The Sudden Departure of the Frasers (6 page)

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 glass
doors 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 sharing
a 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 that. Vanessa’s boss was a woman, but these days women are as much our enemy as men are, maybe even more so.’

‘I’d agree with that.’ Personally, I’d never doubted for a moment that women were the more dangerous sex; their interest in others was far sharper than men’s, which made their suspicions more intelligent.

‘Will you be looking for a job again soon, Amber?’

‘Maybe.’ No need to confide that the prospect was repellent to me. ‘The idea is to have a baby.’ As it happened, directly before Felicity’s visit I’d had an appointment with my new GP and, still naive, had lapped up his advice about folic acid and other aids that my body could then mock for their ineffectiveness. ‘Though there’s no sign of one yet,’ I added.

‘You make it sound like the number 3 bus,’ Felicity said, smiling.

‘I haven’t seen one of those yet either,’ I joked, though I rarely bothered with public transport. ‘Sod’s law, I’d find a great job and then discover I’m pregnant within a week of starting.’

‘Most women have the job
and
the child,’ Felicity said, though she was kind enough not to condemn me for having neither. ‘Not everyone is in a position to choose.’

‘I know,’ I said agreeably. ‘One day I’ll look back on this period and think how lucky I was.’

‘Yes,’ she said, thoughtful, even moved. ‘I imagine you will.’

I’m convinced that this business of trying for a baby affected the dynamic between Jeremy and me in some crucial way. It wasn’t that I disliked having sex with him, not at all, only that in changing the purpose of sex we had somehow also changed the conditions. What had once been a recreational thrill was now a necessary errand, not quite on a par with registering for council tax and shopping for cheaper car insurance but certainly closer than it should have been. Once nothing had been riding on copulation beyond pleasure, but now a great deal was, no less than our whole future. As my friend Helena had remarked the last time we met, ‘The sooner the scientists take you two in hand, the better.’

But Jeremy didn’t want to see any scientists, not yet.

‘Is it time to make an appointment at a fertility clinic?’ I asked him, when my first Lime Park period made itself known.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It takes some couples longer than others, that’s all. We have to be patient, otherwise the thinking it isn’t going to happen will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.’

‘I don’t believe that for a moment,’ I said. ‘This is basic
biology, not mind over matter – at least it is for most people. If it wasn’t, the human race would have died out by now.’

He glanced up at my darker-than-usual tone. ‘I just mean try not to worry about it, baby. Let’s give it till after the summer and then we can think about getting some advice. It might work out better that way – you don’t want to be breathing in all this dust when you’re pregnant, do you?’

‘I suppose not.’ It was unprecedented for me to be the impatient one; if either of us had an interest in hurrying the plan to fruition, it was him. ‘It’s just … well, you’ll be fifty-two at the end of the year.’

‘That doesn’t bother me.’ He reminded me that his famously spry mother was about to celebrate her seventy-eighth birthday and his still compos mentis aunt had just turned eighty.

But I didn’t like to think of my husband at eighty. As I say, I was still young enough to believe that I was the exception to the universal rule of ageing, and Jeremy’s enduring youthfulness and energy had to date encouraged me to persist in this delusion.

In retrospect, of course, it’s clear that I was suddenly pushing for medical advice because I knew, either consciously or subconsciously, that a baby was the only thing that could save me from Rob. No pregnant woman would embark on an adulterous affair, and no man would want her – well, not the type of man that he was, anyway: the unmodernized kind.

All of a sudden, I didn’t have much time to play with.

‘Our finance guy and his wife just went to a specialist,’ Jeremy told me. ‘Apparently he has the highest success rate in the UK, so if and when the time comes we’ll go to him.’

‘After the summer then,’ I agreed. And before I could prevent it I had conjured an image of myself lying in the garden in a bikini – a revealing black one that would pass for underwear from a distance – stretching my arms high above my head as I soaked up the sun, all too aware of dark eyes watching from the upstairs window next door.

She was inexplicably nervous about returning to work after the move, a mood only exacerbated by a puzzling episode that occurred as she left the house on Monday morning.

Locking the door behind her, she was aware of someone on the other side of the hedge in the doorway of number 38: restless feet shuffled, breath was expelled with wheezy impatience, and the word ‘Unbelievable’ was uttered more than once in a furious male undertone. Then came the abrupt drilling of the doorbell. After a wait of only two or three seconds, much too brief for anyone to have reasonably been expected to react, the caller rang again, holding the bell down to produce a loud, unremitting sound that made Christy wince. Inside the house, it must have been thunderous enough to wake a man from a coma. Who rang a doorbell like that at eight o’clock in the morning? Presumably not the rude shaggy guy, since he lived there – unless he’d locked himself out and had some poor flatmate he was trying to rouse?

She wondered about the woman downstairs, Felicity. Was the visitor for her, frustrated by her continued absence? She was still with her daughter in the country, judging by
the silence that belied the nightly and most likely timer-operated lamplight at the lower window. Christy had watched the estate agent plant a ‘Sold’ sign in the flower bed by the gate, but she knew the property had not yet been vacated because furniture and pictures were visible between curtains left neither closed nor open.

Reaching the pavement, she saw that it was in fact the upper flat this caller wanted, for he had moved from the doorstep and was now yelling up at the window. He was a portly, middle-aged man in a business suit and buffed shoes, his face flushed with anger.

‘I know you’re in there! You could at least have the decency to come down and speak to me!’

He returned to the door and stabbed the bell a third time before calling up again, tone loaded with sarcasm, ‘Well, thanks for the letter, mate. Nice way to treat your friends!’

Storming up the path, thwarted and displeased, he hesitated at the sight of Christy’s surprised expression before shouldering past her.

Inevitably, they were heading for the same place, the train station, and by chance boarded the same carriage. Though she sought his eye a couple of times, not so much in expectation of an explanation as an acknowledgement, he did not reciprocate.

She did, however, overhear a brief interaction between him and another commuter, a woman who evidently recognized him and initiated an exchange of Lime Park credentials. He was nodding, both voice and flesh-tone rather calmer now: ‘Trinity Avenue, I know it, yes, just
behind the school, isn’t it? We’re on the other side of the park, Lime Park Road.’

‘Very nice,’ the woman said approvingly and, stamping grounds established, the two returned to their newspapers.

Not just a ‘friend’, then, Christy thought: a neighbour.

Work re-exerted its customary hypnotic power, all thoughts suppressed beyond those billed to the client, and it took fewer than three hours for her to feel as if she’d never left her desk at the agency ten days ago, never closed the door on her rented flat that final time, never
heard
of Lime Park, much less taken up residence there. Eating a sandwich with Ellen at lunchtime, she shared photos of the new house as if it were a holiday let she’d found on the other side of the world, a trip she dreamed of taking but doubted she ever actually would.

‘What are your new neighbours like?’ Ellen asked.

Christy pulled a face. ‘Well, I’ve only had contact with a few so far and, to be honest, they’ve all been a bit strange.’

‘That’s the burbs for you,’ said Ellen, who lived in Shoreditch and regarded the Thames as a lethal electric demarcation line. ‘It’s the lower air temperature, the poorer visibility, all that tranquillizer dust in the air …’

Christy bore the digs about the suburbs good-naturedly. ‘You know when you get the feeling you’ve landed in the middle of some private drama? People are being weird with you, but it’s not actually to do with you?’

‘Because they’re zombies or Stepford wives or something? Not quite human?’

Christy giggled. ‘Just not what I was expecting, that’s all.’ It was good to be back in the office. It put Lime Park in perspective. Of course the neighbours weren’t zombies; she’d merely caught a couple of them off their game. ‘Talking of not quite human, is anything going on with Laurie? She seems more fraught than ever.’

Ellen pulled a face, all at once conspiratorial. ‘There were a lot of meetings behind closed doors last week, and apparently she’s taking Thursday afternoon off. You know what Amy and I think?’

‘What? A restructure?’

‘A pregnancy.’

Christy almost choked on her ciabatta. ‘Goodness, another one already?’

‘I know. Twins would have been a lot more time-efficient.’

If this was correct, it would be their director’s second maternity leave in two years. Christy had stood in with good grace (and mixed success) the first time around, determined not to buy into the culture of the agency that made pregnancy a Black Death, its carriers to be feared, their dwellings marked with a cross. She hoped, after all, to be doing it herself one day. But a second time so soon: the thought was exhausting. Then again, Laurie had turned a blind eye (of sorts) to Christy’s month-long sideshow of mortgage-brokering and utilities comparison-shopping.

‘Oh well, I’ve been no use to anyone these last few weeks. The least I can do is cover another maternity leave for her.’

‘You are
so
honourable,’ Ellen said, balling up her
sandwich wrapper and dropping it into the waste-paper basket. ‘Seriously, Christy, she doesn’t deserve you.’

It was the following Saturday, a still, sharp April morning, when the Davenports’ neighbour Felicity moved out of number 38A. Though Christy had heard her letting herself into the flat a day earlier and had glimpsed a bowed grey head at the bay window, she did not see her properly until the hour of her departure. Watching from the bedroom window while Joe was in the shower, she saw a slight older woman in sportswear hasten down the path towards the leader of the removals team, who stood with a clipboard at the yawning doors of a large van. There was defeat in her posture – or perhaps it was simply an expression of sadness.

No amount of money could keep her here …
That was what Felicity’s friend had said when Christy had called at the flat to introduce herself. What on earth had she meant? The same friend was here this morning to assist, but given the lukewarm reception on that previous occasion Christy did not dare go down and approach her when she was genuinely occupied. In any case, Felicity was moving out, their paths would not cross again. It was more relevant to her to discover who would be moving
in
.

A surprising number of boxes were emerging from the flat, at least three times as many as Christy and Joe had brought with them, and the young removals guys hoisted the cartons with comical ease. Meanwhile, Felicity and her friend brought out a succession of fragile items, stacking them gingerly in the boot of a Honda Civic and pausing
frequently to handle one object or another and comment. Among the knick-knacks was the little hourglass bottle Christy had seen on the hall table when she’d paid her call. The friend plucked this from its box and appeared to be suggesting it be discarded, but Felicity shook her head, fingered the bottle as one would an irreplaceable keepsake.

‘It will all be behind you soon,’ the friend said – if Christy heard her correctly – and Felicity was nodding, glancing about her with the air of a survivor.

After the removals team had pulled off – casual, without indicating, as if transporting potatoes and not the collected treasures of a woman in her dotage – Felicity’s companion took the wheel of the Honda and waited with the engine running as Felicity emerged from her gate for the final time. She stood looking towards the house, pale eyes blinking, and Christy averted her gaze to allow her departing neighbour her private last moments with the home she was giving up.

When she next looked, she saw that some sort of scene was developing in the street below, one that involved the man from the upstairs flat trying to say goodbye to Felicity, or to say
something
, but whatever it was, it was upsetting her. As she held out a hand, palm flat as if to warn him off stepping closer, her friend rolled down the car window and screamed out, ‘Hey! You keep away from her! Do you hear me?’

This hostility was easily loud enough for Christy to hear from behind a pane of glass, but the man ignored it, protesting instead to Felicity, ‘I’ve tried to explain to you, why won’t you listen? I didn’t do anything!’ His arms
gesticulated frantically, even after he’d finished speaking; he was a wild creature, volatile, capable of anything.

‘Please, Felicity, just talk to me!’ With another explosive gesture, he turned side-on to the house, dislodging the heavy drape of hair to reveal a bruised left eye and cheekbone. Someone must have punched him, Christy thought, and it wasn’t all that hard to see how it might have happened if
this
was how he behaved.

With the implication of violence came the thought that she ought to go down there and see if there was anything she could do to keep the peace – or hustle Joe out of the shower and into action. But before she could act, the rotund man she’d seen yelling up at the window on Monday morning had appeared and begun remonstrating with the offender himself.

‘Fuck you,’ the bear told him, but he did at least retreat, blundering down his pathway towards the front door.

Felicity, plainly distressed, fled to her friend’s car without a word to either man, leaving the second neighbour alone on the pavement as she slipped into the passenger seat and closed the door between them. As the car pulled away, with all the urgency of a getaway vehicle, her companion could be seen speaking animatedly, her features hot with outrage, and Christy could tell from Felicity’s slumped shoulders that she was very shaken by what had just happened. How awful to have to leave your home in this way, to have your private goodbyes ambushed!

Who
was
this horrible man? This man who might no longer be Felicity’s neighbour but was most assuredly
theirs? Hearing the crashing footsteps and slammed door that signified his withdrawal to his cave, she found that she was breathing harder than usual.

At last, the second neighbour turned away, his expression troubled but weathered, almost as if he were a bouncer and skirmishes of this sort routine. Clearly there’d been some adjustment to his attitude since that display of passion earlier in the week. Christy watched him go down the path of number 42, from which she deduced he was Caroline’s husband.

‘They’ve obviously had a serious falling-out,’ she told Joe, when he emerged from the shower to her breathless eyewitness account. Though she’d moved from the window, her eyes returned to it as she spoke, as if to a screen.

‘Who has?’

‘Felicity and the guy upstairs. Maybe that’s why she decided to sell. She must really have a problem with him. He was saying, “I didn’t do anything!”’

‘Good for him,’ Joe said mildly, and he began towelling his hair with such energy she felt beads of water sprinkle her skin. ‘He probably
didn’t
do anything.’

‘I’m not sure he’s the one whose honour we should be defending,’ she said earnestly, and settled on the edge of their unmade bed, her back turned deliberately to the temptations of the window. ‘The other man was obviously on her side. He’s the same one I saw yelling up at the window on Monday. I think he’s married to the woman I had a run-in with last week, Caroline.’

But it was clear from Joe’s expression that he had no
memory of her having told him about the earlier incident and that this subsequent drama held no interest for him. ‘What shall we do this weekend?’ he said, dressing.

‘What do
you
want to do? You’re the one who’s worked fourteen-hour days this week.’ Joe’s salary may have been capped, but his working hours appeared not to have been; rather, thanks to a merger between two pharmaceutical companies that necessitated all hands to deck, his hours had increased to encompass all waking ones.

His head emerged through the neck of a T-shirt. ‘I quite fancy just hanging out in my new house. Watch the football.’

‘We might have to make that a box set.’ They still awaited satellite and Internet services; without them, it sometimes felt as if the house were only half alive. ‘And there’s some leftover chilli in the freezer. Let’s challenge ourselves to not spending a bean.’

‘Only eating them? I like this crazy talk.’ He joined her on the bed, his arm around her waist. ‘Are we allowed alcohol?’

‘I believe we have stocks, yes.’

‘Thank God for that. There are some things I
really
can’t give up.’ He sprang to his feet and she watched him return his damp towel to the rail in the en suite (the Frasers’ impeccable standards were rubbing off on him, evidently), wondering if she should have encouraged the arm around the waist. There were activities that came free of charge, after all.

‘I know, let’s invite them all over for drinks,’ she said in sudden inspiration.

‘What? Who?’

‘The neighbours, of course. We should have done it as soon as we moved in. They don’t seem a very happy bunch, do they? It might be just what they need.’

Joe looked doubtful. ‘Or just what they
don’t
need.’

‘Come on, let’s be the sociable ones. I’ll put cards through their doors this weekend. How about Friday night? Can you make sure you’re back early? Or at least by seven-thirty?’

Joe sighed. ‘I’ll try.’

She wrote notes to the occupants of the three houses on either side of them, as well as to several across the road, inviting everyone to come at 8 p.m. on Friday; after some hesitation, she addressed one to the upper flat at number 38. Conveniently, the twin landmarks of new home and Joe’s promotion had furnished them with enough gifts of sparkling wine to cater for the occasion, and glassware stocks were easily supplemented with cheap flutes from the supermarket. She spent her evenings producing her limited repertoire of baked snacks – Parmesan breadsticks and cheese straws, which were, she was the first to admit, virtually the same thing – and trying not to eat the economy caramels she’d heaped into a rather nice blue Moroccan bowl found at the back of a kitchen cupboard, presumably overlooked by the Frasers in their haste to leave.