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‘Hey,’ he says from the doorway, wiping his face with the bottom of his T-shirt.
‘Good run?’ She glances up at him, her smile wary.
‘Neil didn’t have a heart attack, so all good. Do you want to watch something once I’ve had a shower?’
She shakes her head. ‘I’m going to go to bed when I’ve got him down.’
He nods, aware of himself nodding, of making himself stop. ‘I’ll grab a shower then.’
By the time he returns downstairs, Ava is settling Fred. By the time he gets to bed, she is asleep. By the time he gets to sleep, the birds are shifting on their branches, impatient to greet the dawn with sweet songs he knows are anything but. They are territorial war cries; they are warnings.
Seven
Ava
I am almost at my door after an emergency dash to the corner shop when I spot Lizzie from down the road heading towards me at full speed in her customary designer Lycra and carrying two large glossy cardboard bags with rope handles. I know it’s too late to pretend not to have seen her, know it even before she calls out to me: ‘Ava! Ava, hi!’
No escape. She has broken into a jog. But still I try to get to my door before she collars me.
I fail.
‘Lizzie,’ I say, stopping at my gate, digging in my bag for my keys.
‘Hi there.’ She swings her bags to and fro. One of them says L. K. Bennett on the front, the other Whistles. ‘Just been into town for shoes and a frock.’
‘Right.’ I glance towards my front door, realise this might be rude, return my attention to her. My smile is perfunctory, but it will have to do.
‘Just fancied something new to wear for the big do, you know?’ She says ‘big do’ ironically, nodding towards the Lovegoods’ house and widening her eyes. I don’t believe her irony – she is clearly beside herself with an excitement that feels very real. ‘Can’t wait to see what they’ve done with the place, can you?’
‘I bet it’s amazing.’
This I say to appease her obviously. The fact is I couldn’t give the most infinitesimal hoot. I am in the minority, however – I know that. The Lovegoods’ year-long refurbishment has been the talk of the street, fuelled by an endless stream of tradespeople coming and going. I have seen them myself, from the enviable vantage point of the house next door, teams of them, like those brave DIY warriors on home-improvement shows: carpenters in goggles spraying sawdust fountains in the front garden; decorators whistling on high ladders, hair and eyelashes white with paint particles; hints of the latest colour trends glimpsed through open upstairs windows; furniture and lighting deliveries from shops I hadn’t heard of; all sorts of high-tech appliances – a two-metre-wide induction hob, a flat-screen television the size of a ping-pong table, an exercise bike, a gaming chair… at least I think that’s what it was, either that or the actual command seat of the StarshipEnterprise. I’m sure I was supposed to relay all of this in breathless gushing tones to Matt when he got in from work each day, but as I say, there is no overestimating how little I care.
‘Are you and Matt going?’ Lizzie asks.
‘Ah, I’m… I’m not sure.’
She screws up her face, her head tilting inevitably to one side. ‘Of course, of course. Sorry, that was silly of me.’
‘No, not at all.’
‘How are things?’ She adds a nose wrinkle.
‘Fine.’ I wish she’d straighten up her head; she’s going to get a stiff neck. ‘I’m fine. I’d better…’ I hold up the nappies, the reason for my enforced trip out. ‘Fred needs…’
‘Right you are.’ Her smile is a rictus grin; she looks like she’s stubbed her toe. ‘This little fella’s grown so much! I can remember when my two were…’ She looks away, possibly for an exit sign. ‘Anyway,’ she says, with the briefest touch to my upper arm, ‘I’d better let you go. Hopefully see you at the party! Apparently they’re doing Brazilian cocktails. Louise saw Johnnie. They’re having a bar in the garden. Anyway, I’ll let you go.’
‘Yeah. Yeah. Cheers. See you.’
By the time I get to my front door, I’m sweating, frantically scrabbling around in my bag for my keys, praying no one else sees me and tries to talk to me. By the time I get inside, I’m crying. Another few seconds later, I’m sitting on the floor under my front window, sobbing violently now, dropped out of sight like a fugitive. I’m in hiding; that’s how it feels – actually, that’s how it is: every encounter out in the world a tense and risky business in my own self-imposed witness-protection programme.
Lizzie is not alone in being someone I dread bumping into, but she is one of the worst. I can still remember her calling round a few days after that day under the pretext of dropping off a vegan pasta bake, how her questions felt more like interrogation than concern. By then, the fact that I’d left the door open had spread like the gossip it had become.So, you’d left the door open or it had banged open or what? I mean, I’m not saying… it could happen to anyone.I told her I’d left milk on the stove, pretty much shut the door in her face. Suspicion is yet one more thing I have had to get used to.
That day, just hours in, I could already feel it, can still feel it coming at me in waves from Lorraine Stephens when I put myself there, as I do every day: Lorraine, that day, sitting close, holding my hand as the tea she has made me goes cold. Lorraine, beneath her veil of concern, spying on me. Moment by moment, beat by beat, how she watches for signs of anomalous behaviour, angling the conversation to discover if there is anything dysfunctional – post-natal depression, sleep deprivation, murderous intent. I am a suspect, sitting there in my despair. But she keeps it hidden.
‘We’re close,’ I tell her when she asks about my relationship with my daughter. ‘Very. She’s my little girl, you know?’
She is my life, my love, she is part of me as my limbs and bones and organs are part of me. Do you have children, Lorraine? Would you ask that question if you did? What the hell do you mean, what is my relationship with my daughter? She’s my daughter; I’m her mother. She’s two, for God’s sake… These are all the thoughts I keep hidden, even in my darkest hour. It isn’t Lorraine Stephens’ fault that I want to punch her in her sympathetic face.
