The People at Number 9

by Felicity Everett

  When they had left, Sara began to set the room to rights. Caleb and Patrick joined in, subdued and purposeful. Only Dash, apparently incapable of matching his mood to the sombre circumstances, prattled cheerfully. As he scraped away with a kitchen knife at the solidified wax on the kitchen table, he explained that Arlo had been waving the tool around, taunting everyone with it, that he had tried to remove it for his brother’s own protection, but that Arlo had dropped it and the wax had splashed back into his own face, which kind of served him right when you thought about it. Sara smiled tersely. You are a psychopath, she thought.

  Neil’s key rattled in the door.

  “Hi Sara!”

  His sing-song voice told her he wasn’t alone. Footsteps rang down the tiled hall and they appeared in the kitchen doorway, two interlopers from the real world.

  “This is Steve, from work,” Neil said, “Chartered Surveyor extraordinaire. He’s come to have a look at the crack.”

  “Hi Steve,” Sara said, attempting a smile. “Neil, can I have a quick…?”

  “Got them clearing up then?” Neil interrupted her. “I told you you’d get into the swing. I’ll just take Steve up for a gander, he’ll be wanting to get home.”

  They were gone for some time. Sara couldn’t tell what was being said, but she could hear Neil talking in his work voice – bluff and authoritative. She wondered if the day would ever end. She was itching to pour herself a glass of wine, but until Lou and Gav got back with news of Arlo, it didn’t seem appropriate. To distract herself, she went into the living room and turned on the news. She felt restless and a little bit sick. She couldn’t get the thought of Gavin out of her head, but it was all wrapped up, now, with the shame and anxiety of Arlo’s injury. Maybe that was just how it was when you embarked on an affair. How hard she had made it for herself, though. To be living next door to him, to be best friends with his wife, to have remade her whole life – even the children’s education – around an idea which this charmed and charming couple had seemed, uniquely, to embody; yet to be contemplating an act of treachery that would blow it all apart.

  Neil poked his head round the living-room door.

  “Do you want to mute that a minute?” he said.

  He and Steve came in and sat down, bringing with them the blotting paper scent of work.

  “So they’re mates, are they, next door?” Steve said.

  “Yes,” said Sara with less than total conviction.

  “That’s good, because I could do with having a look from their side. You don’t happen to know, do you? If the crack goes right through?”

  Sara had been up and down Lou and Gavin’s stairs many times, but it had never occurred to her to check. She shook her head.

  “Never mind. I’ll be back again to monitor it. Best to look in daylight anyway.”

  “We’ll be insured, will we?” said Sara, more to show an interest than because she really cared.

  “Probably,” said Steve, “depends on the cause. Could be a number of things – soil shrinkage, tree roots, worst case scenario; subsidence. You said they’d had work done, next door?”

  As Steve was walking down the path, the Humber pulled up next door. Sara watched Gav unstrap Zuley from her car seat and lift her onto one hip, before scooping Arlo, his face half-obscured by a large dressing, onto the other. He carried the two of them towards the house, as if they weighed nothing. She was so busy admiring the effortlessness of it, that she didn’t notice Lou approaching.

  “For you,” her friend said, handing her a bunch of garage flowers. “Sorry.”

  “What on earth for?” said Sara.

  “I was out of order, blaming you. I just freaked.”

  “Oh,” Sara smiled uncertainly, “thanks. How’s Arlo? What did they say?”

  “It’s not as bad as it looked, thank God. Only first-degree. There might be a bit of scarring, but his eyesight won’t be affected.”

  “Phew,” said Sara, “I’d never have forgiven myself.”

  “Ah, ah…” Lou held up an admonitory finger. “Not your fault.”

  Sara hugged her.

  “Anyway – it’s a wake-up call,” said Lou. “I’ve been thinking for a while, that working together isn’t really doing us any favours.”

  “So, what? You don’t want to home-school any more?”

  Despite all the frustrations of the past few weeks, Sara felt suddenly bereft.

  “Oh, no, I do,” said Lou. “I just think, for very good reasons, because we’ve been so focused on the kids, we’ve lost sight of our own needs. And I think we should fix that, for their sakes as much as ours. I think we need to be a bit more selfish, Sara. I think we need to make some time for us. When did you and I last do anything together? We don’t even swim any more.”

  If Sara had not been feeling so kindly disposed toward Lou, she’d have pointed out that the reason they no longer swam, was because these days, Lou could never fit it in. The pressure of a fast-approaching British Film Institute grant deadline had edged it out of her itinerary. Only she seemed to have forgotten that, whether or not she wanted to hone her body with aerobic exercise, some mug still had to drive the boys to the leisure centre for their Taekwondo class. For the last five weeks, that mug had been Sara.

  She hadn’t even minded that much. She liked the place. She liked its melancholy strip-lit atmosphere and its comforting aroma of chlorine and chips. The cafeteria was a good place to write. She felt anonymous there. There was no one to judge her; no hipsters in cropped trousers or brainy-looking women in funky tights. Coffee only came one way – hot, weak and foamy.

  It had been a surprise, therefore, on her last visit, to be interrupted mid-sentence by a familiar voice.

  “Hello, stranger!”

  Carol wore her body warmer like a suit of armour. Her hair lay sleek and damp against her head. Under the unflattering light of the cafeteria, the strain of the forty-two years she had spent doing only the done thing, was showing. Sara was surprised, nevertheless, at how pleased she was to see her.

  “Hi,” she said, closing her laptop and sliding it surreptitiously into her bag. “You’re slumming it, aren’t you?”

  “I know.” Carol lowered her voice and jerked her head towards Holly, who was queueing at the serving hatch, “Had to give up my gym membership. Bloody school fees!”

  There was an awkward silence. Sara pushed a moulded plastic chair towards Carol, and she perched uneasily on the edge of it.

  “How’s she settling in?” Sara asked.

  “Oh,” Carol wobbled her head equivocally, “you know. A few teething troubles, but I’m sure she’ll come through. How’re you getting on with the…?”

  “Home-schooling?” said Sara. “Oh, it’s going well. Really, really well.”

  Carol nodded.

  “That’s good,” she said. There was another silence.

  “She hates it,” Carol burst out, “every day I want to run in there and rescue her. It’s competitive and cliquey and she’s in the bottom set for everything. She cries every night and I can’t bear it.”

  “Oh no!” Sara felt a pang of real pity. She reached out and clasped Carol’s manicured nails.

  “Have you thought about moving her back?” she added hopefully.

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Carol said. “Not now you and Celia have gone. I was talking to Deborah Parry and she says it’s a war zone. She said, ‘Carol, I’m not exaggerating, it’s like Sarajevo in there’. No, the more I look at it, the more I think maybe you had the right idea.”

  “Huh!” Sara said.“I wouldn’t be so sure. Home-schooling’s no picnic, I can tell you. It’s exhausting trying to keep them engaged all day and with the best will in the world, Lou can be a bit of a…”

  Carol’s eyes lit up and Sara saw, belatedly, the trap that had been set for her. She could have sidestepped it, but she chose not to. She jumped in with both feet.

  “To be honest, she can be a bit of a nightmare. She’s full of great ideas, but she forge
ts that Patrick and Arlo are only little and then they get left behind and start misbehaving and my God, she’s got a temper on her.”

  “Oh I’ve seen it, don’t worry,” said Carol. “I once made the mistake of telling her eldest off for kicking a football at our garage doors. Well…!”

  “And she’s always disappearing and leaving me to hold the fort,” Sara interrupted her, “and she’s got this way of being really condescending when she thinks what I’m doing isn’t arty enough. Well, her ideas are brilliant on paper, but half the time they don’t come off. She was supposed to be getting Beth Hennessy – you know from Little Creatures Puppet Theatre? To come and do a workshop with the kids.”

  “Oh, now that would be something.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not holding my breath. I just saw in the paper that they’re touring Eastern Europe at the moment. She’s full of bullshit, Carol. If it isn’t all about her, she doesn’t want to know. I don’t know how Gavin puts up with her.”

  “Ah, the lovely Gavin,” said Carol sarcastically.

  “Gav’s not so bad,” Sara said, realising that she had already been shamefully disloyal.

  “Oh, but he’s so fake,” said Carol, “he puts on this big show of being matey when you bump into him in the street, but you can tell he’s not really listening to a word you say.”

  “I don’t agree,” said Sara, hotly. “I find him very genuine. And he’s not poncy about his art, either. Not at all.”

  “Nor should he be, quite frankly,” said Carol. “Talk about the emperor’s new clothes. Really, Sara, I’m no philistine, I like modern art as much as the next person, but Simon and I saw a couple of his pieces at a gallery in Copenhagen, and we just looked at each other and shrugged.”

  “Really?” Sara was starting to feel annoyed. She had forgotten about Carol’s small-mindedness, her determination that anything she didn’t understand must be a con.

  “I find it rather beautiful. I think he’s got a lot to say about the human condition and I think because his work’s figurative, it’s easy to think it’s more straightforward than it is.”

  “Oh well, of course, you’ve seen more of it,” said Carol huffily, “so I’ll have to defer to your superior knowledge.” The barriers were up again. “But, Sara, a word to the wise...”

  Sara never did find out what Carol’s word to the wise was, because at that moment the boys came barging into the cafeteria, flushed and adrenaline-fuelled from their martial arts session, and by the time Sara had calmed them down and doled out change for the vending machine, Carol had made her excuses and left.

  ***

  Recalling this conversation, as she stood on the doorstep, holding Lou’s flowers and listening to her friend suggest ways in which they might reconnect, Sara felt a pang of guilt.

  “There’s this yoga retreat in Kent,” Lou enthused.“I know Shani, the woman who runs it, so we’d get mates’ rates.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “I’ll give them a call,” said Lou, “but we might have to wait a week or two. It’s open studios next weekend and the one after’s my birthday…”

  “So it is,” said Sara, “the big four-oh!”

  “Which reminds me,” Lou said, “save the date, won’t you? We want to take you out for dinner.”

  24

  “Sign this,” Sara said, putting Lou’s birthday card in front of Neil. He demolished his last mouthful of toast, licked his crumby fingers, and dashed off a signature.

  “Is that it?” said Sara. “No kiss?”

  She had drafted her own birthday greeting on the paper bag that the card had come in, so as to appear fluent and spontaneous on the real thing:

  Dear Darling Lou,

  Wishing you everything you wish for yourself, in this, your fortieth year. Your precious friendship means the world to me/us. Can’t wait to celebrate with you.

  Love and kisses hugs, Sara xxxxxxxx.

  Neil took the card back and put two kisses next to his name.

  “It’s her forty-first year,” he said.

  “She’s forty, Neil. I think I would know.”

  “But her fortieth birthday is the beginning of her forty-first year.”

  “Oh for God’s sake!” She snatched the card back.

  ***

  All his little tics and habits were driving her mad at the moment – the way he wore his jeans too high on his waist, his fastidiousness about keeping food in airtight containers, his latest obsession with testing his breath, after brushing his teeth, by exhaling into his cupped hand. It was hard not to compare him unfavourably with Gav, whose clothes hung so well on him, who was endearingly un-house-trained, who, thanks to his cavalier attitude to personal hygiene, had a sort of earthy, fungal thing going on, that drove Sara insane.

  She had hardly seen Gav lately, but it was only to be expected that he would avoid her. There was, after all, nowhere for them to go with their feelings for each other – nowhere, apart from the obvious place, anyway. It was all Sara could think about since it had happened. It was humiliating to have to admit to herself that a fumble with her best friend’s husband, had been the most erotic experience of her life to date, but there it was. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had good sex before. She had. She had even had some of it with Neil. But she had never before been so pole-axed by desire that she had forgotten whom and where she was. It hadn’t even been a proper kiss. It had been a glancing, painful skirmish, lasting perhaps three seconds, at most. Their teeth had clashed. She had come away with blood on her lip, and he with drool in his beard. She had worried afterwards that she might accidentally have leaned too hard on his penis, in a way that he may not have found erotic. Even as fumbles went, it had been clumsy and ignominious, yet she had been unable to think of it since, without melting at the recollection. She had even been moved to go to the bathroom in broad daylight and masturbate.

  She had been happy in her marriage to Neil; never tormenting herself with what ifs, never self-sabotaging by succumbing to passing temptation. There had, in fact, only been one passing temptation – Tim Hughes, her line manager in her first job, who had seemed Byronic and alluring for about three weeks, until she went out for a glass of wine with him after work, and noticed for the first time how oddly long his neck was. That had put an end to it, all right. She loved Neil. She loved his smile, at once self-conscious and cocky, like a kid in a school photograph. She loved his unfussy manliness, his competence, the way he occupied space. She loved that he was playful, but essentially serious. She loved his hands – the way he held her life and the lives of their children in them – steady and sure.

  Had he ever made her swoon though? Had he ever made her feel so ripe, so loaded with nerve endings, that she might explode, like a seed pod, at his touch?

  It was doing her head in, this thing with Gavin. She understood why he was avoiding her – even respected him for it, but she did not have the self-discipline to do the same. She was her own worst enemy – she would loiter guiltily on the landing, for the pleasure of watching him take a fag break in the garden; she would take more trips than necessary to empty the shopping from the boot of the car, because each trip afforded her a glimpse of the back of his head, as he sat on the sofa watching television. She knew it was a kind of madness, but she couldn’t help herself. And the more she was deprived of his company, the more reckless she became.

  One morning, she was washing up, when she saw him set off on his bike, with Zuley in the toddler seat. She knew it was his habit to call in at the newsagent’s on his way back from the childminder’s, to pick up a copy of the Guardian. She glanced at the clock. She had twenty minutes before Lou would be round with the boys. She went upstairs, changed her top for a more flattering one and swiped some Jo Malone behind her ears.

  “Just popping to Samir’s,” she called to Caleb, but her voice was drowned out by the clamour of cartoons. There was a chill in the air as she set off down the road. It was nearly time for other people’s children to go back to school. Sar
a walked as slowly as she could whilst still appearing purposeful. When she came within sight of the newsagents, she got out her phone and whiled away a few minutes scrolling through her inbox, whilst keeping one eye on the corner of the road. Her twenty minutes were almost up and still there was no sign of him.

  She went into the shop and dawdled up and down the narrow aisles like a criminal, acutely aware of the CCTV camera winking in the corner. Glue seemed a plausible item to be buying, so she examined the three brands on sale, as if writing them up for a consumer magazine. At last she chose one and stopped on the way to the counter to pore over the newspaper headlines. She stood there for more than a minute, one ear cocked for the two-tone electronic beep that alerted Samir to new customers. Any moment now, Gav would speak her name or grasp her elbow. She felt sick and elated at the thought of it. But the queue of harassed commuters had diminished and she was now Samir’s only customer. Gavin must have deviated from his normal routine. She paid up with a sigh and hurried home, her breathing ragged, her reflection, glimpsed briefly in the window of the dry cleaner’s, that of a mad woman. As she turned up the path, and took out her key, she heard the whirr of wheels and the ker-thunk as his bike mounted the pavement.

  “Hi, Sara!” he called cheerfully. Turning, she glimpsed the top of his head whizzing behind the privet and moments later, heard their side gate judder and slam shut.

  Located in a back street of Camberwell, down basement steps, Lupercal was very Gavin and Lou. Its discreet signage ensured that by the time they found it, Sara and Neil were even more fashionably late than they’d intended, though not quite as fashionably late as their hosts, who had still not arrived. The maître’d showed them to a cosy wood panelled booth, lit by a retro wine-bottle candleholder and promised to return momentarily to take their drinks order.

  “I told you we’d be early,” hissed Sara accusingly.

  “We’re not early, they’re late.”

  Neil squeezed onto the banquette next to her, inadvertently crushing her full-skirted dress as he did so. She sighed and yanked it out from under him.