The Family Next Door

by Sally Hepworth

  Only one other house in the street beamed out light: Isabelle’s. Essie had hoped to see Isabelle there tonight—she knew Ange had invited her. Perhaps neighborhood watches weren’t her thing. Essie couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. Although she hadn’t processed this thought until right that very second, Essie realized she’d been harboring a childish hope that Isabelle might become her first proper Pleasant Court friend.

  She hesitated in front of Isabelle’s house. Perhaps Isabelle wanted to go to the meeting but felt self-conscious as the newest person on the street? Perhaps if Essie came by and offered to walk her there, she might decide to come? It was, after all, the neighborly thing to do.

  With unusual decisiveness, Essie spun around, walked up Isabelle’s driveway, and knocked on the door. Quicker than she expected, it swung open. Isabelle was dressed in a red tunic with a matching scarf around her hair. Her legs were bare and her toenails, today, were teal green. “Hey, Essie. I was just getting ready for the neighborhood watch meeting.”

  “Oh good,” Essie said, feeling relieved and also suddenly very suburban housewife in her jeans, button-down shirt, and ballet flats. “That’s why I was coming by. I thought I could walk you there.”

  “Sounds great.” Isabelle smiled.

  She had, Essie noticed, a spectacular smile. A familiar smile. She was trying to figure out why it was familiar when suddenly, a smell hit her. “Uh … is something burning?”

  Isabelle cursed. “The pasta!”

  Isabelle spun and bolted back into the house. Essie stood there uncertainly for a moment, then slowly trailed after her.

  From some reason, perhaps the fact that Isabelle hadn’t invited her in the last time she visited, Essie had assumed the place would be a terrible mess—filled with boxes and unpacked suitcases. Instead she found it pristine. Brightly colored, oversize art hung on the walls, and the surfaces were dotted with eclectic designer-looking knickknacks. A headless mirrored mannequin stood in one corner. Essie peeked into an adjoining room that appeared to be a study, also spotless. Looking at it, Essie felt a stab of envy. This was how she would have liked to have lived.

  Alas, Essie had children.

  “Damn,” she heard Isabelle say from the next room. “There goes dinner.”

  Essie followed the voice to a steam-filled kitchen, where Isabelle was emptying a congealed slab of pasta into the garbage.

  “You haven’t eaten yet?”

  She shook her head. “It’s okay. There’ll be nibbles at the meeting, right?”

  Right on cue, Isabelle’s stomach gave a little whine.

  “You need to eat,” Essie said. “There’s a great Thai place just around the corner.”

  “But what about the meeting?”

  Essie shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. She imagined she looked like an easygoing go-with-the-flow type who didn’t care that she was already running seventeen minutes late for the meeting. She liked looking like that type of person.

  “All right. I’m assuming you’ll join me then?”

  Essie felt a twist of unease. She’d RSVP’d to the meeting; it wasn’t like her to be a no-show. She pictured all the residents sitting around Ange’s plush couches eating cheese and crackers, Ange glancing at her watch.

  “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Essie sat at one end of Isabelle’s couch, happily pinching the stem of a wineglass. It was rare for her to drink alcohol during the week. With two small children and a fitness junkie for a husband, it just wasn’t something that occurred to her. But as she sat on Isabelle’s couch, it felt surprisingly right.

  “That chicken cashew stir-fry,” Isabelle said, resting her pale, bare legs on the coffee table. Next to Isabelle’s feet were two empty plastic containers where their dinner used to be, and a wine bottle—the contents of which had been emptied into their bellies. “Best I’ve ever had.”

  “Mmm,” Essie agreed. The neighborhood watch meeting would be well under way by now. Essie imagined the empty spot on Ange’s couch where she should be. For the first time in her life, Essie was a rebel.

  “So,” Isabelle said, “was this better or worse than a neighborhood watch meeting?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Essie said. “It depends on how much grief Ange gives me for not showing up.”

  Isabelle laughed, even though Essie wasn’t joking. Isabelle’s lips made Essie understand what people meant when they described a “heart-shaped” mouth.

  Isabelle clutched a cushion to her chest. It was white silk with hand-painted fuchsia and aqua flowers across the front. It was the kind of item that Essie would have picked up in a store or at a market, but then put down again because she wasn’t brave enough to own it. Isabelle’s couch was teal velvet, and her coffee table had steel legs and a surface made of black and white mosaic tiles. A deep red Persian rug lay beneath Essie’s feet.

  Essie thought of all the times she’d stood in boutique art galleries admiring a piece of modern art or an unusual sculpture. There was no doubt she was attracted to unusual art. Several times she’d even managed to justify the price tag (a birthday or anniversary present from Ben). But when push came to shove, Essie always settled for the muted, Pottery Barn–type wares that filled every suburban living room. She had a sudden urge to run home and throw out every piece of Pottery Barn furniture. This was the home she was supposed to have, she thought irrationally.

  “So,” Essie said. “Tell me about yourself. I hear you work for a nonprofit. Which one?”

  Isabelle lifted her glass to her lips, then put down it down again without taking a sip. There was a slight change to her eyes. “I work for the Abigail Ferris Foundation.”

  “The Abigail…” Essie tried to think why that name sounded familiar. “Wait, Abigail Ferris? Wasn’t she the little girl who disappeared while riding her bike to school? Years ago, when I was a kid?”

  Isabelle nodded. “The foundation was created by friends and family members of Abigail’s. It’s dedicated to the safety of all children, and the recovery of missing children.”

  Essie sucked in a breath. The recovery of missing children. It felt so immediate, so terrifying. Something that could happen to you, rather than something that happened to other people.

  “And,” she said, clearing her throat, “what do you for the foundation?”

  “Our goal, of course, is reunification of families. I do everything I can to facilitate that.”

  Essie she wasn’t entirely clear whether Isabelle had answered her question, but she nodded anyway. Isabelle seemed to have gone into work mode at this talk of work, even sitting straighter in her chair. Or maybe Essie was just imagining it.

  “Does that happen often?” Essie asked. “Reunification?”

  “It depends. In a lot of cases a parent or relative is involved and it’s just matter of finding them. In other cases, sex traffickers or pedophiles are involved.”

  Essie winced.

  “And then there are the baby snatchers,” Isabelle continued. “Women who steal a baby and raise it as their own. Those are the hardest cases for reunification, because the child itself doesn’t know it has been stolen.”

  Essie felt a twist of unease. Isabelle had become so serious all of a sudden. But then, how could you not be serious when talking about missing children?

  “So … how do you find these children?” Essie asked.

  “The best leads we get are from the community. You’d be surprised by how many children have been recovered become someone follows their instincts and asks questions when something doesn’t feel right.”

  “Did you come to this area for a particular case?” Essie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You think one of your missing children might be in Sandringham?”

  “Yes.”

  Isabelle watched her steadily. Essie shifted in her seat. Talking about lost children reminded her about what she’d done that day, leaving Mia in the park. She thoug
ht of what might have happened if Mia hadn’t been there when she returned—how much worse it could have been.

  “Well, I’d better get going,” Essie said, standing.

  “I hope I didn’t scare you away.”

  “No…” Essie fumbled for her bag which had become wedged under the couch. “I just want to get away before the meeting is out. If anyone spots me leaving your place and tells Ange I’ll be in all sorts of trouble.” With a heave, her bag came free.

  Isabelle smiled. “Well, we don’t want that.”

  “Thank you for tonight,” Essie said, babbling now. The wine had clearly gone to her head. She headed for the door. “It was much more fun than a neighborhood watch meeting.”

  “It was,” Isabelle said, following Essie. “I really wasn’t expecting to make any friends in Pleasant Court.”

  Friends. They stepped outside into the warm night air. Essie couldn’t help feeling a thrill at that word. At the same time, she suddenly found it hard to meet Isabelle’s eye. It was such an unfamiliar scenario to her. What was the protocol for two grown women saying good-bye after an evening together? A wave? A handshake? A hug?

  “We should do this again,” Isabelle said as Ange’s door opened and the gentle hum of chatter carried across the road. The silhouettes had disappeared from the window and presumably everyone was about to spill out onto the street.

  “Uh-oh,” Essie said, “I’d better make a run for it.”

  Isabelle chuckled, leaning back against the wall. “Go on, then. Run!”

  Essie took a step toward her house. But at the last minute she quickly turned back and planted a kiss on her new friend’s cheek.

  * * *

  Essie’s house looked like it had been ransacked. Peas were all over the floor, dirty dishes were in the sink, and toy trains lay on their sides alongside the longest continuous train track that Ben and Mia had made to date. The laundry basket was in the exact spot she’d left it, footprint and all.

  Essie put down her bag, sighing. She swept the floor, put the trains away, put the laundry into the machine ready to turn on in the morning. Then she took a minute to fluff the cushions and set the throw rug before heading for the bedroom. Ben was a large mound in the bed, surrounded by the cushions he constantly bemoaned. (Cushions, Ange had recently proclaimed, were responsible for more divorces in America than infidelity or alcoholism. Funny, Essie thought it would be sheets.)

  “How was the neighborhood watch meeting?” Ben murmured as she climbed into bed. His eyes were still closed, his face still collapsed against the pillow. “Is Pleasant Court the safest place in the world?”

  Essie opened her mouth to tell him she’d been to Isabelle’s instead. That they’d had takeout and wine and spent the night chatting. But then Polly started to cry.

  “Safest in the universe,” she said, and headed to Polly’s room as Ben drifted back to sleep.

  14

  ISABELLE

  The street was silent. Everyone had waved good night and finished up their conversations after the neighborhood watch meeting and were now safely back inside their homes, probably tucked up in bed. Isabelle’s was the only light left on in the street, despite the fact it was just after 11 P.M. Pleasant Court really was a sleepy suburban street. So very quaint. So very ominous.

  She lay in bed, wide awake. The anonymity of a new city, as it turned out, was an unexpected gift. Essie, clearly, had no idea who she was—even after she’d mentioned missing children. If that didn’t tip her off, nothing would. In Sydney it was fairly common for people to recognize her name. When they did, they practically fell over themselves to run away (people really did believe bad luck was catching) or to give her their sympathies. Isabelle didn’t mind the running away, or the sympathies, but she hated the stories. Everyone, it seemed, had a story. It had almost happened to their friend, their neighbor, their cousin.

  Almost.

  Almost isn’t the same, she always wanted to tell them. Almost isn’t even almost the same.

  The worst was the breathless exhilaration with which people recounted their tales. People found it thrilling being so close to something so terrible—and they always seemed desperate to tell her all about it. Like the woman who told her that after hearing her story, her daughter had insisted on keeping her newborn twins within arm’s length the entire time she was in the hospital. Or the man who’d seen someone suspicious when he was at the playground with his kids, and after hearing her story he decided to call the police because “you could never be too careful.” Once, an elderly woman at a grocery store had told her, “If you really think about it, that child did the world a favor. Think of the children who are safe because of what happened!”

  Isabelle never knew what to say. You’re welcome? Sorry? Lucky you? What she really wanted to say was Fuck off.

  Beside her, her phone sprang to life. She glanced at the screen.

  Should I be expecting you home anytime soon?

  It was Jules, reminding her that, outside of Pleasant Court at least, people stayed awake after eleven.

  The message was classic Jules. Minimal words. No x’s or emojis. No hidden meanings for her to read into or obsess about. She would have given anything to have him here with her right now, to let him transport her away from all this for a little while so she didn’t have to think.

  Isabelle knew the whole street thought she was gay. She’d seen the flicker of surprise, excitement even, in Ange’s face when she’d mentioned her ex-partner. Isabelle wasn’t trying to be tricky, that partner had been a woman—a business partner in an online business that sold wristbands to music festivals. So she had, in fact, had a female partner. But sexually speaking, Isabelle liked men. One man in particular.

  Julian was a high school teacher in a not-so-nice part of Sydney. He was passionate about his job and a champion of underprivileged adolescents. On the weekends he coached a basketball team of his students because none of the parents had volunteered to do it, and he spent most of the school holidays organizing activities for kids whose parents were working—because boredom and a lack of supervision were two of the most important factors sending teens into juvenile detention. He was a good man, a born father.

  Before Jules, Isabelle had never had anything more than a string of sex-based relationships.

  “Men must love you,” people always told her, when she explained she didn’t do boyfriends.

  And it was true: men did love her. At first they loved the sex and the no-strings part of their relationships, but eventually they all loved her too. It wasn’t because there was anything special about her, it may have even been the opposite. They’d think, how could someone so ordinary not want to have a relationship with them? Eventually some of the guys she dated became positively crazy with desperation, begging her to love them back. And that was invariably where the relationship came to an end.

  But Jules was different. Perhaps it was because he’d made his intentions clear from the get-go. I don’t have purely sexual relationships with anyone, he’d told her the first night. I have too much respect for myself for that.

  Jules never made dreamy plans for the future or asked to meet her family. But without ever saying it in so many words, he commanded different treatment compared to the others. She never called him late at night or kicked him out of her bed in the wee hours of Sunday morning, the way she’d done with countless others. They made plans in advance, and though those plans always involved sex, they also often involved a takeout meal of some description and a sleepover. And over countless evenings, they’d gotten to know each other pretty well.

  When Jules proposed, six months ago, Isabelle actually considered it. They didn’t live together, but they spent several nights a week together, which was a big deal for Isabelle. But ultimately it turned out that was as big a commitment as she could make. When she’d declined, he said he understood. Jules often understood things without Isabelle having to explain them. He was, without doubt, the perfect guy. But Isabelle wasn’t lookin
g for the perfect guy. She was looking for someone else.

  Jules knew what she was going through, and so he wouldn’t pressure her to come home, or to stop doing what she was doing. He made allowances for her strange behavior, her erratic spells, her sudden disappearances. What he didn’t know was that she had come to Pleasant Court to find someone. And the next time she spoke to Jules it would be to tell him that she’d found what she was looking for.

  15

  FRAN

  Fran found Nigel in Ava’s room. He was in the rocker with his feet on the stool, Ava splayed across his chest, both of them out cold and snoring. Fran had been at Ange’s neighborhood watch meeting, which was just as dull as she’d feared. Stories about break-ins in the neighborhood had quickly turned to complaints about people putting their rubbish in other people’s bins (which, frankly, Fran had never seen the problem with—after all, it all went to the same place, didn’t it?), and it had gone downhill from there. Ange had seemed unusually high-strung throughout the meeting, and Essie hadn’t even shown up. Fran wished she’d given it a miss too. But Nigel had insisted.

  “I’ll watch the girls,” he’d said. “You need a break. Go!”

  His earnestness was hard to bear. He thought she had postnatal depression. And maybe she did. After all, it would explain everything. The tears, the odd behavior. Perhaps not the running, though. The other night when she’d broken down in tears in bed, she’d tried to tell him the truth, really tried, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. It was too terrible.

  Something no one told you about real life was that it was complicated. Sure, on your wedding day you were given cryptic words of encouragement from older, wiser women—things like “let things go,” and “love is more important than being right,” or “the real reward is getting to the end together.” Fran believed all those things. She did let things go. She did think love was more important than being right and that getting to the end together was the real reward. Unfortunately, there were some questions even the wise women didn’t have answers for.