Caroline’s eyes widened.
‘He’s horrible and rude and he tries to play with my mind.’ Aware that this did not sound entirely rational, Christy continued in any case: ‘He harassed me in the park café last week. It was awful.’
‘Harassed you?’ Caroline looked alarmed. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘Well, maybe not harassed, exactly. But he plonked himself down at my table as if he owned the place, just glaring at me, really trying to intimidate me. Then he accused me of gossiping, said he would “deal with it” if I did it again. I didn’t know what he was on about. Honestly, it would have been funny if he weren’t so … malevolent.’
‘Malevolent,’ Caroline repeated, frowning. ‘That’s an interesting word.’
Christy watched her. ‘All of you, you said. All of you said no to our invitation just in case he said yes? Did you put it to the vote or something?’
Caroline sighed. ‘Not quite, but we co-ordinated.’
And to think Joe had mocked her for conspiracy theories!
‘And some people did genuinely have other plans,’ Caroline added, with a glimmer of humour.
‘Well, he didn’t come,’ Christy said, ‘so you could have “co-ordinated” to come here. It might have been fun.’
Caroline nodded, contrite. ‘I really am sorry, but we couldn’t take the risk.’
Christy was at a loss as to what to make of this strange exchange. Doubtless the collective antipathy towards Rob had also been the cause of Caroline’s husband having rung his doorbell so hard he would have raised the dead, the issue he’d been so impatient to discuss the same one Caroline was now determined to evade. What had Rob done? Clearly something more quantifiable than the general churlishness she had been subjected to. She imagined drug-fuelled parties with ear-splitting music or one of those burglary rings she’d read about in the papers where an insider would rent a flat in an affluent area and then tip off his accomplices the moment one of his neighbours drove off for the weekend.
‘I thought it must have been something to do with the house,’ she said, ‘something the Frasers did that upset you all. Planning permission or problems with the renovations. You must have thought I was mad turning up that time and demanding to know what the problem was.’
Caroline kindly chose not to answer this directly. ‘There’s never been a problem with the house. It’s the nicest on the street now, look at it …’ She at last relinquished her Tupperware box to run her fingers over the sparkling quartz worktop; she touched it gingerly, as if it had diamonds set in it.
‘Please tell me what this is about,’ Christy said, not to be sidetracked by compliments to an eye for interior design that was not even her own.
But Caroline was standing firm. ‘I honestly can’t. I shouldn’t even have said as much as I have. But I feel terrible that you might have taken this whole’ – she paused to find the word that would give the least away – ‘atmosphere personally.’
Christy suddenly remembered Steph’s report of Caroline and Liz being friendly and helpful. Even before I told her where I lived … ‘So you’re saying you’d have done the same with Steph and Felix if it had been their party?’
‘I think we would have had to, yes.’
Even with their new membership to the parents’ club, Christy thought. This was serious. ‘The thing is, Caroline, there’ve been other things to do with Rob besides the way he treats me. Hate mail came through our door by mistake. It wasn’t signed, but it was addressed to him. Should I be worried for our safety?’
‘No,’ Caroline said firmly. ‘The best thing you can do is not give it another thought. Let’s have our tea and talk about something else, shall we? Here …’ She snapped open the lid of the box. ‘I brought you some brownies. They’re a family speciality. Can you taste properly again? When Richard had the flu he said everything tasted of metal. It went on for months. I thought he’d never overeat again.’
Having seen Richard Sellers’ apple-shaped build for herself, Christy did not comment, but reached dutifully for a brownie to work on her own. They’d plainly been made by infants and God only knew what bodily fluids had been rubbed by young fingers into the mixture, but she ate it anyway to show willing. After all, sugar had been her trusted friend long before Caroline Sellers decided to have a change of heart. Munching, she thought how nice it was to feel liked (or at least not disliked) and to be included again (or at least not excluded), and it wasn’t just because she was unexpectedly based at home, as Joe thought, it was because she was human and, these last dislocated weeks, she had been nothing so much as lonely. Lonely like she’d been before she went to college and met Yasmin in her first year, and then Joe the next. She reached for a second brownie.
‘Well,’ Caroline said, watching with approval as she chewed, ‘this is a first within these four walls.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Christy. Surely this couldn’t be the first time the street’s ‘unofficial social secretary’ had set foot in number 40.
‘The woman of the house eating my baked offerings, I never thought I’d see the day! Rachel certainly never did.’
‘Rachel?’
‘Rachel Locke – she lived here before the Frasers. She had a gluten intolerance. And then Amber, well, she didn’t have any allergies or anything like that, but she never ate cake. The kids were always baking her cupcakes, they loved her, but she just used to nibble a bit of the icing and keep them for Jeremy.’
‘Why didn’t she eat them herself?’
‘Of course, you never met her, did you?’ Caroline said, smiling.
‘No.’
‘Well, if you had you’d know she had an amazing figure, the best you’ve ever seen. Jaw-dropping, men-walking-into-lampposts sexy. And she was very disciplined about it. She and Jeremy used to go to Canvas for dinner all the time and she told me she only ever ate a starter. And she drank of course, so she needed to save calories for that. Do you know what she said to me once? She said she would eat when she was old, and sleep when she was dead, but she would never knowingly turn down a cocktail.’
‘Goodness,’ Christy said.
Caroline sipped her tea, duly warming up. ‘She used to hint at all kinds of depravities in her past, like there was nothing she hadn’t tried, no taboos, do you know what I mean?’
‘I think so.’ Amber Fraser sounded like a remarkable character, which was perhaps why Caroline was as eager to discuss her as she was reluctant to talk about Rob. ‘The two of you were friends?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘Yes, we got quite close, actually. Oh, she was so great, a breath of fresh air on this street. We all had a bit of a crush on her, men and women. She was naughty and sweet at the same time, you know? So generous to everyone, always giving lovely presents, really kind-hearted. I remember Liz was at a low ebb after her divorce and Amber took us shopping one day, got her a new haircut. She saved her in that one day and she wasn’t even aware she was doing it. She was just being Amber. It was exciting to know her, like having a celebrity next door, but without the paparazzi – or the ego. She was actually quite humble, I thought, considering how she looked. Or maybe democratic is the word. She treated everyone just the same.’
Christy was agape. The expression on Caroline’s face during this astonishing eulogy was almost romantic. How perfect Amber sounded, plainly the Lime Park beauty to Rob’s beast. She had an unwelcome image of Joe dining at Canvas with the scrupulously democratic bombshell, mesmerized by her reduced portions and bons mots.
‘You must all wish she hadn’t moved.’ This sounded childishly jealous even to her own ears.
Caroline nodded. ‘We just wish it hadn’t been so sudden. I would have liked to have said a proper goodbye.’
‘Why was it so sudden? We were never actually told. And Felicity as well – was it to do with this problem with Rob?’
‘Really, it’s not for me to say.’
That meant yes, thought Christy. Her habit of evidence-gathering was alread
y ingrained. A shame it had to be so piecemeal. ‘The Frasers weren’t here very long, were they?’ she persisted. ‘Were they getting divorced?’
‘God, no.’ Caroline seemed personally offended by the idea. ‘They were together forever – if it’s ever possible to say that. Jeremy was a wonderful husband. Amber could have taken her pick, but she wanted him. He was older than her, you know, a bit of a father figure, I suppose. She didn’t have the greatest childhood, from what she hinted to us; it wasn’t like she’d led a charmed life. And then it looked like they were having trouble conceiving, though that may have changed by now, of course. I do hope it has.’
Christy’s eyes widened at this further gush of personal detail. ‘Are you not in contact with her any more then?’
Caroline looked down at her hands, at the large conch-shell ring that seemed an odd choice for so conservative a dresser and that Christy imagined her having bought at Amber’s instruction on one of their sprees. Her sadness was plain. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
She shook her head. ‘To be honest, I don’t even know where they went.’
‘Nor do her friends,’ Christy said. ‘One of them sent a postcard and another knocked at the door a few weeks ago, looking for her. Imogen, she was called.’
‘I remember Imogen. She was an old work friend.’
‘She said she hadn’t heard from Amber since January.’
‘Well, I’m not sure that’s good news. I thought it was just us she’d cut herself off from.’ With this, Caroline grew even more despondent and Christy, almost feeling sorry for her loss, had to remind herself that Amber had not died but was probably busy eschewing cupcakes as they spoke in her new neighbourhood somewhere on the other side of time.
‘She was going to try Jeremy at his office, but –’ She stopped mid-sentence, on the brink of admitting that she had done the same herself, but Caroline came to her rescue.
‘Oh, we tried that ages ago, but it’s no use. He’s taken a sabbatical.’
‘Some sort of long-service thing?’ Christy suggested, her face innocent.
‘If you believe that,’ Caroline said.
‘You don’t?’
But, bar the raised eyebrows, the conversation was over. Caroline slid from her seat, preparing to leave. ‘Anyway, I just wanted to say hi, see how you are, and bury the hatchet. Enjoy the rest of the brownies.’
‘Thank you. It was very kind of you to think of me.’
After exchanging numbers and email addresses, Christy saw her to the door before resettling at the bedroom window to turn over what she’d just been told – or not told, as the case may have been – and consider the rather friendlier Caroline Sellers she’d been allowed to meet. She was in good time to see Rob return alone from wherever he had spent the afternoon, his expression typically stormy.
So it was official: he was the neighbourhood pariah, disreputable and disliked.
And the question still remained: why?
When Joe came home, late as ever and emitting the now-familiar odour of a herd of intensively farmed corporate lawyers, she could scarcely resist launching into her account of the conversation with Caroline – until she saw his face in the full beam of the kitchen spotlights. Ashen and downcast, it was the face of a man who’d been roundly trounced.
‘What is it? How was work?’
‘Oh, as terrifying as ever,’ he said bleakly.
She was taken aback. ‘Terrifying? But in an exciting way?’
‘No, in a terrifying way.’
‘But why?’ Christy asked. He’d never spoken like this before, though the truth was he was home so late she wasn’t always awake to ask.
He grimaced, mouth sour, not a trace of characteristic humour in his tone. ‘A hundred reasons.’
‘Tell me them.’
‘I get no air cover from Marcus any more, for one thing. At first he was on holiday, so I didn’t realize.’
‘Realize what?’
‘That I’m not in his team any more. I’m not in anyone’s team, I’m completely on my own.’ He said this as if he’d been left naked and alone in a derelict building, a serial killer hurtling towards him. ‘The only business I get is the business I get. Once this pharmaceutical deal is out the door …’ he shrugged, helpless.
‘But you always knew you’d have to bring in the clients when you were a partner.’
‘Sure.’ Joe drank from the glass of wine she’d handed him – or rather discharged the liquid into an open throat – and looked at the empty glass as if he’d been tricked. ‘It’s not just that, it’s the lack of any kind of human decency. I went to the partners’ meeting today and everyone was jockeying for position and challenging each other, there wasn’t a scrap of camaraderie. Honestly, it was no different from how it was when I was a trainee trying to get noticed. If anything it’s worse because now I’m in competition with the people I used to get support from.’
Not having any better idea, Christy poured him more wine. ‘How long have you been feeling like this? A month ago you were still on a high.’ Wasn’t he? How could it have escaped her notice that he had plunged so low? ‘It doesn’t suddenly kick in, this sort of stuff, does it?’ She knew she should do better than this to console and encourage, but she could not find the words, could not remember the psychology. The effort was perhaps visible in her face as she passed back his glass, because he dispatched the second as rapidly as the first before declaring himself sick of thinking about it.
‘Enough about JR. How was your day? How goes the one-woman Lime Park Road charm offensive?’
Christy felt her heart rate pick up. ‘Well, I have some news, since you ask. It’s quite mysterious stuff.’
Boosted by his uncharacteristic interest, she told him all she’d learned from Caroline Sellers and how she had, following Caroline’s departure, taken again to the Internet. What was it that Caroline was so intent on concealing? On a hunch, she’d googled ‘Trouble Lime Park’ and then added ‘Controversy’ and ‘Mystery’, but all she’d found were forums about speed bumps and news of improvements to the junction at Lime Park Parade. All local intrigue seemed to involve road traffic. (Perhaps Rob had injured someone when driving, she’d thought wildly, thinking of his anger at the wheel that time.) Taking things to their Hitchcockian conclusion, she’d tried ‘Lime Park killer’, which yielded a story about a teenager from a neighbouring area who’d stabbed someone on a bus bound for Lime Park and had now been jailed.
To her surprise, Joe responded to her report with a surge of hilarity.
‘I get it,’ he said. ‘It’s obvious! We must have infiltrated some kind of suburban swinging set. Amber Baby ran it and now she’s gone no one’s getting any.’
Christy stared. Could he really be dismissing Caroline’s opaque apologies and dark hints so lightly? The news that they had moved next door to a man so disliked by the rest of the street that they worked collectively to avoid being in the same room as him? A man who had as good as threatened Christy with violence and had received poisonous notes from unnamed enemies? But before she could protest she heard the edge of hysteria to Joe’s jollity and understood that he needed to laugh, he needed to make a joke of this, however unlikely the material. The ostracism of Rob was inconsequential compared to his growing anxiety about work.
He felt completely on his own – and for him Lime Park Road was his refuge, not a place he needed to hear contained risk and scandal.
‘Why haven’t we been asked to join?’ she said, producing a plausible chuckle. ‘We’re not good-looking enough, d’you think?’
‘You have to have a black Lab and a Range Rover to qualify? Or maybe they have tried to recruit us but we’ve been too dense to notice?’ Joe grinned. ‘That’s why this Caroline came round, to see if you’re ready to be initiated. And the reason Rob is so bad-tempered is because he hasn’t made the cut. He’s too hairy.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s one theory,’ Christy said.
Underscored though the merriment w
as by the wrongness of ignoring Joe’s wretchedness about work, it was good to be laughing together; it felt like the old days – before they’d moved into the new house. These were the new days now, the Lime Park future on which they’d staked everything. Ironic, then, that it had come to feel so troubled. Ironic, too, that when she pictured herself in the cramped rooms of their old flat, the street light yellow and stark even through dark curtains, traffic noise absent only on those occasions you happened to wake in the night, the loneliest hours, it was as a much happier woman.
And Joe – not yet a partner – a less terrified man.
Chapter 14
Amber, 2012
I don’t like to boast, but the neighbours said there had never been such a good party on the street as the one we gave on the bank holiday weekend in late August. ‘Let’s throw some money at this,’ Jeremy said – and I needed no second invitation.
In my opinion, a successful party serves functions beyond the giving of a good time and in this case there were several: to show off the renovations, which were a magnificent tribute to Hetty’s bold taste and Jeremy’s deep pockets (even Gemma admitted to being impressed); to thank our neighbours for their suffering and goodwill during the works; and, possibly most importantly, to provide the hostess with a new opportunity to observe her husband and her lover together and reassure herself – again – that the former knew nothing of the latter. Call it essential maintenance.
To this end, I suggested Rob bring a date. ‘I know you don’t like to at these things, but it will look more realistic.’
‘That’s because it is realistic,’ he said in mock objection. He was far too self-assured ever to take real offence; this was a man who thought he was God’s gift – and if I’d believed in the Lord I’d probably have agreed. ‘Much as you like to think I exist purely to service your insatiable sexual needs, I do have a private life of my own.’
‘All right, keep your hair on,’ I said. We were in bed, of course, my phone (turned to silent) on the cabinet next to me. ‘You really don’t need to remind me of your prodigious hit rate. So who will you bring? Not that girl from Joanne and Kenny’s dinner party?’
The Sudden Departure of the Frasers Page 18