The Sudden Departure of the Frasers (7 page)

At first no one RSVPed. Then, on the Wednesday evening, a neighbour she hadn’t seen before called by and introduced herself: Liz from number 41. She was in her early forties, her dark hair worn in a pixie cut that
accentuated tired eyes, the reason for which was presumably the pre-school infant who dangled from her cuff.

‘I just wanted to say thank you for your invitation.’ She spoke with the same self-confidence as Caroline, the same faintly defensive tone of a woman accustomed to living on high-status streets like this and not about to share the privilege with any old incomer.

‘You’re very welcome,’ Christy beamed. Behind Liz the spring twilight glowed, birdsong wobbling on the breeze, and she felt a sudden rush of optimism, that soaring sense of a new dawn. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to come?’

‘The thing is, we … I was just wondering, who else will be coming?’

‘I’m not sure yet, but we’ve invited everyone.’

There was a pause as Liz apparently awaited names. ‘Caroline and Richard?’ she prompted.

Abashed still from her skirmish with Caroline, Christy answered cautiously. ‘Yes, that’s not a problem, is it?’

‘No, of course not, we’re very good friends.’ Liz hesitated. ‘What about the other side?’

‘Well, Felicity’s gone now, hasn’t she, but I’ve posted a note to her flat in case the new people move in between now and Friday. And I’ve invited the guy upstairs, though we haven’t actually met yet.’

And who she rather hoped
wouldn’t
come if he had a habit of attracting disagreement, not to mention injury. She wasn’t sure her talents as a hostess ran to dispute-resolution services.

‘Mummy,’ the child said. He was blond-haired, long-lashed and
very
cute. ‘Rupert wants to go home now.’

‘Yes, Rupe, give Mummy one minute to talk to the new lady in Amber’s house.’

It took Christy aback to hear herself described in this way.

‘I’m sorry,’ Liz told her, ‘but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it on Friday. You see, I’ve got two little ones and I’m on my own …’

Again, Christy was unsure how to respond: should she ask for clarification of ‘on my own’ (divorced single mother or just housebound on the night in question while her husband went out?) and urge Liz to find a babysitter, or should she declare small children welcome too? But at 8 p.m. wouldn’t most children be in bed and their parents expecting an adults-only affair?

Why did interaction with her new neighbours already feel so political?

‘Well, not to worry,’ she said, finally. ‘I completely understand. It’s very short notice and I’m sure there’ll be lots of other opportunities.’

Liz looked relieved. ‘Actually, I’m glad I’ve caught you because I wanted to ask if you happen to have a new address for the Frasers. I’ve tried texting Amber but I think she must have changed her number.’

‘I don’t, I’m afraid,’ Christy said, feeling familiar unease on the issue. She thought fleetingly of the postcard, its complaint that calls and emails had gone unanswered. Should she have phoned the sender to explain that the
Frasers had moved on? ‘I need to find it out myself, in fact, so I can send on some post.’ Post she’d been sitting on for weeks now, one of those chores that slid further and further down the list.

‘How disappointing,’ Liz said.

‘I’m sorry.’ Christy watched as she headed from her door directly to the Sellerses’. Oh dear, would Caroline tell her about their little misunderstanding? Would she also decide not to come to their drinks?

She soon had her answer. By the following morning, eight others, including Caroline, had RSVPed no, while the remainder – including the bear – had not responded at all.

Nor, when Friday evening came, did any of the undecideds turn up.

‘All the more for us,’ Joe said, a wine glass in one hand and a clutch of cheese straws in the other, and he honestly did not seem to register the disgrace of the situation. His head was probably filled with work, with the forthcoming partners’ meeting that would be his first, not to mention the residual excitement of the house purchase: there was still more than enough to celebrate in his own right, and having to eat all the avocado dip himself was simply the icing on the cake.

Christy, however, struggled to share his bonhomie. Having dashed home from work, buoyed by the thought of a social triumph (or at least a few laughs), she felt dejected –
re
jected. There it was, that sudden unleashing of the trait she most disliked in herself: social insecurity, the fear that she had never quite made the leap from outsider to insider. At work, for instance, yes, she was friends
with Ellen, but Ellen was also close to Amy and several others, which constituted the kind of network that Christy had never been able to build. And she had moved house enough times to know that even in London people were curious about new neighbours, about what they did for a living and where they’d come from; it was human nature. So if they wouldn’t cross the road – and most of them didn’t even need to do
that
– for a free drink, then it was because the hosts held no fascination for them whatsoever.

‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s at home, it’s not like it’s the school holidays any more.’

‘They’re just busy.’ Joe shrugged. ‘Come on, people get booked up on Friday nights, you know that.’

‘
We
don’t.’

‘We’re hostages to debt, that’s why.
Willing
hostages, admittedly. And you know what everyone’s like …’

Though he was typically vague, she
did
know. Most of their friends had new babies and it was an unwritten rule that those who remained luxuriously child-free should be the visitors, not the visited. Even the event of a major property upgrade had not proved sufficiently alluring to overturn convention. It didn’t help that Christy’s closest friend, Yasmin, was six months into a three-year ex-pat stretch in Kuala Lumpur with her oil-executive husband. Without the Internet, their weekly Skype catch-up had had to be put on hold.

‘I should have said that woman could bring her kids,’ she sighed. ‘The one from across the road, Liz.’

Joe put down his glass, finally declaring allegiance to her disappointment. ‘But if you’d done that then they’d be
the only ones here, the kids would be wrecking the house and she would go home and tell everyone what a crap night it was. This way nothing’s been damaged and only
we
know it’s been a washout.’

Christy managed a smile. ‘That’s true. So you don’t think we’ve been deliberately snubbed? Because I had that argument with Caroline next door?’ A theory was forming that Caroline Sellers was the queen bee of Lime Park Road and had sent out the signal to shun the new arrivals; she’d dispatched Liz to the Davenports’ door to reject her and then ordered her to report the newcomer’s reaction.

No, that was insane.

‘It must be something to do with the house,’ she added, unwrapping a caramel. (Now she’d have to eat all one hundred of them herself: Joe disliked toffee and its sweet buttery relatives as much as she loved it.) ‘Maybe some of the building work was done without the correct permissions, or the Frasers damaged something when they dug out the garden.’

‘But why would anyone blame
us
for that?’ Joe said reasonably. ‘They’d know we bought the house in good faith. Come on, don’t take it to heart.’

She knew he was right. But even so, as she returned the untouched glasses to the kitchen cupboard, it was with the same unsettling feeling she’d had the day she’d picked up the keys and entered the house alone, seeing in front of her those receding blank walls, that succession of pale shut doors. It was as if there was something being concealed from her, an unwelcome surprise in store.

She remembered again how Liz had referred to her: ‘the new lady in Amber’s house’.

As if she didn’t have a name of her own.

Those first few weeks in Lime Park Road, her best stab at friendly conversation was with Dave, the guy who came to check the boiler. They’d been in residence less than a month when the hot water suddenly ceased to work. It was a brand-new heating system under warranty and the Frasers had left the business card of the engineer who fitted it. He agreed to come as a priority.

It was not ideal to leave work early on a Thursday to meet him at the house, but the notion of Joe ditching before dark was so laughable as to be not worth airing.

‘Settling in all right, are you?’ Dave said, having rectified the fault in the time it took Christy to make him a cup of tea. ‘The house looks really different from before.’

‘You mean emptier?’ Christy laughed. ‘The couple before had a lot more furniture than us.’ She paused. ‘Did you ever meet them?’

‘Sure. We were here nearly two weeks installing the system.’

‘What were they like?’

At once his face brightened, as if he couldn’t believe his luck to be asked to speak on his specialist subject. ‘Well, we didn’t see him that much, but
she
was here most days. Beautiful girl, she was, a real looker. Gorgeous long red hair, fantastic figure, make-up all done like a model or a film star, you know? She was going out one afternoon
and she came down in these incredible high heels, hair all piled up on her head …’

Christy got the feeling he might have elaborated more graphically in different company. ‘Girl?’

‘Well, early thirties. Seemed a bit young for round here, a bit too glamorous, if you know what I mean? More Notting Hill than Lime Park. No offence.’

At thirty-seven, and having postponed having her highlights done to save the cash, Christy was less offended than crestfallen. It didn’t help that with the longer commute she also had to sacrifice crucial minutes in front of the bathroom mirror, arriving at her desk a little more tousled than she used to. And such things worked cumulatively, didn’t they? You didn’t suddenly go from Coco Chanel to Worzel Gummidge, you simply looked a little less polished every day until one morning people stopped taking the seat next to you on the train. OK, so she’d
never
looked polished. Polished was Amber Fraser, not Christy Davenport, and ‘polished’ wasn’t polished enough a word either. (
Soignée
. Amber Fraser was
soignée
.)

‘I’m guessing the money was the husband’s,’ Dave went on. ‘He was older. Doted on her. Sugar daddy, we thought. Classic set-up, everyone’s a winner.’

Until they’d had to give up their home, Christy thought. (
Hope you’re still loving your forever home!
) ‘Do you know why they moved on so quickly? They were only here a year, the agent said.’

‘Haven’t got a clue. Must have been something serious, though, because they weren’t doing the place up to sell. She told me that herself. They’d inherited some money
and had got an interior designer in, one of those posh West London types. You should have seen some of the kit that was arriving, you’d think the recession never happened. Designer furniture, everything top of the range. I said to her, “Who’d you inherit your money from, Amber? The Queen?” She goes, “The Queen isn’t dead, Dave, careful with that sort of talk or they’ll have your head off for treason.” Great girl, she was.’ He chortled, warming to his story, and Christy lapped it up like someone receiving a visit in prison after a long period in solitary confinement.

‘Maybe they ended up overspending?’ she suggested.

‘Yeah, she might have been one of those shopaholics, wouldn’t be surprised. Or he was laid off, more likely. I didn’t get the impression she worked.’

‘Oh well, it will have to remain a mystery.’ The word stirred something in her, dislodged a remark in her short-term memory:
It will all be behind you soon
, Felicity’s friend had said.
What
was behind old Felicity? And if it was behind the outgoing residents, did that mean it was in front of the
incoming
ones?

Dave scratched at his lower eyelid with the nail of a smeared thumb. ‘Expensive to run, these big old houses,’ he said. ‘Stumping up in the first place is just the start, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Christy swallowed. She hoped he wasn’t going to announce that his labour that morning fell outside the terms of the warranty. ‘Speaking of which, do I owe you anything?’

‘No, you’re all covered.’

And she did her best to hide her relief.

Well, you certainly couldn’t say there was no social life to be had in the sticks. Having already enjoyed a warmth of welcome assumed out of the question for a pair of peace-wrecking incomers, we were now to have a drinks party held in our honour by our neighbours at number 42, Richard and Caroline Sellers.

‘It’s on Sunday afternoon,’ Jeremy told me, having received the invitation on the Wednesday as he walked to the train station with Richard. ‘No builders in that day, eh?’

‘
This
Sunday? Will anyone be free at such short notice?’

‘They all will. Richard says Caroline can mobilize the whole street with a couple of phone calls – she’s the chief whip.’

‘Is she indeed?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Then consider us whipped.’

It was early May by then and warm enough for us to take our drinks to the Sellerses’ terrace. Weathered teak furniture had been exhumed for the occasion and a fleet of plastic cars and other toys cast to the edges in an effort to reclaim territory from the battalions of small children in attendance. Older ones clustered on the trampoline,
soon a seething mosh-pit of close-combat bobbing that made me shudder slightly.

On offer for the adults were Prosecco cocktails and a tableful of canapés and nibbles Caroline had rustled up by her own fair hand: squares of pastry smeared with tapenade and crème fraiche, curls of salami stuffed with soft cheese, the sort of thing I could no longer taste even in my fantasies but that Jeremy wolfed.

‘Amber, you look amazing!’ she cried, when Richard led us into the throng. ‘It’s like you’ve stepped off the pages of
Vogue
.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I protested, but soon others had joined in: ‘Oh yes, you do!’ ‘That dress! I couldn’t squeeze into that in a million years!’ ‘Where’s it from?’ ‘Goodness, isn’t she stunning?’

I was not used to this level of open admiration by other women; it simply did not exist in my old working world of competitive cynicism. As for our neighbours in Battersea, fifty per cent had used their apartments as occasional pieds-à-terre and the remainder had been far too self-involved to notice any sartorial success on the part of anyone but themselves. (The men were a different story. I’d soon stopped reporting to Jeremy the number of advances made to me in the lift.)

This, clearly, was a different style of community. At least twenty-five neighbours were here and every single one was demonstrably excited to meet us.

‘Kenny and Joanne live a few doors down from us,’ Caroline said, introducing a flushed and jolly pair, both of
whom, extraordinarily, wore mud-spattered wellingtons to the event. ‘You might have seen their Labradoodle?’

‘I’m not sure …’ There were numerous dogs on the street, I’d seen them being taken for walks in tangled packs; and cats, too, sitting on gateposts with an air of reserving judgement (unlike their big-hearted owners). All had names interchangeable with those of human infants: Lily, Archie, Poppy.

Jeremy and I settled in a group with Kenny, Joanne and a clutch of others keen to discuss our renovations and reassure us we were not the pariahs we feared we might be (not when we looked
this
good). They all knew the house from social occasions hosted by the Lockes and were well informed as to what our predecessors had and had not done to it over the years (‘I had a shower there once when our water was turned off,’ Kenny said. ‘
Abysmal
pressure. I don’t know why they didn’t just put in a pump. Total false economy’). And whatever the Lockes might think, the consensus here was that the People’s Republic of China couldn’t hold a candle to Lime Park.

‘Did you know Rachel Locke had her third baby on your living-room floor?’ Caroline told us. She had a very likeable manner, mischievous and chummy, but a rather less successful look. Her eyes were a little bulbous and the distance between nose and upper lip elongated: it was as if someone had intended making her beautiful but had abandoned the job before finishing. The main issue, however, was her personal style, which might best be described as windswept. I would need to take her in hand, I decided.

‘I didn’t know that, no,’ I said, grateful for the pristine chevron parquet about to be laid in our living room.

‘Any plans yourself in that direction?’ someone asked.

This I
was
used to: the directness with which people enquired into a brand-new acquaintance’s reproductive affairs. It had begun the very day Jeremy and I returned from our honeymoon, the implication being that you could only have children if you were married first. The child-free and unmarried would ask their questions with a certain dark suspicion, while those who’d already begun breeding behaved as if they’d personally proposed us as members of a golf club, our acceptance to which was a foregone conclusion. But they all asked equally brazenly.

‘We
would
like kids,’ Jeremy told them, his arm snaking around my waist. ‘Who knows when – we thought we’d just let nature take its course, eh?’

At which everyone looked me over as if I alone represented nature and Jeremy had nothing whatever to do with the course I might take. The problem with this sort of conversation was you couldn’t help suspecting that behind those enquiring eyes were images of you naked and engaged in the sexual act (or, God forbid, in childbirth itself). Perhaps Jeremy liked this more than I did: there was undisputed kudos in having a young, attractive wife as yet unburdened by motherhood. Well, enjoy it while you can, I thought, because on the evidence of this welcoming committee it was not possible to have children and get fitted for a decent bra. And did something happen to your ankles and calves too? Those I could see that were not encased in rubber
were uniformly stocky – did they, like hips, broaden with childbearing? I checked my own lower legs, smooth and tapered, my feet arched into elegant nude slingbacks.

‘You all know each other so well,’ I remarked to Caroline. ‘Do you get together very often?’

‘Oh, all the time. It’s a very sociable street. But there are a lot of young kids and babysitters cost the earth, so we tend to do these daytime gatherings. We do have our book group, though, that’s in the evening. I’ll invite you to the next one.’

‘Maybe I could babysit some time?’ I was thinking it might be good practice for me. As a girl I’d helped my mother with her babies, but the experience seemed otherworldly now. My whole childhood did.

‘I wouldn’t say that too loudly if I were you,’ Caroline drawled. ‘Seriously, Amber, take it from a veteran: enjoy your freedom while you can. And while you’re at it, remind me how it feels. No detail too insignificant, OK?’

I laughed. I could tell she and I were going to get on very well.

I sensed Rob Whalen’s arrival before I saw him: a rise in oestrogen levels, perhaps, or a collective twirling of hair among the womenfolk, the sudden flicking of glances through lowered lashes. As the only unattached male in the circle, he evidently had a celebrity of his own.

‘Have you met our resident enigma?’ Richard said, drawing him towards us. His hair was damp from the shower and he’d shaved, presenting himself as an altogether more respectable character than the one I’d encountered before.

Jeremy seized him by the hand, his smile broad and
genuine. ‘You’ve met my wife, I think. But I know you must already loathe us both.’

‘I certainly do,’ Rob said amiably. ‘And a little bit more every day, I suspect, until eventually I’ll snap and murder you in your beds.’

Beds. I noted the plural: wishful thinking on his part.

‘Did Amber not show you the schedule?’ Jeremy said, as sincere as Rob was sardonic. ‘It’s designed for the pain to be sharp but short. The last thing we want is to make enemies of our new neighbours.’

‘She hasn’t shown me, no,’ Rob said, his gaze resting on my mouth. ‘I’ll have to invite her over and quiz her.’ At this, an extremely pleasurable fluttering started up in my abdomen, the kind of sensation that can only be activated by someone new and untried. He raised his eyes to Jeremy’s. ‘So how are you finding the commute?’

As they chatted about signal failures and defective heaters I sipped my drink and watched. I made a point of not comparing the two men directly, their respective heights, breadths, thicknesses of hair, but I did allow myself to think that, based purely on appearances, an outsider might guess incorrectly at which of the two I was married to.

Just then a latecomer was shepherded into our huddle. Liz, she was called, a neighbour from the house across the road, who scattered two painfully loud infant boys in opposite directions as she came to a halt. Thirty seconds later they had reunited to scrap over a toy motorbike, a tussle that Jeremy stepped in to umpire while she slipped beside Rob and began discussing primary-school curriculum with him. The gist seemed to be that she felt that the
teaching of spelling in England was all wrong, nay a ticking time bomb, and he had useful comparisons to make with the education systems in France and Sweden.

‘That’s
very
interesting,’ she said with an eagerness that bordered on mania. Though pretty enough, she had the most hectic-looking haircut I’d ever seen – it was as if it had been scribbled on her head by Quentin Blake – and make-up so poorly applied I wondered if she’d handed crayons to her sons and given them free rein. ‘Do you think we’ll
ever
get it right here?’ she asked Rob, almost in plea.

‘Only by accident,’ he said.

He was clearly a prized guest: Caroline brought him a selection of snacks as if he was far too important to be expected to go and help himself, and several times children came up to try to engage him in a game, as if they’d collectively discerned that he, of all the men present, might be a superhero.

‘You’ll be a great father, Rob,’ Liz told him, with the softest of sighs. ‘When the time comes,’ she added.

Presently Jeremy was invited by Richard to inspect his outdoor lighting system just as Liz was summoned indoors to see what her sons had done with a twelve-pack of Andrex, and all at once there we were, Rob and I, alone under the magnolia, unsupervised.

‘She’s nice,’ I said, nodding after Liz. ‘Big on literacy, I take it.’

With an easy manoeuvre, he turned his back to the rest of the group and smirked privately at me. ‘They’re
all
big on literacy, Amber. They’re big on everything to do with
education, which is why I don’t always come out to these things. I tend to get cornered.’

That explained the ‘enigma’ crack, I thought,
and
the VIP treatment. I had an inkling as to how he’d come to be lured on this occasion.

‘They might as well be sitting in the classroom themselves,’ he continued. ‘You wait till the entrance exams come around, you won’t believe your eyes. I swear, they’ll be down on their knees, lining up to tackle the non-verbal reasoning on their kids’ behalves.’

I giggled. ‘I suppose it’s better than not giving a damn if your child bothers turning up at school or not.’

The smirk deepened. ‘Do I gather from that statement that we can add truancy to your list of former crimes?’

‘What former crimes? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Smiling, I glanced around the terrace. ‘Isn’t Felicity here?’

‘No, she’s out of town, visiting her daughter. She’ll be back this evening.’

I liked that he knew her whereabouts; it implied a certain protectiveness of her. ‘She obviously prefers city life in her old age?’

‘Oh, Felicity wouldn’t leave the Big Smoke if you paid her. She’s been in Lime Park longer than I have.’

Over his shoulder, a neighbour I’d met once or twice before – Mel – was trying to catch my eye and I waved hello, a polite note of deterrent in my manner. I had no intention of ending this conversation. ‘I must pop round soon and check we’re not disturbing her too much,’ I said. ‘I would hate to be the one who drove her out.’

‘That’s not a bad idea. Maybe take a cake. She likes lemon drizzle.’

I remembered what he’d said the previous time we met, about keeping her onside. He’d not intended it purely in relation to the building works, I suspected.

‘So,’ he said, finished with Felicity and his attention now firmly on what he saw in front of him.

‘So … ?’ I echoed.

‘Are we going to do this or not?’

I inhaled sharply.

‘And don’t say “Do what?” Because you know exactly what I mean.’

I have to tell you this wasn’t nearly as high risk as it reads on the page, because his body language was so utterly guiltless, his voice dipped slightly but perfectly casual in tone, as if he were proposing a trip to the garden centre. Only his eyes, which no one else could see but me, betrayed the dangerous nature of his intent, daring me, seducing me, and my excitement rose like a sudden spike in blood sugar.

‘Of course I know,’ I replied, the same easy tone, the same unimpeachable body language. And that was the moment that I chose to acknowledge the truth: you could reinvent yourself but you could not reinvent the wheel. Of course I would be sleeping with Rob Whalen. Accepting this, I became very calm. ‘The answer is yes, we are. But there are things that must be understood beforehand.’

‘Sure.’ He dipped a hand in his pocket for his phone. ‘Can I take your number?’

He was still tapping in the digits when Jeremy and Richard appeared behind him, Jeremy beaming with that
slightly idiotic bonhomie men exhibit when they outnumber women.

‘Darling,’ I said, ‘Rob and I were just exchanging numbers. We think it might be useful in case there’s a problem with the works. But I’ve forgotten my phone. Could you take his details instead?’

‘Why don’t I just send you a text so you’ve got mine,’ Rob said helpfully to me.

‘Good idea. I’d prefer it if you addressed all complaints to my wife,’ Jeremy joked. ‘She’s the front of house in this operation.’

‘You have my word,’ Rob said.

He moved away to join a different group and Richard was summoned by Caroline to circulate with drinks, so Jeremy and I held hands at the edge of the terrace, facing the flock.

‘Isn’t this nice of the Sellerses?’ he said. ‘They’ve made such an effort and everyone’s so friendly. A different world from the Wharf, eh?’