The Family Next Door(23)

She lay in bed, wide awake. The anonymity of a new city, as it turned out, was an unexpected gift. Essie, clearly, had no idea who she was—even after she’d mentioned missing children. If that didn’t tip her off, nothing would. In Sydney it was fairly common for people to recognize her name. When they did, they practically fell over themselves to run away (people really did believe bad luck was catching) or to give her their sympathies. Isabelle didn’t mind the running away, or the sympathies, but she hated the stories. Everyone, it seemed, had a story. It had almost happened to their friend, their neighbor, their cousin.

Almost.

Almost isn’t the same, she always wanted to tell them. Almost isn’t even almost the same.

The worst was the breathless exhilaration with which people recounted their tales. People found it thrilling being so close to something so terrible—and they always seemed desperate to tell her all about it. Like the woman who told her that after hearing her story, her daughter had insisted on keeping her newborn twins within arm’s length the entire time she was in the hospital. Or the man who’d seen someone suspicious when he was at the playground with his kids, and after hearing her story he decided to call the police because “you could never be too careful.” Once, an elderly woman at a grocery store had told her, “If you really think about it, that child did the world a favor. Think of the children who are safe because of what happened!”

Isabelle never knew what to say. You’re welcome? Sorry? Lucky you? What she really wanted to say was Fuck off.

Beside her, her phone sprang to life. She glanced at the screen.

Should I be expecting you home anytime soon?

It was Jules, reminding her that, outside of Pleasant Court at least, people stayed awake after eleven.

The message was classic Jules. Minimal words. No x’s or emojis. No hidden meanings for her to read into or obsess about. She would have given anything to have him here with her right now, to let him transport her away from all this for a little while so she didn’t have to think.

Isabelle knew the whole street thought she was gay. She’d seen the flicker of surprise, excitement even, in Ange’s face when she’d mentioned her ex-partner. Isabelle wasn’t trying to be tricky, that partner had been a woman—a business partner in an online business that sold wristbands to music festivals. So she had, in fact, had a female partner. But sexually speaking, Isabelle liked men. One man in particular.

Julian was a high school teacher in a not-so-nice part of Sydney. He was passionate about his job and a champion of underprivileged adolescents. On the weekends he coached a basketball team of his students because none of the parents had volunteered to do it, and he spent most of the school holidays organizing activities for kids whose parents were working—because boredom and a lack of supervision were two of the most important factors sending teens into juvenile detention. He was a good man, a born father.

Before Jules, Isabelle had never had anything more than a string of sex-based relationships.

“Men must love you,” people always told her, when she explained she didn’t do boyfriends.

And it was true: men did love her. At first they loved the sex and the no-strings part of their relationships, but eventually they all loved her too. It wasn’t because there was anything special about her, it may have even been the opposite. They’d think, how could someone so ordinary not want to have a relationship with them? Eventually some of the guys she dated became positively crazy with desperation, begging her to love them back. And that was invariably where the relationship came to an end.

But Jules was different. Perhaps it was because he’d made his intentions clear from the get-go. I don’t have purely sexual relationships with anyone, he’d told her the first night. I have too much respect for myself for that.

Jules never made dreamy plans for the future or asked to meet her family. But without ever saying it in so many words, he commanded different treatment compared to the others. She never called him late at night or kicked him out of her bed in the wee hours of Sunday morning, the way she’d done with countless others. They made plans in advance, and though those plans always involved sex, they also often involved a takeout meal of some description and a sleepover. And over countless evenings, they’d gotten to know each other pretty well.

When Jules proposed, six months ago, Isabelle actually considered it. They didn’t live together, but they spent several nights a week together, which was a big deal for Isabelle. But ultimately it turned out that was as big a commitment as she could make. When she’d declined, he said he understood. Jules often understood things without Isabelle having to explain them. He was, without doubt, the perfect guy. But Isabelle wasn’t looking for the perfect guy. She was looking for someone else.

Jules knew what she was going through, and so he wouldn’t pressure her to come home, or to stop doing what she was doing. He made allowances for her strange behavior, her erratic spells, her sudden disappearances. What he didn’t know was that she had come to Pleasant Court to find someone. And the next time she spoke to Jules it would be to tell him that she’d found what she was looking for.





15


FRAN


Fran found Nigel in Ava’s room. He was in the rocker with his feet on the stool, Ava splayed across his chest, both of them out cold and snoring. Fran had been at Ange’s neighborhood watch meeting, which was just as dull as she’d feared. Stories about break-ins in the neighborhood had quickly turned to complaints about people putting their rubbish in other people’s bins (which, frankly, Fran had never seen the problem with—after all, it all went to the same place, didn’t it?), and it had gone downhill from there. Ange had seemed unusually high-strung throughout the meeting, and Essie hadn’t even shown up. Fran wished she’d given it a miss too. But Nigel had insisted.