by Ese McGowan
‘The lorry,’ she explained. I look perplexed. ‘Over your driveway.’
‘Oh, what, oh.’ Yep, still wasn’t listening.
‘When we moved in.’
‘Yes, sorry. I’m not with it. Welcome to the neighbourhood or whatever people say,’ I said. Pretty sure no one says that but that’s the gist of how the conversation went, nominally that I wasn’t fazed by her.
‘I’m Alicia and Joel’s around somewhere, knocking the odd nail in the wall, probably.’
‘Ok,’ I said, suddenly wanting to close the door. I didn’t feel like small talk. I was tired. I made small talk all and every day at work. At home, by the sea, with fairly nosey neighbours who have too much time on their hands watching people, I preferred not to.
For some reason I didn’t want to tell her my name. I was in a funny mood and it was becoming funnier. Snap out of it. She seems nice enough, if you like that sort of person, all smiles and my God, heralding the cleanest, neatest set of nails I had ever seen adorning a woman’s hands. She wasn’t a woman who knew hard work, you could see that about her, believe me.
‘Well, I just wanted to say hello but I can see you’re busy,’ she said looking at me, bedraggled with my dressing gown half hanging off my shoulder and it wouldn’t have looked entirely out of place had I held a bottle of rum, out of kilter in the hand that swung limply to my side but of course it was nothing like that. She had caught me at a bad moment. I was tired and that’s all that was. It will look nothing like the version she serves you.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said, now feeling dreadful for being so discourteous because at the time I did feel bad about it. ‘I’m Erin.’
‘Do you live here alone?’ she asked me.
‘Oh, no, with Adam. He isn’t here. He’s at work,’ I said, still being awkward. I couldn’t help it. I was embarrassing myself. And then, what I should never have done but invariably always did, I over compensated for it. ‘Why don’t you both come over tonight, for a drink? You can meet Adam. He’ll be back by then.’ I wish I hadn’t done that.
‘We’d love to.’ Shit. She snapped at the chance. No going back now, I thought. ‘Gives us a break from unpacking. It takes so long, doesn’t it?’ I nodded. Is she going now or is she about to force me into more sober small talk with her? ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it. What time do you want us?’
Want was not the word I would have used for it. ‘About 8. That good?’
‘Lovely,’ she said, finally backing away, retreating, stepping over the wall instead of around the path. That was a precedent, the hop, that I wanted, right there and then, stamped out. I did not want the super friendly neighbour reaching over from her door to mine at the sound of me latch lifting. One foot on her side and one on mine. She was pushy. That’s how she started out. Pushy.
Adam said very little when I told him about the surprise guests coming over later. He was a sociable guy but seldom so at home so it didn’t seem unusual for him to react like that. He was only keen when we were having our closest friends over, although now I think about it, that never happened and I don’t have any close friends anymore.
I set about to frantically tidy the house, mostly sweeping up the mounds of laundry scattered on the bedroom floor, the bathroom and anywhere else we had casually cast things off, coming home late or leaving early. Once in the kitchen I grimaced at the state of the cafetière. It was mouldy. That’s the problem with a burgeoning springtime, high humidity and chilly post-winter houses, you know what I mean? Let’s hope they don’t hang around long enough to want coffee, I remember thinking, not that I have to offer it to them. I should throw this thing away, I thought. Can’t be hygienic running hot soapy water through it, through the sieve section which had grown a lawn of mould. But then, why not? It’s not like I got a warm fuzzy feeling about her when she landed on my doorstep. Not that I’m suggesting at all that I was wishing her dead. Quite the opposite. I mean she was ok, she is ok, it’s just I’ve always had this hard and fast rule that I would never become too involved with any neighbour as once it sours, the relationship, as they so often do, it’s not like you can get away from them that easily. You can move house but that’s one hell of an expensive solution to it. Maybe she’ll be ok, I thought and of course there’s her other half, this Joel bloke, maybe he’s interesting, decent and maybe I’m too intolerant of people when I haven’t had enough sleep. I’m sure I knew a Joel once. No, I thought, must have been an actor on the telly and so I cast the thought aside.
‘Just drinks, right?’ asked Adam, interrupting my thoughts and in a tone that was fastidiously harsh, deliberately so.
‘What— oh, yeah, drinks, that’s all I said.’
‘So why you going mad cleaning up?’ He asked me, kicking a shoe across the floor in a defined act to show his disagreement with my new arrangement with the frump blonde next door.
‘You could help, you know,’ I sneered. He could help, he won’t help but I am not helping the situation by being antagonistic with him and he’ll no doubt tell me that.
‘Why do you have to get so stressed? I was only asking you a question Erin,’ he said caustically, and that, right there, was his explicit expression of resentment that I had stupidly invited over the new neighbours, or so I thought.
‘Sorry,’ I corrected my tone. ‘I don’t want them thinking we’re a couple of slobs.’
‘We are a couple of slobs,’ he continued. ‘Slobs who work long hours,’ he told me as I gathered up the random shoe and hunted under the sofa for the partner to the pair. ‘How much more are you going to do?’
‘Does it matter?’ I hissed. I hated cleaning up at the best of times and cleaning up under criticism and a deadline was worse.
‘Yes it matters,’ he said, his mood frothing over to his bad place. ‘I need to relax Erin and you’re neurotic tidying is stressing me out.’
‘Adam if you need to relax so badly, why don’t you go upstairs, or out, go get some nibbles or something?’
‘Nibbles? Are we seriously doing that? I’m not playing along with this keeping up with the Jones’ bullshit. Stop tidying up.’ I ignored him. He was being petulant. He was putting on a good show of it anyway. ‘What time they coming?’
‘Eight.’
‘For how long?’
‘Jesus.’
‘That’s not what I asked you. Don’t go dressing up.’
‘Oh,’ I thought, thinking how he’s joking around, isn’t he? ‘Does it matter what I wear?’ I said rather sarcastically. He had been doing or saying this sort of thing more and more lately and I was finding it a little suffocating.
‘No, all right, I just don’t want some big fuss,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel like having people over, that’s all.’
‘Nor do I and don’t ask me why I suggested it. I was trying to get her off the doorstep.’ He pulled the, “are you shitting me with this?” face. I looked at his grimace. ‘Don’t say anything. It’s like my mouth went rogue. I had no control,’ I continued, ‘What are you going to wear anyway?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied.
‘I hope something.’ I could just imagine the look of horror on Miss Prissy Arse’s face when he opens the door to her and her husband Joel, in the nude. They’ll think we’re swingers, which, when I think about it, could have been a good way of ridding them from our lives and raising the brick wall between us. Unless they are swingers in which case the whole episode will be seismically awkward, more than it already is, I told myself. They were something but I hadn’t realised that then. I hadn’t realised who they were.
‘This?’ he said, pulling on his t-shirt. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It’s Saturday. I am not dressing up for some random neighbour who I don’t even want to meet.’
‘You slept in that t-shirt.’
‘I did,’ he confirmed defiantly, proudly.
‘Ok then,’ I said, struggling with the jumbled garments in my arms. ‘I’ve lost interest in this now. I’m knackered. I’m going to chuck this in the
bedroom. She won’t look up there will she?’
‘What?’ he looked horrified or at least gave me the impression he was. ‘What the hell would she be doing going upstairs? We’re not selling her the sodding house.’
But when she arrived, it kind of felt that way.
The clock struck 8pm at the doorbell rang instantly. Who does that? Who is that exacting? Alicia Mason, that’s who. Nonetheless, I still kept an open mind about her. You have to believe me.
***
Adam and I had hit up two shots of Sambuca before the doorbell chimed. We both threw each other a look of dread, neither of us wanting to answer the door, one of us determined to ignore it so I took the charge and greeted them, in my best possible fake cheerfulness, which was so contrived it was pitiful. But the point is that I made an effort.
‘Are we early?’ she asked deliberating on my strained smile.
‘No, course not, come in,’ I said, ushering them through, remembering a Portuguese friend of mine telling me once that if a guest shuts your front door instead of you when they visit, it’s a sure sign they’ll be back again and welcomed in. Alicia, though, did a double take, off footing me, as she drew herself back to the camelia in near bloom, bushing out at the edge of the light cold grey stone step leading up to our door and without any ability to mitigate her destruction of my Portuguese sage advice, she clamped her hand on the front door and closed it behind her as she crossed our threshold. My heart sank. You get a feeling about people. I had one about her.
Now they were in the kitchen and I hadn’t even had the hello, I’m the husband, neighbour crap, how do you do.
‘Sambuca?’ offered Adam. No, do not give them that for crying out loud.
‘We know each other,’ declared Alicia. Another sinking of my heart. This threw me completely and this was the moment when doubt began to really creep in. What was going on here? I don’t believe in coincidences. Do you?
‘Do we—?’ he said, and whether this was a pretence or not, I thought at the time, I really didn’t know but it sounded genuine. But he had never been genuine. It’s impossible for him.
Joel reached out his hand, ‘I’m Joel by the way.’ Adam shook the outstretched palm while quizzically pulling his brain open for an answer to Alicia’s claim.
‘Control, I was the make-up artist.’ Now I’m standing, leaning over the counter, wishing it was high enough for me to topple back from it. This was not information that comforted me at all, not one bit. ‘And you were the set builder, right?’
‘Right!’ he exclaimed, as if this was a good thing. ‘Man that was hard work and I thought that job was going to be a breeze and what about Leila eh, and her tantrums?’
Leila was the actress and I’d heard all about her. Demure and calm publicly and total anarchic bitch behind the scenes. I had a sense that Alicia might have found a kindred spirit in her.
‘Oh. My. God,’ enunciated Alicia. Annoyingly. She was irksome to me anyhow. ‘All she did was moan, moan, moan; and she complained about me,’ she laughed emphasising the “me”, ‘to the director. I nearly got thrown off the set!’
‘You’re kidding me?’ Adam had forgotten that anyone else was in the room. He was leaning over, resting on the table top with a full tank of attention on Alicia and she was sucking out every inch of his gaze.
‘No, seriously, it was a living nightmare with her,’ she blabbered on and how those two laughed and merrily shared shots, gabbing away and all the while I was stuck playing the awkward unofficial guest with Joel who had zero interest in talking to me. Something about him made me distinctly ill at ease. It was as if I knew him and saying that, it’s important here that you know something about me. When bad things happen to me, I blank them out and even if it’s thrust in front of me and the sirens are blaring out the reality I can still find it hard to recall something traumatic.
Each time I asked him a banal yet polite question he briefly answered whilst focussing an ear, eagerly latching onto every word from Adam and Alicia, poised to interject with ever so unfunny comments. He was concertedly avoiding looking at me and talking to me. I would not have been able to tell you what colour his eyes were. And his face was so hirsute with the beard that I could barely fathom his skin tone. The whole atmosphere, for me, was pungently unpleasant. It felt like I should leave my own house. So I became rather hideously drunk, rather swiftly and shared company with the toilet bowl and not before long. And if you think that this all makes sense now, it doesn’t. I rarely get so drunk that I’m sick from it. I have blackouts, according to Adam yet I don’t remember having them. But they’ll all tell you differently now, I’ll bet on that.
Finally, and I think it was a good two, three hours later, the front door slammed shut, decorated with laughter and chat over how great it was to see each other again and heralding how wonderful it was to finally have some fun neighbours, some interesting neighbours, some great neighbours after all this time and so loudly that all the other neighbours, (who Adam had now characterised as being boring, dull, lacklustre) would now hear him and never speak to us again. Some of these neighbours had become friends, like Dana. And again, how wrong was I about her? Obviously I wasn’t party to the joy of suburban living discussed on our doorstep.
I continued to vomit and swore I would never again drink sambuca. And I haven’t.
The ensuing weekend had been a draining weekend with all the thudding and banging on the walls coming from the ever so interesting new neighbours and I was glad to be back at work, albeit for a day, and gladder still to be home from work, the following Monday, from here on in.
Shattered, I called out to Adam whose job had been cancelled due to Air Traffic Control striking and mostly but also because the virus had begun to spread. It was quite nice thinking he’d be here, with me, all week long for a change. It was a seldom event.
I wasn’t sure why at that point, over those weeks, the company I was working for had me homebound a little more each week until that was me entirely. And I don’t remember having a conversation with them about it, only Adam. He’d locked me down long before we ever really know the virus was virulent in this country. He did that. I know that now.
Yes, and you will ask me why I appeared to be quite happy with him until Alicia and Joel moved in next door. That all the trouble started once they had moved in. That everything sounds an awful lot like I was paranoid and jealous. But when you have been with someone who is so controlling over you, you begin to believe in the myth. You believe that the control is a protective ring around you. That he will never let anyone else hurt you even though he hurts you all the time. And this time was different. His mind had travelled from me to another woman. That ring had been broken. I was scared. He didn’t need me, want me, not even to control me, not like he had anyway.
So I felt a little deflated when he failed to answer. Must have gone out somewhere, supermarket probably, I concluded, thinking nothing much about it at the time and yet thinking everything about it deep down.
I opened the back door, to let the air in. It was stuffy in here. It was still cold enough for the heating to be on, every so often, but the strength of the sunlight charging through the windows ramped up the heat and crumpled the dried-out air into an unpleasant stagnant mustiness.
Adam was outside, which surprised me. I could hear his voice but I couldn’t see him.
He was next door. With Alicia Mason. They were marvelling at the enormous shed Joel had installed at the bottom of the garden. It was the size of a small house and grimly overbearing. He was going to start an illegal horticultural business in it.
They didn’t notice me, Adam and Alicia. I watched them interact. For some reason I choked. Not literally like I couldn’t breathe but choked in as far as I couldn’t speak. I didn’t feel comfortable yelling out to my fiancé, saying hello, being jolly, being relaxed, being ok with him hanging out with Alicia, Little Miss New. Instead I ran upstairs to look at them through the window. To spy on them. And yes, when she tells you I had a
problem with her, I did. She was throwing herself at my fiancé and I didn’t like it much. Would you? And no, I didn’t think how lucky I actually was, that this moment could be the moment I became free of Adam a new beginning for me. It wasn’t as simple as that. I didn’t know then – I didn’t understand how much my life had become policed by him. I thought I was happy.
I’m just telling you how it was for me. I need to paint this picture. I’m being honest.
I’m lying. I have lied a lot in my life.
It was an awful sight. The almost prim version of Alicia I had met that first time on the doorstep, when she had knocked on the door and introduced herself, had been extinguished and in its place sat a short skirted, tight-fitted shirted woman of horror visions. And this new version was all over Adam. She may as well have been sitting on his lap. The giggling between them was nauseous. Gag making. So over the top. So full on. So much more than he and I had been doing for a long time. Months. Years even. It was like watching a magpie rip my boyfriend from our once happy, once secured nest and I wasn’t about to let her do that. She wasn’t better than me, was she? Is she? And all the neighbours will testify to her doing that. They were really loud and no one else was outside. They must have seen this nauseous display. The street was full of vicious spies waiting for a human meltdown to happen. It’s better than what’s on TV you see.
I caught my reflection in the mirror. My stressed contorted face cut an unpleasant image. I looked unattractive. She made me feel unattractive. My hair was a mess. I hadn’t cut it, not even styled it or even tried to for some time. My make-up was half-heartedly applied. My clothes, creased, bedraggled. And I was out of shape. I wasn’t over weight but neither was I toned. Had I taken him for granted? Been so confident that he was mine that I had stopped bothering to look good for him? Maybe. Or did he do that to me? I admit I did ask myself these questions and all the while I heard laughter, more laughter. It was crippling me. I could sense the insecurity seep over me like a gentle wave rippling in, pulling the tide closer, edging in slowly, building into a heavy springtide, one that might very well drown me. They were ripping off my self-esteem and they damn well knew what they were doing.