by Rob Parker
Determined to smile, she started for the stairs, and dropped down with ease. She was forty-one, in better shape than most of her peers, and looked five years younger than she actually was, with flowing dark curls and the easy poise of natural beauty. She could easily have passed for one of the younger yummy mummies at the primary school gates she no longer had to go to. Not that Peter put much stock in things like that. She was convinced he just looked at her as a ball and chain forged from the shinier qualities of their earlier years together.
Arriving in the hall, she saw Peter opening the front door to the street, and could hear the sigh as he fortified himself for what was to come. They had only been there twenty-four hours and already he seemed stressed out of his mind, and Pam was even more concerned that him dragging them here, to this faceless estate in the middle of nowhere, had the makings of a supremely bad idea.
3
‘Christ, he looks even more stressed than you did on moving day,’ said David Lyon, looking out along the street from his kitchen window—the perfect spot from which to monitor all the comings and goings on Broadoak Avenue and have a coffee and a read of the paper. If he actually had a paper, that is—the paper delivery services, if there were any round here, hadn’t gotten out to them yet to offer their wares, and with the nearest shop over in the next village, he wasn’t about to make a seven-mile round trip before breakfast just so he could get the news. So his spot in the kitchen window in their house, Longpike, at the breakfast bar he was growing quite fond of, was part of a new coffee and iPad routine. At least the internet guy had made it out.
He was joined by Christian, who merely hovered by the breakfast bar without taking a seat, and looked out the window gesturing with a coffee of his own. ‘You’d have thought they’d be finished with the vans after yesterday,’ he said. ‘They had so much stuff I was sure they were one of those tabloid families with surprise octuplets.’
David laughed, remembering he had seen two kids. Two teens, awkward and trailing. A girl buzzing, a boy trepidatious. He then remembered his own child, which was something he was trying his hardest to get used to, but somehow kept forgetting—not that he would ever admit that to Christian.
‘How’s Olivia?’ he asked, trying to sound like he hadn’t just remembered. Happy as he was, he was still getting used to the idea—something he was forced to admit.
Christian moved over to the fridge, and began rooting in the juices. ‘She’s just on her morning nap,’ he replied. ‘You know how it is when she’s had an early start.’
‘What time was it?’
‘About five.’
David checked his watch. Bugger, it had just gone nine. ‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘Forget it,’ Christian interrupted, ‘I was happy to do it. Do you mind calling the maintenance company today?’
‘The smell still bothering you?’ Christian had been mumbling about a funny odour in the air, that David himself couldn’t detect, but didn’t want to cause any friction over small details.
‘Yeah, it’s not so much me, but it can’t be nice for poor Olivia.’
‘Yeah, course I will.’
Christian gave David a squeeze on the shoulder, which David appreciated, before heading off to the door, when they both turned back to the windows again. A car was heading up the street, going a little quicker than it should, and they heard its tyres screech as it rounded the bend onto Broadoak.
‘Bloody hell, is he just getting in?’ gasped David. A black Mercedes shot down the road, swerving around the removal van and pulling up outside the vast property opposite the one the new neighbours had moved into. It was the biggest house on Broadoak, by some margin.
‘Dirty stopout,’ said Christian, resuming his exit. ‘We’ve only been here two weeks and you can already tell he gets away with everything.’
David couldn’t work out whether that was a muted plea for Christian himself to get away with everything, but he let it slide. Times were turbulent enough for the new adopters—new house, new baby, a new life they had fought tooth and nail to get their hands on, but truthfully hadn’t got a clue what to do with now they were in it.
4
‘Before you ask,’ said Fletcher Adams, the front door not yet shut after his whirlwind entrance, which sprayed the hall with cheap aftershave and fag smoke, ‘it was work’. The door thunked behind him, and he stood still for a moment, wiping sweat from his brow and steadying himself. He looked like roadkill fried in grease and packed in a rumpled suit.
‘I never ask,’ replied Joyce, who sat at the bottom of the ornate walnut stairwell opposite the front door, swaddled in a dressing gown with fluffy slippers stretched out in front of her. She too was struggling to compose herself—she wanted Fletcher to believe she had been waiting there for hours—as opposed to the truth, which was that she had simply flung herself out of bed on hearing the car approach. For whatever reason, she always slept better when he wasn’t home. She knew it shouldn’t be like that, yet it was—but she certainly didn’t want him to know it.
‘It was work,’ Fletcher pointed out again, probably too quickly, wiping his hands together in such a way he flicked the sheen he just swabbed from his head onto the floor. Joyce felt like gagging just looking at him. She knew work could mean anything when it came to Fletcher, so when she said she never asked, she really meant it. And when some wives say they don’t want to know, Joyce genuinely, vehemently, didn’t want to know.
‘I hope you got a lot done,’ she said, unsure whether it came out as sarcastic, but not that bothered if it did.
‘Loads actually, darling,’ Fletcher replied, his shoulder loosening a touch now he realised that the storm he’d been fearing had whipped straight on out over the horizon without even a cursory grumble. ‘Could do with a shower though.’
Joyce didn’t want to holler in agreement but she certainly could have. She got up, and pottered into the kitchen, trying not to run but desperate to avoid a rushed kiss from Fletcher as he headed upstairs to the showers.
‘The twins are in the front room,’ she said. ‘They are playing that computer game you were upset about. They won’t listen to me, I can’t get them to stop.’
She got to the sink and looked out through the slatted windows onto the street, waiting for a sign of combustion. That game was Grand Theft Auto 5, the game that Fletcher made such a song and dance about on the local radio stations and in the local rag years prior. Politicians needed a cause, needed something between their teeth. Fletcher decided that something as obviously poisonous as that antisocial game—which looked to Joyce as a cathartic riot, on the odd occasion she had watched the twins running people over, giggling in glee—would be exactly the right thing to show his constituents how morally upstanding he was, how the core values of society were soldered to his own conscience, and how the developing fibre of the region’s youth was a cornerstone of his everyday thinking.
Fletcher didn’t answer.
Being the wife of a moderately young MP was all about the sacrifice and scrutiny, as well as learning to stand fast, while your erstwhile-wonderful husband was dragged increasingly out of shape by expectation, pressure and, worse, in Fletcher’s case, his own unspoken, maniacal lust for power and influence.
All Joyce could do was hang on for dear life. She had invested so much in this family to see it slip from her now. Stripped of her own professional livelihood with the birth of the twins, she adjusted focus and sought the silver linings associated with her decision. She had made her family, and its prosperity, her job. And she poured herself all over it, far too thinly at times, to make it work. And that’s precisely what she was doing now.
The kitchen window overlooked the side street, Lance Drive that ran directly alongside the edge of their vast property, off the monstrous sounding Broadoak Avenue. And as she looked left, she saw the house on the corner of Broadoak and Lance, the smallest the estate had to offer, but nonetheless well-appointed and perfectly in-keeping with the design of the whole estate. And out in
to the sunshine stepped Grace Milligan, carrying a briefcase and a silver thermos.
Working on a Sunday. Good for her. Joyce knew she’d be at her own brand of work all weekend in any event, but she couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy at the attractive young woman who was heading to her parked car opposite. She must have been doing well to afford a place like that on her own, and at that age, which had to be early- to mid-twenties. She must feel like she had the world at her feet.
Long-buried feelings threatened to burrow their way to the surface, like a bitter, resent-fuelled tapeworm. Grace looked up and waved, the sun catching her right in the eye as she did so, causing her to wave awkwardly in the general direction of the house with eyes squeezed shut. Joyce waved back politely, knowing the poor girl couldn’t see a damn thing.
Like all her gestures. Made, but never noticed or acknowledged.
5
And now I feel like a proper dick, thought Grace. It’s okay, keep going, it’s important.
Make the effort, keep the neighbours on side. She felt self-conscious as it was—at her age, in this fancy neighbourhood—without the neighbours turning on her when she’d barely been here any time at all.
As she finally stopped waving, she turned back to her own house, to look for Dewey in the front window. He should have been there by now, he always was. She felt bad abandoning him on a Sunday, after she had been out hard at it all week, but what can you do? Mortgage payments on a house like this dictated all the stops had to be pulled out. It’d be an investment, her dad had said. Bricks and mortar is better than any bank, especially in this climate. She had heard this so many times over tea at home, usually when her dad had just started his third glass of Tempranillo, so much so that putting an offer on this place was almost just to shut him up.
There was Dewey now, his nose pressed up to the glass, fogging the window with his panting breaths. He was a big dog, an Irish wolfhound. Grace’s mum and dad insisted that he came with her when she said she was going to live on her own, and she didn’t mind too much. He’d been the family dog for a good number of years, didn’t need any training, and she could always do with the company. But after only three weeks here, she was already worrying about Dewey, and the effect her near constant absences were having on him. Needs must. Can’t be helped.
She waved back to Dewey, who barked twice. She consoled herself with the notion that that was his acceptance of her duty. Good dog.
She got in the car, but sloshed hot tea from the thermos onto her thumb. She cursed and sucked her thumb, wondering how any tea got out of the tiny opening on the thermos lid. Her briefcase started to get heavy as she heaved it across to the footwell, fingers slipping on the worn handle, and it dropped to the carpet.
She took a deep breath, long in, strong out. She’d faced many more challenges than a belligerent cuppa and some luggage. Like in court, for example, and the near-daily occurrence of her client throwing a curveball, making her look like a dipshit in front of the judge. She composed herself in an instant—pick up, forget and press forth.
She settled behind the wheel of her tasty BMW M2 as it purred to life. No matter how confused, uncomfortable or constricted she felt in that godawful house, her car was always a source of comfort. It was the first thing she really spent money on, as a freshly qualified lawyer with the first cheques coming through. It was the first thing of note that had been truly hers. A monument to her hard work and early successes. She’d live in it if she could. A bit small for Dewey, mind. When she took him out, she had to flatten the front passenger side and he sprawled across the whole car interior on each of the other three seats.
She pushed off her own short driveway, entering Lance Drive just to turn straight off it onto Broadoak, and accelerated a touch. She adjusted her mirror, to check her make up one last time, when she noticed the Fenchurches up ahead. Both of them, in their garden, looking at her approaching car. Out of a mix of self-consciousness and eagerness to please, she waved animatedly. The Fenchurches waved back, with broad smiles, causing Grace to smile herself. Whatever the others were up to, she seemed to be able to rely on these two. The friendly grandparents of their little community, never short of a smile or wave. Maybe moving here wasn’t such a bad move after all, Grace thought, as she headed off down the estate.
6
‘How does she afford a place like that?’ said Quint Fenchurch through a broad smile, while waving with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. He didn’t want to, but Wendy would surely crawl right up his arse if he didn’t. He watched the Beemer disappear off through the estate. ‘It’s taken us all our lives to get to this point, and this girl who doesn’t even know she’s bloody born, just swans in here with her ridiculous car and massive bloody dog like she owns the place.’
He turned back to the house, his own, and couldn’t help but compare it to Grace Milligan’s home. Yes, he thought immediately. Whatever happens, mine is still bigger. ‘What has she done to earn it?’ he said in a mutter. ‘I mean really?’
‘Maybe she just works hard and saves her pennies, like you always moan about people not doing,’ said Wendy from the porch. A cardigan covered her shoulders, a chair pulled up tight to the stone of their entrance arch way (which nobody else had, Quint noted when he put the offer in), so she could sit and muse. That’s what they wanted in retirement. A quiet spot to pontificate and potter, in a nice area.
‘She’s been saving her pennies since she was a twinkle in her daddy’s crotch, then,’ said Quint, marching slowly back to the house. ‘In fact, that’s probably it. It’s daddy’s money, not hers. She’s just a rich kid, a brat who stamped her feet. It won’t be long before she stamps her feet for a pony and she’ll be building a stable in that little garden of hers. That hound is big enough for a stable and all.’
‘Come on, Quint, it’s Sunday, aren’t there more important things to be doing than moaning?’
Quint literally harrumphed, his shoulders selling the gesture, and marched off around the side of the house.
Wendy smirked. She found it sweet that after all these years, he still had that fire she found so attractive in the first place, like he constantly had a piece of steak stuck between his molars and his righteous tongue couldn’t rest until it had been dug out. It had been the part of his job, as a full time beat policeman, that had fuelled his purpose and focussed his energies. Retirement, when it came almost exactly ten years ago, brought about a shift in priority. No longer could he direct his passion at meaningful pursuits like law and order, so he now took that same ‘search and destroy’ attitude to everyday mundanities. Shopping was now a military excursion. Every gesture was borne out of a measured adherence to protocol. And for Quint, that protocol suggested he should be making all the right noises for their new neighbours.
He often told her how important community was, and that a community strong enough could repel all challenges, and remain strong through testing times. He’d doled out that speech a hundred times throughout his forty-year police career, indiscriminately, both for her and the people he encountered through work in equal measure.
Wendy knew she would follow him to the ends of the earth. Their love was as concrete as an emotional attachment could get. She knew what she’d get from him, and vice versa. Although she had adapted to retirement a lot better than he had. It took her all of ten minutes to forget her job as head nurse at Warrington Hospital gastro-intestinal unit. She was ready. Quint, however, still felt he had something to prove. Wendy thought Quint still didn’t know that, by the end, she had been earning more than he. She had hidden it from him, so as not to wound the pride she knew gripped him so fiercely.
Quint reappeared around the corner now, heralded fractionally by the trundle of plastic tyres on gravel.
Mowing. Again, Wendy thought. Well, if it keeps him happy.
7
He had to concede it. The living room looked pretty good. Peter even cracked a smile. Maybe this could work after all.
‘Okay gang, let’s be h
aving you,’ he shouted up the stairs.
Jacob bounded down immediately, his arms windmilling either side of him, getting used to the extra space around him. Peter’s smile broadened. He looked happy, his son—his cheeks high in a grin, sending his round, boy-wizard spectacles high up his brow.
‘You like it here?’ he asked, as Jacob sailed down the stairs on blurred tip toes.
‘Yep,’ he said in a gleeful exhalation. ‘The smell’s a bit weird though’.
‘Smell?’
Jacob landed at the bottom, planting both feet. ‘Yeah, can’t you smell it?’
Peter hadn’t smelled anything, but there was so much new to take in that maybe his otherwise-occupied senses had overlooked it. ‘Is it just a new housey smell? New carpets and stuff?’
‘Nah, it smells rotten. A bit like when we go to the tip.’
‘Really? I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Just the air around here I suppose,’ said Jacob, who skid-slid joyously in his socks over to the front door for his shoes, but misjudged it slightly and knocked a box by the door, which clanked angrily in reply.
‘Hey, careful, careful,’ said Peter. ‘I’d hoped they would make it to the neighbours with the wine inside the bottle.’
‘Schmoozing tactics to defcon 5?’ asked Pam, as she came down the stairs.
‘Something like that,’ replied Peter. ‘You look nice.’
Pam smiled as she joined him, in a dark, tasteful dress and her hair pinned up with just as much care. ‘Want to make a good impression before they see me in all my first-thing-in-the-morning, lost-cast-member-of-The-Walking-Dead glory when I creep out to grab the post.’