The Family Next Door(4)

Ben leaned his elbows on the counter. “So,” he said, “apparently the new neighbor has moved in.”

“I heard,” Essie said. The whole of Pleasant Court was at fever pitch about the new neighbor. There hadn’t been anyone new in Pleasant Court since Essie’s mum moved in.

“Ange gave me the inside scoop.” Ange, from number 6, had been the agent to rent the place. “She’s a single woman in her late thirties who has moved down from Sydney for work.”

“A single woman?” Barbara said, eyes still on her crossword. She tapped the base of the pencil against her lip. “In Sandringham? Why wouldn’t she get an apartment in the city?”

“Single women can live in Sandringham! Maybe she wanted to live by the beach.”

“But it’s an unusual choice, wouldn’t you say?” her mum said. “Especially Pleasant Court.”

Essie thought about that. Pleasant Court was a decidedly family area, she supposed. A cul-de-sac of 1930s-style redbrick bungalows—and even those in need of a paint job or new foundations sold for well over two million thanks to the beach at the end of the road. Ben and Essie had bought their place when it was worth less than half that amount, but property had skyrocketed since then. The new neighbor, whoever she was, was renting, but even rent wouldn’t have been cheap. And with three or four bedrooms and a garden to maintain, Essie had to admit it wasn’t the most obvious choice for a single person.

“Maybe she has a husband and kids joining her?” Essie said, opening the fridge. She snatched up a head of iceberg lettuce, a tomato, and a cucumber and dumped all three on the bench. “Salad?”

“Sure,” Ben said. “And I doubt she has a husband joining her.”

“Why?”

“Ange said she talked about her ‘ex-partner.’ Partner,” he repeated, when Essie looked blank. “As in she’s gay.”

“Because she used the word partner?”

Ben shrugged, but with a cocked head and a smile that said he was in the know.

Essie grabbed an avocado from the fruit bowl. Though she’d never admit it to Ben, she was a little intrigued. The sad fact was, Pleasant Court was very white bread. The appearance of anyone other than a straight married person with kids was interesting. Essie thought back to her days working as a copywriter for Architectural Digest, when she had numerous gay and mixed-nationality friends. It felt like another lifetime. “Well … so what? I didn’t realize we cared so much about people’s sexuality.”

“We don’t,” Ben said, holding up his hands. “Unless … hang on, did you say … sexuality?”

Ben slipped a brawny arm around her waist. After eight years of marriage Ben still wanted sex constantly. Essie would have blamed the excessive exercise if he didn’t insist he’d always been this way. “If I was a kid these days,” he was fond of saying, “I’d have been diagnosed with ADHD and put on Ritalin. Instead, my parents took me to the park every day to run me like a dog.” Some days that’s what Essie felt like she was doing with him in the bedroom.

“You need a shower,” Essie said.

“Great idea. Meet you in there?”

Essie’s mum put down her pencil. “For heaven’s sake! Come on, Mia. You can stay at Gran’s tonight.”

Ben’s eyes lit up. “Barbie! Have I ever told you how much I love you?”

“If you really loved me,” she said, without missing a beat, “you wouldn’t call me Barbie.”

Ben put his hand on his heart. “Scout’s honor.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Not Babs, either. Not Babby. Not Ba-Ba.”

“But those are all the good ones!” Ben cried as her mum let herself out with Mia on her hip. Then he turned to Essie. “Ready for that shower?”

*

One good thing about Ben, he rarely lasted more than ten minutes (Ten with Ben) and tonight Essie spent eight of them thinking about Polly. At first she’d simply been listening out for her in case she woke up, but then her thoughts had drifted to what she would do if she did wake up and then to why on earth she’d been waking so often these past few weeks.

It’s a phase, everyone said. The most irritating of all findings. A phase wasn’t a diagnosis, it wasn’t a treatment. It was, at best, something to say when you had no idea what the problem was. But Essie wasn’t going to take it lying down.

“I thought you could give Polly a dream-feed tonight,” she said to Ben when he was spread-eagled and panting beside her. She lifted her head and propped her chin in her palm. “A dream feed is when you give the baby a bottle of formula at ten P.M. to get her to sleep for a long stretch. Apparently it’s better for the dad to do it, because otherwise the baby can smell the mother’s milk.”

It was Fran, from number 10, who’d suggested the dream-feed. Fran had a daughter Mia’s age and another one a few months younger than Polly, but unlike Essie’s children, Fran’s children slept and generally did everything they were supposed to do. As such, she seemed like a good person to take advice from.

Ben stared at her. “Are you actually talking about our infant daughter? Now?”

Essie winced. “Faux pas?”

“Fatal faux pas.”

Essie dropped her head back onto his chest. She lay there for a few seconds before Ben grabbed her chin and turned it so she was looking at him. Essie smiled. He did this every now and again. They’d be standing in the kitchen or out for a walk and suddenly his eyes would go all soft. He never said anything, he didn’t need to. The look said it all.