The Perfect Neighbours
Page 1
The Perfect Neighbours
RACHEL SARGEANT
Copyright
KillerReads
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Copyright © Rachel Sargeant 2017
Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
Rachel Sargeant asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © December 2017 ISBN: 9780008276737
Source ISBN: 9780008276744
Version: 2017-12-11
To Fergus, Gillian, Jenny, Peter and Karen
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Fiona
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Fiona
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Fiona
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Fiona
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Fiona
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Part Two
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Fiona
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Fiona
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Fiona
Chapter 44
Part Three
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
PART ONE
1
Sunday, 19 December
The spotlight is set into the ceiling so prisoners can’t get at it. Helen’s head hurts from the glare but she doesn’t shield her eyes. The moment she closes them, the images will flood back. Jagged photos in a digital picture frame, moving upwards and sideways, repeating and holding. She doesn’t know which one will torment her first. If she’s lucky, it’s the child’s cello, on its back, neck broken, blood smeared around the sound holes.
But it could be the blood-cherry cheesecake. Or the matted, pink-black belly fur of the dead dog. Or the gaping crew-neck sweater oozing its obscene innards onto the parquet floor. Or Gary.
She sits on the edge of the bed, her arms cradling her knees. If she could focus on the cello, the rest might fade. She must grab the sticky instrument; drag it into view; admire the thickening stains on the polished wood; remember the small, expert hand that once pressed against the fingerboard; and strain to hear the soothing sound of his playing. But it won’t be enough to block out the other images. Seventeen days so far and nothing has dimmed.
She stands up and paces the floor, her joints grating from lack of exercise. They let her walk in the yard at the back of the police station, but the snow piled at the fence reminded her of the cell so she asked to go back in. White room. White loo in the corner, no seat or lid. The only stab of colour is the green button by the door. She presses it.
“Please, sit yourself. Your lawyer will visit you in a little time,” the desk sergeant tells her through the intercom.
No point in arguing; it’s doubtful his English is up to it and, even after eight months in the country, she’s still another expat Brit who can’t be bothered to learn German.
She flops onto the bed. The mattress smells like Marigold gloves. Washing-up, Gary doing the drying. But another view of Gary invades – folded ankles, empty expression, crimson shoulder. She fights the vision and tries to see Gary at their kitchen sink. Tries to make him smile. Make him speak. She curls up, exhausted by the effort.
The door bolts deactivate but she stays foetal. It’s the lawyer, Karola. The ruddy-faced neighbour who keeps spaniels in her back garden and waves at her on Mondays when they put their dustbins out. She’s Frau Barton to her now, the only bilingual German-trained lawyer the school can find at short notice. These days she’s more used to picking up dog poo than counselling women charged with murder.
Helen rolls towards the wall.
“Why didn’t you mention Sascha Jakobsen?” Karola asks.
The name shoots through Helen. She says nothing.
“He’s told the police that you were with him at the outdoor pool in Dortmannhausen.”
Helen sits up. “He said that?”
“The police searched the frozen pool site again. You’d better tell me everything,” Karola says, perching on the bed. Dark trouser suit, darker soul.
Helen draws her legs up, away from her. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“How long have you known Jakobsen?”
Why ask when she knows the answer? The school is a goldfish bowl and they both swim in it. Karola Barton knows every bit of her business. All the neighbours do, all the neighbours that are still alive.
Helen says: “It wasn’t like that.”
Karola stands up. The crease of her trousers is plumb-line vertical. “What was it like, Mrs Taylor?”
2
Monday, 5 April
Eight Months Earlier
Gary squeezed Helen’s hand. “Excited?”
She said nothing. Was she excited? New start in a new country. As a full-time wife. She managed a smile and nodded.
They drove off the A road – the Landstrasse as Gary called it – into a grey, built-up area. She thought of the coach trip she’d made with a Year 10 class to Bulgaria; communist-built apartment blocks on the outskirts of Sofia.
Gary pulled up at traffic lights and poi
nted. “And behind there is the Niers International School.”
Through the spike-topped metal fence on the right she made out rows of full bicycle stands. It looked like a provincial railway station.
“But you can’t see it properly from here,” he added.
A pot-bellied man in a dark uniform was standing by a sentry hut, the wooden roof scabby and cracked.
“You have guards?” she asked.
“Don’t mind Klaus. We have two full-time security men to patrol the site. The parents like it. Except our guys spend most of the time playing toy soldiers in their little house.”
Helen laughed until she noticed Ausländer Raus spray-painted on a bus shelter. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
The light went green, and they turned left.
“Foreigners Out – but you hardly ever see that stuff. Most of the Germans love the international school,” he said. “Lots of locals work here in support roles, and the parents spend good money in the town.”
He’d told her about the parents before. Most worked for big international companies in Düsseldorf, and others were rich locals prepared to pay for an English-speaking education. And some were teachers.
“Think about it, Helen,” Gary had said when they sat down with their pros and cons sheet on one of his weekend visits, agonizing over where to live. “Not yet, but in a few years, if we have children, it could be their school. There are so many perks, as well as the salary.”
That had been the clincher: Gary could earn more staying out here than the two of them put together in the UK. Helen had stopped being stubborn in light of the cold hard figures. She quit her job and put her house up for rent.
He went over a speed bump, and she felt the seatbelt rub against her collarbone.
“Have you noticed the street names?” He pointed at one, multisyllabic, a jumble of Ls and Es. “Can you read them?”
She shook her head. They had been driving non-stop since Calais. The traffic signs after the border into Germany had become a strident Teutonic yellow. Here the street names were in white, more like British ones, but they were unpronounceable.
Gary crawled along at 20 mph and seemed unfazed by the need to slalom his way around parked cars, playing children, and speed bumps. She glanced at his profile – round cheekbones, smooth jaw, patient eyes. Who would have thought affability could be so magnetic? Her stomach settled.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“About Birmingham.” Where they first met.
At the teachers’ conference in the university bar after the speeches, he’d been the gentle-faced man in the noisy crowd. The one everyone wanted to talk to. A kind of jig took place as people vied for a position next to him. And when he caught her looking and smiled, Helen – never normally part of a pack – took it as her cue to join the reel. By the end of the evening she and Gary were the only people still dancing.
“No regrets?” he asked.
Was she still scared about the move? It had taken her long enough to make up her mind. She stroked his arm and smiled. Not scared now; a little apprehensive, maybe.
“Nearly there,” he said. “You’ll love the neighbours. Polly and Jerome are great. They live across the way with their two girls. Jerome Stephens is head of science.”
After a couple more turnings he made a right into Dickensweg, a cul-de-sac of identical semi-detached houses. Unlike the grey of the Bulgarian patch they’d driven through, the houses had been painted lemon in the last decade and, as if by some unwritten rule, all the cars were parked on the left side of the road. Bicycles, trailers, and pushchairs were propped up against almost every front door as if soliciting at a car boot sale, and large yellow dustbins lurked on front lawns like Tupperware daleks.
A pink-faced man with big, white hair climbed out of a red sports car. Gary beeped the horn and gave him a thumbs up. “That’s our next-door neighbour, Chris Mowar. He’s head of art.”
The man crossed the road in front of them, bowed theatrically and disappeared into a house on the other side.
“Is everyone round here head of something?” she asked.
Gary nodded. “We’ve got the head of geography at number 4, although he’s hardly ever at home, and the school’s public relations manager at number 1. And the head teacher, of course.”
He touched the brake and pointed up the street. “Through that copse is Hardyweg, where the rest of the heads of department live. The weg bit means way. Dickens and Hardy. The town council re-named the streets in honour of the school thirty years ago. A nice gesture, don’t you think?”
Helen smiled. It did sound nice, welcoming. She felt mean for thinking the street looked shabby.
Three boys, dressed in T-shirts, shorts, and wellies, were playing with remote-controlled trucks in the road. Maybe they didn’t feel the cold. Helen zipped up her jacket.
Gary braked again. “I’d better not run them over; they’re the head teacher’s kids.”
The boys waved at the car and moved out of the way. Gary waved back and drove to the end of the road. Instead of another pair of semis, there was a large detached house with a magnificent wisteria that framed the front door, and sunny yellow shutters at every window. Number Ten declared the carved wooden plaque, with no sign anywhere of the ugly metal house numbers that Helen had seen on the other walls.
Warmth sped through her. Moving here was the right thing. They couldn’t have maintained a long-distance marriage for much longer. She was bound to get another teaching job. It might not be head of PE again but there would be something. In the meantime she could enjoy living in this beautiful house.
Gary reversed into the turning circle and moved back down the street.
“That one’s Damian and Louisa’s. Number Ten, that’s what we call it, like the prime minister’s place. We’re at number 5.”
“Damian and Louisa?”
“The head and his wife. Remember I talked about them.”
Helen swallowed her disappointment as he pulled up opposite a house displaying a lopsided metal 5, weed-ridden flower beds and a knocked-over bin. Twenty yards from her husband’s boss and his executive home.
3
Tuesday, 6 April
Something disturbed Helen. The warm mound under the bedclothes beside her was fast asleep. She turned over.
The ringing noise sounded again.
“Gary.” She nudged the duvet. “Doorbell.”
She’d woken up once already, and Gary had been standing by the window. Too tired to ask him what he was doing, she had gone back to sleep. Now he snuggled further down the bed.
“Gary?”
She climbed out and padded around in search of her robe. She slipped it over her naked body and headed downstairs. The doorbell rang again.
A perfect woman stood on the doorstep – sleek shoulder-length hair a shade of chestnut that only a top salon could make look natural, and flawless made-up skin. The woman’s eyes did a tour of her tousled hair, bare face, and ancient towelling dressing gown. Helen tugged at its hem but could do nothing to stop it ending mid-thigh.
“I’ll come in so you don’t catch cold,” the stranger said, stepping into the hall. She closed the front door and filled the air with eau de Chanel. Helen found herself apologizing for being in bed at eight thirty. Heat spread across her neck and cheeks. Why the self-conscious idiocy? It was her home now and she could sleep all day if she wanted.
“You’ve had a long journey, Helen. It’s understandable,” the woman said.
Helen tugged at her dressing gown again; the woman knew so much about her. Were they all nosy neighbours here? God, she hoped not.
“I’ve called round to let you know that I’m throwing your welcome party tonight. It’s seven for seven thirty. You don’t need to bring anything, this time. I’ve got Polly helping me, and Mel, of course, bless her.” She rolled her eyes. Without waiting for a response she opened the door to leave.
“But where …? I didn’t catch your name?” Helen
called.
The woman turned. “Hasn’t Gary mentioned me? I’m Louisa.” She headed down the path, stepping over the weeds between the paving slabs.
***
Helen squeezed Gary’s hand as they walked over the road to Louisa and Damian Howard’s house that evening. “Should we have brought something? It seems rude to turn up empty-handed.”
“Don’t worry about it. Louisa likes to make a fuss of new people. I suppose it’s what head teachers’ spouses do.” He pulled her towards him, smiling. “Come on, I can’t wait to show off my gorgeous wife.”
One of the children she’d seen in the road the previous day, a boy of about eight, opened the door.
“Hi, Toby,” Gary said.
The child was wearing a white shirt and black bow tie. “Super to see you,” he said, as if quoting from a script. “Let me take your coats. Oh, you haven’t got any.” He looked at a loss at this departure from what he’d rehearsed.
“Don’t worry, mate,” Gary said, patting his shoulder.
The hallway was vast and had the most amazing smell – some kind of herb. No sign of the functionally beige carpet that plagued the floors in Gary’s place. Louisa and Damian must have ripped theirs out and put down vinyl. When Helen looked closer, she realized it was solid wood. So this was Number Ten. She found herself placing the words in capital letters.