Those People

by Louise Candlish

  Ant gestured in the direction of the common wall. “I thought we were in the clear for once.”

  “Yes, they just went out. But, rest assured, they’ll be back later and it will start again.”

  Rest assured? As if he wanted the torture to resume. “Unless they’ve gone on holiday?” he said hopefully.

  Em shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t have left all that stuff on the scaffolding. Plus, I heard her on the phone this morning saying, ‘It’ll be ready this time tomorrow,’ which must mean one of the cars.” Em no longer used Darren’s and Jodie’s names. They were “him” and “her,” interchangeably abhorrent.

  “OK.” Ant wiped Sam’s mouth and extracted him from his chair. He was getting heavy, wriggling to be lowered to the floor and have another try at crawling. “Ralph mailed me today with some good news. He chased up the council over the car trading and they say the clip we sent was exactly what they needed. They’ve done some preliminary investigation and found matches between the cars advertised and those parked on the street.” He paused for a show of enthusiasm on Em’s part that did not arrive.

  “Wow, quite the Sherlocks, aren’t they?” she drawled. “Why don’t they do something about it, then?”

  “They have. They’ve written to Booth, but he’s so far failed to respond.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “They allow twenty-eight days for a response.”

  “Of course they do.” Her sarcasm felt pointed, as if she blamed Ant personally. “Why not twenty-eight weeks? No need to rush him into anything he’s not comfortable with.”

  Ant sighed. “I know it’s frustrating, Em. Everything you feel, I feel the same.”

  “No, you don’t.” She stopped what she was doing with the Tupperware and locked her left hand onto her right wrist. “You’re at work most of the time. I’m here all day long, touching distance from those lowlifes!”

  Ant took a bottle of wine from the rack and last night’s glass from the draining board and sat down at the table. “I know and I wish you weren’t. But I, for one, feel better knowing that we’re tackling it as a group.”

  “Well, I, for one, feel better getting as far away from the whole lot of them as is physically possible,” Em said. “And since a desert island isn’t an option, Gloucestershire is going to have to do.”

  Ant began drinking, but the effect was not as instantaneous as he would have liked. “Fine. I’ll come with you for the weekend and get an early train in on Monday.”

  Em was unyielding. “No. You don’t get it: I want to go on my own. I need some space from this. I have to have a break from discussing them.”

  He felt his heart rate pick up, his skin redden. “You’re asking me not to spend the weekend with my wife and son because I might comment on an issue affecting our welfare?”

  Em stood firm. “Yes. Or I might. It’s what we talk about now, isn’t it? The only thing.”

  He had to admit she was right. It had happened insidiously and yet startlingly quickly. New parents were famously one-track in their conversation, but in this family, Sam shared his parents’ attention with their neighbors. How’s he been today? When Ant came home and asked Em this question, it applied equally to Darren Booth and Sam.

  Em returned to her task, stacking pots in the fridge. “Please don’t make a big deal of this, Ant.”

  He did his best to comply with this request. A weekend alone need not be a desolate one. He could go to a museum or a food market, maybe the theater, one of those mythologized pursuits lost to new parents that he wasn’t sure they’d done much of in the first place.

  He became aware of how hungry he was. “What are we eating?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to think about dinner.”

  Too busy plotting her getaway.

  “We’ll order a pizza. I’ll do Sam’s bath first,” he said, and Sam, at least, cooperated, not tensing in objection as he sometimes did when separated from Em.

  “I love you,” Ant told him as he carried him upstairs to the bathroom, and there was a choke in his voice, as if these were the only words left in the family—the only emotion—untarnished by external forces.

  Without any disturbance from next door, Sam’s bedtime routine was textbook smooth and, after sharing a pizza in front of the TV, Em took advantage of the silence and went up for an early night. Left alone, a second bottle of wine open, Ant felt his mood plunge. Why was he sitting here on his own? He and Em should have been wallowing in the peace, catching up and having a laugh (maybe, God forbid, having sex). Instead, it was just him and his familiar new companion, self-pity.

  Until Darren and Jodie returned at about midnight, voices raucous with drink, and turned on the music. There’d be ten minutes, maybe fifteen, before Sam woke and either Em brought him down or Ant went up to join them for the latest hissed conference.

  He opened the front door and stepped into the night air. Across the road, in Sissy’s front garden, foot-level landscape lights led the eye to the bays in their tall pots, the dark mapping of wisteria under the first-floor windows. When they’d first looked around their house, he and Em had stood together at the bedroom window and joked about the view from here being a lot better than the one from there.

  “I’d rather live there, obviously,” Em had said, “if I had the choice.”

  “Me too,” he’d replied. “All in good time.” As if anything were possible. As if they’d found their place in the world and it was simply a matter of increasing their share of it.

  His eye rested on the van on the Booths’ side of the driveway. Maybe he and Em could dig up their half and put in a hedge of cypresses to block their view, create some separation. Then again, if they did that, where would they park? The nearest six or so street spaces were filled with Darren’s vehicles, and competition for the remaining ones had become fractious. The RV outside Ralph and Naomi’s had been there for weeks now, the battery probably dead.

  The music faded out. In the second or two between songs, there was a cry from inside, overhead. Sam.

  You bastard, Ant thought, you’ve reduced my life to the gaps between songs. You’ve made my home intolerable to live in, you’ve stolen my son’s right to proper sleep and you’re well on your way to wrecking my marriage.

  Because Em’s departure in the morning was the beginning of the end; he was sure of it. Not a week, but a week or so. While Booth reigned, while Jodie supported and enabled him, Em would not return; he was sure of it. How long before she found a lovely nursery near her parents’ place? A flexible local job for a returning new mother?

  The door to number 1 opened and Jodie emerged. She set off down the drive, staggering slightly in her heels.

  Expelling the breath from his lungs in a bid to calm himself, Ant had a very strong sense of how it must feel to face your enemy with nothing left to lose.

  CHAPTER

  11

  TESS

  Yes, I would agree the Kendalls have had it worst. Em has been particularly distraught—close to the edge, I’d say. There’s been no escape for her. Still isn’t.

  MRS. TESSA MORGAN, 5 LOWLAND WAY, HOUSE-TO-HOUSE INQUIRIES BY THE METROPOLITAN POLICE, AUGUST 11, 2018

  One day earlier

  In the taxi back from the West End, Tess closed her eyes, partly out of exhaustion and partly to avoid having to engage with Naomi. Their mother-daughter theater trip had been Naomi’s idea, with the aim of making it a school-holiday tradition (on her website, there was a whole section devoted to “making memories,” a phrase Tess hated). She didn’t want to be ungrateful, but if this outing was anything to go by, she preferred not to subscribe long-term. Isla’s view of the stage had been restricted by a tall woman with exorbitant hair in the seat in front, Libby had come over dizzy and overheated, and the entire interval had been taken up with queuing for the loo. The tickets alone had cost more than most people ear
ned in a week and Tess, of course, earned nothing.

  They’d been back from Portugal only three days and already the thought of their holiday—silver sands and cuddles with the kids in their damp beach robes—had a profound sense of loss to it, leaving her with an overwhelming desire to stave off her London life for as long as other people allowed. To her shame, following a bumping into with Em that had brought her up to speed on the very Lowland Way antagonisms she’d sought to flee, she’d avoided suggestions that they have a coffee so she could hear more of the same. Today, Em had messaged: Not going to be around next week. You can guess why.

  Booth, of course.

  “Just here,” Naomi commanded the driver as they turned into Lowland Way. “Can you sort this, Tess? I’ll get Libs in before she’s sick.”

  “Sure.” Petty to note that she’d never get the money back. Naomi was cavalier about shared expenses, especially when it came to making memories.

  By the time they were all inside and the kids in bed, Finn and Ralph had come back from the pub and proposed the four of them have a bottle of wine in the garden since there was no music booming from number 1.

  “Ralph, you open the wine,” Naomi ordered. “I’m going to sit with Libs for a couple of minutes. She’s still a bit queasy. Finn, just walk Daisy home, will you?”

  Tired and scratchy, Tess finally lost her cool. “Can you please not tell my husband what to do, Naomi? He’s not staff!”

  “I beg your pardon?” There was an odd gleam in Naomi’s eye as she halted in front of her five-grand fridge (or whatever it cost), a rare meanness, and Tess saw it was too soon after the scare with Charlie to cross her, especially now that Libby was worrying her as well. “Oh, for God’s sake, Tess, just because you’ve been out of the workplace so long you’ve forgotten the art of delegation doesn’t mean the rest of us have to. We’re not all martyrs, you know, insisting on doing everything ourselves.”

  Tess gasped. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Exactly what I say.”

  Tess’s heart banged in anger. “Has it crossed your mind that if you didn’t have me to delegate to all the time, you wouldn’t be practicing this ‘art’ either? And your workplace is hardly the prime minister’s office, is it? Posh mums dispensing advice to other posh mums from one of their posh garden offices!”

  Naomi’s expression turned thunderous. “I wonder if that’s how the families of the founders of Mumsnet spoke to them. Really, Tess, you might want to update your attitude to workingwomen, for Isla’s sake, if not your own.”

  Tess wheeled round to Finn, her voice wild: “Are you hearing this? And you wonder why I want to sell up!”

  There was a moment of frozen silence at this first public reference to her desires, followed by an exchange of covert looks between the other three. It took an excruciating ten seconds for Tess to understand that this was not because her declaration was a shock to Ralph and Naomi, but because they knew it would be a shock to her to realize that they already knew. What was going on in this family? Next they’d be planting a chip in her head and stealing her dreams.

  “Finn?”

  He struggled to speak, obviously hoping the crisis would depart as quickly as it had arrived. Ralph, meanwhile, took his time reaching into the cupboard for wineglasses, his back to the room. Naomi had told Tess once that he had a strict policy with catfighting (as he termed women’s disagreements): to intervene was to risk being clawed yourself.

  “Come on, you’re not going to sell up,” Naomi said at last, and Tess knew her well enough to know that she was steering them away from that ugly trading of slurs, in itself an acknowledgment of regret on her part. “It’s honestly not worth trying, Tess, not while this thing with Booth is going on. The Boulters were considering getting a valuation, but they’ve postponed for now. To be honest, I think we have to accept we’re in for the long haul with this guy.”

  Did Tess detect relish in her tone? Was it paranoia to imagine that calling meetings and coordinating complaints were Naomi and Ralph’s way of keeping Finn and Tess on the street, under their control?

  “Anyone can sell anything,” she said stonily. “It’s all just a matter of price.”

  “Of course.” Naomi shrugged, as if anything less than the best price was of no interest to her.

  “I ought to head off,” said a young voice from the kitchen door. Daisy. In their rancor, they’d forgotten the babysitter was still there.

  Ralph reentered the earth’s atmosphere then, satisfied presumably that Naomi was, as ever, victorious, queen of all women. He produced his wallet. “Has someone paid you?” he asked the poor girl. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

  * * *

  —

  She knew she wouldn’t sleep, even before the music started. Finn wanted to have sex, but Tess wanted to get a few things straight.

  “How does Naomi know we’re thinking about moving?”

  He groaned. “Do we have to talk about this? Anyway, we’re not moving yet, so let’s not make it into something it’s not.”

  “I’m just asking, because it would be quite useful to know: Is it no longer a subject we’re keeping private? Is any subject?”

  Finn resigned himself to the debrief. “It’s never private when it comes to property. People speculate all the time, even when they haven’t got a madman driving them out.”

  The worst part of it was that Naomi was right. It was crazy to imagine anyone would pay the market rate, let alone a premium, for a house two along from one that couldn’t be plainer in advertising itself as toxic if it had a sign on the door saying CONDEMNED. They were hostages to these people; it was as simple as that.

  “We’re not all martyrs. . . .” Her mind spun with the indignity of it, of Naomi’s clear wish to degrade her in front of the men, of Finn’s conspicuous lack of intervention, and she cut the conversation short, unable to look at him. His conscience evidently clear, he fell quickly asleep, with the soft nasal snore of a cat.

  Downstairs, Tuppy was howling. On his own behalf or on hers? she wondered. And why was she suddenly icy cold? Was she ill? The chill went through her arms and chest and settled deep within.

  She got out of bed and slipped on sheepskin slippers, the ones that looked like moccasins and that she sometimes wore outside. Then she closed the bedroom door behind her and crept downstairs.

  CHAPTER

  12

  SISSY

  None of this would have happened if you’d responded to complaints—you and the council. That’s right—you shake your head, deny everything. You don’t like hearing you’ve failed us, do you? Well, it’s too late now. Are you even aware that two lives were lost this morning, not one?

  MS. SISSY WATKINS, 2 LOWLAND WAY, INQUIRIES BY THE METROPOLITAN POLICE, AUGUST 11, 2018

  One day earlier

  When Amy phoned to say she had some news for Sissy, news she wanted to tell her in person, Sissy suggested she come for dinner and stay over. Pete had been delayed and wasn’t due to return from Aberdeen till the Saturday afternoon, so there was no reason to rush back to North London.

  Sissy had a horrible feeling the news was not going to be welcome. Aberdeen was to be replaced by Dubai, perhaps, or Jakarta, any future wedding vows exchanged before strangers on a far-flung beach.

  She didn’t think she could remember ever having been so exhausted, and it wasn’t simply the fact of having spent the day cleaning and preparing all three guest bedrooms, one for Amy and two for the following day’s B and B guests. No, it was also the weight of the warning she’d received from CitytoSuburb that morning, which had come in the form of an automated e-mail:

  Dear Property Owner,

  You may be aware that your property at 2 Lowland Way, Lowland Gardens, has received less-than-positive reviewer feedback recently. Poor ratings can lead to a drop in bookings.

  Be aware that CitytoSuburb
sets a minimum requirement of 100 nights’ bookings a year and you are falling short of this target.

  The following are ideas to boost your business. . . .

  The ideas included offering a gift with every booking made at least four weeks in advance. Food went down a treat: local honey or some homemade biscuits. She could then opt to pay CitytoSuburb to promote this on its site. Of course she could.

  A shame she couldn’t pay them to pour local honey down Darren Booth’s throat until he choked. Then she wouldn’t need a special offer.

  Nice house, nice host, shame about the place opposite, one guest had commented, succinctly. Three window boxes, which was as many as she could hope for these days.

  She’d approached Jodie that morning, a last-ditch attempt to make her consider a point of view beyond her own.

  “What’re we meant to do?” Jodie had asked, and her eyes clouded, the line between her eyebrows deepening. Sissy saw she was insulted, even hurt. “We’re only making a living, same as you.”

  “But my business doesn’t disrupt the street the way yours does,” Sissy said.

  “You don’t call chucking a brick at someone disrupting the street?” Jodie’s phone rang, ending the exchange before Sissy could decide whether to disclose the reason for her violence. Did Jodie know her husband spoke to neighbors the way he had to Sissy?

  She could no longer put off ringing her mortgage lender. “I wanted to talk about pausing my repayments for six months,” she told her appraiser. “Pause” was a verb Sissy used a lot these days; it was important to keep the faith that this dispute with the Booths had only suspended normality and not replaced it.

  “Let me just bring up your file, Mrs. Watkins, and check the conditions of your contract.”

  As if she were a convict out on parole.