The Sudden Departure of the Frasers

by Louise Candlish

  ‘Fuck you,’ the bear told him, but he did at least retreat, blundering down his pathway towards the front door.

  Felicity, plainly distressed, fled to her friend’s car without a word to either man, leaving the second neighbour alone on the pavement as she slipped into the passenger seat and closed the door between them. As the car pulled away, with all the urgency of a getaway vehicle, her companion could be seen speaking animatedly, her features hot with outrage, and Christy could tell from Felicity’s slumped shoulders that she was very shaken by what had just happened. How awful to have to leave your home in this way, to have your private goodbyes ambushed!

  Who was this horrible man? This man who might no longer be Felicity’s neighbour but was most assuredly theirs? Hearing the crashing footsteps and slammed door that signified his withdrawal to his cave, she found that she was breathing harder than usual.

  At last, the second neighbour turned away, his expression troubled but weathered, almost as if he were a bouncer and skirmishes of this sort routine. Clearly there’d been some adjustment to his attitude since that display of passion earlier in the week. Christy watched him go down the path of number 42, from which she deduced he was Caroline’s husband.

  ‘They’ve obviously had a serious falling-out,’ she told Joe, when he emerged from the shower to her breathless eyewitness account. Though she’d moved from the window, her eyes returned to it as she spoke, as if to a screen.

  ‘Who has?’

  ‘Felicity and the guy upstairs. Maybe that’s why she decided to sell. She must really have a problem with him. He was saying, “I didn’t do anything!”’

  ‘Good for him,’ Joe said mildly, and he began towelling his hair with such energy she felt beads of water sprinkle her skin. ‘He probably didn’t do anything.’

  ‘I’m not sure he’s the one whose honour we should be defending,’ she said earnestly, and settled on the edge of their unmade bed, her back turned deliberately to the temptations of the window. ‘The other man was obviously on her side. He’s the same one I saw yelling up at the window on Monday. I think he’s married to the woman I had a run-in with last week, Caroline.’

  But it was clear from Joe’s expression that he had no memory of her having told him about the earlier incident and that this subsequent drama held no interest for him. ‘What shall we do this weekend?’ he said, dressing.

  ‘What do you want to do? You’re the one who’s worked fourteen-hour days this week.’ Joe’s salary may have been capped, but his working hours appeared not to have been; rather, thanks to a merger between two pharmaceutical companies that necessitated all hands to deck, his hours had increased to encompass all waking ones.

  His head emerged through the neck of a T-shirt. ‘I quite fancy just hanging out in my new house. Watch the football.’

  ‘We might have to make that a box set.’ They still awaited satellite and Internet services; without them, it sometimes felt as if the house were only half alive. ‘And there’s some leftover chilli in the freezer. Let’s challenge ourselves to not spending a bean.’

  ‘Only eating them? I like this crazy talk.’ He joined her on the bed, his arm around her waist. ‘Are we allowed alcohol?’

  ‘I believe we have stocks, yes.’

  ‘Thank God for that. There are some things I really can’t give up.’ He sprang to his feet and she watched him return his damp towel to the rail in the en suite (the Frasers’ impeccable standards were rubbing off on him, evidently), wondering if she should have encouraged the arm around the waist. There were activities that came free of charge, after all.

  ‘I know, let’s invite them all over for drinks,’ she said in sudden inspiration.

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘The neighbours, of course. We should have done it as soon as we moved in. They don’t seem a very happy bunch, do they? It might be just what they need.’

  Joe looked doubtful. ‘Or just what they don’t need.’

  ‘Come on, let’s be the sociable ones. I’ll put cards through their doors this weekend. How about Friday night? Can you make sure you’re back early? Or at least by seven-thirty?’

  Joe sighed. ‘I’ll try.’

  She wrote notes to the occupants of the three houses on either side of them, as well as to several across the road, inviting everyone to come at 8 p.m. on Friday; after some hesitation, she addressed one to the upper flat at number 38. Conveniently, the twin landmarks of new home and Joe’s promotion had furnished them with enough gifts of sparkling wine to cater for the occasion, and glassware stocks were easily supplemented with cheap flutes from the supermarket. She spent her evenings producing her limited repertoire of baked snacks – Parmesan breadsticks and cheese straws, which were, she was the first to admit, virtually the same thing – and trying not to eat the economy caramels she’d heaped into a rather nice blue Moroccan bowl found at the back of a kitchen cupboard, presumably overlooked by the Frasers in their haste to leave.

  At first no one RSVPed. Then, on the Wednesday evening, a neighbour she hadn’t seen before called by and introduced herself: Liz from number 41. She was in her early forties, her dark hair worn in a pixie cut that accentuated tired eyes, the reason for which was presumably the pre-school infant who dangled from her cuff.

  ‘I just wanted to say thank you for your invitation.’ She spoke with the same self-confidence as Caroline, the same faintly defensive tone of a woman accustomed to living on high-status streets like this and not about to share the privilege with any old incomer.

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ Christy beamed. Behind Liz the spring twilight glowed, birdsong wobbling on the breeze, and she felt a sudden rush of optimism, that soaring sense of a new dawn. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to come?’

  ‘The thing is, we … I was just wondering, who else will be coming?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, but we’ve invited everyone.’

  There was a pause as Liz apparently awaited names. ‘Caroline and Richard?’ she prompted.

  Abashed still from her skirmish with Caroline, Christy answered cautiously. ‘Yes, that’s not a problem, is it?’

  ‘No, of course not, we’re very good friends.’ Liz hesitated. ‘What about the other side?’

  ‘Well, Felicity’s gone now, hasn’t she, but I’ve posted a note to her flat in case the new people move in between now and Friday. And I’ve invited the guy upstairs, though we haven’t actually met yet.’

  And who she rather hoped wouldn’t come if he had a habit of attracting disagreement, not to mention injury. She wasn’t sure her talents as a hostess ran to dispute-resolution services.

  ‘Mummy,’ the child said. He was blond-haired, long-lashed and very cute. ‘Rupert wants to go home now.’

  ‘Yes, Rupe, give Mummy one minute to talk to the new lady in Amber’s house.’

  It took Christy aback to hear herself described in this way.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Liz told her, ‘but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it on Friday. You see, I’ve got two little ones and I’m on my own …’

  Again, Christy was unsure how to respond: should she ask for clarification of ‘on my own’ (divorced single mother or just housebound on the night in question while her husband went out?) and urge Liz to find a babysitter, or should she declare small children welcome too? But at 8 p.m. wouldn’t most children be in bed and their parents expecting an adults-only affair?

  Why did interaction with her new neighbours already feel so political?

  ‘Well, not to worry,’ she said, finally. ‘I completely understand. It’s very short notice and I’m sure there’ll be lots of other opportunities.’

  Liz looked relieved. ‘Actually, I’m glad I’ve caught you because I wanted to ask if you happen to have a new address for the Frasers. I’ve tried texting Amber but I think she must have changed her number.’

  ‘I don’t, I’m afraid,’ Christy said, feeling familiar unease on the issue. She thought fleetingly of the postcard, its complaint that calls and e
mails had gone unanswered. Should she have phoned the sender to explain that the Frasers had moved on? ‘I need to find it out myself, in fact, so I can send on some post.’ Post she’d been sitting on for weeks now, one of those chores that slid further and further down the list.

  ‘How disappointing,’ Liz said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Christy watched as she headed from her door directly to the Sellerses’. Oh dear, would Caroline tell her about their little misunderstanding? Would she also decide not to come to their drinks?

  She soon had her answer. By the following morning, eight others, including Caroline, had RSVPed no, while the remainder – including the bear – had not responded at all.

  Nor, when Friday evening came, did any of the undecideds turn up.

  ‘All the more for us,’ Joe said, a wine glass in one hand and a clutch of cheese straws in the other, and he honestly did not seem to register the disgrace of the situation. His head was probably filled with work, with the forthcoming partners’ meeting that would be his first, not to mention the residual excitement of the house purchase: there was still more than enough to celebrate in his own right, and having to eat all the avocado dip himself was simply the icing on the cake.

  Christy, however, struggled to share his bonhomie. Having dashed home from work, buoyed by the thought of a social triumph (or at least a few laughs), she felt dejected – rejected. There it was, that sudden unleashing of the trait she most disliked in herself: social insecurity, the fear that she had never quite made the leap from outsider to insider. At work, for instance, yes, she was friends with Ellen, but Ellen was also close to Amy and several others, which constituted the kind of network that Christy had never been able to build. And she had moved house enough times to know that even in London people were curious about new neighbours, about what they did for a living and where they’d come from; it was human nature. So if they wouldn’t cross the road – and most of them didn’t even need to do that – for a free drink, then it was because the hosts held no fascination for them whatsoever.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s at home, it’s not like it’s the school holidays any more.’

  ‘They’re just busy.’ Joe shrugged. ‘Come on, people get booked up on Friday nights, you know that.’

  ‘We don’t.’

  ‘We’re hostages to debt, that’s why. Willing hostages, admittedly. And you know what everyone’s like …’

  Though he was typically vague, she did know. Most of their friends had new babies and it was an unwritten rule that those who remained luxuriously child-free should be the visitors, not the visited. Even the event of a major property upgrade had not proved sufficiently alluring to overturn convention. It didn’t help that Christy’s closest friend, Yasmin, was six months into a three-year ex-pat stretch in Kuala Lumpur with her oil-executive husband. Without the Internet, their weekly Skype catch-up had had to be put on hold.

  ‘I should have said that woman could bring her kids,’ she sighed. ‘The one from across the road, Liz.’

  Joe put down his glass, finally declaring allegiance to her disappointment. ‘But if you’d done that then they’d be the only ones here, the kids would be wrecking the house and she would go home and tell everyone what a crap night it was. This way nothing’s been damaged and only we know it’s been a washout.’

  Christy managed a smile. ‘That’s true. So you don’t think we’ve been deliberately snubbed? Because I had that argument with Caroline next door?’ A theory was forming that Caroline Sellers was the queen bee of Lime Park Road and had sent out the signal to shun the new arrivals; she’d dispatched Liz to the Davenports’ door to reject her and then ordered her to report the newcomer’s reaction.

  No, that was insane.

  ‘It must be something to do with the house,’ she added, unwrapping a caramel. (Now she’d have to eat all one hundred of them herself: Joe disliked toffee and its sweet buttery relatives as much as she loved it.) ‘Maybe some of the building work was done without the correct permissions, or the Frasers damaged something when they dug out the garden.’

  ‘But why would anyone blame us for that?’ Joe said reasonably. ‘They’d know we bought the house in good faith. Come on, don’t take it to heart.’

  She knew he was right. But even so, as she returned the untouched glasses to the kitchen cupboard, it was with the same unsettling feeling she’d had the day she’d picked up the keys and entered the house alone, seeing in front of her those receding blank walls, that succession of pale shut doors. It was as if there was something being concealed from her, an unwelcome surprise in store.

  She remembered again how Liz had referred to her: ‘the new lady in Amber’s house’.

  As if she didn’t have a name of her own.

  Those first few weeks in Lime Park Road, her best stab at friendly conversation was with Dave, the guy who came to check the boiler. They’d been in residence less than a month when the hot water suddenly ceased to work. It was a brand-new heating system under warranty and the Frasers had left the business card of the engineer who fitted it. He agreed to come as a priority.

  It was not ideal to leave work early on a Thursday to meet him at the house, but the notion of Joe ditching before dark was so laughable as to be not worth airing.

  ‘Settling in all right, are you?’ Dave said, having rectified the fault in the time it took Christy to make him a cup of tea. ‘The house looks really different from before.’

  ‘You mean emptier?’ Christy laughed. ‘The couple before had a lot more furniture than us.’ She paused. ‘Did you ever meet them?’

  ‘Sure. We were here nearly two weeks installing the system.’

  ‘What were they like?’

  At once his face brightened, as if he couldn’t believe his luck to be asked to speak on his specialist subject. ‘Well, we didn’t see him that much, but she was here most days. Beautiful girl, she was, a real looker. Gorgeous long red hair, fantastic figure, make-up all done like a model or a film star, you know? She was going out one afternoon and she came down in these incredible high heels, hair all piled up on her head …’

  Christy got the feeling he might have elaborated more graphically in different company. ‘Girl?’

  ‘Well, early thirties. Seemed a bit young for round here, a bit too glamorous, if you know what I mean? More Notting Hill than Lime Park. No offence.’

  At thirty-seven, and having postponed having her highlights done to save the cash, Christy was less offended than crestfallen. It didn’t help that with the longer commute she also had to sacrifice crucial minutes in front of the bathroom mirror, arriving at her desk a little more tousled than she used to. And such things worked cumulatively, didn’t they? You didn’t suddenly go from Coco Chanel to Worzel Gummidge, you simply looked a little less polished every day until one morning people stopped taking the seat next to you on the train. OK, so she’d never looked polished. Polished was Amber Fraser, not Christy Davenport, and ‘polished’ wasn’t polished enough a word either. (Soignée. Amber Fraser was soignée.)

  ‘I’m guessing the money was the husband’s,’ Dave went on. ‘He was older. Doted on her. Sugar daddy, we thought. Classic set-up, everyone’s a winner.’

  Until they’d had to give up their home, Christy thought. (Hope you’re still loving your forever home!) ‘Do you know why they moved on so quickly? They were only here a year, the agent said.’

  ‘Haven’t got a clue. Must have been something serious, though, because they weren’t doing the place up to sell. She told me that herself. They’d inherited some money and had got an interior designer in, one of those posh West London types. You should have seen some of the kit that was arriving, you’d think the recession never happened. Designer furniture, everything top of the range. I said to her, “Who’d you inherit your money from, Amber? The Queen?” She goes, “The Queen isn’t dead, Dave, careful with that sort of talk or they’ll have your head off for treason.” Great girl, she was.’ He chortled, warming
to his story, and Christy lapped it up like someone receiving a visit in prison after a long period in solitary confinement.

  ‘Maybe they ended up overspending?’ she suggested.

  ‘Yeah, she might have been one of those shopaholics, wouldn’t be surprised. Or he was laid off, more likely. I didn’t get the impression she worked.’

  ‘Oh well, it will have to remain a mystery.’ The word stirred something in her, dislodged a remark in her short-term memory: It will all be behind you soon, Felicity’s friend had said. What was behind old Felicity? And if it was behind the outgoing residents, did that mean it was in front of the incoming ones?

  Dave scratched at his lower eyelid with the nail of a smeared thumb. ‘Expensive to run, these big old houses,’ he said. ‘Stumping up in the first place is just the start, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Christy swallowed. She hoped he wasn’t going to announce that his labour that morning fell outside the terms of the warranty. ‘Speaking of which, do I owe you anything?’

  ‘No, you’re all covered.’

  And she did her best to hide her relief.

  Chapter 6

  Amber, 2012

  Well, you certainly couldn’t say there was no social life to be had in the sticks. Having already enjoyed a warmth of welcome assumed out of the question for a pair of peace-wrecking incomers, we were now to have a drinks party held in our honour by our neighbours at number 42, Richard and Caroline Sellers.

  ‘It’s on Sunday afternoon,’ Jeremy told me, having received the invitation on the Wednesday as he walked to the train station with Richard. ‘No builders in that day, eh?’

  ‘This Sunday? Will anyone be free at such short notice?’

  ‘They all will. Richard says Caroline can mobilize the whole street with a couple of phone calls – she’s the chief whip.’