‘Hmm,’ I said to myself, considering it. It had come from Calwhit, Blank, Mettle LLC. It has been something of an abiding mystery to me why lawyers always seem to have such odd Dickensian last names, which they insist upon gathering into absurd lists. Perhaps they are obliged to change their names when they qualify for the Bar, like nuns taking their vows. Nothing of their old human frailty will remain. They will become dead to the world.
There was nothing Dickensian about the envelope – it sported a squat corporate font in embossed silver that meant business. I tore open the heavy paper envelope with a funny, sick feeling.
Inside was a single piece of paper – heavy, embossed like the envelope. They were acting under instructions from their client, Dr Edward Lewis, in the matter of his divorce and the subsequent financial settlement. Could all further correspondence with their client please be directed through them. They thanked me for my attention in this matter.
I read it through carefully, at least three times, while waves of hot and cold washed over me – a volcanic ocean.
You knew he would do this you knew you knew you knew…
I stood a long time, considering my response, which, since it involved running through the streets of Cambridge and banging on the door of his love nest like a deranged person, was probably not going to fly, strategically speaking.
He wants the house he wants your house…
It was not yet a declaration of war, but the ambassadors were being expelled and worried motions tabled at the UN. Preparations for battle were clearly underway.
Calm down, I thought to myself. It was something I said to the children in class every day, and it seemed to work on them.
I needed to get a grip. Eddy had moved in with his boss now. He had a second property he rented out. No judge was going to give him my house, too, that was just madness. We were only married for three years. And he made a lot more money than me, anyway.
But they might make me sell the house. It’s worth more than the flat now – a lot more. If you were to split our assets down the middle… Oh God, he wants my house.
I wrapped my hands around my head, futilely trying to contain my racing thoughts.
Oh fuck fuck fuck…
One thing at least was clear. I would need to find myself a lawyer.
In the end I went with my first impulse, and drove round to Professor Arabella Morino’s Georgian terrace in its short, frilly skirt of garden in De Freville Avenue to find him. I had not gone the whole hog and turned up on her doorstep with tousled streaming dark hair in a wine-spotted nightshirt, like a furious hung-over Bacchante; instead opting for a wash and a cup of black coffee first.
Those were all the concessions I would be making today however.
When I rat-a-tatted on her imposing bronze knocker I expected to be kept waiting as the guilty lovers procrastinated on the other side, so when the door opened immediately I was thrown, my prepared, angry statement forgotten. In any case it would have been wasted on Evan, for it was he that answered my knock.
I reined myself in, and we regarded one another in silence with the wary respect borne of mutual sympathy. Evan, impeccably barbered and heavily jowled, rested one hand on the doorframe. I caught a glimpse of the pale skin of his wrist, with its light covering of black hair, as it poked out of the cuff of his dressing gown.
Oh curiouser and curiouser. Evan moved out of this house six weeks ago, in disgusted rage, and Eddy moved in. Evan is, or rather was, Ara’s partner. Her once and future partner, judging by his casual attire.
I’m too amazed to speak, so he has to.
‘Margot,’ he said, polite but formal. ‘This is early.’
It is, isn’t it? I thought. It must have been about eight fifteen. A mortified heat was rising in my cheeks. I was not being very well mannered, but then, this wasn’t a social call.
‘I know, I’m sorry. I wanted to call by before work. Is Eddy in?’ I asked this for form’s sake, I realized. There was no way on earth that Eddy was in at that moment.
Evan’s face did a funny little thing where it froze, and I suspected it was because he was being assailed by a variety of competing emotions, none of which were fit for public consumption. There was the memory of humiliation; the discomfort and alarm of being confronted by a spurned and potentially volatile woman; but also, most tellingly, there was a tiny gleam of triumph.
I knew all before he had opened his mouth.
‘Eddy doesn’t live here any more, Margot,’ he said. His glance flicked away over his burly shoulder to a shadowy form I could just make out in her own dressing gown, standing at the foot of the stairs. ‘He moved out.’
I resisted the temptation to follow his eyes with every nerve, every muscle, every twitching impulse in my being. In my belly, something was squirming, with a terrible kicking energy, like a wounded animal.
‘Oh,’ I said. I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do or say next, and Evan seemed to understand, waiting patiently for me to find my way. Within, I could see the shadowy figure move restlessly. She wanted me to bugger off, I’m sure. She’s trashed my marriage and now has buyer’s remorse, and my presence is damaging her rapprochement with her old favourite.
‘When did he move out?’
‘I don’t know,’ Evan looked over his shoulder, and she murmured something in the semi-darkness of her curtained hall. Her voice was husky, almost hoarse. Did Eddy find it part of her charm? ‘Last week sometime,’ he supplied.
Last week. He was at my house, unannounced, on Friday. Definitely Friday, for it was the day I’d come back late from the police station, the day I’d received the first letter from Bethan Avery. Dressed in his best. Come to talk about the settlement, tried to get me into bed and I’d blown him out. Why had I blown him out? I had often in my lonely hours wished him back again. Or thought I had.
Because I must have sensed something about him, I realized. Known that he wanted something.
‘Do you know where he’s gone?’ I asked.
Evan shook his head.
He couldn’t go back to the flat – he’d rented it out for less than its worth to some other chancer from Sensitall Labs, the extra-academic start-up business they were all involved in. Ah yes, of course, work was going to be very awkward for them all now, and as I seem to remember from Eddy’s departmental gossip, Ara has a longstanding reputation for elegant ruthlessness. I scrubbed at the back of my head with one hand while I thought.
I’m not proud of what happened next.
I distinctly heard that husky voice murmur that it was very early and Eddy wasn’t here, so could I please leave and let them get on with their day?
I glanced up, sharply, at the shadowy figure, caught the flash of the whites of her eyes.
‘Don’t you dare even speak to me, you filthy fucking bitch.’
Everybody froze. It would have been comical, but I was now some other Margot, and I think if Evan hadn’t been standing in the way, I would have launched at her and ripped her eyes from her face with my nails. The lines that define the normal and forbidden are tissue-paper thin, after all. She has torn through my life, casting out all of the contents, all of the work, all of the memories, like rubbish spilled out of the bin during a high gale, and now she has grown bored of it and wants me to leave.
Evan moved, and with a jolt I realized I had actually taken a step forward.
‘I think you need to go,’ he said. That trace of sympathy had vanished now, his jaw set.
I didn’t miss it, treating him to a contemptuous raise of my eyebrows. ‘Well, good luck with all this.’
He set like concrete.