“The boys just need some space too,” Fiona comments.
Marks nods. “Thanks, Fiona, your being here really helps.”
“Oh, I’m doing nothing.” She knows this isn’t true. She’s done the shopping, laundry and cooking; she’s being a surrogate mum but it’s not very English to brag about one’s usefulness in a crisis.
Mark raises a small grin, understanding the code. “You’ve done everything. Not least simply keeping the conversation going at supper. A supper you made. The boys are a bit calmer around you.”
It hasn’t been discussed but it seems to be tacitly agreed that Fiona will stay on the sofa again tonight. She reaches for a bottle of Merlot that she bought this morning. She’s pretty sure it’s Mark’s favorite. She holds it up. He nods. She pours two large glasses.
Mark sits down in front of the family computer that is on a small desk in the corner of the kitchen, where the boys are encouraged to do their homework. Fiona smiles as she remembers talking to Leigh about this. “Is it so you can oversee their homework while you make tea?” she’d asked.
“No, it is to minimize the chance that they lose hours watching porn while pretending to do homework,” Leigh had replied with a wink and a grin. Leigh knows the boys inside out. Fiona had often enough witnessed Leigh intuitively understand that while one of the boys might appear sulky, they were in fact nervous about something; then she’d offer to run through Seb’s lines for whatever school play he was rehearsing or she’d give Oli a pep talk about the likelihood of him being picked for the football team. Mark was more likely assuming the kids were just being a bit “teeny” and morose. He often demanded that they “turn that frown upside down.” Not that Mark is a bad parent, far from it. On the scale he is somewhere between better-than-most and good. Leigh is excellent. She has also always been an excellent friend too. If Fiona is ever feeling lonely or a bit depressed about a lousy date or the prospect of a long weekend alone, whatever, she never has to admit as much to Leigh. Leigh just seems to sense it and will immediately issue an invitation for Fiona to join them for Sunday lunch or maybe just to stand on the sidelines and watch Oli’s match.
It is unbelievable to think that lovely Leigh has done something so wrong. Something illegal, immoral.
Evil.
Because looking at Mark now, splintered with grief and heartache, it is hard to think of Leigh’s actions as anything less than evil.
This evening, Fiona had explained to Oli that Leigh was a bigamist. Seb is too young to understand it all, but Fiona thought it was fair to bring Oli up to speed. He is not a baby and he’d resent it if they treated him like one. Oli said he felt he was Luke Skywalker discovering Darth Vader was his dad. That seemed about right to Fiona. The whole thing was such a colossal shock.
Fiona doesn’t want to judge. Relationships are a morass of dos and don’ts; broken rules and hearts. Her own acidic experiences prove that. How many times had she discovered she was dating a married man, for instance? Not by design. She would meet someone on an app and they always say they are single at first, then when she started to care （always after sex） they would admit to being married. Fiona remembers chatting about this to Leigh.
“They don’t want to hide it for any length of time. They want you to know, so you understand their level of commitment,” she’d explained.
“Or lack of it,” Leigh had pointed out. Eyes wide.
“Precisely.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, it’s not your fault.”
“You know what I mean,” mumbled Leigh.
“You are so lucky to have Mark. Shall we clone him?” Fiona had asked with a laugh. She didn’t like to appear mopey.
“No. Yes. I mean, no, we probably shouldn’t try to clone him but yes, I am lucky. I see that. I know that.” Was Fiona just misremembering things now, filtering? But was Leigh confused, defensive? Fiona recalls her adding, “But he came with his drawbacks.”
“The children?” Fiona had gasped.
“No, not the boys. I’d never describe the boys as a drawback. His steadfast insistence that we couldn’t adopt or foster. That was hard.”
“But you have two anyway,” Fiona pointed out.
Had Leigh blanched, blinked slowly? Fiona was sure she had. She wasn’t misremembering or rewriting history. “Oh yes, two children,” Leigh had confirmed. Did she momentarily think Fiona knew more than she did?
Leigh has two children, that is two more than Fiona has; she should have counted her blessings. And now it turns out she has two husbands as well. It is unbelievable.
Fiona brings herself back to the here and now. “Do you think her parents are to blame?” she asks Mark.
Mark shakes his head. He admires Fiona’s loyalty but has never been a fan of the therapy woe-is-me culture that allows people to blame mummy and daddy for their own fucked-upness. Fiona clearly sees as much reflected in his face because she tries to explain. “I’m just saying, from what she’s told me, her dad was emotionally disinterested—hell, every which way disinterested—and her mum tried too hard to please him. Or to be seen, or something. She was split between their two homes, wasn’t she? After they divorced, she—”
Marks cuts Fiona off impatiently. “Look, maybe you’re right. Maybe everything can be explained, but nothing can be excused.” He isn’t ready to unearth any understanding. Mark lets out a deep breath, pulls on a mask that radiates grim determination and taps the keyboard. Fiona abandons the folding of the laundry and plonks herself down on the bench next to him; she is just as curious as to what Mark’s search might throw up. Mark’s fingers quickly fly over the keyboard. Tap, tap, tap. Mark taps in Dan Jansen.
“He’s a fifty-four-year-old Olympic speed skater?”
“The police said he was Dutch, that’s unlikely to be how you spell his name,” Fiona points out.
“How do you think you spell it?”
“Dan will be double a, maybe. And Jansen could be double s. Try that.”
There are a number of Daan Janssens but some are too young, others don’t live in London; it is an unusual enough name to quickly and easily identify the right man.
The real Daan Janssen is just as impressive as an Olympian. Maybe more so. He is CEO in some trading division in the city. Mark clicks through to the company website. His suave, smooth face shines out from the top of the “Who We Are” page and the same image is at the bottom of the mission statement, which Fiona and Mark read in full although, having done so, neither of them is really any the wiser about what the company does. Something important, powerful, lucrative. That much is obvious.
Mark cannot take his eyes off the image. The pixels begin to separate, dance in front of him as he stares at the blond, chiseled man with green eyes and an easy, confident smile that seems to say sincere, serious but also entertaining, invigorating. It is just a head-and-shoulders shot but somehow the man’s mass and self-assurance radiate off the screen and punch Mark in the face. Mark is shorter, darker, more hirsute. His smile is generally hard-won, tighter. “She clearly doesn’t have a type,” he mutters darkly.