The Family Next Door

by Sally Hepworth

  At first it was just the frequency of his drinking that increased. His Friday night beer became an every night beer. Then the beer became Scotch. Or wine, if that was what they had in the house. And it became more than one. Each night, he sat in his chair from seven until midnight, only getting up to go to the fridge. The “Ah” noise disappeared.

  He got fat. Properly fat. While Nigel had never been much of an athlete, he’d always been health conscious … until suddenly he wasn’t. He developed a taste for cheap, student-type food—instant noodles, bags of Doritos, mac and cheese. His stomach became hard and round, the kind of stomach that screamed “early heart attack happening here … watch this space!” It was as sudden as it was astonishing. All at once, Fran felt like she was living with a stranger. And any attempts she made to get him back on track with healthy eating were greeted with hostility.

  His sleep became erratic. Some days he was so tired he’d go to bed at 7 P.M., leaving her to feed and put Rosie to bed on her own. Once, she woke at 3 A.M. to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, rocking and punching the pillow repeatedly. When she asked him what was wrong, he lay back down immediately, muttering something about a cramp.

  Fran begged him to see a counselor, to get medication. She researched a retreat for men who were burnt out. She forwarded him articles from men’s health magazines about men who’d gone through depression and come out the other side. He wasn’t interested in any of it.

  Eventually she took Rosie away for a week and stayed at a hotel, hoping that might shock him into taking control of his life. It did. For a few days, Nigel was on his best behavior. Then it all started again.

  Fran started to worry about what he might do if he didn’t snap out of it. She started to worry about what she might do. He’d been in a slump for a year—what if something pushed him over the edge? Rosie wouldn’t have a father. She wouldn’t have a husband.

  That was when she told him she was pregnant again.

  6

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  Fran was brushing her teeth when she heard it. Nigel and Rosie were in Rosie’s bedroom, getting her ready for bed. They’d already brushed her teeth, read the story, and now she was getting tucked in.

  Fran walked to the bathroom door to listen.

  “I love you too, Rosie. Good night.”

  She smiled. The “I love you” wasn’t a usual part of the routine, as far as Fran knew. Most of their conversations, even at bedtime, were fact based. The capital of a certain country. The number of bones in the body. An idea for an invention Rosie had had. Even this exchange, Fran realized, was matter-of-fact. They didn’t bother with nonsense like “I love you to the moon and back” or “I love you more, no I love you more.” Not Nigel and Rosie. It struck Fran that a different kind of daughter could have thrown Nigel completely. A daughter who demanded Barbies and fairies and silliness. But Rosie was a perfect fit.

  Was Ava?

  After a minute or two Fran heard the snap of the light switch. She put her toothbrush back in the holder. She felt a jittery feeling in her chest, behind her sternum. That had been happening to her quite a bit lately. Generalized anxiety disorder, perhaps. Or was it something else?

  Her conversation with Isabelle this morning had been bugging Fran all day. (“I noticed you had a newborn” she’d said. “And her name’s Ava?”) What was that about? Fran doubted that when she was single and childless she’d ever noticed someone else’s newborn. If she had, she certainly wouldn’t have mentioned it to them. Like most normal people, she had a hearty fear of being labeled a stalker. Which begged the question … why didn’t Isabelle have that fear?

  Fran washed her face, slathered on some face cream, and headed down the hall. Rosie lay on her side in bed, clutching the travel-sized telescope Nigel had brought back from a business trip to China, like it was soft toy. She crossed the hall and peeked into Ava’s room. Her head moved back and forth like she was on the verge of waking, but then she gave a huge, shuddery sigh and settled right back to sleep again.

  Sweet girl.

  Fran wondered where they would be if Ava hadn’t come along. Would Nigel still be depressed? Would she be? There was no doubt she had been heading in that direction, before announcing her pregnancy. Nothing she had tried had worked and … he didn’t seem to care. If something hadn’t happened to break the circuit, who knew where they’d be. Ava had saved them. And also, broken them.

  When she got to the bedroom Nigel was already in bed. He’d kicked off the quilt, with only the bare sheet covering him. It was far too hot to sleep under anything else. He frowned up at the wall, where a family portrait hung of the two of them and Rosie.

  “We need to get some new family portraits done,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “With Ava in them.”

  Fran stared at him.

  Before they had children, Nigel would have been appalled at the concept of a professional family photo. “They’re all a lie anyway,” he would have said. Propaganda created to project an image of happiness that doesn’t actually exist. A false laugh at a stupid joke the photographer made, a stern word to the child who refused to look at the camera, a bribe of ice cream afterward. All lies. The only reason they’d had the first one taken was because Ange and Lucas had given them a photo shoot as a gift after Rosie was born. Fran glanced up at it. Lucas had taken it when Rosie was two or three weeks old. They were in the park next to his photography studio, nestled next to a pile of leaves. Fran had put a lot of thought into Rosie’s outfit, as she recalled, but a moment before the photo had been taken she had annihilated it with one of those newborn poops that traveled up her back as far as her neck. In the picture, Nigel was holding a newborn Rosie up and as far away from him as possible, while Fran lay back in the leaves, laughing. Lucas captured it perfectly. It was a brilliant shot. It was that shot that had changed her own mind about professional family photos. And for that reason she said: “Sure. Why not?”

  Fran generally saw eye to eye with Nigel about most things. She’d always prided herself on the fact that they were a great match. For their first date Nigel invited her to a trivia night at a pub in South Melbourne. Fran decided not to tell him about her wicked trivia skills and instead let them reveal themselves, but as it turned out, her trivia knowledge paled in comparison to Nigel’s.

  “Four countries in Africa starting with B?” the quizmaster called out.

  “Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, and Burundi,” Nigel answered immediately.

  “Name the two letters that don’t appear in the periodic table.”

  “J and Q,” he said without even a pause, “although Q is occasionally used as a placeholder for the artificially created, super-heavy elements until a suitable name has been adopted.”

  “What is the most common blood type?”

  “O,” Fran cried, desperate to get an answer in before Nigel. “Everyone is O.”

  “Actually the most common is O positive,” Nigel said. “O negative is quite rare.”

  “Really?” Fran said. “I’m O negative.”

  “So am I.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “Is it true,” she said, “that two negatives make a positive?”

  She’d meant it as a throwaway, cheesy line, but Nigel’s brow furrowed. “Well, not always. For example, negative ten plus negative ten doesn’t equal positive twenty, does it?”

  That was the moment she fell in love with him.

  By the end of the night Fran had to physically restrain herself from jumping him, right then and there. Intelligence, she’d always thought, was the most powerful aphrodisiac. And if there was one thing that could be said about geeks, it was that they were very eager to please.

  She looked at him now. He had no book, no phone in his hand. He was looking at her in that familiar way. Her heart rate quickened a little.

  It had been a while.

  While Nigel was depressed, he’d lost interest in sex almost entirely. It had become so bad that Fran had
even bought a book called Rekindling the Spark in Your Marriage and started trying new things like turning up at his office unannounced and telling him she’d booked a hotel room, or joining him in the shower while Rosie was watching cartoons. Nigel usually managed to perform, but it was always lackluster, and only ever when Fran initiated it. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at her like this.

  He crawled across the bed toward her, and kissed her. Fran’s knees weakened. It felt so good, being pressed against him. And they hadn’t kissed like this in years. She pulled him closer.

  And something inside her cracked.

  “What is it, Fran?” he said, pulling back. “You’re crying.”

  She wiped her face. “Am I? Sorry.”

  “You’re not yourself.” He sat up. “Tell me what’s going on. Please. Maybe I can help.”

  The concern in his face was undeniable. Nigel had always been the person she could turn to when things were bad. He was always so calm and ready to formulate a plan. She had always found him a tremendous comfort in difficult times.

  Fran felt the tears begin to flow in earnest.

  That’s the problem, she thought. You can’t.

  7

  ANGE

  When Lucas came to bed, Ange was going to have sex with him. She lay there, listening to him clattering about in the kitchen, thinking all sorts of amorous thoughts. There was truly nothing sexier than a man who did the dishes. The first time she and Lucas had hosted a dinner party together, Ange had collapsed happily into bed at the end of the night, thoroughly drunk, leaving all the dishes and pots on the counter and the half-drunk glasses of wine on the dining room table. (Ange liked things to be meticulously clean when her guests arrived but once they’d left she could happily ignore the mess until morning.) But the morning after, when she woke and crawled out into the living room for coffee, she’d found the place sparkling.

  “I enjoy doing clearing up,” Lucas had said. “It helps me wind down at the end of the night.”

  It was the moment she knew she was going to marry him.

  Ange rolled herself onto one side. She was naked because it was far too hot for lingerie. Besides, a few nights ago she’d fastened herself into a complicated garter belt–type arrangement only to wake up in the early hours of the morning with Lucas snoring beside her—the lingerie still fastened. Apparently since reaching forty her window between horny and asleep was ever shrinking. But tonight, she was determined. They were going to have sex, and not mundane sex. Hot sex. Decidedly unmarried-person sex. She was going to be the wife every man wanted … if she was able to stay awake.

  The funny thing was, Lucas probably wouldn’t have minded mundane sex. Lucas had an odd affection for mundane things. Replacing light globes the moment they fizzed. Writing important events on their family calendar in the kitchen so things couldn’t be forgotten. Ensuring there were batteries in their battery drawer. It occurred to Ange that, without Lucas, their family would come to a crashing halt. Sometimes she even had shameful thoughts about what would happen if he suddenly dropped dead. She imagined herself going to the battery drawer and finding it empty, then sliding down the wall of the kitchen, sobbing. The kids would find her there at the end of the day screaming, “Batteries! There are no batteries in the battery drawer!”

  She could hear Lucas now, in the kitchen, hand-washing the hand-washables. She willed him to hurry up. Come on, Lucas! Her eyelids were starting to droop. The two glasses of wine she’d had with dinner didn’t help matters. It was just so exhausting, being an adult.

  Ange wondered if Will and Ollie were asleep. It was possible they were, but it was equally possible they’d located an iPad and were watching random people play video games on YouTube. She didn’t get it. Why would you watch someone else play a video game, for goodness sake! (‘It’s a guy thing,” Lucas had told her when she’d lamented about ridiculous it was. A guy thing! She loved her boys but sometimes she thought that Y chromosome had a lot to answer for. Sometimes she yearned for a daughter so badly she could almost reach out and touch her.)

  Ange sat up. Through the window she could see a few lights on in the street. Fran and Essie were probably having sex with their husbands, she decided. Essie’s muscleman of a husband probably had a Cirque du Soleil line-up of moves, and Fran and Nigel were so straightlaced you could just tell they liked it dirty. (They were coy, of course, when Ange asked them about their sex lives, but that only proved it. It was the quiet ones you had to watch.)

  Isabelle’s light was on too. What was she up to? It irked Ange that she couldn’t even hazard a guess. When she’d showed her around Mrs. Harrap’s old place, Isabelle had mentioned an ex-partner, which had been telling. If it had been a man, surely she would have said ex-boyfriend or ex-husband? Add to that the fact that she was unmarried without kids at forty and, well, it made sense. Not that it mattered—Ange couldn’t have cared less if she was gay, straight, bisexual, or any of the other preferences encompassed by LGBTQIA—but she liked to have a handle on these sorts of things. It would be embarrassing to ask her if she had a boyfriend for example, when she was interested in women. And if she did happen to like men, well, Ange knew some single men at the office who were great catches.

  At some point Ange had designated herself the architect of Pleasant Court, determined to make it the most desirable street in Bayside, if not the whole of Melbourne. She’d done a good job too. They had families with young children. One grandmother. An older couple, one an ex-doctor. Her own family, of course—a happy family of four living in the prettiest bungalow that sat on a slight hill so every other house in the street seemed to pay homage to it. If you turned right at the end of the street, you’d be at the beach within two minutes, and if you turned left, Sandringham Village, a miniature hub of cafes, shops and AMOS hair, the only hairdresser in Melbourne that Ange trusted with her platinum blond tresses. Yes, Pleasant Court lived up to its name. Pleasant Court hosted Christmas parties and street parties. Kids rode their bikes and skateboards in the street. Soon they’d have a neighborhood watch. There was no opportunity for scandal anywhere. Whenever Ange posted photos of the street on Instagram she tagged it #pleasantcourt #whereeverythingispleasant. But Isabelle Heatherington was an unknown quantity. It was irritating.

  Ange yawned. She listened for Lucas—the telltale clang of a pot or pan being washed, or the dishwasher being stacked. Instead she heard something else. He was on the phone, she realized. His voice hushed and urgent.

  Ange rolled over and switched off the light. Sleep was already calling her, a siren, and all at once she was happy to answer its call. Things were far better watched from a distance, Ange thought as she drifted off. When you watched too closely, you saw things you didn’t want to see.

  8

  “Look at meeeeee!”

  Ange was watching Ollie skateboard—in body, if not in mind. She leaned against her low brick fence, which was still warm from the day’s heat. It had been yet another scorcher. The air was sticky and salty-sweet, a mixture of ocean and ice cream, and the scream of cicadas pierced the early-evening air. A procession of children, families, and dog walkers trailed past the opening of the street, following the peach sunset down to the beach. Usually on nights like this, she and Lucas and the boys would also head down to the beach and they’d all swim until dark, but Ollie had been pestering her to watch him do tricks on his skateboard and she’d run out of excuses.

  “Watch this!” he cried, doing some sort of midair spin. He was far too focused on whether she was looking and not nearly focused enough on landing safely, in her humble opinion.

  “Fantastic!” Ange concealed a yawn. “Tremendous!”

  “Did you see that?” Ollie cried. “I nailed it.”

  “You sure did. You’re amazing.”

  Ange resisted the urge to check her iPhone, which was in the pocket of her sundress. It was tough going. Sometimes Ange wondered if she had a phone addiction. With each minute that passed without checking her phone, the
more uncomfortable she became. Isn’t that what happened to junkies when deprived from their drug? And then, when she finally got to check it—total euphoria. Seventeen new emails. Five new Instagram comments. Twenty-seven new Facebook likes?

  Nirvana. She’d got her hit.

  Occasionally at work Ange even ate lunch in her car so she could scroll through her phone in peace without fear of anyone interrupting her. She always found an hour alone with her phone to be as soothing as a cold glass of pinot gris. But not now, she reminded herself with a little shake. Now she was watching Ollie try to kill himself on a small board with wheels. It was what any good mother would do.

  “Mind if I join you, Ange?’

  It was Isabelle. She was headed over, by the looks of it, to chat. Not that there was a problem with that. It was just that, in general, they tended to do a lot more waving than chatting in Pleasant Court.

  “I had to get some fresh air,” Isabelle said. She wore a white tank and a long black skirt covered in red flowers and her feet were bare. Her chest and neck were shiny with sweat. “My house is like an oven. I don’t know how I’m going to sleep!”

  “Oh. Well … we only get a handful of these heatwaves each summer in Melbourne,” Ange said. “It’s not like Sydney.”

  “Thank heavens for that. I’m really looking forward to four seasons.”

  “You’ll get them,” Ange said. “Probably in the one day.”

  Isabelle joined Ange on the fence and hitched her long skirt up to her knees. Her legs were smooth and creamy white. Ange was forever going to get spray tans to avoid this sort of pallor, but on Isabelle it looked exotic, like she belonged to another era.

  Ollie zoomed by them, leaping off his board and landing (with luck rather than skill) back on it again. Isabelle cheered.