Even as she spoke, she regretted mentioning the B and B, understanding instinctively that the less he knew about her arrangements, the better. But he’d already turned to go inside.
Almost immediately, the door to number 3 opened and Em Kendall reversed out with the baby in his buggy—Sissy sensed she’d been waiting for Booth to go in before she came out, which if it were the case meant relations between the two households had already deteriorated badly. Em was a slight, pale-skinned woman whose mood could be discerned by the set of her mouth: a pained smile today, chased by a sullen pout. She didn’t remark on Sissy’s agitation as they met at the end of the drive, but fussed over the baby, preoccupied.
“How are you, Em?” Sissy said, smiling herself into better spirits. “And how is little Sam?”
Em sent a wary glance over her shoulder. “We’d both be a lot better if we got a decent night’s sleep once in a while. It’s a complete nightmare. The wall between us is so thin. Sam isn’t sleeping, which means we’re not sleeping.”
Sissy made sympathetic noises. “Tough for Ant, going off to work every morning without proper rest.”
“Tough for me,” Em said, not quite snapping. “If anything, work is a break.”
Sissy knew better than to dispute this; she’d been a new mother herself and it didn’t feel very long ago to her, even if Em’s generation imagined it to have been centuries. It’s so much harder now was the attitude, which was completely illogical given the countless advances since, but Sissy accepted that every new parent was convinced of his or her own unique martyrdom.
“It’s early days. I’m sure things will settle down with our new neighbors.”
“I’m not holding my breath. We’ve said we’ll give it till the end of the month and then . . .” Em tailed off, glancing at her phone. It was in her hand, as everyone’s was these days, as if phones were dialysis machines that could not be out of reach without life-threatening consequences.
“And then what?” Sissy prompted.
Em looked up. “Then we kill them.” The deadpan tone deceived Sissy, if only for a split second, and her startled expression made the younger woman laugh. “No, complain to the authorities. Not to him, obviously. He couldn’t care less.”
Later, when Sissy looked back, she thought how confident they’d all been in the notion of the Authorities.
Yes, even Em.
* * *
—
Sissy, I believe we have a common cause. Not sure if you’ve seen FB, but we’re meeting here on Thursday at 8pm to discuss the situation. Ralph
Sissy did not respond to Ralph’s text, not at once, but instead put Booth, with his dangerous driving and his churlishness, from her mind. There was, after all, the width of two sidewalks and a road between their properties; if she sat in the kitchen at the back of the house with Radio 4 on and the dishwasher or washing machine whirring, life was exactly as it had been before, untroubled by any external noise. As for the eyesore the new neighbors had made of their plot, she decided she’d let her hedge grow at the front, sacrificing a little light to create a screen: out of sight would be out of mind. One by one, her favorite items—a cushion knitted by her mother, a photograph of Pete on his first day at school—migrated from the sitting room at the front to the kitchen, where she now did most of her sitting.
Of course, anyone who came to her house could hardly avoid noticing theirs, and so it was invariably the opening topic of conversation.
“What’s with the place across the road?” Pete asked on his first visit since the Booths’ arrival. “It’s chaos.”
“I thought you were safe from bad neighbors here,” his girlfriend, Amy, said, when Sissy explained. She and Pete rented in a block of flats in North London and had a neighbor upstairs who held parties on the roof, advertising them on social media. On such occasions, they lived in fear of seeing someone plummet past their window (so far, only bottles had made the trip, alarming in itself). It was different when you were renting, though: the nuisance could move—or, if all else failed, you could. Sissy wondered if the reign of peace she’d enjoyed on Lowland Way for almost three decades owed as much to pure luck as to active cultivation. Both she and Naomi Morgan liked to believe that in their own ways they set the tone, led their neighbors by example, but maybe the truth was they’d simply not encountered any opposition.
“When did he get rid of that old tree?” Pete asked, scandalized.
“Yesterday,” Sissy said sadly. “He just got up and went at it with a chain saw.”
“Why?”
“Presumably to create more space for the cars.” Sissy had checked online to see if the maple had had a Tree Preservation Order, but it had not, which was a shame, not least for the poor tree itself. Council guidelines required that measures be taken to remove trees safely and there was no evidence that Booth had not done this, were no reports of injury or damage.
“Don’t people normally have hoardings up to keep building work a bit more contained?” Amy said.
“I’m not sure he does things ‘normally,’” Sissy said, but seeing Pete grow concerned, she shrugged off further questions. He had taken the divorce badly and helped campaign against the sale of his childhood home when Sissy and his father set about getting it valued for sale. Colin had been bought out only with the aid of an uncomfortably steep new mortgage—the first she’d had in her name alone, at her age!—and a plan produced for a B and B business.
“Well, make sure you phone Amy if you need any help,” Pete said. The two worked for the same consultancy firm, but whereas his current client was based in Aberdeen, requiring him to stay there Monday to Friday, Amy was in London all week. Sometimes she visited Sissy on her own, which was lovely. She was lovely. Sissy hoped the two would marry and start a family but knew better than to suggest such conventional notions.
It was still light when they left and she walked them to the gate. They lingered for a moment, eyes drawn, inevitably, to number 1.
“You know, I don’t think I’d ever even noticed that house before,” Amy said.
“There wasn’t really anything to notice,” Sissy said. There was the usual dust cloud caused by the day’s labors; it was as if the house and its overspill had been produced by some evil spell.
“Who’s the woman coming out the door?” Pete asked.
“Oh, that’s Jodie.”
Retrieving something from the car at the foot of the drive, Jodie was evidently in a spiky mood, slamming the door shut with unnecessary force. Sissy had had little contact with her since her arrival and was not encouraged to seek more. The woman couldn’t muster a smile and had such a mean-spirited look in her eyes, a look not so much of a hard life lived but of a hard attitude toward that life. A good match for Darren, she supposed.
Seeing them watching, Jodie stalked to the edge of the sidewalk and yelled across, “Take a picture, yeah? It lasts longer.”
“Maybe we will,” Amy replied loudly.
“Don’t,” Sissy said, both mortified and thrilled by her boldness.
Jodie gave them the finger and turned to go back in.
“Wow,” Pete said. “You really weren’t exaggerating.” He kissed her good-bye. “Remember what we said about you ever needing help.”
After they left, Sissy found a new notification on her phone—another bad review:
Everything was great except the position of the house on the street—I suggest CitytoSuburb add the Google Street View function so you can see. Even these nice streets have a dodgy end.
Two window boxes.
She opened her text messages and selected Ralph’s.
A meeting is an excellent idea, she texted. Count me in.
CHAPTER
5
RALPH
A “specific grievance”? How long have you got?
Well, from my point of view it hasn’t been the building wo
rk so much as the cars. He sells them from the premises without a permit and has at least six parked in the street at any given time. It’s completely disrupted the parking situation. You see that clapped-out monstrosity right there? That’s his. I swear he keeps it there just to wind me up. Deliberately lowering the tone, you know?
Wait, I can see what you’re thinking and I’ll tell you something for nothing: Lowland Way isn’t one of those middle-class bubbles where people act all entitled. No, we count our blessings here. The Rushmoor Estate’s just on the other side of the park, as I’m sure you’re aware. I cut through there sometimes, remind myself how different life could be. What I’m trying to say is, it’s ironic. We live right next to a high-crime zone like that, but the criminal is here on Lowland Way. Right where we thought we were safe.
MR. RALPH MORGAN, 7 LOWLAND WAY, HOUSE-TO-HOUSE INQUIRIES BY THE METROPOLITAN POLICE, AUGUST 11, 2018
Three and a half weeks earlier
On the evening of the residents’ meeting, Ralph was driving through the Rushmoor Estate, which had produced, among others, two teenagers recently remanded in custody for stabbing a third to death, when Finn called with his early-evening update on the parking situation. It was their new thing.
“Sorry, mate, but it’s still there.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Ralph said. For the last week, a decaying Ford Focus belonging to Booth had been parked outside his house and he’d had to leave the Beamer right down the other end of the street under a plane tree, which meant there was now bird shit all over the roof.
“Why the fuck doesn’t he just put the house on the market and take the cash?” This was a sentiment Ralph had expressed repeatedly since Tess had heard the terrible truth from the horse’s mouth (well, Jodie’s): the unusually large corner plot was ideal for Booth’s Motors— or whatever he called his tawdry little business. “He obviously doesn’t belong here,” he added.
As a rule Ralph liked it to be known that he wasn’t one for pulling up the ladder; he wasn’t like those first-wave incomers who voted against the second. Darren Booth would be as welcome on Lowland Way as he had been himself—were he to respect the prevailing culture. Assimilate. But running a repairs workshop and/or used-car showroom from his wasteland of a front garden was not respecting the prevailing culture. It was not assimilating.
“No arguments there,” Finn said. “Where are you, anyway? You haven’t forgotten about the meeting?”
“Course not. Ten minutes away.” Ralph ended the call, preferring not to specify his location or explain why he often detoured through the bleaker pockets of southeast London when returning home from Bermondsey. With the right song playing—nineties guitar rock, attitude trumping melody though by no means replacing it—he would experience a rush of sensory memory that was almost erotic as he cruised past the featureless flats of first the Loughborough Estate and then the Rushmoor. By the time he reached Rushmoor, with its obstacle course of speed bumps to deter the joyriders, he’d be going slowly enough to absorb the mood of the pedestrians he passed, the dismal-looking underage mothers whom he’d never, ever seen interact with their babies; the old blokes with their collapsed posture, collapsed dreams (if they’d ever had any dreams in the first place). People who were light-years from him and yet almost close enough to touch.
He’d heard a phrase to describe this kind of activity: poverty porn. Which made him uncomfortable but at least suggested he was not the only sick fuck in town.
“Hey!” He braked sharply, causing the seat belt to lock across his chest. A teenage girl with a beat-up buggy was in the street in front of his car, walking down the middle of the road as if there wasn’t a fucking sidewalk for just this purpose! She was mesmerized by her phone—surprise, surprise—probably spent more money on it than she did on the child’s upkeep.
Since the sound of two tons of deadly machinery braking didn’t register, he swung the car alongside her and rolled down the window: “Hey, do you want to use the sidewalk? That’s what it’s for, y’know.”
She had earphones in, so he reached to pull the wire, dislodging the buds. Straightaway she began screaming at him, abandoning the buggy to march after his car and smack a hand against the roof, spitting words he didn’t recognize but was fairly sure were no official language. Urban invective of some sort.
“Get off my car, you crazy witch,” Ralph yelled, hitting the switch to close the window. “Go and get your baby out of the road before he’s run over! People like you shouldn’t be allowed to have kids!”
He couldn’t hear her response through the glass, but he could see the damp black hole of her bellowing mouth and the hatred that had gripped her face.
Jesus.
He put his foot down and she slid from view. The landscape changed abruptly, the way it did in South London, square footage too overvalued to allow for subtle transition, and the concrete of the Rushmoor estate was soon replaced by old brick and new spring leaf. Family cars and dug-out basements. Teenagers with homework, not babies.
On Lowland Way, after he parked—the closest spot to his house was on the corner outside Sissy’s place—he scanned Booth’s plot for new atrocities. For all his agitation, it was astonishing how quickly the situation had become, in its way, sport, and on the rare days that there was nothing new he felt not so much relief as anticlimax, the flatness of a tie.
But this evening, there was something: an ancient RV parked in the drive, dirty and ugly and square, with hideous copper orange paintwork.
He plucked his phone from his pocket and Googled the council’s policy on parking RVs in a residential area, groaning when he read the results. Glancing up, he was startled to find Booth at the end of the drive, smoking, watching, infuriatingly casual. He was in his overalls, as usual, face and hands stained gray.
“I see you’ve got another classy set of wheels to add to your collection,” Ralph said, mock-friendly.
“Mind your own business, mate,” Booth said, hardly audible. For all his crashing and banging, he had never been heard to raise his voice.
Ralph strode forward, ready for his second confrontation in the space of ten minutes. “I don’t have a business, not on the street. That’s the point. These are homes, not workshops.” He tried—and failed—to disguise the rage in his voice. “Enough is enough, all right? This is a residential neighborhood and you can’t use your front garden as a showroom. I suggest you look into alternative premises for all these vehicles as a matter of urgency before we get the whole lot towed away.”
Booth grinned. “Think you’ll find it’s a free world, mate.”
Much too free for Ralph’s liking. As he turned to leave, an involuntary sound escaped him, a kind of suppressed war cry. It was as if he’d been walking away from Darren Booth his whole life, thwarted and provoked, their sparring a biological imperative, almost what he had been born to do.
This meeting with the neighbors couldn’t come soon enough.
* * *
—
Given the Kendalls’ uncomfortable proximity to the source of the aggravation, it was not surprising to Ralph that they arrived in a microclimate of marital high pressure.
“I’ll find somewhere for Sam, shall I?” Em said to Ant, with a harpylike sharpness that Ralph had never heard from Naomi, not even in the heat of early parenting.
“Come upstairs with me. We’ll find a quiet place,” Naomi told her, while Ant, looking harried, joined Ralph, Finn and Sissy in the living room.
“Wine?” Ralph offered. He and Naomi had agreed to serve modest measures in order to keep the discussion focused. It was all too easy to degenerate into drunken ranting, Naomi said, with not the slightest suggestion that he might be one of the more susceptible of the assembled.
When she and Em reappeared, they were talking about Em’s return to the workplace.
“If things continue as they are, it would be better for Sam’s welfare if
he was in day care, in which case I’ll go back sooner rather than later,” Em said, and Ralph noticed Ant’s look of confusion at this.
“That’s why we’re here now, Em,” Naomi told her with conviction. “We’re not going to let things continue. Ah, here’s Tess, finally!”
Tess arrived via the kitchen, preoccupied as she took a spot next to Em on the smaller sofa under the window. “Tuppy’s a bit unsettled,” she explained. “It’s the noise from the corner. He hates the sound of machinery. He’s on red alert the whole time.”
“Aren’t we all?” Ralph said. If you asked him, she cared more about pets than about people. “Anyone else coming, Nay?”
“No, but I’m reporting back to Sara Boulter and a couple of others. They’re keen to get things sorted, but they’re not as badly affected as we all are. So . . .” Naomi sharpened her manner, eager to open proceedings. “Thank you all for coming. We’re here to share information about what’s going on at number 1 and to have a think about how we can restore the street to the safe, peaceful place we know and love. First of all, I think we can all agree that Darren and Jodie are not remotely troubled by informal complaints. I’ve approached them together and individually and while I wouldn’t say they’ve been overtly antagonistic”—here she glanced preemptively at Ralph—“they certainly haven’t been interested in sharing plans or listening to reasonable objections.”
“Sorry to contradict you, Naomi,” Em said unapologetically, the moment Naomi drew breath, “but I would say they have been antagonistic.”
Sissy nodded her agreement. “You might find that complaints actually spur them on. He, in particular, sees himself as a bit of a rebel.”
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