The New Neighbours

by Costeloe Diney

  Sylvia and Thomas were ready for bed when Anthony came in on Friday evening. They flung themselves at him, telling him, both at once, about the geese and the swimming and helping Granny make chocolate cakes, their voices high and excited, as they told him their news. Jill waited in the background as the children greeted their father, watching their delight at having him home in time to read them their story, and his pleasure at being able to do it. Whatever happens, she thought we must hang on to this.

  She was dreading being left alone with him. He had hardly spoken to her when he’d come in, just asking casually, “Did you get back in time for Madge’s funeral?” and when she said yes he simply nodded and went upstairs with Sylvia and Tom. What would he say when the children were tucked up in bed and how would she answer?

  She had dressed with care, having a shower herself while the children splashed happily in the bath, and re-done her face. The dinner was ready in the oven, and she’d opened a bottle of wine. Isabelle had been given another night off, so that they would not be interrupted and any time now she and Anthony would have to face each other.

  When Anthony came down from reading the story, he had changed in jeans and sweater, and looked much younger than in his business suit, but still tired and drawn. Jill had poured him a drink, and then escaped upstairs herself to kiss the children goodnight.

  At last, there could be no further procrastination. Taking a deep breath, Jill went down to the living room where Anthony was reading the paper by the fire. He looked up when she came in, watching her as she picked up her own drink, but saying nothing.

  “Did you have a successful week?” she asked at last.

  “Yes, not bad,” Anthony replied. “How was your mother?”

  “She was fine. She was great with the children, and they love doing things with her.”

  “Good.” His eyes dropped to his paper again, and silence lapsed round them again, an awkward silence that Jill felt she must break. It was time to take the plunge.

  “Did you,” her voice came out as a croak and she cleared her throat, “did you get my letter?”

  Anthony looked up again. “Yes,” he said, “I got it.”

  “And…?”

  “And we’ll talk things through over the weekend.”

  “Couldn’t we begin now?” asked Jill.

  Anthony set the paper aside. “If you want to,” he said, and then waited. His face was cold and bleak, and he gave her no hint of what he was thinking, no help in starting to say what she needed to say.

  “Anthony,” Jill began, “I don’t know what to say. Can you forgive me for what I did?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I can try, but I don’t know.”

  Jill stared at him. “So what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know that either, not in the long term.” He sighed. “I suppose we’ll just keep going as we are for now and see how things are.”

  “But if we’re going to try again…?” began Jill.

  “But are we? I’m not sure I can put things behind me as easily as you seem to be able to. We can’t put the clock back, and things will never be the same.”

  “I know that,” Jill agreed, “things will be different, but they may end up better. If you still love me…”

  “If I still love you? I don’t know that either. Maybe that’s changed.”

  Jill looked at him helplessly. “So what are we going to do?” she asked again. “What about the children?”

  “It’s for them that we must keep going,” he said, “and see what can be salvaged, but I can’t see far into the future. I don’t know if we have one together or not.”

  Jill’s eyes were filled with tears, and on a sob cried, “Anthony, I’m so sorry.”

  “Yes,” he said, “so am I.”

  They had an almost silent dinner and then Anthony said he had some work to do and would be in his study. “I’ve taken the folding bed from underneath Isabelle’s, and put it up down there,” he said. “So I shan’t trouble you upstairs.”

  “But Anthony…”Jill protested.

  “I’m sorry, Jill, but I’m not ready to share a bed with you at present.”

  “And will you ever be?” Jill whispered.

  Anthony’s eyes were as sad as her own. “I don’t know,” he said.

  Twenty-four

  Oliver Hooper had a problem. Indeed, he had several, but the one that concerned him most was news he’d heard from his father. The Smarts were due home for Christmas, and this meant that he must clear out everything he’d been storing in their shed before they arrived. He had tried to find out the exact day when they would be returning, but Steve Hooper didn’t know.

  “A couple of weeks before Christmas, I think,” he said. “Why?”

  Oliver shrugged. “Just wondered,” he replied casually. “They’ve been away a long time, haven’t they?”

  “They’ve been visiting their daughter in Australia,” Steve said. “If you’re going that far and can take the time, it makes sense to stay for a good while. Anyway, Mike Callow’s heard from them to say they’ll be back for Christmas.”

  Oliver warned Scott that they had to clear everything out at once.

  “You’ll have to take all I’ve got,” he said.

  Scott agreed. “Pity,” he remarked, “it was a good scam, right?”

  “It’s not going to end,” Oliver assured him with more confidence than he felt. “I’ll get another place sorted.” He was determined not to let his source of extra income dry up and having given it some concentrated thought, he came up with a plan that he thought would work. There was, perhaps, more risk attached to it, but there was no reason why, with a little care things shouldn’t go on as before.

  Oliver’s bedroom was on the ground floor. His father, security conscious as always, had long ago decided not to make his home office in the room that had been designed as a study. Being on the ground floor, he thought, it was too easy for thieves to look through the windows and see what computers and other office hardware were on offer. With the house unoccupied during the day, it would be simple enough for them to remove everything of value. So he used one of bedrooms at the top of the house to work in and had made the study into a bedroom for Oliver. This actually suited Oliver very well. Beside his bedroom was the door into the garden. He’d had a second key cut and could now come and go, unobserved, at will. Once he was in the back garden it was quite easy to swing up over the fence into the car park of the office block that backed on to the houses on that side of the Circle. At night the offices would be deserted, and the car park empty. Provided he could store the stuff in his room, it would be easy enough to pass it over the fence, under cover of darkness, to Scott waiting with his van in the car park. The risk was in the hiding of the stuff in his room. Although none of the items was large, there was nowhere much to hide it where Annie wouldn’t find it.

  When Oliver first moved into the house permanently, the ground rules had been laid down. He was to make his own bed and keep his room tidy, and Annie would make sure it was properly cleaned once a week. However, he seldom bothered to make his bed, or took any trouble to keep the place tidy, and recently Annie had been complaining about the state of the room and refusing to go into it until he tidied it up. This suited his plans very well, so he didn’t touch the dirty clothes heaped on the floor, or pick up magazines and school work dumped on the desk. At last, she refused to clean the room and in this decision she was backed by his father.

  “If you can’t take a few moments to clear up your room, Oliver,” he said in exasperation, “Annie’s certainly not going to do it for you.”

  “I don’t want her to,” Oliver snapped back. “I don’t want her poking her nose into my things! I like my room the way it is!”

  “Well, if you want to live in a pigsty…”

  Oliver had his victory, but even so he didn’t trust Annie not to go into his room when he wasn’t there and poke around. Then he saw his big empty suitcase on the top of the wardrobe.
She’d hardly be likely to look in there, he thought, and anyway it had a key, so he could keep it locked. Until he could find somewhere better to stash his stuff, he decided, that would have to do

  Scott arranged to come round and clear the shed on Saturday night. He normally took the stuff on a Friday or Saturday ready to offload at Sunday boot sales.

  “Better be late,” he said. “Too many people about early Saturday evenings. I’ll come round after the pubs chuck out.”

  Oliver didn’t care how late Scott came. As far as he was concerned, it was easier to go to bed and then go out through the garden door. That way there were no awkward questions as to where he was going. At midnight, when the house was dark and settled for the night, he slipped out into the garden, carefully locking the door behind him. In a moment he was over the fence into the car park and round the road to the track behind the houses opposite. Scott’s van wasn’t there yet, so he climbed over the fence and made for the shed. He could hear music coming from somewhere and for an awful moment he thought there was someone in the house. Then he realised it was coming from much further away, from the front of the house, loud reggae music, and he guessed that the students must be having a party. That’ll shake up old Ma Colby, he thought with a grin.

  He crept into the shed and by the light of his torch began to pack the last of his stash into black bin bags. He wasn’t worried that the torchlight would be seen, as he knew that Mike Callow wasn’t at home. He’d met him a couple of days earlier and asked if Peter would be about this weekend.

  “No, sorry, mate,” Mike had replied. “Not this weekend, I’m away.” There was more than he thought, and he sorted it out as he packed. Should be worth at least another hundred to Scott, this lot, he thought. There were some good CDs this time, but it would be the last of those for a while. He’d been buying magazines in a newsagent in town that sold sealed and packaged CDs as well and he had managed to smuggle several of them out on different occasions before disaster struck.

  It had been on a Saturday morning when the shop was quite busy. Oliver paid for his magazine and them wandered over to the CD rack. For a long time, there was no opportunity to slide a CD between the pages of his magazine, and he realised afterwards that had been his mistake, he’d been hanging round the rack for too long and alerting the suspicions of Noshir Patel who ran the shop. As he reached the pavement a hand fell on his arm and Mr Patel’s quiet voice said, “Excuse me young man, but I think you have not paid for all you are taking away.”

  Oliver looked up sharply, and tried to jerk his arm away, but Mr Patel had a firmer grip on his arm than he had realised and Oliver couldn’t break free. Protesting he didn’t know what the shopkeeper was talking about, he was piloted back inside and taken to a tiny office at the back. There Patel removed the magazine from his grasp and revealed the CD wrapped inside it.

  “What then is this?” he asked holding it up, and before Oliver could answer, Patel turned to his wife who was at the desk and said, “Ring the police!”

  For a split second, as Oliver watched her dial the police station, he felt a wave of panic, but then he pulled himself together and decided how to play it.

  “Oh, please don’t call the police,” he begged. “I’ve never done anything like this before… it’s just, well it’s my dad’s birthday next week, and I couldn’t afford to get him a present. He likes music, my dad.” He looked appealingly up at Noshir Patel, allowing his eyes to fill with tears, a trick he had always been able to manage, but the shopkeeper seemed unimpressed.

  “I always call the police,” was all he said, and then they waited for them to arrive. Mrs Patel went out into the shop to help serve in her husband’s place, shutting the office door firmly behind her. Oliver considered his chances of making a dash for it and getting out of the shop, safely away into the crowd of Saturday morning shoppers, but he knew two of Mr Patel’s sons were in the shop, and even if he did make a run for it out of the office, he knew he’d never get to the street.

  Oliver tried again. Looking at Mr Patel with eyes brimming with tears, he said “I’m very sorry, Mr Patel, really I am. I didn’t mean any harm. I’ll never do anything so awful again. It’s my dad’s birthday, see?” The birthday had been an inspiration. Oliver’s dad did indeed have a birthday in the coming week, and he hoped if he kept saying as much, they might believe it was a first and only offence, a dreadful mistake, made simply to get his dad a present.

  “What is your name, boy?” Patel asked.

  “Oliver Hooper,” murmured Oliver. He looked across at the shopkeeper. “I really am sorry, Mr Patel, I don’t know what came over me.”

  At that moment, the office door opened again and Mrs Patel led in a policeman and a policewoman.

  “This is the boy,” Mrs Patel said. “He took a CD and hid it in a magazine. I think he has done it before. Lots of our CDs have gone missing.”

  “Oh, no, I haven’t,” wailed Oliver. “This is the first time, honestly! I’m so sorry, Mr Patel. I’ve never done it before, honestly.”

  “I think there is nothing honest about you,” retorted Mrs Patel, entirely unmoved by his outburst. “You are a thief!”

  The policeman cleared his throat and said, “Yes, madam, well, we’ll deal with this now. Will you be pressing charges?”

  “Yes,” replied Mrs Patel firmly.

  “Maybe,” answered her husband at the same time.

  “I’m PC Davison,” said the policeman, turning to Oliver. “What’s your name, son, and where do you live?”

  Oliver gave his name and address, and then Davison said, “Well, I think we’ll go down to the station and get your parents to come in. We’ll talk about things down there.”

  The two police officers took an arm each and Oliver was led unceremoniously out of the shop and hustled into the waiting police car. As he climbed into the back of the car, the policewoman at his side, he saw there was an interested group gathered to watch the proceedings, and there, disaster upon disaster, was Chantal Haven. She stared at him as he was put in the car, saw that he was in trouble and a slow smile spread across her face, a smile of triumph and revenge. It was not a smile that Oliver was likely to forget in a long time.

  When they reached the police station he sat in an interview room and waited for his parents to arrive, well his dad and Annie. They were soon there and greeted Oliver with shock when they heard what he’d done. Oliver manufactured the tears again and said on a sob, “I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry.”

  “When is your birthday, sir?” enquired PC Davison.

  Steve looked at him in surprise. “My birthday? Wednesday,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Your son says he took the CD to give you as a present.”

  “Oh, Ollie,” Steve looked at him in exasperation. “What will you do next?”

  Oliver said nothing, and Davison asked, “Has Oliver been in any trouble like this before, sir?”

  “No! None!” cried Steve. “I can’t think what’s got into him?”

  There was more discussion and the sergeant was called in from the front desk. Finally, after more talks with Mr Patel who had followed them to the police station, it was decided that Oliver should be cautioned, not charged with theft, and after yet more time and paperwork, he left the police station flanked by his father and stepmother, and was driven straight home.

  There were more recriminations there of course, but Oliver let them wash over him. He’d escaped! He wasn’t going to end up in court. He wasn’t going to be sent to a Young Offender Centre. He’d heard enough from Scott to know that it was not a place he wanted to go.

  He looked at the CDs in his hands, the ones he had removed successfully before, and was glad they’d been hidden here. His father had been told that CDs had been going missing over a period of time, and Oliver was pretty certain that his room had been thoroughly searched while he was at school for any evidence of them. He didn’t ask, but he knew. It was why leaving stuff there from now on would be risky, Annie mig
ht search again at any time when he was out; on the other hand, if she hadn’t found anything the last time, and she hadn’t, then she might not bother again.

  Oliver hadn’t told Scott of his run-in with the police. There was no need to worry him with what was over and done with, it wasn’t going to happen again, and he didn’t want Scott refusing to deal with him any more simply because he’d got careless once.

  When all his packing was done he slid out of the shed again and went to look for Scott at the fence. There was no sign of him. Where the hell was he? Oliver didn’t feel in any danger in the dark shelter of the trees at the bottom of the Smarts’ garden, but it was getting cold, and he wanted to go home to bed. He looked at his watch. It was well past one o’clock. Something must have gone wrong. He’d have to find out from Jay on Monday morning, but they couldn’t wait much longer or the Smarts would be home and looking in their garden shed.

  Quietly he shut the shed door and made his way round the side of the house, intending to slip out of the side gate into the Circle, but as he approached the gate he saw a flashing blue light. Cautiously he peered over the gate and saw two police cars parked outside the house. He ducked down again at once.

  “Fucking hell!” he whispered, “How the hell did they find out?” Had Scott been caught and talked? He hurried back into the bottom fence and swung himself over on to the track beyond. He listened. There was no sound. Then it struck him. There was no sound! The music blasting from the party at the student house had stopped. “That’s why the filth are here,” he murmured, and slipping along beside the fence and through the cut, he waited in the shadows between the fences to see what was going on.