This area of London is a leafy village trapped in a bend in the river between Putney and Chiswick—an oasis of calm full of overpriced houses, boutique shops, and cafés. The locals are mostly company directors, stockbrokers, diplomats, bankers, actors, and sports stars. I saw Stanley Tucci walking across Barnes Bridge the other day. And I once spotted Gary Lineker at the farmers’ market. He played football for England and now works as a sports commentator just like Jack.
Have you ever noticed that TV presenters have big heads? I don’t mean they’re conceited or up themselves, although some of them probably are. I’m talking very literally. I’ve seen Jeremy Clarkson and his head was humongous. It was like a poorly inflated beach ball, all jowly and pale. They don’t tell you that in the gossip magazines—about the big heads—and it’s not like you can inflate your head on purpose if you want a job on TV. You either have one or you don’t. Jack has one—a big head and great hair and whiter-than-white teeth. His chin is a little on the weak side, but he keeps it tilted up when he’s on camera.
Now he’s on his second coffee. I like the way he licks his forefinger before he turns the pages of a newspaper. He’s good with the kids. He picks up crayons when they drop them and carries their drawings home to show “Mummy.”
I first saw Meg not a hundred yards from this very spot. She was in the park with Lucy and Lachlan, who were playing with a bubble wand, chasing after the soapy orbs. Meg wore a simple white shirt and jeans. I pictured her working for a fashion magazine as a photographer or a stylist—which wasn’t far from the truth. I thought she’d have a stockbroker husband and a holiday villa in the South of France where they went for long weekends. They invited friends, all of whom were attractive and successful, and they’d eat French cheese and drink French wine; and Meg would complain that baguettes were “the work of the devil” because they went straight to her hips.
I love making up stories like this. I imagine whole lives for people, giving them names and careers, inventing their backstories and populating their families with black sheep and terrible secrets. Maybe it comes from reading so many books as a child. I grew up with Anne of Green Gables, spied with Harriet, wrote plays with Jo March, and explored Narnia with Lucy, Peter, Edmund, and Susan.
It didn’t matter that I sat alone at lunchtimes and rarely got invited to parties. My fictional friends were just as real, and when I closed a book at night I knew they would still be there in the morning.
I still love reading, but nowadays I search the Internet for information about pregnancy and childbirth and looking after babies. That’s how I discovered that Meg has her own blog: a site called Mucky Kids where she writes about motherhood and the funny weird stuff that happens in her daily life—like the time Lucy wrote a letter to the Tooth Fairy and argued that two pounds was “too little for a front tooth,” or when Lachlan broke a full bottle of blue nail polish and created a “Smurf murder scene.”
The website has several photographs of Meg, but she doesn’t use any real names. Jack is called “Hail Caesar.” Lachlan is Augustus and Lucy is Julia (Caesar had a daughter). Meg is Cleopatra, of course.
If you read her blog posts, you can tell that she used to be a journalist. She wrote for a women’s magazine and some of her articles are still online, including an interview with Jude Law, whom she called “sex on legs” and admitted to flirting with over oysters and champagne at the Savoy Hotel.
Across the road at the café, Jack is packing up the kids, strapping Lachlan into a pushchair and holding Lucy’s hand. As they cross the park, Lucy has to touch the trunk of every tree, while leaves fall in their wake like confetti at a wedding.
I follow from a distance, across the green, past the pond, turning left and right until we reach Cleveland Gardens, a pretty road lined with Victorian semi-detached houses and neatly trimmed hedges.
During the Blitz a German bomb flattened three houses at the far end of the road. A block of flats replaced them, which the locals call “Divorce Towers” because so many straying husbands (and the occasional wife) have finished up there in the aftermath of an affair. Some eventually go home. Others move on.
Directly behind Jack and Meg’s house is a railway line—the Hounslow Loop—which gets about four trains an hour during the week and less on weekends. The trains aren’t so noisy—not like the planes, which line up from first light and sweep overhead, a mile apart, descending towards Heathrow.
Crossing the road, I cut through Beverley Path until I come to the pedestrian underpass. The wire fence has partially collapsed, making it easy to climb over. Checking that the coast is clear, I walk along the railway tracks, stumbling over the broken scree, counting the back gardens. A very angry Alsatian hurls itself at one of the fences as I pass. My heart leaps. I snarl back at him.
When I near the right house, I crawl through the undergrowth and climb onto a fallen tree, which is my favorite vantage point. From here I can look across a narrow garden that runs fifty feet past a playhouse and a children’s swing set and a rear shed that Jack has turned into a home office, which he never uses.
I hear little girls giggling. Lucy has a friend over for a play date. They’re in the playhouse, pretending to make cups of tea. Lachlan is sitting in the sand pit, moving mini-mountains with a bulldozer. The French doors are open and Meg is in the kitchen cutting up fruit for a morning snack.
Leaning back against a large branch, I take a can of soft drink from my coat pocket and pull the tab, sipping the spillage. I also have a chocolate bar that I’m saving for later.
I can sit for hours and watch Meg and Jack and the children. I’ve watched them having summer barbecues and afternoon tea, or playing games in the garden. One day I saw Meg and Jack lying on a blanket. Meg had her head resting on Jack’s thigh while she read a book. She looked like Julia Roberts in that scene in Notting Hill, lying with her head in Hugh Grant’s lap. I love that movie.
Every fifteen minutes a train rattles past. I turn to see the carriages lit from within; the passengers captivated by mobile phones, or newspapers, or leaning their heads against the glass. One or two are looking at me as they pass. Being seen doesn’t worry me. I don’t look like a burglar or a peeping tom.
When it begins to grow dark, I follow Meg’s path through the house as she turns on lights. Children are bathed, teeth are brushed, and bedtime stories are read.
Cold and hungry, I don’t stay to see Jack arrive home, but I picture him coming through the door, shrugging off his coat, loosening his tie, and grabbing Meg around the waist. She shoos him away and pours him a glass of wine, listening to him talk about his day. After they’ve eaten, they’ll pack the dishwasher and curl up together on the sofa, their faces painted with flickering light from the TV. And later they will lead each other upstairs and make love in their king-sized bed.