The Family Next Door(25)
She wasn’t going to tell Nigel, she decided. She’d live with her guilt, for the sake of her family. It was the least she could do.
She touched Nigel’s elbow and he jolted awake, glancing down at Ava quickly and relaxing when he found her safe. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and blinked up at Fran with his lovely thick eyelashes.
“Hey,” he said sleepily.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s go to bed.”
16
ANGE
A cheer went up among the parents on the grandstand. Ange joined in even though Will was on the bench. It’s about team spirit, not individual performance, the coach had said before the game, a nice little excuse for leaving the weaker players on the bench.
“Whatever happened to ‘It’s not about whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game?’” she wanted to scream. “Just give each kid a bloody turn!”
Instead she nodded and smiled and cheered other people’s kids on the field.
As she sat, watching other people’s kids kick the ball around, she was thinking about the neighborhood watch meeting. Even without a few of the residents, it had, by all counts, been a raging success. Afterward, she’d Instagram’d and tweeted several pictures. Ange liked the idea of a neighborhood watch. She liked the idea of making the neighborhood safer and keeping an eye on the neighbors. Tomorrow she’d put in an order for stickers and lawn signs, which would be prominently displayed on the street. YOU HAVE ENTERED A NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH ZONE. WARNING! YOU ARE BEING WATCHED. VIDEO SURVEILLANCE: ALL SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY WILL BE RECORDED AND SENT TO RELEVANT AUTHORITIES. Ange was looking forward to getting those signs up. It was good for people to know they were being watched, she thought. It made everyone behave better.
“Mom, I’m bored!” Ollie whined.
Me too, Ange thought.
“Shh,” she said. “We’re here to support your brother.”
“But he’s not even playing.”
“He will soon,” she insisted. But honestly, who knew? Will only turned up to sports games because Saturday sport was compulsory and he was a rule follower. But he wasn’t a natural athlete. He was bookish and inquisitive. When he was little, five or six, he would often wander off the field and start picking up leaves and examining them. (Photosynthesis! he’d said once, when Ange had chased after him to ask what he was doing. Look! Can you believe it?) At eleven he was tall and smart and an unequivocal geek. His saving grace was that he was exquisitely handsome, perhaps even more so than his father. And every year, as he filled out more, he became even more breathtaking.
Ollie shifted in his seat. “Please, Mum, can we go? My arm hurts.”
Ange locked eyes with Ollie. He was lying, of course. Unlike Will, a classic firstborn unable to tell a lie (an annoying trait when they were on holidays in the Gold Coast and were trying to get him into Sea World for free, and he insisted on telling everyone he was four and not three), Ollie could lie so convincingly it was hard not to be impressed. Ollie was a fabulous sportsman, of about average intelligence, but when it came to looks he’d inherited a horrible assortment of genes, from Ange’s pointyish chin to her mother’s stocky physique. Still, the boy could lie, which was bound to serve him well at some point. He’d probably make a very good real estate agent one day. Unfortunately, right now, there was a very slim chance that he wasn’t lying. And a slim chance was all it took to make a hairline crack in her resolve to laugh at his pathetic attempt to get out of watching the game.
“Where does it hurt?” she asked him.
He pointed vaguely at his arm. “Here.”
“Is it a sharp pain? An ache? What?”
“An ache,” he said.
Of course it was an ache. (“The arm might ache quite a bit over the next few weeks,” the doctor had said. “Ibuprofen and rest are the best things. And maybe some extra TLC. It can be quite painful. If he complains, indulge him a little. Let him stay home from school or whatever he’s doing.” But of course, Ollie had been there when the doctor had said that. And Ollie was no fool.) “Oww,” he said, loud enough for surrounding people to hear.
“Shh,” Ange said, patting his arm awkwardly.
It was one of those moments when motherhood felt like a shock. As if someone had just walked up to you with a baby and cried, “This is your child. You are a mum! You are meant to know what to do in this situation!” Fran would know what to do, Ange thought. She seemed to be equipped for any situation—whether the child needed a Band-Aid, a lollipop, a hug, or a pep talk. She was the girl guide of motherhood and she’d earned all her badges.
“How about an ice cream?” she tried.
Ollie pretended to consider that. “It might help,” he said solemnly. “It is hot. Where’s Dad? Can he take me?”
Lucas, of course, was nowhere to be seen. Ange had last seen him wandering off with another dad to fetch equipment from the storage shed. But now the other dad was back in the grandstands cheering on his son, and Lucas was MIA. She felt a wave of irritation with him. Why did he always wander off? Why did he strike up conversations with strange people and find them fascinating?
Ange called his phone, but it rang on the bench beside her. It must have fallen out of his pocket. She sighed. “I’ll go check The Shed.”