve years, I’ve wanted to tell Dominic what I did to that photograph and ask him which he thinks is worse: that, or what Flora did to me.
If I did, he’d probably laugh and say, ‘You’re mad, Beth,’ in an affectionate way. He’d say the same – that I must be insane – about what I’m going to do next, which isn’t what I’ve just told Ben.
I’m not going to the supermarket to buy tonight’s dinner.
I’m going back to Wyddial Lane.
I’m amazed by how much more I notice now that I’m alone and there’s no pressure from an imminent football match to distract me: the black metal postbox attached to a gatepost, with ‘16’ on it in white, the burglar alarm, the row of what might be tiny security cameras or some kind of motion sensors lining the top of the house just under the guttering, like a string of paranoid fairy lights.
As I drove back here, the grey sky gave way to a hazy blue and the sun appeared. Now it’s properly warm for the first time this year. Even with the window down, it’s already too hot in the car. I don’t want to put on the air conditioning – that would involve starting up the engine, and the last thing I need is for Flora to look out and wonder about the stationary car with its engine running.
That’s funny: I’m assuming that, if anyone’s home, it’s going to be Flora. Twelve years ago, when I still knew the Braids, Lewis’s job on Saturdays was to ferry Thomas and Emily around by car to their various hobby-duties: swimming lessons, drama club, tennis coaching. Five-year-old Thomas and three-year-old Emily had an absurd number of unmissable appointments. Lewis drove them to and fro while Flora caught up on the housework. He often used to say, ‘When I sell my company for a trillion dollars, we’ll have a fleet of chauffeurs and I’ll be able to spend weekends watching telly with my feet up.’ In those days, he was always making jokes about how he would one day be rich. If we went to a crowded bar or café where we had to raise our voices to be heard, Lewis would announce, ‘When I’m rich I’ll have four chefs living in the annexe of my mansion – Indian, Italian, French and English – so that I don’t have to put up with other people’s noise in order to get great food.’ Flora would tut at his imaginary extravagance and say, ‘Lew-is,’ in the same voice she used to subdue her small children when they were making a spectacle of themselves in public.
As it turned out, Lewis didn’t need to worry about selling his company in order to get rich. His hoarder-miser grandfather died and left him several million pounds that nobody in the Braid family had known the old man had. Lewis and Flora moved from a three-bedroom basement flat to 16 Wyddial Lane, which looks as if it must have at least eight bedrooms, and now perhaps Lewis has all those chefs and chauffeurs he used to joke about acquiring. Maybe he and Flora and their kids are all inside the house now, staring at their iPhones.
What age would Georgina be? Twelve, so not quite a teenager. We didn’t let Zannah have a phone until she was thirteen, but her teenager behaviour had definitely started by then. She was eleven the first time she raised her eyebrows and asked me why I imagined in my wildest dreams that she might want to go into town with someone wearing a carpet. (I was dressed in a beautiful woollen poncho at the time.)
I feel ashamed when I think about Georgina Braid, so I concentrate on the house instead. I got it wrong before – I glanced at it and decided it was modern, but, on closer inspection, it looks as if only the sides of it are newly built. The middle third of the building sticks out in front of the grand wings to the left and right, which are flat-fronted and have been added much more recently in what Zannah would call a ‘glow-up’. The dark-red pantiled roof of the newest sections starts higher up than the roof of the middle part, which has two dormer windows set into it. Presumably this was once an average-sized cottage. Only just visible above the closed wooden gates is a lychgate-style roofed porch, with the same red tiles. Apart from the two roofs – house and porch – the entire frontage is gleaming white. It looks as if it might have been painted yesterday. The overall effect is of a sleek, contemporary white-cube-style house that has swallowed a lumpy old cottage and been unable to digest it.
There’s a second building, long and low, standing between the house and the high wall, separating the two. Most likely it’s a double or triple garage. If there’s this much space at the front, there must be three times as much at the back, at least. I picture a long, striped lawn, alternating shades of lush green, and a smooth stone patio area, complete with top-of-the-range outdoor chairs and sofas: dark brown with plump cream cushions.
I wipe beads of sweat from my forehead. One open window isn’t enough. How has it got so hot, suddenly? I open my door slightly, to let more air in.
Could I …
No. Absolutely not. I can’t ring the bell and smile and say, ‘Hi, Flora. I was passing, and I thought I’d pop round on the off-chance.’ Not after twelve years.
Is that why I came here, really? Not only to see the house but because I’m secretly hoping to rewrite the story?
The Braids and the Leesons were best friends. Twelve years ago, they did not have any sort of argument, nor did they exchange harsh words. The last time they saw each other, everybody smiled and laughed and kissed and hugged goodbye. They talked about getting together again very soon – maybe next week, maybe taking the kids to the summer fair on Parker’s Piece. As they enthusiastically agreed to ring each other to arrange this outing, Flora Braid and Beth Leeson both knew that there would be no phone call in either direction, and no trip to the fair. Dominic Leeson and Lewis Braid did not know this, because no one had told them that the two families would never meet or speak again.
On the face of it, it makes no sense. Only Flora and I understand what happened – and I’ll never know whether our understandings of it are the same. I’ve tried to explain to Dominic what happened from my point of view, and I suppose Flora must have told Lewis something, though perhaps not the truth …
This is ridiculous. I should be watching Ben play football, or finding a supermarket. I really do need to get something for dinner. Who cares where the Braids live now? I’ve seen everything there is to see – cream curtains at the upstairs windows, fat, square red-brick gateposts topped with large balls of grey stone, perfectly smooth and round, clashing horribly with the red brick.
I should go.
I’m about to start the car when I notice one coming up behind me: a Range Rover driving extra slowly. Wyddial Lane is a twenty-mile-an-hour zone, and this car’s going at no more than ten. I’m watching it, willing it to speed up, when I notice a movement from another direction.
It’s Flora’s gates – they’re opening.
The silver-grey Range Rover slows still further as it approaches the Braids’ house. It inches forward, now almost level with my car. That’s where it’s heading: through the wooden gates, into the grounds of number 16. Of course: there’s no way Lewis and Flora would have gates that you have to get out and open; they’d have some kind of remote-control set-up.
I see glossy dark brown hair through the Range Rover’s half-open window. It could well be Flora. It’s bound to be.
Shit.Why did I think I could get away with this? She’s going to see me.
No, she won’t. No one looks at a random parked car. She’ll drive in through the gates and then they’ll close again, and she won’t think about what’s beyond her property.
I turn my face away, making sure to lean close to my open window in case there’s anything to hear.
There’s nothing for a few seconds. Then a crunch of tyres on gravel, and the sound of the Range Rover’s engine cutting out. A car door opens. Feet land on gravel and a woman’s voice, halfway through a sentence as it emerges into the open air, drifts across to me: ‘… said I’m ready now. You can start. Yes. Start.’
