The Family Next Door(7)

“They’re probably to hide her forehead wrinkles,” Fran said, folding a fan out of a piece of newspaper. “Which, I might add, is quite a practical idea.”

Fran thrived on practical ideas. Her clothes were fashionable but low-key, her shoes were flat. She wore the same nude lipstick and mascara every day, and her hair was always in the same glossy dark-brown ponytail. At the street party last year she’d revealed that she only bought a single style of beige bra and knickers so she never had to worry about hunting around for a matching set. Thankfully she stopped short of being one of those insufferable types who shoved practical ideas down your throat (‘You know what really works a treat on carpet stains? Let me tell you.”). The best thing about Fran was that she never seemed to care a fig what anyone thought of her, which was, in Essie’s opinion, a tremendously underrated quality.

“Probably,” Ange agreed. “She looks like she’s approaching forty. Did she stop by your place too, Essie?’

“She did,” Essie said. “To introduce herself. It was neighborly.”

Ange made a face that suggested she wasn’t so sure. “I don’t get it,” she said. “Who moves to Pleasant Court without kids?”

“You rented her the place,” Essie pointed out. “Besides, the Larritts don’t have young kids.” The Larritts, admittedly, were in their early seventies. “Neither does my mum.”

“The Larritts had young kids when they moved here. All three of their children went to school in the area. And your mum moved to the street to be close to you!”

Ange gave her a look to say So there, then patted down her white pants that somehow—despite her “beastly boys”—were pristine. It wasn’t hard to understand why people bought houses from Ange. She had everything together. She was married to a sickeningly handsome man; she seemed to be making a heap of money in her business. Essie had held out hope that she was hiding some great flaw on the domestic front, but when she’d popped around recently to borrow a Pack ’n Play, Essie had followed her into the garage and it was impossibly orderly in there. The garage! Essie would have been happy just to have some order to her pantry. Despite having children, Ange didn’t have LEGOs in her purse or McDonald’s wrappers on the floor of her car. That was the thing about Ange. She didn’t just sell houses. She sold the life you wanted to lead.

“What does Isabelle do for a job?” Fran asked. Ava had fallen asleep with her cheek squished comfortably against Fran’s forearm. “Did you get the scoop from her application form?’

“Apparently she works for a not-for-profit,” Ange said. “I’ve always thought that was an odd way to describe a business—a not-for-profit. Why not say what you actually do?”

“Which not-for-profit?” Fran asked.

Ange waved her hand. “Oh, I can’t remember. They’re all the same, aren’t they?”

Fran was on maternity leave from her job at a law firm, but Essie knew she’d worked as in-house counsel for Save the Children for several years before that. Her expression said they were not all the same. Fran may have been about to say as much, but Ava chose that moment to open her eyes and spit up on Fran’s white shorts.

“And this is why I wear white,” she said.

If Ange was the image of the life you wanted to lead, Fran was the image of the person you want to be. She and her husband, Nigel, were intellectuals, the type who sat around discussing highbrow topics like religion and politics and art. At least that’s what they’d done during Christmas drinks last year. Poor Ben had been so out of his depth he had spent the whole night nodding and saying, “What an interesting thought,” and “Gee, I never thought of it like that.”

“So I guess she went around to the whole street last night, introducing herself,” Ange said.

“I guess she did,” Essie said.

Fran pulled a packet of baby wipes out of a navy quilted diaper bag. “I read an article recently that said that people who knew their neighbors were sixty-seven percent less likely to be the victims of crime.”

Ange rolled her eyes. “There’s no crime in Sandringham.”

“Um, hello?” Fran said, wiping at her shorts. “Emily Lynch?”

Emily Lynch was the baby taken from her grandmother’s porch last year. Her gran had taken the pram outside as it was stuffy in the house and she wanted to give her some fresh air. She’d sat out there with her for an hour, reading her novel, before ducking inside to go to the bathroom. The phone had rung while she was inside; she’d been gone for a maximum of ten minutes. That was eight months ago. The initial horror at the baby’s disappearance had died down to the odd news report of a lead that never came to anything. Now people mentioned it occasionally with somber faces, her name a reminder of what could happen if you didn’t watch your kids. (I never let my kids outside alone, not for a second, people said now. Remember Emily Lynch?)

“I blame the grandma,” Fran continued. “Who would leave a baby alone like that? It’s no wonder she was taken.”

A funny silence permeated the room. Essie kept her eyes down, burying her lips in the back of Polly’s head.

Finally, Fran inhaled sharply. “Oh, no no … I didn’t mean—”

The neighbors all knew what had happened that day, even though they never ever talked about it. It was one of those baffling things about adult relationships. The way you needed to pretend. In any case, Fran was right. Mia could have been taken that day. Essie had been lucky.