“Mel’s caught in the crossfire between you and the Howards. Let her eat her meal in peace.”
He hesitated as if her words might be getting through to him. He narrowed his eyes again. “It’s always the innocent who suffer. But someone pays in the end.” He strode away.
As she climbed the stairs back to the café, she overheard the neighbours.
“Helen’s too headstrong,” Chris said.
“Mel wouldn’t have got in this mess if it wasn’t for her,” Louisa said.
“Thick as thieves,” Damian said.
When Helen approached the table, they fell silent.
***
Helen challenged Gary when they got back to their hotel room. “I heard what you were saying, you know.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“That’s the point. Not one single word in my defence.”
“We all saw you talking to him,” Gary said, throwing his T-shirt on the floor. His neck was pasty in contrast to his pink face.
“What’s it to you? For some reason he has a grudge against Louisa. Why do you have to get involved? Or do you know what’s made him come all this way to stalk her?”
He looked away, avoiding her glare. “Of course, I don’t know. But he must be unhinged, can’t you see that? You could be …” His voice trailed off. “Forget it.”
“What? Say it.”
Gary sighed, still not catching her eye. “You could be leading him on.”
Her hands trembled as she unbuttoned her clothes, raging at his accusation, but angrier still that there might be truth in it. Palm to palm. “To set the record straight, I persuaded Sascha to leave. I wish I hadn’t bothered.”
She slipped into bed and switched off her lamp. When Gary got in, they turned their backs towards each other, a cold trench of no man’s land between them. For all the arguing, she sensed that they were still in the calm before the storm.
She woke at 2 a.m. when Gary went to the bathroom. He spent an age in there. It was their second night in the ski resort but the change of scene hadn’t cured his night-time restlessness.
18
Monday, 31 May
The hotel restaurant was busy the next morning, so breakfast was a noisy affair that Helen welcomed as it disguised the rifts in their group. She barely spoke to Gary, Louisa barely spoke to anyone and no one spoke to Mel. When they sat down with their ham and rolls from the buffet, Chris made an announcement.
“As you can see, I had a touch too much sun yesterday.” He jutted out his raw-coloured chin and soaked up their attention. “So to avoid damaging my youthful good looks permanently, I’m heading back north this morning.”
“That’s a shame,” Damian said. His face was neutral, but Helen had the oddest feeling he sounded pleased. Or was she projecting onto Damian her own gleeful relief at Chris’s proposed departure?
“Don’t be silly, Chris, I have plenty of spare sunblock. The same brand the Royals take to Klosters,” Louisa said.
Chris shook his head. “What I’d really like you to do for me is look after Mel.”
“I’m not coming with you?” Mel asked, her voice becoming a squeak.
Chris raised his hand to show he hadn’t finished speaking. “And at the end of the week you can give her a lift back.”
“I’m afraid we can’t help on that score. The dog cage is still in the boot. We can’t transport your wife in that,” Damian said. The men and Louisa laughed. Mel peered desolately into her orange juice.
“We’ll take you home,” Helen said.
The laughter stopped dead.
“Generous offer,” Chris said, “but are we safe putting both our double agents in the same car?”
Mel’s shoulders trembled.
Chris rested his hand on her arm. “I was only joking,” he said softly. He stroked her hair and she leant on his shoulder. Helen hadn’t thought him capable of such tenderness.
He pulled away from Mel. “Bye all, and make sure you behave yourselves.” His eyes lingered on Damian as he spoke. Damian’s suntanned face went a shade darker.
Chris gave a smirk and left without another word to the wife he’d been comforting a moment earlier.
“Perhaps we could all stay together on the nursery slopes this morning,” Helen said. “The boys can show us their slalom racing.”
Gary declared his support for Helen’s idea. He squeezed her hand. Was it a step towards an apology for not defending her the night before? She’d need more than that. She retrieved her hand.
***
The slalom races started off well despite Louisa’s attempts to instil competitive spirit into Murdo. “Stop eating the snow, poppet, and bend your knees. Don’t let the others lap you.”
“Leave him. He’s enjoying himself,” Damian said.
Toby won everything: short and long slaloms, and a race with mini hills to vault. He was set to try a jump over a bigger hill until Louisa forbade him lest he injure his cello hands. He threw himself angrily into the snow so Louisa organized a race for Leo and Murdo without him. Leo won it but Louisa was ecstatic for Murdo. “You were second, my little man. What a clever boy you are. Murdo’s the champion,” she chanted.
“Well done, Leo,” Damian called.
The final race was to be a combination of slalom and jumps. On Damian’s insistence, Louisa allowed Toby to join in as long as he was careful. The three boys hunched forward ready for Louisa’s order to start. A figure skied across their course and sprayed the adult spectators with loose snow as he stopped dead.
“Guten Morgen Zusammen. Bin ich spät dran?” Sascha Jakobsen raised his ski mask. “Good morning everyone. Am I late?”
Louisa gasped and slid backwards on her skis.
“Get lost,” Damian said, pulling Louisa towards him in a protective gesture. He clenched his fists and his thick ski mittens resembled boxing gloves.
Sascha skied up to Toby. “Is this the start line?”
“Keep away from my children,” Damian yelled.
The shout acted like a slap across the face. Sascha stopped smiling and skied down to Damian. “I would never hurt a child.”
To Helen’s surprise, the anger faded from Damian’s face and he looked unsure of himself.
“Let’s start the race,” Gary said with surprising enthusiasm. He didn’t catch Helen’s eye. She had the feeling that his jolly intervention was to rescue Damian from something she didn’t understand.
Sascha skied back to the children. There was a look of mirth in his eyes. He’d found another way to antagonize the Howards: through their children. It was a low blow. Helen shook her head, slowly, to show her contempt, but he didn’t respond.
“Are you ready?” he said to the children. “Auf die Plätze, fertig, los.” He set off down the course. Murdo followed him but Toby and Leo looked to their parents.
Louisa shouted: “Murdo, come to Mummy. We’re going home.” She threw down her ski sticks. “We’re all going home.”
Toby and Leo burst into tears.
***
The neighbours met in the hotel car park an hour later and loaded their cars, the silence broken only by the children’s sniffs and sobs.
Damian suggested they drive back in convoy but Helen persuaded him that it might be easier if they went their separate ways. She had frightening recollections of the trip down the A8 Autobahn when Gary had dodged HGVs with his foot to the floor attempting to keep up with boy racers Damian and Chris.
Mel climbed into the back of Gary’s car. Helen noticed that she ran her hands underneath the seats and along the seatbelt strap and buckle before she fastened it. A bit OCD as well, then.
Whenever Helen tried to make conversation, she’d nod or shake her head. She spoke once, to ask why they’d stopped, when Gary turned off his engine at the border into Germany.
“Traffic jam. We might have to show our passports.”
Through the wing mirror, Helen could see her fumbling with her handbag. She clutched her passport.
/> “We’re moving again.” Gary started the engine.
They had a couple of stops at motorway service stations on the eight-hour journey. Mel followed Helen to the toilets. Helen tried a quip about Damian’s reckless driving making Louisa lay another egg, but couldn’t rekindle the intimacy of the joke they’d shared in Austria. Mel stared at the floor and said nothing. It was like having a sulky child in tow. By the time they drove into Lindenallee, she’d been asleep for a good two hours.
“What’s going on?” Helen asked. They were in a queue of at least fifteen cars. Ahead they could see temporary traffic lights and the swirling blue of a stationary police van. Mel stirred in the back but remained asleep. After a while, the car at the front of the queue moved on.
“They’re letting us through one at a time,” Gary said.
They watched as the driver on the opposite side of the road got out to open his bonnet and boot. A police officer peered in.
“I wonder what’s happened,” Helen said.
“We’ll find out in a minute. There’s an officer coming down the line to speak to the drivers.”
Another car was let through before the German policeman reached Gary’s window. Gary wound it down.
“Good evening, sir. Where are you going to?” the officer said in English, presumably having noticed the England footie badge on their windscreen. Gary replied in German. The officer smiled in relief and launched into a speech which Helen couldn’t understand.
When the officer moved on, Gary explained: “There’s been a bomb scare at the school. They’re searching all the cars leaving the neighbourhood.”
Mel was wheezing heavily on the back seat.
“Do you need to get out?” Helen said.
Mel shook her head.
“You’ll be home in five minutes, back with Chris. You can have a lie-down.”
When they reached the lights, another police officer waved them straight through.
19
Tuesday, 1 June
“I’ve made you some toast,” Gary whispered.
Helen yawned. “Thanks, but I was planning on sleeping through breakfast today.”
“Louisa’s called a meeting to discuss yesterday.”
Helen sat up in bed. “Don’t tell me that woman runs the local police force while she’s waiting for her jam to set?”
“Not the bomb scare. She wants to talk about the stalker. She’s invited the whole street.”
“Why does she have to involve the neighbours in her quarrel? It’s got nothing to do with us.”
Gary sighed. “Don’t start, Helen. Let’s pull together and support her. She’d do the same for you.” He left the bedroom before she could continue the argument.
***
“Gary, nice to see you,” Louisa said, answering the door, “both,” she added belatedly.
Napoleon padded into the hall and came straight to Helen. She rubbed his belly as he wagged his tail in ecstasy. Given the choice, she would have stayed with the dog, but she followed Louisa and Gary into the lounge.
There were strains of violin and cello scales coming from behind the closed music room door, and Murdo was occupied with Lego on the lounge floor. Whatever power Louisa thought she wielded over the street, it wasn’t evident here; she hadn’t drummed up a quorum. She explained that the Bartons from number 1 were at work. As the school’s PR manager, Geoff Barton had been called in to deal with press enquiries about the bomb scare, and his wife, Karola, a native German speaker, was helping him. The geography teacher from number 4 had gone on a half-term holiday with his girlfriend. The Garcias at number 3 and the Stephens at number 8 were also away. There’d been no reply from the Greek household. Louisa offered no explanation for her husband, Damian’s, absence. Helen wondered if he was showing Shelly Sweetheart their holiday snaps.
“But Manfred’s here.” Louisa turned to the old man standing by the patio doors. “I’ll get you some tea, Manfred.” She formed her hands into a cup and saucer and mimed having a drink.
Chris, who’d been pretending to film Murdo with a camera he’d made out of the Lego, said: “Mel and I would like coffee.” His face was still pink and his forehead was flaking. Mel sat beside him on the sofa.
From the kitchen, Louisa produced a tray laden with cafetière, teapot and cups and instructed Gary and Helen to help themselves. She stood in the middle of the room and clapped her hands. “I’ve called you here to discuss what’s to be done about the stalker. The man is so fixated, he hounded us into another country.”
Helen looked at the others, but they were listening and nodding. Was no one ever going to challenge Louisa’s word? Sascha had interrupted their holiday but he wasn’t responsible for them being in Austria, for leaving Germany. How much longer could Helen live in the same pen with these sheep bleating after Louisa? She stayed silent, but the effort of suppressing her annoyance left fingernail marks in her palms.
“As you know, he destroyed our garden last year, and now he’s back,” Louisa continued. “He inveigled his way onto my property by duping a naive newcomer – I’m sure you won’t mind me saying that, Helen – by tricking her into thinking he worked at the school. Goodness knows what damage he would have caused if I hadn’t chased him away.”
Helen poured herself a coffee, trying hard to hold the jug steady as she trembled with fury. Her recollection was that Sascha had been outside the garden with the naive newcomer when Louisa had come out of the house screeching.
Louisa went on: “He knows when we’re at home, when we go out, what cars we drive, where our children play. None of us is safe.”
Mel’s cup slipped, and she spilt coffee on her skirt.
“Go and splash cold water on yourself and give me that before you spill more,” Louisa said. She took Mel’s cup from her as she left the room “Not only did he trick Helen – who was new and could be forgiven to some extent – he also manipulated Mel into telling him where we were going this week. Goodness only knows what pressure he brought to bear on the poor thing.”
Helen swallowed a sneer. So Mel’s a poor thing now, is she? A definite improvement on the slow person that Louisa judged her to be in Austria.
Mel re-entered the room with a big wet patch across her skirt and took her place beside Chris.
Louisa was in full flow. “He’s almost certainly mentally ill. He must be on drugs, or a dealer.”
Chris took Mel’s hand. “If you ask me,” he said, “this stalker character is capable of anything. I wouldn’t put it past him to be behind the bomb scare.”
“How could he have done it? He was with us in Austria.”
“He wasn’t with us, Helen. Get that notion right out of your head,” Louisa said.
“He could have made the call from Austria having planted the fake device on Saturday before he left here,” Chris said.
“You mean someone made a fake bomb? It wasn’t just a kid making a crank call?” Gary said.
“Klaus, the security guard, told me someone rigged a box of wires to vibrate in a bin outside the refectory,” Chris said, standing up and taking the floor. “It wasn’t a kid at all. The hoax call was made in English to the guards’ office by a man with a German accent.”
“Anyone can put on a German accent,” Helen said. She looked at Chris, running his hand through his hair. And anyone could quit their holiday with sunburn, drive like the wind from Austria and rig up a toy bomb – especially a wannabe moviemaker with a secret project, who loved to push people’s buttons.
20
Wednesday, 23 June
Helen was used to waking up without Gary’s warmth beside her; it was weeks since he’d slept through the night. His nocturnal tapping on the games controller was so much the norm that she no longer got up to check on him. But tonight, the coldness went beyond physical discomfort and seeped through to her core. Did all marriages go cold? Was it inevitable that something or someone would spread ice over a once hot union? Louisa Howard? Sascha Jakobsen? Or had the chill set in the min
ute she chose husband above career? Whatever the catalyst, she worried that they might become a mismatched pair of skaters, sliding towards each other and dodging apart before impact. The thaw was on its way; the ice would shatter, and they would slip through the cracks.
Despite her inner cold, she was sweating. She went to the bathroom and closed the door, not wanting Gary to hear her. This action pricked at her heart. There had been a time not that long ago, if one had heard the other, they would have taken them back to bed and made love. Neither seemed willing to initiate much anymore.
The cold flannel made her flinch when she pushed it under her arms. She could hear sloshing sounds next door. One of the Mowars was awake. She realized that she hadn’t seen Mel for days. Was she away?
She went back to bed. When light glowed peach through the school-issue floral curtains, she decided to get up and go for a run along the river. She found Gary asleep in front of a paused computer game, one of his arms stretched across his body, cupping the side of the chair. He’d get a bad back but she couldn’t face waking him and having to talk. She laid a blanket over him and went downstairs.
***
She set off for her run. Not that she cared, but there was no chance of bumping into Louisa as she’d gone to America for a shopping trip with some girlfriends. Helen loved Louisa’s girlfriends. It was the third time they’d lured her away. She thought of the comment about Louisa’s trips that she’d overheard Damian make in the restaurant. Was he jealous? She didn’t have him down as the possessive type, but who knew what happened behind the gleaming shutters of Number Ten?
She ran round a pile of dog turd, still soft but there was no sign of the culprit. Louisa once suspected dog walkers of letting their pets do it on her lawn. The problem disappeared after she put out chilli-laced dog food. Helen had felt a moment of unity with her neighbour.
A cat was toying with a dead sparrow. When it saw her, it stalked off with some of the entrails in its jaws. It was the first cat she’d seen for months. Her neighbours were dog people. For a delicious moment she thought of getting a cat but she preferred dogs too.
The Perfect Neighbours Page 9