The Sudden Departure of the Frasers

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Authors: Louise Candlish
Tags: Fiction, General, Psychological, Thrillers
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are sealed off, but we’ve set up a temporary flat at the top. The dust still gets up there but it’s not nearly as bad as on the floors below. I’ve lived in worse conditions.’
    ‘I imagine you have. How long is it going to take?’
    ‘Four months and then another one for decorating.’
    Five months during which I’d be displaced for most of the day, in need of refuge, consolation, distraction. And the first offer was about to be made, in broad daylight, in earshot of others.
    ‘The builders won’t be knocking off for an hour or two,’ he said. ‘Want another coffee at my place? It’s a lot quieter on the other side of the wall.’
    I looked up at the mouth that issued this invitation – or challenge, as we both knew it to be – and I wanted that mouth on my skin, kissing and sucking and grazing, making greedy contact with every part of my body. ‘I would love one,’ I said, at last, ‘but I’m afraid I can’t. There are some deliveries I need to chase up and then I’m meeting my husband in town for dinner.’
    ‘All right,’ he said, and the look he gave me was almost admiring, letting me know that he was impressed that I had the self-discipline for such gamesmanship.
    ‘See you around,’ I said, over my shoulder, casual, non-committal.
    See? I tried.
    As promised, I’d invited Felicity for coffee. We sat as far from the crashing and banging as we could get, in the little seating area at the top of the house where two of our smaller sofas had been set opposite one another with scarcely space between them for the coffee table. A bowl of daffodils marked the centre, dozens of them crushed into a dense hemisphere, and their yolk-yellow faces cast light on my guest’s face, illuminating every pore and line and fold of her skin. I wondered how it felt to inhabit withering flesh, to be a prisoner of time. I wondered as if I would never find out myself.
    I showed her Hetty’s drawings.
    ‘Goodness,’ she said, ‘how smart. I do like those glassdoors to the garden. I bet they won’t stick when it’s damp like my French windows.’
    ‘I’ll send someone round to fix that, if you like,’ I offered.
    ‘Oh no, I’m used to it. I’d miss the imperfections if they weren’t there.’
    Though ostensibly as easy-going and co-operative as I could have hoped for, she had eyes that missed nothing, and even without Rob’s advice I like to think I would have known better than to underestimate her.
    ‘You’re a member of Lime Park Club?’ I asked. She had come dressed in jogging bottoms and a fleece, which suggested we had one pastime in common. ‘I’ve just joined myself.’
    ‘No, no,’ Felicity said. ‘I can’t stand those places. Full of people worshipping their own bodies, and so expensive! I like fresh air. I walk.’
    She told me she had a friend on sick leave from her job with whom she undertook epic walks, the kind you had to do in stages over several weeks. Their latest was the London Loop, which stretched Lord knew how many miles around the capital. I couldn’t think of anything more tedious. Who would want to end where they’d begun?
    ‘How come your friend can walk that sort of distance when she’s off work sick?’
    ‘Depression,’ Felicity said grimly. ‘She was hounded from her job by a bully.’
    ‘Poor thing,’ I said. ‘That happened to me too, in my job before last.’ I didn’t normally raise this subject, but there was no better way of accelerating trust than sharinga secret. ‘Though mine was more a sexual harassment problem than bullying – what did they call it at the employment tribunal? “Inappropriate sexual conduct”, that’s right.’
    ‘He was your boss, was he?’
    ‘Yes. He was the one who did my performance evaluations and as you can imagine he had his own ideas of what my performance should entail.’ It surprised me that the memory could still make me squirm.
    ‘What a disgraceful abuse of power,’ Felicity tutted. ‘I’m very sorry to hear

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