It wouldn’t be so bad if it was Finn’s business and Ralph the one being recruited, but the fact was that Ralph and Naomi were always the ones with something better to offer, always the ones who did things first. They did things first and then they briefed Finn and Tess on how best to do them next, briefed them expansively, generously, including which pitfalls to avoid. Well, Tess wanted to experience the pioneer’s exhilaration for herself. She wanted to make her own mistakes.
Though the feeling of claustrophobia must have been percolating for years, it had presented itself abruptly, over the issue of secondary schools. Naomi wanted to send Libby to a private school and Finn and Tess explained they couldn’t possibly afford for Isla to follow: they had neither the same income as Ralph and Naomi nor Naomi’s wealthy parents to help out. With no decent state secondary within range, they would have to move.
But it hadn’t happened like that. Naomi had discovered the train link between Lowland Gardens and a grammar school in Kent—a free state school with highly competitive selection criteria. As sure as night followed day, Libby had been prepared for and aced the entrance exam, and Naomi was passing on the private tutor’s phone number to Tess with the furtiveness of a drug dealer. “You need to start now to be safe,” she advised.
Finn, for one, had assumed that this was the end of the matter. Thanks to Naomi’s tutor, Isla would follow where Libby led, followed by Charlie, followed by Dex. Job done. “I don’t know how people deal with schools applications without this insider information,” he’d crowed.
“Maybe they enjoy finding out for themselves,” Tess had said.
He looked astonished. “You want Isla to be rejected?”
“Of course not! I just want to decide for myself which school she’ll go to. Can’t you see it’s not us who think she should get on a train to a school miles away? It’s them. She’s not their child, Finn.”
“No, but we’d be mad not to learn from their expertise. Ralph says you have to start with the tutor two years in advance.”
“You’re not listening to me,” Tess said, and there’d been, for a while, a stalemate. How would Naomi manage a stalemate with Ralph? she wondered. She had an instinct it might be through sexual negotiation of some sort. Well, Tess relied on patience in her marriage.
After the press coverage of Play Out Sunday, she’d had the house valued by an estate agent, careful to arrange a day and time when Naomi would be at work. Explained how easily the fence between their place and number 7 could be rebuilt and traditional boundaries restored. Finn had been amazed when she’d told him the valuation; he’d flushed with the pleasure of all that free money.
“That’s four times what we paid for it!”
“I know. If we moved further out, maybe closer to my brother, we could buy a new house outright. Imagine being mortgage-free.” Ralph-and-Naomi-free was what Tess meant, and Finn was not stupid; he read between the lines.
Inevitably, his interpretation was totally reductive. “She does use you. I know that.”
“She doesn’t use me.” Tess was careful not to get emotional. “I’m happy to help her out. But I’d also like to help my side of the family.”
And be helped once in a while, she thought.
“I feel like we’re plotting,” Finn said, looking morose.
“That’s exactly the problem,” Tess said. “We’re not plotting. We’re just deciding what’s best for our family, like families do up and down the country. I don’t want to be made to feel like Lady Macbeth for suggesting something completely sane and reasonable.”
“You’re right,” he said. “Just let me get my head around it.”
“Remember, not a word,” she warned him.
To Ralph, she meant. If Ralph got wind of this, he’d stop it. Naomi was a busybody, but she was also a pragmatist. She could recruit a new deputy with ease; she could pay a professional for the services Tess supplied as a family member and next-door neighbor. But Ralph was different. Having lost their mother in their late teens and with contact with the extended family sporadic at best, having risen from bunk beds in a four-hundred-square-foot council flat to master bedrooms in a pair of three-thousand-square-foot piles in Lowland Gardens, having basically reinvented themselves, the two brothers had only each other as any claim to their original identity. Most Fridays, they went for a drink together, men only, calling it a tribute to their father, who had died before Tess had met Finn and was by the brothers’ own admission an unreconstructed chauvinist and bully. The arrangement peeved Tess more than it did Naomi, the only woman Tess knew who continued the tradition of Saturday date night with her husband fifteen years into her marriage. Booking proper restaurants and hogging Daisy, their shared babysitter. Dressing to seduce.
That last conversation had been two months ago. But Tess hadn’t allowed for new neighbors two doors down who had the potential to make their house unsellable—at least at a price high enough to turn Finn’s head.
“Well, whatever we decide, we definitely can’t do anything this summer,” she said now, and this placated Finn. He survived displeasing Ralph another day. “That’s actually pretty loud,” she added, as music drifted through the open doors. Not an assault, but an intrusion, certainly.
“Black Sabbath, ‘War Pigs.’ Great song,” Finn said. “Not loud enough to wake Dex, is it?”
“His window’s closed. But think how loud that must be for Em and Ant.” Tess frowned, thinking once more of cars being driven across sidewalks, of dogs being sworn at and threatened. How soon before one of them was under the wheels? “I wonder if we should suggest to Ralph and Naomi that we have a meeting about those people. Before it starts to get silly.”
Those people. The phrase was snobbish, the tone contemptuous, but Finn didn’t correct her. Instead, he agreed it was high time the couple Tess resented for their kingpin ways—to the extent that she sought to sell up and escape them—stepped up and challenged the invaders.
CHAPTER
4
SISSY
No, I’m really not sure I’m up to this. . . . But if it’s just one or two questions . . .
Yes, I was at home this morning. I was upstairs in one of the bedrooms at the back when I heard the noise outside. I thought maybe it was a lorry delivering gravel across the road. So I went to the bedroom at the front to check. . . .
Sorry. Please, just give me a minute.
No, it’s fine. I can carry on. The setup over there? Well, it was a building site, an amateur one, completely unsafe, with cars everywhere, doors and hoods open—he’d leave them with the engines running while he went inside. It was an accident waiting to happen and now it’s happened.
No, I didn’t get on with him before this. I know some of the other neighbors saw him as just selfish, oblivious, and maybe I did as well at first. But I soon realized.
That he was plain nasty. A bad person.
MS. SISSY WATKINS, 2 LOWLAND WAY, INQUIRIES BY THE METROPOLITAN POLICE, AUGUST 11, 2018
Five weeks earlier
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The alert came with the sort of urgency that used to be reserved for surgeons on call but now meant someone of no importance had made a passing remark about someone else of no importance with no thought whatsoever as to the consequences. Sissy had read in the Telegraph how Silicon Valley designed everything with scores and notifications to keep you hooked on dopamine; they were latter-day Pablo Escobars. She’d seen a television drama about a community in which the services available to you were dictated by your popularity: your own opinion of yourself was irrelevant; it was only other people’s that counted. Terrifying! (It was set in the “near future,” whenever that was.)
She duly logged in to the CitytoSuburb members area. Ratings were out of five like on Amazon, except it used little window-box icons, not stars. This one was her first-ever two:
B
eautiful old property in Lowland Gardens. Lovely host, huge room, delicious breakfast. Why the two-star rating, then? The problem was that the neighbor across the road got up at the crack of dawn and was revving engines in his drive. It sounded like a Hells Angels rally. Talk about a rude awakening—on a Sunday! And he pulled out of his drive so dangerously when we were leaving, we felt lucky to escape with our lives! There were children playing a few feet away! So with the best will in the world, we just can’t recommend others stay here. Sorry.
—Harry and Elaine Cogan, near Plymouth, Devon
Sissy could only sigh. Every word was true.
The incident had occurred the previous weekend. What with the constant and unfathomable reordering of cars between driveway, garden scrubland and street, it was inevitable that Play Out Sunday would be a sticking point with Darren Booth, and so it transpired. Her guests were leaving after a late breakfast and, Lowland Way being closed to traffic, Sissy accompanied them to the corner of Portsmouth Avenue to wait for their taxi. There were four cars in the street: two outside number 1, one in front of Ralph and Naomi’s and one outside Sissy’s, almost certainly all Booth’s. As they crossed, he was standing at the bottom of his drive with a car key in his hand—about to start moving the vehicles, she assumed (how naïve she was!).
“Oh, look at the little ones,” the Cogans exclaimed, as Sissy called hello to Naomi and the other parents out with their kids. Even though the whole point of the exercise was that the street had been cleared of potential hazards, parents would hover at their gates because, well, you never knew when a pedophile was going to stroll by and take his pick, did you? I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened, the mums would say, hypervigilance legitimized into a sort of catchphrase. They made parenting sound so superstitious, Sissy thought. Almost medieval.
Pedophiles had not really been a thing when her son, Pete, was a boy, at least not that she could remember.
To give Booth the benefit of the doubt (again, naïve), she thought he might not have read the notices Naomi and Tess distributed every Saturday afternoon and that Sissy knew by heart:
Dear Grown-up,
Thank you for moving your car off the street in good time for Play Out Sunday. This small favor has big benefits for all of us!
Love from the children of Lowland Way x
A cute hand-drawn font had been used and at the top of the flyer there was an endorsement from no less than the London mayor himself.
“I haven’t seen kids playing hopscotch for years,” Mrs. Cogan said.
“Yes, they’re free to draw on the road in chalk,” Sissy told her. She had grown used to praising the same activities that had been completely unremarkable in her own childhood as exceptional, because, without fail, her guests were charmed by them and tended to go on to mention them in their reviews.
She was dismayed to see that Booth was now at the wheel of one of the cars on his drive: Surely he wasn’t moving another into the street? That really would be bloody-minded. The sudden roar of revving caused nearby children to startle and shift away. Under the wipers, the Morgans’ flyer flapped unread.
“Just hang on a moment,” she told the Cogans, emboldened by their presence, their respectable expectations. She stepped onto Booth’s drive and peered at him through the half-open car window. Though he did not lower it fully or turn off the engine, he did acknowledge her, which was more than he’d done on any previous occasion. Then again, at her age she found it was a common experience to be regarded on unequal terms. The fact that Booth was probably only a few years younger than her was by the by: all signs pointed to his being the kind of chauvinist who considered a woman with gray hair and a comfortable bra unworthy of attention.
“Did you not see the note on your cars about Play Out Sunday?” She took the liberty of fishing the flyer from under the wiper and thrusting it through the window to him.
“Huh?”
When he didn’t take it, she let it drop onto his lap. “Have you not noticed these last few weekends? It looks like you haven’t got room to squeeze them all on your drive, but there are plenty of spaces on Portsmouth Avenue.”
His head still angled toward her, Booth’s gaze hardened. “I’ve already said, they’re staying where they are.”
Already said: he must have been approached by other neighbors and opted not to comply. Had Naomi tried? If she couldn’t persuade him, no one could.
“I see. Well, thank you.” For nothing. What an unpleasant character he was, she thought. Jean would be turning in her grave to see this craven lack of community spirit. Sissy had known Jean as well as anyone on the street, and while having been aware of a nephew living in South London, she could not recall a single reference to any familial act on his part. Perhaps Jean had thought he’d sell the place without setting foot in it, imagined another couple like the Kendalls moving in—the poor Kendalls, as Sissy thought of them now. Instead, according to Tess, these people had judged the premises perfect for their car business and moved in themselves.
At least they hadn’t touched the old maple, which created a beautiful architectural shape across the side gate and left-hand edge of the house. (She remembered Libby Morgan doing a lovely painting of it when she was little and giving it to Jean for Christmas.)
She turned away from Booth and steered the Cogans beyond the bollards to the corner of Portsmouth Avenue, where traffic rolled by, indicator lights ticking off as drivers registered the red ROAD CLOSED sign. Half listening to Mrs. Cogan explain the complications of their onward journey, she became aware of the sound of a vehicle approaching, felt a flare of panic as she realized it was coming from behind her, on Lowland Way—and accelerating, not braking. She swung round to see Booth swerving to avoid the sign and knocking aside one of the bollards before, briefly, mounting the curb. She and the Cogans scattered, barely in time, and without so much as a raised hand of apology Booth took the corner and sped down Portsmouth Avenue. He braked at the next light, almost rear-ending a Range Rover.
“Hey!” yelled Mr. Cogan, striding a few steps after the receding vehicle before giving up and returning to check on his wife, who looked breathless and confused.
“My goodness,” Sissy said, her breath ragged. “Are you both all right?” A vehicle approaching from the right—the taxi—pulled up sharply, the driver’s face as startled as Sissy’s own.
“We’re fine,” Mrs. Cogan insisted, with effort. “Are you? Did you see it was that rude neighbor of yours? What’s he playing at, driving like that?”
The bollard had rolled into the gutter on Portsmouth Avenue and Sissy tried not to think how different the scene would look had it been human flesh and not plastic the car had struck.
“Do you know his registration?” Mr. Cogan asked. “We should report him.”
“I’ll deal with it,” Sissy said. “Please don’t give it another thought.”
As the cab pulled away, Naomi hurried over. “I saw that from down the street! Are you OK?”
“I think so.” Sissy watched her retrieve the bollard, hugging it to her as if to protect it from further assault. Even in the exercise clothes she wore at weekends she always looked so groomed and sexy, like Hollywood’s idea of a wife and mother.
“Honestly, there’s absolutely no need for him to be a refusenik like this,” Naomi grumbled.
“Can we get the council to help?” Sissy asked.
“No, the program is completely based on goodwill. No one is legally obliged to move their car. Normally, if someone’s resistant, I try to get their other half on side, but in this case she’s a prickly character herself.”
Sissy tried not to resent the casual assumption that everyone had an “other half.” This sort of oversensitivity, she’d found, was the most lingering symptom of grief for her divorce, just over three years ago. How would Colin have tackled Booth? He could be quite officious about local matters. But it was already clear
that Booth gave short shrift to such interference. In any case, Colin wasn’t here. He was living in Blackheath with his new partner, enjoying, as he’d put it, with staggering indelicacy, “my last chance.”
“I’ll think of something, I expect,” Naomi said. “Meanwhile, I can’t risk him speeding in and out like that again.” She set about repositioning the bollard and the ROAD CLOSED sign in line with the Kendalls’ house, in effect cutting Sissy’s house off and reopening the corner stretch to parking. “Kids?” she called out in a posh, confident foghorn. “Stay on this side of the sign, OK? It’s dangerous on the other side.”
The whole thing made Sissy cross. Not only had Darren Booth endangered the safety of her guests, but he’d caused her to be excluded from the lovely festive atmosphere. She could not let him get away with this. When he returned, an hour later, she took a deep breath and crossed the road, waiting for him to emerge from the driver’s side.
“Mr. Booth?” She no longer felt inclined to use his Christian name. “Would it be possible to have a word?” With some insistence, she managed to force eye contact. His face was pink and irritable, a smear of oil on his brow. “The way you drove earlier was really dangerous. You came very close to hitting us—do you realize that?”
Booth slammed shut the car door, muttering his response.
“What did you say?” Sissy demanded. “Did you call me a fucking busybody?”
“Think you’re imagining it, love,” Booth said, his mouth curling. “Never called nobody nothing.”
Ignoring his abysmal grammar, Sissy frowned at him. “Good. Because that would be the last thing you’d want to say to someone you’d almost just run over. They might decide to report you to the police. That’s exactly what my B and B guests wanted to do!”
Those People Page 5