Finally, after settling her again, Peter and I were at the kitchen table with our supper in front of us. I chewed with my head bent low, shattered.
‘The one thing I dreaded most about moving out to the country was the idea of busybodies like Mira interfering in our business.’
‘It’s just good community spirit.’
I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.
Sometimes I regretted that Peter and I had moved out of London to this house. Technically it was perfect, a dream house, a dream location, tucked away in a bucolic market town in an expensive enclave of the Home Counties. Most days Rosie and Noah ambled to and from their school on their own, across the green expanse of the recreational ground, past cricket or tag-rugby matches, straight to our sweet garden gate at the bottom of the garden. They breathed clean air and their bellies were filled with fruit and vegetables and wholegrain. The crime-free fields of green were a hop-skip-and-a-jump down a country lane. The views of treetops and shimmering lakes – and the odd swimming pool thrown in – would be the backdrop to their childhoods. If suits of cotton wool were available at John Lewis, I would have clicked and collected, and wrapped them both up tightly in them. I worked bloody hard to pay for our exclusive spot on this hill. But often I loathed it and everything that it represented.
‘We’re extremely community spirited,’ I protested. ‘We have Vics and Jim two doors down for starters.’
‘We only know them because we send our kids to the same private school,’ he said, spitting ‘private school’ as though it was a dirty phrase, adding, ‘New Hall Prep isn’t exactly inclusive, let’s face it.’
‘It’s a really good school,’ I said, knowing Peter had never liked it. He thought they pushed them too hard. He had wanted Rosie to go to the picturesque Woodlands Primary on the green, with the forest school and the front door that was covered in children’s colourful handprints, reminding him of the school he had been to as a child.
‘But we lead such separate lives from all those other parents. We don’t even see Vics and Jim that often, and they’re our best friends.’
‘We’re all too busy paying for the school fees.’
I glanced over at the whiteboard, scribbled on in blue and red marker – blue for Noah, red for Rosie – to find an hour when we might have time to nip round to someone’s, anyone’s, house spontaneously. Unless we dropped an afterschool club or decided that homework could be skipped, there was no spare time. Even at the weekends, both children had tennis club on Saturday morning, followed by Rosie’s tap class, and our family trip to the gym for swim-time, which would be followed by more homework. On Sundays, I would take Noah to mini-rugby training first thing, while Rosie and Peter would go on a bike ride. And then we’d head to our regular table at the pub in the next village, where we’d eat a roast next to the roaring fire, often with Vics, Jim and Beth, and usually play chess tournaments on the sofas afterwards, unless I had work to do.
Peter looked out of the window whimsically. ‘It was like a free-for-all at my house growing up. Aunt Sophie lived two doors down and Uncle Teddy lived in the next street and my cousins ran into our garden through the back hedge.’
‘Your family is weird.’
‘I’m sure it was easier bringing up kids back then,’ Peter reflected. ‘When Granny Cilla lived with us, Mum used to nip over to Aunt Sophie’s for a cup of tea and she’d leave me with Granny and I’d sneak out without her noticing and trike round to Mrs Denbigh’s for some squash and a soggy digestive.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Four, five.’
‘Couldn’t your granny’ve got you a drink and biscuit herself?’
‘She thought elves lived in the biscuit tin.’
‘And your mum didn’t worry about leaving you with her?’
‘She was normal a lot of the time.’
‘My worst nightmare,’ I said, absent-mindedly, thinking about where the instructions were for the electric gate so that I could change the code.
‘Having dementia?’
‘That too. But living with my mum would literally be my second worst nightmare.’
‘Probably hers, too,’ he snorted.
I laughed. ‘She’s always said Jacs and I should stick her in a home if it comes to it.’
‘Strange that,’ Peter mused. ‘You’d think she’d want to hang out with the kids and help out.’
‘I don’t need any help. I’ve got Harriet,’ I said, flicking through the stack of manuals in the kitchen drawer.
I heard him open the fridge and pour more wine into his own glass.
‘It might be a good idea to take a cake round to Mira or something. Show a bit of old-fashioned neighbourly spirit, no?’ he said.
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Go round?’
‘Yes, if you’re so keen.’
‘Just thought it would be a nice thing to do, that’s all.’ He looked hurt and I wished I were more magnanimous.
‘You know, I would go round but I’m always so knackered when I get home.’
‘Maybe I will go round,’ he mumbled as he padded off across the heated floorboards in his socks, probably to watch sport on television.
We both knew he wouldn’t go round.
‘Found them!’ I cried triumphantly to myself, brandishing the instructions to nobody.
The night air was damp up my sleeves and licking my collar. My mobile phone torch lit the way to the black gates, which loomed larger in the dark. A bat flitted high in the sky above my head as I tapped away at the keypad. Mira could probably hear the blue neon keypad beep away as I reset the entry code, and I felt embarrassed at the thought of her watchful eye, as though she saw me in a way that no others saw me, as though she had found me out.
While both Peter and I had done anything and everything to keep her at arm’s length up until now, Peter’s fresh desire to make an approach unnerved me. I wondered if there was more to it. Just as a criminal with pockets stuffed with stolen goods might be particularly well mannered or chatty around a suspicious shopkeeper, I wondered whether Peter sensed danger.
Chapter Six
Mira felt her way through the shadows of furniture to the kettle, which she switched on in the dark. The rushing noise competed with the sound of blood coursing through her ears. A little girl from school had told her that without ears we wouldn’t be able to stand up properly. She held her hands at her ears, to check, to find balance somehow. Her fingers felt cold, and she tucked them into her underarms, wet through her fleece. When the white steam from the boiling water billowed up into the ceiling, she pictured putting her fingers onto the spout to stop it.
At the foldout table, she cradled her mug. There was a stack of opened letters and bills lying in front of her. The knife that Barry had used to open them was lying on top. Barry would systematically slip into and slice through every envelope that came through the door, regardless of the addressee. It was a habit that infuriated Mira, but he insisted he couldn’t read the small print of the names written on the front. Mira did not believe him. He liked to know everything. How little he really knew. There had been a time when she had intercepted the post every day. He hadn’t known that, now, had he?
The tea tasted watery and too milky as she sipped it.
She reached into the pocket of her fleece for her mobile phone and scrolled through her contacts list. The As, the Bs, down to the Ps. She stopped at ‘Police Station’, listed simply as ‘Police Station’, just as she had ‘Health Centre’ and ‘School’ and ‘Hairdressers’ listed. It wasn’t necessary to call 999, was it?
Rosie’s wrist had been soft and light in her hands. She had wanted to kiss her better. She had wanted to be sick onto Gemma’s pristine shiny floors.