The Sudden Departure of the Frasers (10 page)

‘Oh, there’s been progress today,’ I said. ‘Hetty was here this morning and put a rocket up them. They fixed that fault in the folding doors, the spotlights are in, and some of the kitchen cabinets are in position.’

My voice had a rough-grained tone, a rawness to it that was not usual, but he didn’t notice, too busy running his hands over the new fittings, caressing the glazing, questioning counter height, voicing new doubts about tap
swivel. It was a ready-made smokescreen, this renovation project; a dust screen.

When he’d finished his hands were black. ‘You mustn’t stay in the house all day,’ he said. ‘All this dirt. The builders probably wear masks.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not here most of the time. I was out all day today. I went to the gym and had a coffee with Rob next door.’

‘The dust hasn’t got through there, has it?’

‘No, not that I noticed. Anyway, I thought that as long as I stay local and can get back quickly if something goes wrong, then I can go missing for hours.’

‘You like the idea of going missing, don’t you?’ Jeremy smiled. ‘Of being a woman of mystery?’

‘Who doesn’t? Besides, I need to keep you on your toes, darling.’

As his indulgent expression turned all too quickly to a frown, I held my breath. ‘Hang on, nothing
has
gone wrong so far, has it? The builders know what they’re doing? There’s nothing I should be worried about?’

‘No, that’s the point,’ I exhaled. ‘We only worry when it
does
go wrong.’

‘Good.’ He checked his phone for the time. ‘Let me change and we’ll go out for dinner. Which of our four options shall we go for?’

On Lime Park Parade there was an Indian, a Mexican, a pizza place and, best of all, Canvas, the proper West End-style restaurant on the ground floor of the old art school. We’d been eating in them virtually in rotation, uninspired by our temporary kitchen quarters at the top of the house.

‘Canvas?’ I said.

Physically exhausted though I was, I got myself ready to go out. I’d already showered, of course, in the generous intermission between the builders leaving and Jeremy returning, my hair dried for the second time that day. As I put make-up on I noticed a faint grazing on my chin. I was going to have to demand that Rob shaved.

Another condition.

The next day, having extracted from my gift stocks one of my favourite room scents and selected from the patisserie on the Parade their finest lemon drizzle cake, I presented myself uninvited at Felicity’s door. I told her I was there because I wanted to know how affected she was by the noise, but really I wanted to know how good the soundproofing was between her flat and Rob’s.

‘I haven’t seen you for a while,’ I said. ‘I thought it was time for a fresh offering.’ As the sudden screech of the tile cutter made us both wince, I added ruefully, ‘Perhaps a blank cheque might work better?’

‘Let’s start with this and see how we get on,’ she said, taking the cake box from me. ‘Ooh, my favourite! How did you know?’

‘I had inside information – your neighbour upstairs. The next part of my evil plan is to get you to tell me
his
favourite.’

‘Well, I’m not sure it would be cake,’ she said. ‘Rob doesn’t have a sweet tooth.’

That, I could easily believe. I followed her in, liking that her flat was clean and tidy just for herself and not because
she’d been expecting a guest. She had framed photographs of Glen Campbell on her walls, and when I admired them she showed me a video clip of him performing at the Hollywood Bowl.

‘I had lunch with Rob yesterday,’ I told her, in the casual way of acquaintances passing the time. We were settled by then at the coffee table with tea and cake. She had yet to open the room scent, but I knew she would love the addition of its rich, woody notes to her home.

‘Yes, I heard you on the stairs,’ she said.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that, didn’t think there was anything particularly distinctive about my approach to a staircase, up or down. I made a mental note neither to skip on arrival nor drag my feet on departure.

‘It’s hard to imagine he’s much of a cook,’ she added.

‘That makes two of us,’ I said, shrugging. I knew better than to fabricate details that could later be disproved. ‘You should join us when you’re not circumnavigating the city with your pedometer. We’ll go out somewhere. I’m always looking for new places to escape the dust.’ I smiled my most winning smile. ‘That’s the real reason I’m here now, to escape. I’m only pretending to keep you sweet, Felicity.’

‘Well, keep up the pretence for as long as you like if the cake’s always this good,’ she said, finishing her first slice. I had pushed mine around the plate, having forsaken such treats years ago.

I glanced about the room. ‘So you’ve got your rooms the other way around to his? Your bedroom is at the front?’

And the living room in which we were sitting was
directly under his bedroom, which was not ideal. I imagined her tucked up on the sofa with her Glen Campbell biography, her concentration disturbed as squeaks and groans leaked from above.

‘Yes, he likes the bigger room for the living room, because he works from home, but I wanted my living room here, at the back, so I can see the garden. The Californian lilac should be flowering soon. You’ve got one as well, of course.’

‘Have I?’

Felicity laughed. ‘You’re not a gardener, then?’

‘No, to be honest I’m not sure where my talents lie in the domestic realm.’

I imagined Rob smirking at that. I imagined Jeremy smirking at that, too. I blinked their twin smirks from view.

‘Better that way, if you ask me,’ Felicity said. ‘If you’re too good at housework, they think you’re no good for anything else.’

‘I couldn’t agree more. Were you ever married, Felicity?’

‘Yes, once. So I know the pitfalls first hand. Those sacred vows people find so hard to keep.’

I looked carefully at her then, but there was nothing insinuating in her tone, nor anything in her expression to suggest disapproval. ‘Well, I think I like your arrangement better than Rob’s,’ I said, deciding I’d fish one last time before dropping the rod. ‘But I hope he doesn’t keep you awake with his parties when you’ve gone to bed.’

‘Oh, he’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’m the noisy neighbour, with my music. I have it on all day long.’

I was pleased then, because I hadn’t been aware of her music when I was upstairs, which meant she’d likely not noticed the sort we were making either. ‘Well you’re both model citizens compared to me,’ I said, motioning to the dividing wall. ‘I know it must feel like it’s taking forever, but we
are
making progress. It won’t be one of those situations that keeps overrunning and overrunning until you wake up one day and realize it’s been three years.’

Rather like the affair I’d embarked on. Ablaze now, it would surely lose its rampant heat in a few months, or even weeks, blowing itself out naturally perhaps at about the time building work was finished.
That
could suit all concerned.

Agreeing she would not suffer in silence, Felicity cut herself a second slice of cake, while I rose to have a look at her CD collection.

‘Is it only Glen you listen to or do you like others as well?’

‘Johnny Cash,’ she allowed. ‘And Elvis, of course.’

‘Everyone likes Elvis,’ I agreed. ‘He must have been irresistible when he was young, don’t you think?’

Morsel of cake poised at the end of her fork, she looked at me with interest. ‘No man is irresistible,’ she said.

Well,
that
was interesting, she thought, as a couple she had not yet met but who she suspected might live at number 46 (and in which case had declined her drinks invitation with neither apology nor explanation) crossed the street outside the Davenports’ house just moments after having crossed
towards
it. Their dog, a long-legged creature with a coat like lambswool, pulled at the lead in resistance before tripping after them to nose the base of a cherry tree on the opposite kerb. Though it was drizzling and hardly the weather for lingering, the pair stood in obviously contrived conference, heads down, lips moving like those of extras on a film set, mouthing but not speaking. The man had his hands in his pockets and the woman reached suddenly to grip his right forearm, as if restraining it – restraining him.

Very curious behaviour.

It was 11 a.m., the time of day when the street was at its most peaceful, the only sounds those of pre-school children in the playground in the park, the commuters long gone. Since this man was usually among them, he must have a day off or be working from home.

She imagined Joe hearing her thoughts and laughing:
Who cares who works from home? It’s
his
business, not yours. She reddened, but did not move from the window.

It was then that she saw a figure hove into view from the opposite direction, passing the gates of numbers 48, 46, 44 … it was the churl from the flat next door, Rob – it seemed too approachable a name for one so abrasive – presumably returning home from some rare public appearance (frightening small children, perhaps, though he hardly need leave the street to do
that
). As he neared his own gate he slowed sooner than Christy was expecting – he’d noticed the couple crossing in front of him, perhaps; would he heckle them as he had Felicity that time? – and came to a halt by the Davenports’ wall. To her great horror he lifted his big bushy chin and stared up at the very window where she stood spying. Even allowing for the helpful dazzle of sunlight on glass, she knew he had seen her: there was no mistaking that glare – stark, hostile, menacing. Pointlessly, too late, she slid aside, fingering the curtain fabric for comfort, relieved by the peripheral sight of him on the move again, pacing past her gate and into his own.

Returning to her original position, she was in time to watch the couple from number 46 re-cross the road and head towards their own gate. To her surprise, it was now this other man who turned to glower – in Rob’s direction – before his wife scurried back to take his arm and usher him towards home. Though he exclaimed angrily, it was clear from his wife’s consoling demeanour that the expletive was not directed at her.

Goodness. What had that been about? There had been genuine loathing in number 46’s expression.

It was only when all parties were safely indoors and the pavements clear once more that Christy registered a detail that had been staring her in the face. The hands of the man from number 46, they had no longer been stuffed in his pockets as he stood at his gate, they’d been free, his arms hanging stiffly at his sides. And the right one, if she remembered rightly, had been bandaged across the knuckles, as it would be if sprained or badly cut. The kind of injury you might get, perhaps, from punching someone in the face.

‘What do you think it
meant
?’ she asked Joe that night. Admittedly, this was possibly not the first subject he wished to discuss on coming home exhausted at 11 p.m., but it was hands-down the most remarkable thing that had happened to her that day.

‘I don’t know, but I think you might be becoming a bit obsessed,’ he said, as amused by her indignation at this suggestion as by the idea that she should be so curious in the first place. He, by contrast, was detached, just as she doubtless would have been had she still been working, the hours spent at home dwarfed by those in the office and too scarce and precious to be squandered on an audit of the neighbours’ comings and goings. He had considerably more attention for the large glass of wine he’d poured himself before even uttering a greeting.

‘How can I be obsessed? I’ve never mentioned this couple before. I’ve never even met them.’

‘I mean with the street generally. It’s like
Rear Window
or something. You’ll be telling me you’ve witnessed a murder next.’

Christy laughed. ‘I suppose I’m bored. Job-hunting when there aren’t actually any jobs doesn’t take up a lot of my day. My mind must be looking for some other occupation.’

‘You’re not in plaster like James Stewart,’ Joe pointed out. ‘You do have the use of your legs. You’re allowed to leave the house, you know.’

Thanks to the adrenalin of shock following her redundancy, she’d been filled at first with extraordinary energy, cramming her days with meetings with old contacts and headhunters and choosing to overlook the terms they used to describe the job market – ‘
very
quiet’, ‘a bit dead’, ‘not as buoyant as we’d like’ – until one consultant, confiding that she feared for her own job, had actually begun crying in front of her.
Then
she believed them. She’d quickly resolved that this universal pessimism would need to be counteracted short term by domestic accomplishment if she was not to succumb to it and, though there was no DIY to be done, she could clean. The Frasers had made countless improvements but they had not had the power to repel dust and the parquet flooring showed every last mote. And then there was the immense kitchen and the three bathrooms (two of which they had not yet used) and the downstairs cloakroom … Yes, this could be a full-time job if she applied herself to it conscientiously.

And didn’t allow herself to get too distracted every time she passed a window.

‘I wish I could afford a gym membership,’ she said. Fitness was the saviour of many an unemployed white-collar worker, everyone knew that, but even with Joe’s
promotion she was not about to dive deeper into debt for the joining fee required by Lime Park Club, a luxurious facility next to the primary school with a tantalizing olive-green pool you could glimpse through the glass. (
Even with Joe’s promotion
… She was using that phrase more and more, his accomplishment somehow recast as not quite enough to save their skin. He didn’t deserve that.)

‘You could go running?’ he suggested. ‘That costs nothing.’

‘You know I hate running. It hurts and I give up.’

‘That’s not much of a motto,’ Joe said, grinning. ‘“It hurts and I give up”?’

She tugged at the drawstring of her pyjama bottoms, as if to tighten them was to remove an inch from her waistline. (In the first week of her redundancy she had imposed the rule that she should remain dressed for Joe’s return from work, but she had soon abandoned this wifely discipline and now asked of herself only that she remain awake.) ‘OK, so I’m not going to be hired as an ambassador for British Athletics. I just want to be hired, Joe. By
anyone
.’

‘Something will come up soon. You’ve got an interview lined up for the week after next, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, but according to the headhunter that agency has a reputation for pulling budgets just when they’re about to make an offer.’ That was how it was now, the consultants had told her, cutting short the joy she’d felt on hearing she’d made her first shortlist, albeit for a role junior to the one she’d just lost. Multiple interview rounds seemed to be standard now, and it took companies months to get through the process and make a decision.

But at least she was online again. Having given up the ghost of the cut-price supplier, she’d called the market leader and within hours was making use of the fibre-optic cables installed in the Frasers’ day. She didn’t need to phone her mother to be told that false economy was never a good idea.

‘It’s a numbers game,’ Joe said, refilling his glass (
already
?). ‘Eventually, your number will be up.’

She raised her eyebrows, amused. ‘Would you like to rephrase that?’

‘Enjoy the break while you can, that’s what I say.’ Though he was claiming to envy her, she could tell that he would rather jump off a bridge than be at a loss as she was. He had developed a subtle new gravitas since being promoted, she noticed; he’d leave in the morning as if eager to make his mark on the world and he’d return in the evening with the air of having made it. It was very attractive.

She, on the other hand, was reduced to what was starting to tip alarmingly close to being a nosy neighbour. Just as well she hadn’t confessed that the first thing she’d done when dusting down her laptop was not to job-search but to google the Frasers. She wanted to find out who they were and where they were now; she wanted to see if they still existed.

Well, Jeremy Fraser did, she had established that at once. Amber Fraser’s friend Imogen would not have found it hard to locate him, for he was a founding partner of a digital branding firm called Identico.UK, its Kingsway address given on the company website. His biography in the ‘Our People’ section was crammed with business
achievements and yet it felt featureless, devoid of personal details, as if he himself, in spite of his expertise, defied branding. The photograph showed a man of about fifty with cropped grey hair, his expression one of self-important vexation, as though the photographer had interrupted him in conference with the prime minister.

Of Amber Fraser there was only an archived biography of a junior media-buyer role she’d held years ago, along with a list of clients she had looked after; she’d had ‘special responsibility’ for projects co-partnered with Identico.UK, which if nothing else at least hinted at how she and her future husband had met. Christy supposed that her marriage could have been relatively recent, any earlier references presumably involving her maiden name, which Christy did not know.

Just as Imogen had said, she had no Facebook or Twitter presence. How had she put it?
She wanted to cut loose undesirables from the past
… It was an interesting choice of words.

To Christy’s great disappointment, there was no photograph.

Well, at least they had ended their inauspicious reign as new kids on the block, for the couple who’d bought Felicity’s flat had now moved in. Having learned from her mistakes, Christy did not knock at their door and introduce herself, but posted a ‘New Home’ card through the letter box and left it at that.

Soon after, on the first day of spring to contain the promise of summer, a voice called to her over the garden
wall (gardening being this week’s activity to promote mindfulness) and when she climbed onto a tree stump to peer over she found a woman of approximately her own age, raven-haired, olive-skinned and – inevitably – pregnant, radiantly so.

‘Hi there, are you Christy? Thank you for your card!’ She introduced herself as Steph, distinguishing herself at once from the rest of the Lime Park Road population by making eye contact and smiling broadly. ‘Oh, and we found your note about the drinks party as well, but we hadn’t moved in then. Did you have a good time?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Christy said, flashing to an image of Joe and her standing on either side of a tray of unused champagne flutes.

‘You’ll have to tell us what everyone’s like around here.’

Christy hesitated. ‘I’m not sure I know myself yet. They keep themselves to themselves a bit.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Steph said. ‘I’ve been getting around that by accosting people in the street.’

Given the tensions she’d observed, Christy wondered if this was the best strategy.

‘So far I’ve waylaid Joanne and Kenny at number 46’ – Christy made a mental note of the names of the couple she’d spied in that cryptic interaction with Rob – ‘and Caroline and Richard next to you. Caroline seems to be the unofficial social secretary of the street, doesn’t she?’

So Caroline did preside, just as she’d suspected. ‘You’ve talked to her?’

‘Yes, I bumped into her with her kids in the park yesterday. She was really helpful.’

‘She was?’ Christy tried to keep the incredulity from her voice.

‘Even before I told her where I lived, she’d already filled me in on the local nurseries, primary school admissions, the lot. She said if it weren’t for the great schools, they’d have moved on by now. Liz was there as well. Her boys are
so
gorgeous. You know she’s a single mother?’

‘Ah.’ Christy
knew
she’d made a mistake with Liz in not welcoming the offspring with open arms. As Steph chattered on, it became clear that in a matter of days she had had far greater success in engaging the natives than Christy had in several weeks, which rather contradicted her suspicion that it was the street that was at fault. Christy could only put Steph’s advantage down to the fact of her pregnancy; I’m being punished for my lack of breeding, she thought, pleased with the joke if not the situation.
That
, well, it could only grow more painful by the day – if she allowed it to.

‘I find that no one turns down a pregnant woman,’ Steph continued. ‘We naturally attract advice givers, if you know what I mean.’

‘I think I do.’

‘
You’re
not … ?’

‘No.’ Christy chose to interpret the question as the standard one of whether she had any children rather than whether she was expecting a baby, not as outrageous a suggestion as it sounded in light of the shapeless clothing she’d taken to wearing for her long days of domesticity. ‘It’s just me and my husband.’

‘In
that
big place?’

‘I know.’ All that square footage so marvelled at by their families as a luxury for two had come to be an uneasy abstraction for one woman (lugging a vacuum cleaner, generally), the rooms beyond recognition from the Frasers’ day. When they’d first viewed the house, she and Joe had admired item after item, the elegant little tables with jugs of fresh flowers, clusters of quirky, mismatching chairs, beautiful woven rugs at every step; by the time of their second viewing, most had been removed, but there had remained in the air itself the stamp of the Frasers, the scent of their wealth and style. Now, under the Davenports, there was no stamp, no scent, and Christy knew that if Steph asked for a tour she would be embarrassed to give it.