The Woman Next Door

by Natasha Boydell

  As she made a coffee she glanced at the crystal fruit bowl, the one that had been a wedding present, and it brought back memories of that hot summer’s day when they had first moved into the house. How long ago that seemed now. She had hoped that a fresh start would repair their marriage. Now look at what had happened. I’ll find a way through, she told herself, feeling the familiar stirrings of the confident, capable Angie that she used to be so many moons ago. She had always been good in a crisis. One step at a time. But she had to do something important first and she couldn’t put it off any longer.

  20

  Sophie was staring out of the kitchen window, watching the rain hammer down onto the patio, when Angie burst into the garden. She was rushing through the downpour and clutching onto her hood to keep it from blowing off her head.

  How dare she use the garden gate, like we’re still mates, after what she’s done? Adrenaline started to course through Sophie, her body preparing itself for fight or flight. Which one though? She considered moving away into another room, not answering the knock on the back door, which was increasingly imminent. But she remained where she was. This conversation, showdown, confrontation, whatever you wanted to call it, had to happen sooner or later so she might as well get it over with. Rage, intermingled with nerves, fluttered around inside her, amplifying with every step Angie took towards the house. She peered in through the glass door and spotted Sophie in the kitchen before giving a tentative knock.

  Sophie watched her, standing outside in the rain, for a few more seconds and then walked over to unlock the door, moving aside to let her in.

  ‘Thanks,’ Angie said as she brushed water from her coat before hesitating, perhaps unsure whether to take it off or not.

  Sophie watched her silently. She doesn’t know if she’ll be staying, she thought.

  Eventually Angie shrugged the coat off. ‘Hi,’ she said.

  Sophie nodded back at her.

  ‘Can we talk?’

  Sophie nodded again. She inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times. She was too livid to speak.

  Angie moved towards the kitchen table and sat down, waiting for Sophie to join her but she remained where she was and leaned back against the kitchen cupboards, arms folded. They regarded each other. Sophie took in Angie’s dishevelled, unmade-up appearance and wondered how it was possible to vehemently despise someone you had previously adored.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Angie began. ‘That’s what I’ve come here to say. I know that those words probably mean nothing to you, but I still wanted you to hear them.’

  ‘And now I have.’

  ‘What I did was unforgivable,’ Angie continued. ‘There’s no justification for it, so I’m not even going to try. I made a terrible, stupid decision and hurt people who didn’t deserve it. I know you hate me, and I don’t blame you, but I can assure you that I probably hate myself more.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘There we must agree to disagree.’

  Passive aggressive cow. Sophie was almost vibrating with indignation. She looked at Angie, sitting so calmly at her kitchen table, and felt like she might explode. She wanted to run at her, pull her hair, rip it out in strands, scream at her. But she stayed where she was, pushing her folded arms tightly against her body, clenching and unclenching her fists. She used to think that Angie was so beautiful but now all she saw was a bitter, selfish woman and she loathed her for it.

  ‘I don’t think you’re capable of hating yourself, Angie. You’re too narcissistic. You always have been, I think, although I’m only really seeing it now.’

  Angie was looking up at her, perhaps trying to decide whether to defend herself or just sit quietly and let Sophie say what she needed to say. Before she had a chance to make up her mind, Sophie continued. ‘When I first met you, I thought you were a bit of a snob. But I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. I invited you into my home, into my life. Our children played together. Our husbands drank beer together. As time went on, I began to think of you as the friend I’d never had. But this whole time, you really didn’t give a shit about me, did you?’

  ‘I did–’ Angie began, but Sophie interrupted her.

  ‘No, you didn’t. The only person you care about is you. You even let me comfort you, support you, when you thought you were pregnant, even though you knew the baby could be Alan’s. You knew I wanted a baby. How could you do that? How could you be so cruel?’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Angie said but Sophie was barely listening.

  ‘Do you know how hurt I was when you started giving me the cold shoulder? I thought, What have I done to upset my lovely friend? I tormented myself trying to work it out. Even when Jack warned me about you, I still blamed myself.’

  ‘What do you mean Jack warned you?’

  Sophie felt a short, sharp satisfaction at how quickly Angie had pounced on that. ‘He told me that you were obsessed with your work and that everything else took a back seat, even him and the children. But even then, I still defended you.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Back then of course I thought the worst thing you’d done was avoid me a few times and forget about our dinner. It didn’t occur to me that you were sleeping with my husband.’

  ‘I do care about you, Sophie. A lot.’

  ‘No you don’t! You don’t care about anyone. Did you even like Alan? Or did you just sleep with him because you could? To make yourself feel wanted. Was he the first person you came across or was it a calculated decision? I mean, he’s hardly your type, is he?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ Angie said. ‘Alan was very kind to me at a time when I needed kindness. I mistook my feelings of gratitude for something else. I didn’t plan what happened and I certainly didn’t set out to seduce your husband, believe me, but I take full responsibility for what happened. I just did something incredibly stupid to make myself feel better.’

  ‘And you say you’re not a narcissist?’

  ‘Look, I know you don’t want to hear this from me right now,’ Angie continued. ‘But Alan loves you very much. I’ve always thought it, ever since I first met you both and if I’m being honest, which I really want to be with you, I always felt a bit jealous. I would love to be adored.’

  ‘But you are adored! Jack adores you.’

  ‘It’s complicated, Sophie. All I can say is that Alan is a genuinely nice man.’

  ‘Well, I certainly used to think he was.’

  ‘And he cares about you more than you know.’

  ‘I don’t really want to talk to you about how Alan feels about me, thanks.’

  Angie fell silent.

  Her whole demeanour is different, Sophie thought. She looks defeated.

  ‘Jack’s moved out,’ Angie said. ‘I don’t know if he’s coming home.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame him.’

  ‘I know,’ Angie said sadly. ‘I’ve messed everything up.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I could take it all back, I would.’

  ‘But you can’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, I think you need to get the fuck out of my kitchen.’

  Angie nodded and stood up. The conversation could never have ended any other way and they both knew it. ‘Ellie and Freddy are asking to see Tom and Katie,’ she said, tentatively. ‘Perhaps we could sort something out, for the sake of the children?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘We don’t have to see each other; I could send them round and you could send them back at an agreed time?’

  Angie sounded desperate. Perhaps this was her attempt to fix what had happened. It would never be fixed between the adults but maybe she thought she’d feel better if she managed to stop the children from becoming collateral damage. The problem was that Sophie didn’t want Angie’s children playing in her house, like nothing had happened, no matter how innocent they were in all of this. And she certainly didn’t want her children in Angie’s house. There was no way that the kids could continue to hang out as normal, having sleepovers at e
ach other’s houses, as if the two families were still the best of friends. How could she even think that was possible right now?

  ‘No, Angie.’

  ‘Okay.’ Angie nodded again. ‘I understand. I’ll leave you to it.’ She put her coat on and began walking towards the back door.

  Sophie considered asking her to use the front but knew that it would sound petty.

  Just before she opened the door, Angie looked back at her. ‘I know we’ll never be friends again. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But for what it’s worth, I think that Alan does.’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘You’re right, it’s not.’ And with that, she was gone.

  Afterwards Sophie sank down onto a chair, exhausted. Her marriage was in tatters and she had lost her close friend to boot. Where did she go from here? Perhaps in a different world, under different circumstances, she might have found herself walking across to Angie’s house in search of a listening ear. But that was impossible now and would never happen again.

  She thought of Jack, who had moved out, and wondered if she should do the same, but she knew that she couldn’t do that to the children. They needed her and she needed them. She was stuck here, living next door to the woman who had seduced her husband. The question was, did she let Alan stay or did she kick him out? It was the hardest decision she had ever made in her life. And as she tried to work out what to do, she started sobbing. She cried for all the things she’d thought she had, just a few days ago, and everything she had lost since. Because whatever happened next, she knew one thing for sure; her life was never going to be the same again.

  21

  Ten Years Later

  Katie Brennan tapped her foot impatiently on the vinyl floor and peered round the long line of people in front of her waiting for their recommended student vaccinations. She was itching to leave so that she could go and explore but judging by the excruciatingly slow speed the queue was moving at, she suspected she was in for a long wait. The sports hall was packed with other freshers, all eager to get on with navigating their way around campus, making new friends and arranging nights out. She smiled self-consciously as she caught the eye of a boy in the queue next to her. He smiled back. They both shuffled forward a couple of steps.

  ‘Looks like we’re in for a long wait,’ he said.

  She nodded in agreement. She’d arrived at university two days ago. Her parents had dropped her off and lingered for too long, fussing around her as she unpacked, finding excuses to stay. She had eventually told them, kindly but firmly, that it was time for them to leave. Even then, they had been reluctant to prise themselves away, clinging on to her tightly as they hugged her goodbye. She was the baby of the family and she wasn’t sure that they’d ever be ready to let her go.

  ‘We’re so proud of you, Kitty Kat,’ her dad had said. ‘Who’d have thought, a Brennan at Oxford University?’

  She had wanted to go to Oxford ever since she had read and later watched His Dark Materials. She had been bewitched by the idea of the magical city so steeped in history, with its long list of extraordinary alumni who had changed the world in so many different ways. When she finally saw it in person, after begging her mum to take her for a day trip, she hadn’t been disappointed. It was just as special as she’d built it up to be in her mind. She vowed there and then that she would earn her place at the prestigious university.

  She had always been a good student. Her schoolmates called her a swot although never maliciously. She was popular enough not to attract the attention of bullies, and her brother, Tom, was a heart-throb so it was in the other girls’ interests to be nice to her. But even so, she had known that getting into Oxford was a push. So, while her friends went to parties or spent hours on social media, she studied. She was only satisfied if she achieved the top marks in her class, which she usually did. She got the highest grades in the year in her GCSEs, much to her parents’ pride, and she tackled her A-levels with the same determination. She threw herself into as many extracurricular activities as she could manage so that she’d have plenty to write about on her application. She spent hours preparing for her interview, practising her answers over and over again until she was even dreaming about it. She would wake up in a cold sweat, terrified that she’d blown it, before she came to and realised that it hadn’t even happened yet.

  In the end, she needn’t have worried. She received an unconditional offer and just like that, her dream became a reality. Even now, she wasn’t sure if it had quite sunk in yet.

  Still, when the day came, she had been ready. It was time to fly the nest and begin the next chapter in her life. She knew the sacrifices that her parents were making to enable her to go to university. They did okay but they were hardly swimming in cash. Katie had offered to get a job so that she could pay her way but they would not hear of it. It was nothing, they insisted, they could manage just fine, she should concentrate on her studies.

  Her big brother, Tom, had left for Manchester University two years before her and he’d had no qualms about taking their parents’ money and spending most of it on booze. He came home in the holidays, regaling her with stories about crazy nights out, and she listened to it and wondered if he did any studying at all. She wanted to make new friends and have fun but more than anything, she wanted to immerse herself in university life, to smell the dusty books in the library, to gaze at the architecture of the university buildings, to be inspired and to learn.

  Her phone pinged and she fished it out of her pocket. It was a message from her mum.

  Just checking in to see you’re okay. Have you had your jabs? xxx

  She typed out a quick reply.

  Just waiting now, call you later xx

  Her mum called and texted her several times a day. They had always been close, the two of them, and Katie knew that she was struggling with empty nest syndrome, so she was trying to be patient with her. As she pocketed her phone and moved forward another inch in the queue, she spotted a girl from her college. She caught her eye and gave her a little wave and the girl waved back, mouthing, ‘Coffee after this?’ Katie nodded her agreement.

  Everyone had been so friendly. Her dad had been worried that Oxford would feel like a private school club and that his beloved daughter would feel excluded from the clique but she hadn’t experienced that so far. It seemed that they were all just a bunch of young people trying to make friends and settle into their new digs. She had been invited on a pub crawl with a few people from her college that evening and she was looking forward to it. She considered what to wear. Jeans and a smart top, she decided: she didn’t want to overdo it.

  Finally, after forty-five minutes, she reached the front of the queue and got her vaccinations. As she was pulling her sleeve down afterwards, she looked around for the girl whose name she had completely forgotten and saw her waiting by one of the exits. She smiled and walked up to her.

  ‘Katie, right?’ the girl said. ‘I’m Freya.’

  Katie grinned with relief, grateful to Freya for reminding her of her name, and they walked together towards a coffee shop that Freya knew. After ordering their drinks and finding a table, they sat down opposite each other and began the usual pattern of small talk; where they were from, what they were studying, whether they knew anyone else in Oxford.

  As they talked, Katie suddenly got the feeling that she was being watched. She turned her head slightly and saw a boy, about her age, sitting a few tables away. He was studying her intently. She looked away and tried to switch her attention back to Freya, who was still chatting, oblivious to the interruption.

  ‘So Mum was trying to persuade me to go to Exeter for ages so that I could live at home. I was like, “Erm, no thanks, Mum.” I couldn’t wait to get here.’

  Katie smiled and nodded but she was distracted. She glanced quickly back over at the boy and saw that he was still looking at her. He was exceptionally good-looking, with olive skin, dark hair and an intense stare that was currently fixed directly on her.
r />   ‘Do you know that boy?’ Freya asked, following her gaze.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Katie replied, confused. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘He’s really looking at you,’ Freya confirmed. ‘He’s fit. Hang on, he’s coming over!’

  She felt a presence by her side and glanced up to find him standing over the table looking down at her. He was tall and quite broad. He looked like someone who did a lot of sport. A captain of the football team type. The type of boy who didn’t normally talk to her.

  ‘Do we know each other?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. Now that she was looking at him properly, she felt a jolt of recognition, but she still couldn’t place him. He definitely hadn’t gone to her school. Was he from her hometown? Maybe a friend of a friend or someone she had seen out and about?

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

  ‘Cambridge,’ she replied.

  ‘That’s not it,’ he said, rubbing his face as he tried to work it out.

  ‘Perhaps she just looks like someone you know?’ Freya suggested.

  ‘Maybe,’ he agreed and then shrugged. ‘Anyway, nice to meet you, I’m Freddy.’

  ‘Katie,’ she said, firmly shaking the hand that he had held out to her.

  ‘Katie Brennan!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘That’s it, you’re Katie Brennan!’

  Katie was perplexed. ‘Have we met?’ she asked.

  ‘We used to be neighbours, in Pemberton Road,’ he declared triumphantly. ‘I never forget a name. You were in the same year as me at school. We played together all the time.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Katie exclaimed, putting her hand to her mouth as the penny finally dropped. ‘I remember! You’ve got a sister, haven’t you? Emma?’