Fiona recalls the apartment she had pitched to transform. The floors were a decent-quality hardwood but pocked by small rugs that, while charming in a cottage, looked provincial and out of place in the spacious, urban dwelling. It never failed to surprise her how many people with a lot of money had no taste at all. She’d noted with some pleasure that the furniture was quality but dated, knowing she’d be able to make inroads and improvements easily. Quick wins tended to lure in clients.
Fiona remembered Mrs. Federova proudly showing her the communal areas. “To help set tone.” In fact, to show off. The swimming pool, covered with silver mosaic tiles, and the communal gym, with all the best equipment on hand to help bodies stay toned, were impressive. Desirable. Every detail was easy to recall. Exquisite opulence abounded. She couldn’t tell Mark that. Or, if she was going to tell him, she should have said something straightaway.
The other thing that she recalled about the development was the number of apartments that remained empty for sizeable periods of time, as they were bought up by people with multiple properties and choices about where to live. It wasn’t just Mrs. Federova who was looking to employ an interior designer, many of the properties were under construction. Floors ripped up, kitchens and bathrooms ripped out in a constant quest for the latest must-have top-social-status decor. Fiona wasn’t complaining; she earned a living through other people’s ambition, other people’s discontent.
The development was very private, quiet. The apartments were exclusive, practically deserted. There was something else that Fiona didn’t want to say to Mark. Fiona thought they were the perfect place to stash a captive.
Or a body.
29
Kylie
Friday 20th March
I keep drifting into a peaceless sleep and then waking again, shivering or sweaty. Hungry, unrested. Each time I wake there is a split second when I forget I am in this room and I think, am I with Mark? Am I with Daan? The usual question that I ask myself whenever I wake. Usually, whichever answer presents itself, unrolls into some level of organization, and I take control. But now when I wake up, it takes a moment to remember, I am alone. Time sloshes around me. I might drown in it. What can I do other than wait it out? I think it is Friday. If it is, then no matter who is responsible, the world must know I am missing by now.
The world must know I am a bigamist.
All I ever wanted to do was give the boys a happy home but now they will know their home was faulty, fractured.
In most marriages there is a problem with time. There often is not enough of it, sometimes there is too much of it. Naturally with two marriages I have this problem doubled, intensified. However much I plan, compartmentalize, organize, sometimes the two worlds blur, they collide. At Christmas, for example, I can’t be two people and I have to be in one place or another. I have to choose. Until this past Christmas I always chose to be with the boys, with Mark. How could I not? Christmas is for kids. Daan is not a kid. But he is my husband, so it hurt being away from him. I told him I needed to be with my mother on the actual day, that we could celebrate another day—what did it matter to us? And he agreed. So on the twenty-fourth we drive up to Mark’s parents’ home, sit on the motorway for long hours, nose to tail with all the other cars full of people trying to get to their families; compelled by love or duty, or a blurred blend of the two. Love and duty can be smudged together like two different colored packs of Play-Doh; once teased, mauled, handled they can never be completely separated. Both bright colors smirch into a duller shade.
Our Christmas Days pan out very much like everyone else’s we know, I suppose. An early start, the kids bouncing on our bed, bony knees and elbows landing indiscriminately, stockings already opened, a chocolate orange quickly consumed, the evidence of which is smeared on their faces. There are paper hats and too much food, too much drink, a polite pretense that new slippers are the ideal gift from my mother-in-law. I drown in a mass of plastic and tantrums, and sulks and laughter. Then it is all over by 4:00 p.m. By that time, Mark’s parents are usually dozing on the sofa, not replete, stuffed. The boys are huddled in the corner of the room playing with new toys, sometimes contentedly but most likely low-level bickering abounds. A full row might erupt or be avoided because the turkey sandwiches and trifle are served. Food none of us need or really want but we have to have it because, “Christmas isn’t Christmas without turkey sandwiches and trifle, is it, pet?”
Mark’s parents are nicer to me at Christmas than they are at any other time of the year. They are never horrible or mean to me, but they are—despite stereotypes about northerners—cool toward me. They see me as an interloper. To them, I am not simply Mark’s wife. I am Mark’s “second wife” or worse his “new wife.” That is how Mark’s mother once introduced me to a neighbor. We’d been married six years at that point. Longer than he and Frances were ever married. But at Christmas, a morning sherry, Frank Sinatra crooning, maybe my elaborate, well-thought-through gifts seem to soften them. I might get a kiss on the cheek or be pulled into a hug. I don’t blame his parents for their coolness, though, their distrust. They are right not to trust me, aren’t they? The other stereotype about northerners—the one that specifies that they are a canny bunch, and that you can’t pull the wool over their eyes—that may be true. Maybe they sense something in me. I always think his mother can see right through me. I wonder what she thinks about my disappearance.
Good riddance, perhaps.
Daan and I make more of the season generally, because we can’t focus on the specific day. Our celebrations are very different. We have never done late-night trolley dashes around Toys “R” Us, nor do we get stressed about booking our supermarket delivery of the Christmas shop around mid-November, because Daan and I do not shop as though the apocalypse is coming. Which is a relief because who would opt to do that twice? By contrast, we glide around the Harvey Nichols food department, slipping delicacies into our basket: New Zealand Manuka honey, jamón Ibérico crisps, large hunks of pistachio nougat. Our groceries are delivered by a series of local artisan food experts: greengrocers, butchers, bread makers, fishmongers. We celebrate Christmas on the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, depending on which day Christmas has fallen on. I tell Mark I need to be back at work, he stays with his parents, so they get to see a bit more of the boys and I get to travel from York to London by train. I love that journey, it is transitional, hopeful, crammed with anticipation.
However, last year, as early as October, Daan started to make noises about how he really wanted us to have a Christmas together. “I don’t mind how we do it exactly. I can come up to your mother’s care home with you. I just want us to be together.”
“No, that’s not much of a Christmas. You are better spending it with your family.”
“But you are my family. You are my wife. I want to spend it with you. And from what you say of your mother it is not even clear she knows it is Christmas Day. You could go to her the day after. Just one Christmas. Is that an unreasonable ask?”
Of course it was not. Or rather, it should not have been. So, I agreed.
We woke up late and ate smoked salmon on rye bread, sipped vintage champagne, until we started on the oysters and bloody Caesars, which Daan introduced me to, explaining that they are the same as Bloody Marys but with a splash of clam juice added. We ate the meals in bed. There was no plastic, or novelty dancing Santas, he did not gift me a sandwich toaster or a new Dyson. He bought me a diamond pendant. As he fastened the clasp, I felt his breath on my neck. I missed the boys and Mark and the smell of sprouts so much I wanted to howl. They believed I was stuck, because of weather, at one of my half brother’s homes. Suddenly, I was awash with an overwhelming need to get back to Mark, Oli and Seb. I couldn’t have Christmas there with Daan. The routines, the patters, everything could fall apart.