The Family Next Door(19)

Isabelle sat at her dining room table and peered out the front window. She was still in her bathrobe even though it was early afternoon—it was too damn hot to get dressed and go outside. And so she sat in her front room, doing some people watching.

There was plenty to see. An hour earlier Ange had pulled up outside her house and run inside carrying a Red Rooster bag, presumably lunch for Ollie, who was home from school with a bright green cast on his arm. Fran had been out for a run twice—twice!—with her kids in the double jogging pram. And ten minutes ago Essie had piled Polly into her car seat and driven off, waving to her mother who was weeding her front garden in a wide-brimmed hat with a floral band.

So this was what suburbia was like, she thought. Close-knit. Pleasant. People talking to one another, keeping an eye on everyone else’s business (in fact, Isabelle had received a flyer in her letter box about a neighborhood watch meeting tonight at Ange’s house). It was a hard place, you’d imagine, to keep a secret.

Her phone began to ring.

Jules, she thought. Isabelle had been thinking about Jules a lot today.

“Do what you have to do,” Jules had said when Isabelle had explained she was moving to Melbourne. Do what you have to do. She hadn’t given a reason, or any notice. She couldn’t. And Jules let her go anyway, no questions asked.

On the surface it seemed like a dismissive response, as if Jules didn’t care what she did one way or another. But in fact the opposite was true. Jules cared enough not to ask. It was the reason their relationship worked when so many before had failed. It occurred to Isabelle how lovely that was … and how sad.

Isabelle glanced at the screen. It wasn’t Jules, it was her father.

“Dad.”

“You picked up!” came his booming voice. “I thought I was going to have to file a missing person’s report. Then I hear you’ve up and moved to Melbourne!”

Isabelle fought the urge to fake a bad connection and hang up. She needed to speak to him sometime or he would file a missing person’s report. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t gotten in touch with you. I just … needed a change.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” he said. His voice may have been loud, but she knew he’d be hurt that she’d moved without telling him. She imagined his large, craggy face lined with concern. “I don’t like you being so far away.”

It was a nice comment, even if she hadn’t seen her father in nearly a year in Sydney. She thought back to Easter last year, when she’d spent the day at his house with her two teenage half-sisters. Her dad had bought them all novelty Easter eggs, which none of them had eaten—her sisters because they were on some sort of diet, and Isabelle because she simply couldn’t stomach watching him beam around the table, saying how marvelous it was to have all his kids together in one room. Isabelle had to remind him that her brother Freddy was spending the holiday with his wife’s family and he didn’t even have the good grace to look sheepish. Her father wasn’t a bad man, but he’d been as good as useless to her and her brother for years.

“Listen, I just wanted to,” he said, then suddenly, his voice went far away and Isabelle heard Rachel, her sixteen-year-old half-sister, talking in the background. “What is it? Oh. Izzy, hang on a sec, would you? What is it, honey?”

Isabelle closed her eyes and banged her head softly against the table.

“The iPad’s not working,” Rachel said in a whiney, obnoxious voice.

Isabelle tried to remember whether she’d spoken to her dad like that when she was sixteen. It was unlikely since when Isabelle was sixteen her parents were divorced and she was a guest in her dad’s home.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said to Rachel. “I’m talking to Isabelle. Do you want to say hi?”

Isabelle heard the phone being passed through air and pictured Rachel wildly shaking her hands, mouthing “Noooo!” while her dad, oblivious, smiled.

“Hi, Rach,” Isabelle said.

“Hi.” She sounded sullen and unenthused. “Now can you fix it, Dad?”

Isabelle sighed. She knew how this would end. Her dad wanted to be there for Isabelle, but his new family was his priority. He’d made that perfectly clear every time he rang to wish Isabelle a happy birthday a few days late, while the same day posting a Facebook photo of him and her half-sisters on some kind of day trip—to a lake, a mountain, a zoo. Isabelle knew she was far too old to care about being her father’s top priority—for God’s sake, she was nearly forty—but it still managed to irk her. She wondered if the fact that she’d mysteriously moved to Melbourne would make a difference. Maybe this time he’d tell Rachel, Sorry, but the iPad will have to wait. I’m talking to Isabelle.

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” he asked her.

Isabelle glanced at the window. Fran was out there again, putting Ava and Rosie into the jogging stroller. Surely she wasn’t running again?

Through the phone, Isabelle heard her sister let out a high-pitched noise that sounded more animal than human. “Dad!!!!!”

“Izzy, do you mind if I call you back later? I’ll call from work tomorrow and then we’ll have no interruptions.”

“Sure,” she murmured. Fran did appear to be running for the third time today. Crazy lady. Essie pulled into the street and gave her a wave. Did no one else notice that that woman had some sort of exercise addiction?