her behalf. Maybe she wanted to let Sunny know she cared enough to send someone to ask if she was okay. This didn’t seem such a bad thing to me but I had seen how Justin reacted to the idea of Karen having anything to do with their daughter. It was predictable. Understandable even. I wondered how much of the drowning Sunny remembered.
A text alert interrupted my thoughts: Caravan confirmed for 1 pm tomorrow. Cheers Jason. I stared at the message for a full minute, trying to figure out what it meant. Then I got it. It was a message from the real-estate agent Jason Baker, confirming that a bunch of agents would be traipsing through my house — our house — tomorrow.
Just like that, a tsunami of sadness swamped me. Sean and I had been so happy when we bought it. We had walked through the empty house talking quietly, self-conscious of the echo. It felt to both of us as if we were trespassing. We couldn’t believe we’d done something as grown up as buy a house together. We loved everything about it; even the flaking paint on the old window sashes. Later, when we had to scrape it back for repainting, we complained that it was a pain in the arse, but on this first day, possession day, we called it romantic. When the movers rang to say the furniture truck would be late arriving we grabbed the opportunity. For some now-forgotten reason we ended up in the hallway, maybe because there were no windows or because the wall was warmed from the early morning sunshine, I don’t remember, but I do remember we were interrupted by the neighbour arriving, armed with a plate of muffins, to welcome us to the neighbourhood. She cheerfully instructed us to carry on with it and not stop for her. She even insisted we’d enjoy the muffins more once we’d finished the job in hand.
Later we learned that eighty-six-year-old Madeleine’s eyesight had failed some years earlier and she’d thought we were putting up a shelf. From then on Sean and I used the phrase ‘putting up a shelf’ as our private code. Over the years we put up a fair number of shelves. We even put up a real shelf against that sunny hall wall and let our books slowly fade there. Now I’d have to sort those faded books into his and hers.
It was never a good idea to ring Sean when I was feeling nostalgic but I needed to let him know I was on to selling the house. I didn’t want him making any more buddy calls to Robbie with messages to pass on to me. Sean’s mobile rang for a lifetime. I wondered which ring tone he had for me. Probably a song, ‘We are Family’? No, probably not. He finally answered and without any preamble I told him I’d contracted an agent and there was going to be a caravan at the house tomorrow.
‘So it’s all go,’ I said, repeating an upbeat phrase Jason had used on me. ‘I don’t need to ring Abi for advice.’ I resisted the urge to point out I was unlikely to ask Abi’s advice on anything. She’d had the hots for Sean for years. It had sparked at my party four years earlier when he’d done a joke striptease as a surprise birthday present for me.
‘Thanks for arranging that,’ Sean was saying, all business.
I could hear the cry of a baby and pots and pans banging in the background. My heart gave a lurch. Either the baby was taking out his frustration on the cooking utensils or Sean’s partner was. Suddenly my anger and sadness lifted off somewhere.
‘You’re welcome,’ I said cheerfully. I almost meant it.
‘Well, if there’s anything you need from me, just let me know,’ he said.
I refused to let the formal phrase and its deeper meaning affect me. I felt no need to lecture him about talking to me through Robbie. Felt no necessity to remind him what our house had meant to us. And when I hung up I was smiling. It’s impossible to explain why — probably those two glasses of wine.
I thought about ringing Robbie. I even hovered my thumb over his name in my contact list. Instead, I plugged the phone into the charger and fell asleep almost immediately.
Chapter 7
THURSDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2012
Justin’s office was on the floor above his wife’s gym in Jervois Road within easy walking distance of where they lived.