The Family Next Door(32)

Isabelle walked inside.

“Oh,” her mum said, as they rounded the corner. It may have come out wrong, but it didn’t seem like a friendly “oh.”

“Hello, Barbara,” Isabelle said, equally curtly. She turned to Essie. “I saw the light on and I thought maybe you could use a drink. Don’t they call this time of day the witching hour?”

“They do,” Essie said. “But if I had a broomstick, I have to say, I’d have been out of here long ago.”

She filled two glasses, nice and full. She’d just turned to put the bottle in the fridge when she noticed smoke drifting out of the broiler.

“Shit!” she cried, wrenching out the tray. Immediately she dropped it. The burning-hot tray clanged to the floor. “Oh … holy … owww.”

Essie looked at her right hand, which was already pink and throbbing.

“Are you all right?” Isabelle asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

But Essie wasn’t sure. She looked down at the tray on the floor—and then at her hand. It was already showing signs of blistering. For a long second she didn’t know what to do. Apologize for her silliness? Sweep up the charred chops? Call for pizza? She’d been feeling like this a lot lately. It was as though processing a series of thoughts or reacting to a basic situation was beyond her.

Isabelle appeared beside her. She guided her over to the sink. She turned on the cold tap and held Essie’s hand underneath, letting cold water stream over the burn.

“Better?” she asked after a moment or two.

“Yes. Thank you. Sorry, I … don’t know where my head is at today.”

“Neither do I,” Essie’s mum said, bustling up behind them. She’d put Polly in her swing and Mia was in front of the television. “In any case, why don’t you two sit down and let me clear this up?”

“No, Mum, really I—”

“I insist. We don’t need any more accidents.” Barbara stuffed her hands into oven mitts before Essie could protest any further. Essie felt a little like a teenager getting into trouble. She wondered what was up with her mum.

“You know what I think?” Isabelle said. “I think you need a break. Why don’t you take the night off, Essie? Go and see a movie with Ben? I can babysit.”

Essie felt herself sway with desire. A movie. For mothers of young children, going to the movies was the ultimate indulgence. The comfortable chair, the quiet, the escapism. The sugar, if she treated herself to a candy bar. The fact that no one was touching you, or talking to you. There had been nothing—including sex—that had transported her more completely since becoming a mother than seeing a movie. “Unfortunately,” Essie said, “Ben has to work late. But maybe … you and I could see a movie? You could babysit couldn’t you, Mum?”

Barbara looked up from the tray she was scrubbing: a deer in the headlights. “But what about Polly? I thought you were worried she was coming down with something?”

Essie looked over at her, gurgling happily on her mat. “She seems all right now, don’t you think?”

Barbara put the tray on the draining board, her brow furrowed. Her hair, which she usually dyed herself with a box of Clairol ash brown, was threaded with gray at the temples. “I guess it’s all right,” she said finally, sounding like she meant the opposite.

“Thank you,” Essie said, rushing to the bedroom to swipe on some lipstick and grab her bag. When she returned to the lounge room Isabelle was on her knees, talking to Mia and Polly in a funny, playful voice. They both smiled back at her, delighted at the attention.

“We’d better go,” Essie said, and Mia made a pouty face. Polly started to cry again. Everyone seemed sad to see Isabelle leave.

Everyone except Essie’s mum.

*

Essie and Isabelle had just ordered a second bottle of wine. They weren’t going to make it to the movies. Essie didn’t care. Dinners out with friends should be mandatory for mothers of small children, she decided. They should be the law.

Essie didn’t usually do things like this. She and Fran and Ange met for tea and cakes, and for drinks at Christmas, but they rarely went out, and they rarely laughed. It felt sophisticated and fun, even if they were just at The Pantry in Brighton, the next suburb along.

“What looks good, ladies?” the waiter had asked when he came to take their order.

“The prospect of not cooking,” Essie had said, and Isabelle had laughed.

It may have been the alcohol, but they’d spent a good portion of the evening laughing—at the waiter’s desperate attempt to get Essie’s name right (she’d called up and made a booking from the car) and their subsequent agreement to make the booking under the name “Jane”; at the men at the next table who kept ogling them, one of whom uncannily resembled Essie’s high school P.E. teacher; at Isabelle’s excellent impersonation of Jerry Seinfeld. It made Essie acutely aware that she hadn’t laughed much recently.

They sat opposite each other at a small table with a single white flower and a drinks menu between them. Essie had already wolfed down her chili prawn pizza in a matter of minutes and now was watching Isabelle eat her linguini aglio e olio with similar gusto. Essie was relieved to find Isabelle wasn’t a salad kind of girl (not that it would have been an unforgivable offense, but it would have been a shame).