The Woman Next Door(61)

I could do anything.

Melissa makes a sound: a groan mingled with an unintelligible word. And where closed lids had been I am looking into the shine of her open eyes. I fancy I can see a tiny version of myself reflected in them. I don’t move a muscle. She mumbles something in her sleep and closes her eyes again.

It’s as I get to the bottom of the stairs on shaking legs that I hear the sound. Urgent whispers are coming from the landing. My heart seems to stop beating as I pad quickly to the kitchen door and try to dissolve into the shadows.

It’s only now that I really think about what I am doing. How this might appear to others.

The voices are coming down the stairs now, getting closer.

I bunch the sides of my dressing gown in my fists and try to quell the panic inside me. I think I might be having a heart attack. My chest is tight and I want to run, run away from here, but I must be silent.

I can’t be discovered.

‘I didn’t mean to drop off!’ says a familiar male voice in a low, sleepy murmur.

There is a giggle. Tilly. ‘I know! Me neither!’ she hisses. ‘But my mum would go mental if she found you here! Go on, go home.’

I move my head very slightly to the left to see Tilly pressing her body up against Nathan’s. He slides his hand down her back. She is dressed only in her bra and knickers and he grabs and squeezes her bottom as though it is made of putty. I want to look away, but cannot.

‘Call you tomorrow, okay?’ he whispers and she nods and kisses him on the lips before opening the front door.

When the door closes, she runs back up the stairs, rather heavily.

I am feeling quite calm again now. I did the right thing, coming here.

A few moments later I am squeezing through the fence and back into the safety of my own garden.

All in all this has been a most useful neighbourly visit. I’m sure Melissa won’t think so much of her friend when she discovers her son has been sleeping with her fifteen-year-old daughter.

And now I must get some sleep. Tomorrow, I have a busy day ahead of me.





MELISSA


Wandering the aisle of Wholefoods, Melissa sips from her Starbucks’ cup, closing her eyes as the extra hot, extra shot latte suffuses her bloodstream. She has tied the scarf around her hair and is wearing make-up for the first time in a week. It feels, pleasantly, as though she has stepped back into her own skin.

Maybe having a prosaic, domestic problem to deal with has forced her back to normality.

But she is in no hurry to rush home to face her sulking, red-eyed daughter.

Stopping to look at the vegetables, she idly picks up an aubergine just because the taut, midnight skin is pleasing to look at. She places it in her basket.

It’s always therapeutic, shopping in here.

The shelves are loaded with organic produce that is almost aggressively healthy and wholesome. Melissa pictures the mean little Spar at the end of the road when she lived with her mother. Newspapers, porn, sweets, tinned crap. Maybe a wizened banana or two and a sad collection of tomatoes that tasted of nothing but acid.

She belongs here, not there.

She wants all of it, from the sweet, scarlet tomatoes on the vine to the grimy potatoes designed to make rich metropolitan buyers feel at one with nature.

Tonight they will eat as a family.

Something has to change.

Hester was round early, before nine. Melissa realized immediately that the other woman’s expression was cool and distant.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she’d said, not quite meeting Melissa’s eye. ‘But when Tilly has friends staying until the middle of the night, could they avoid slamming your front door? It woke me up, you see, and I couldn’t get back to sleep.’

Melissa smiled, awkwardly. ‘I … don’t know what you mean. She didn’t have anyone here last night.’

Hester coughed and her mouth twitched into a tight smile.

‘Well, I’m sorry, Melissa,’ she said stiffly, ‘but I looked out of my window at around 3.30 a.m. and clearly saw that Nathan boy exiting your house. I do apologize if you didn’t know about this … relationship.’

Melissa felt a tumbling sensation inside. The little bastard …

‘Thank you, Hester,’ she’d managed to say, in a controlled voice. ‘I’ll speak to her. And please accept my apologies.’

Hester had walked back into her house without another word. Melissa felt a flicker of relief. Maybe things would go back to normal between them now and they could resume the polite distance that had worked so well.

There had been a loud, tearful row with Tilly, who claimed her mother didn’t let her do anything, but only cared about exam results. Melissa had half wanted to slap her, this ungrateful child who had no appreciation of her riches. Tilly was told her allowance was to be cut for the next month. When she went into her bedroom, she slammed the door so hard the house shook.

She knew the phone call to Saskia wouldn’t be easy but it had taken even more of a sour turn than she had expected. Melissa should have known that the one boundary she couldn’t cross was to criticize her golden son; apparently, they were ‘only doing what young people do’. Melissa told her he was to keep away from her daughter, who was not going to waste her promising future on boys. The phone call ended frostily.

Unpleasant though it had all been, the events of the morning had forced Melissa to take stock. She’d felt lately that she was watching everything through a Perspex screen but now it was time to try and reconnect.