The Family Next Door(10)
“You must be one of those morning people,” Isabelle called.
Fran glanced from the footpath to Isabelle and back again, biting back an urge to scream. Would it be rude to keep jogging now? She could pretend she hadn’t heard, or that she thought Isabelle had been talking to someone else. Or she could just be the rude neighbor who didn’t talk to people. Fran could live with being that neighbor, she decided.
The funny thing was, Fran would never have picked Isabelle to be a morning person. Or the type to engage in neighborly banter, for that matter. Fran had her pegged as the inner-city apartment type who rode a pushbike in an ironic way and befriended the local homeless man rather than her actual neighbors. The type who took her coffee very seriously and frequented vegan cafes where you paid what you thought your food was worth. But perhaps Fran had her all wrong.
“I guess you have to be a morning person when you have kids,” Isabelle said, walking over. Fran realized she’d hesitated too long. “Too much to do, not enough time, am I right?” She stopped in front of Fran, resting her elbow against the Larritts’ letter box. She had this cool, casual thing going on that seemed out of step with Pleasant Court. It made Fran feel suddenly uptight. “I don’t know how you fit everything in. You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?’
Suddenly Fran understood. Isabelle was looking for free legal advice. At least now she understood. She’d got herself involved in something—a fence dispute, a sexual harassment complaint, some problem with her rental that hadn’t been resolved swiftly enough by the landlord. Everyone always had a legal issue, it seemed. And they were always so confused when Fran suggested they get advice from a lawyer specialising in that particular field. (But you’re a lawyer, they always said, baffled.)
“I’m a mergers and acquisitions lawyer,” Fran said, cutting her off at the pass. “Pretty specialized stuff. And I’m on maternity leave right now so…’
“Yes, I noticed you had a newborn.” Isabelle smiled. “Congratulations. Where is she this morning?’
Fran paused. So, perhaps not the legal advice then. “She’s … still asleep. Her dad is home.”
“And her name’s Ava?”
“Er … yes.”
Fran felt off-kilter. It was too early. She couldn’t figure out if she was having a lovely chat with the new neighbor or being very pleasantly interrogated. Usually she prided herself on being able to judge people’s intentions.
But it was 6:10 A.M.
“Morning, ladies.”
Fran glanced over at Ange’s place where Lucas stood on the front lawn, pushing a garbage bag into an over-full bin. “Up and about early, today I see,” he said.
Fran waved vaguely at Lucas, who didn’t appear to be waiting for a response. “Well, I’d better keep moving,” she said to Isabelle, aware that any minute now Ange would be outside wanting to chat about the neighborhood watch or some such horror. Fran turned her back and started walking.
“It feels like every time I see you, you’ve been running,” Isabelle called after her. “It’s very impressive.”
“Well,” Fran said over her shoulder, “I need to lose the baby weight, so—”
“But you aren’t carrying any baby weight,” Isabelle said. Her voice wasn’t loud but it carried in the quiet of the early morning. Fran reached for her earplugs and was about to bury them in her ears when Isabelle added: “In fact, you don’t look like you’ve had a baby at all.”
*
Nigel’s depression lasted a year. It felt to Fran like a betrayal. As ridiculous as it sounded, she’d always believed Nigel was too sensible to get depressed. She had assumed that if he started to feel down he’d simply go see his family doctor about addressing the chemical imbalance in his brain. He’d have been given a list of instructions to follow—take antidepressants, exercise, and stop drinking alcohol.
Instead, alcohol became the worst part.
Nigel had never been much of a drinker. In the old days he’d had only one drink a week, on a Friday, and it was for the ritual more than anything else. He’d come home from work, open a beer and sit in his chair with a soft “Ah” noise. Often he didn’t even finish the beer.
At first it was just the frequency of his drinking that increased. His Friday night beer became an every night beer. Then the beer became Scotch. Or wine, if that was what they had in the house. And it became more than one. Each night, he sat in his chair from seven until midnight, only getting up to go to the fridge. The “Ah” noise disappeared.
He got fat. Properly fat. While Nigel had never been much of an athlete, he’d always been health conscious … until suddenly he wasn’t. He developed a taste for cheap, student-type food—instant noodles, bags of Doritos, mac and cheese. His stomach became hard and round, the kind of stomach that screamed “early heart attack happening here … watch this space!” It was as sudden as it was astonishing. All at once, Fran felt like she was living with a stranger. And any attempts she made to get him back on track with healthy eating were greeted with hostility.
His sleep became erratic. Some days he was so tired he’d go to bed at 7 P.M., leaving her to feed and put Rosie to bed on her own. Once, she woke at 3 A.M. to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, rocking and punching the pillow repeatedly. When she asked him what was wrong, he lay back down immediately, muttering something about a cramp.