The Woman Next Door Read online

  ‘It’s a lot of work,’ Angie had replied, wrinkling her nose when she spotted what looked suspiciously like damp in one corner of the living room. ‘Can we manage it?’

  Jack had wrapped his arms around her and given her a squeeze. ‘We can manage anything, you and me.’ They’d made an offer that day and four months later here they were.

  ‘Obviously the house is a fixer-upper,’ Angie said now, as she turned the coffee machine on and reached into the fridge for a couple of juice cartons for the children.

  ‘Yes, the elderly couple you bought it from had lived here for forty-odd years and I doubt that they’d done anything to it for a long time,’ Sophie confirmed. Her children sat obediently at the table opposite their mother, but Angie could see them fidgeting.

  ‘There’s a whole pile of children’s toys in those boxes over there,’ she told them. ‘Why don’t you go and get some out to play with?’

  The boy, Tom, leapt up enthusiastically and ran over to the boxes. The girl, Katie, looked uncertain but after some gentle urging from her mother, she went over to join him. Angie caught Sophie’s eye and they both smiled.

  ‘How old are your children?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘We’ve got four – Benji is eleven, Indie is ten, Eloise is eight and Freddy is five.’

  Sophie’s eyes widened in amazement. ‘Four kids? Wow!’

  Angie was used to that reaction. ‘I’ve always wanted a big family and so has Jack. He’s one of five and I’m an only child so we both had our own reasons.’

  ‘Do you work as well?’ Sophie asked, spying her laptop, notebook and two mobile phones at the end of the table.

  ‘Yes, I’m a solicitor.’

  ‘Blimey, are you Superwoman too?’

  Jack, who had just entered the room, laughed as he overheard Sophie’s remark. He put his hand on Angie’s shoulder and she smiled up at him. ‘She claims not to be but we’re pretty sure she is,’ he said. ‘We haven’t discovered where she hides the outfit yet, but the kids are onto her.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘With Jack’s parents,’ Angie explained. ‘We thought it would be easier to have them out of the way while we moved and did the bulk of the unpacking. They’re arriving later this morning.’

  ‘You must pop over to ours this afternoon. Tom and Katie will be so excited to meet them.’

  ‘How old are Tom and Katie?’

  ‘Tom’s seven and Katie’s five. She’s just finishing up her first year at school, actually. So where did you move from? Will the children be moving schools?’

  Angie sipped her coffee and nodded. ‘We lived in Greenwich. But we decided to move north to be nearer my mum. She’s not in great health and it used to take me the best part of an hour and a half every time I wanted to pop in to see her. This way I’m just down the road. So yes, the children are moving school much to their disapproval.’

  As Sophie chattered away about what the local schools were like, Angie glanced at her watch. Her new neighbour seemed perfectly pleasant but she was absolutely itching to carry on with unpacking before the children arrived. Sophie must have sensed her impatience because she quickly drained her coffee and stood up.

  Angie felt bad. ‘Please don’t feel you have to rush,’ she said.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Sophie reassured her. ‘You’ve got loads to do and I’m sure you just want to get cracking. I’d be the same in your shoes. Anyway, the kids have got homework to do. We’ll leave you to it, but do pop round when you get the chance so we can meet the children.’

  Angie smiled with relief as Sophie called out to Tom and Katie, who reluctantly relinquished the toys, and all three headed towards the front door.

  ‘Lovely to meet you,’ she said, waving them off. She closed the door behind them and walked back into the kitchen, her mind already full of the many tasks that lay ahead. Jack, who had been out in the garden, stuck his head inside the back door. ‘They seemed nice,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Angie replied dismissively. She reached for her phone to check her emails and then turned her attention to unpacking the tableware. There were four large boxes on the kitchen floor waiting to be sorted through. She started digging out plates and glasses, shoving them straight into the dishwasher and then paused as she unearthed a large crystal salad bowl from its layers of kitchen roll. Christ, she hadn’t seen this bowl in years. It had been a wedding present from a distant relative – she couldn’t even remember who now – and had been in the back of a kitchen cupboard gathering dust ever since. Looking at it now, she remembered her wedding day, nearly fourteen years ago. How much has changed since then, she thought. How much we’ve changed.

  She stared at the bowl, trying to decide what to do with it. It was only a silly bowl but its future now seemed like the most important thing in the world. She didn’t even like the damn thing but it was a symbol of her marriage, her intent. Did she bury it in a cupboard, never to be seen again or did she put it out on display, a proud emblem of their shared past, their union. She quickly hand-washed it and left it out to dry on the kitchen surface. She’d put fruit in it.

  She was cleaning the downstairs loo when the children arrived just before lunchtime. They bustled into the house with barely a glance at their mother and raced up the stairs, jostling each other out of the way as they went, desperate to have first dibs at the best bedroom. Within less than a minute they were bickering and she marched up the stairs, put her hands on her hips and started dishing out instructions.

  ‘Ellie and Indie, you’re sharing the big bedroom at the front until the loft conversion’s done. Me and Daddy are in the one next door. Benji and Freddy, you two are in the back bedrooms. We’ve already put your furniture and boxes in there so there’s no room for negotiation.’

  The boys raced towards their allocated bedrooms without further ado and Eloise, known to everyone as Ellie, wandered amiably into her shared room too. Indie, who had become a stereotypical tweenager the minute she reached double digits, observed her mother with a sulky expression as she twirled her hair angrily around a finger.

  ‘Why do I have to share?’ she demanded. ‘Ellie is such a pain; she follows me everywhere and steals all my clothes. I need some privacy.’

  Feeling ratty herself after a hectic morning, Angie tried to swallow the irritation that was rising up inside her, reminding herself that she had been a young girl once too, and replied: ‘It’s just until we do the loft conversion, darling, and then you’ll have a whole room to yourself.’

  ‘I still don’t see why the boys can’t share.’

  ‘There’s a much bigger age gap between the boys, Indie. It’s hardly fair to ask an eleven-year-old to share with a five-year-old who goes to bed two hours earlier. We’ve been through this.’

  Indie regarded her mother sullenly. Angie wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to her sweet, angelic little girl. But then she was looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses because Indie had never been particularly angelic. She’d been trouble from the moment she was born, with her scrunched-up eyes and scowling face, her tiny fists squeezed tightly in protest as Angie tried to bathe her or dress her. She’d been the fussiest baby of the four, the toddler with the most tantrums, a stubborn pre-schooler. But she was captivating, with her huge dark eyes, olive skin and determined pout that had broken her parents’ hearts more than once over the years and was going to shatter many more when she was older. When she laughed, the whole world laughed with her, but when she was in a bad mood, they all ran for cover.

  As a baby, Indie had almost put her off having more children but then Ellie came along – their kind, funny, down-to-earth Ellie – and she’d sighed with relief. A few years later Freddy had arrived, an amiable, sporty little thing compared to his more sensitive, theatrical older brother and Angie and Jack had finally declared their family complete.

  As a mother of four and criminal law solicitor, it took a lot to intimidate Angie. She stared Indie down now until the girl
finally relented and huffed off into her room, throwing herself dramatically onto the bed that Angie had already made up with her favourite bedding. Angie saw Ellie glance up at her sister and then back down again, wise enough to know not to bother trying to talk to her. Jack, who she suspected had been deliberately hiding while the bedroom politics were negotiated, crept up the stairs and peered into the various doorways.

  ‘Just seeing my parents off,’ he said. ‘They’re meeting my brother for lunch, but they’ll pop by tomorrow on the way home to check out the house. All sorted?’

  ‘I think so,’ Angie replied. ‘Although Indie threw her toys out of the pram and now she’s sulking. Poor Ellie, having to share with her.’

  ‘It’s not for long. We’ve got builders coming round next week to give us some quotes. Hopefully we’ll start work by the end of the year.’

  ‘I’m dreading it,’ Angie admitted. ‘It all seemed like a thrilling idea at the time but now the prospect of living through months of building work is terrifying.’

  ‘It’ll be fine, Ange,’ Jack said reassuringly. ‘It’ll be worth it in the end.’

  Angie thought of their lovely little house in Greenwich, which was too small for the six of them but had hosted so many years of happy times and suddenly felt an overwhelming loss. Had it really been a good idea to uproot their family, take their children out of school and away from their friends, and move to a new area? Their whole life was in south London. They had a community there, a support network, a fantastic group of friends. They had been a popular family, always hosting parties, playdates and sleepovers. Would these friends, who had promised to visit regularly, be true to their word or would the prospect of driving through the congested streets of London every time they wanted to visit prove too much of a barrier? Would they be happy here? Had she completely misjudged things by insisting that they move?

  ‘Mum, my new room is awesome,’ Benji, her eldest, said as he emerged from his bedroom.

  ‘Mine too,’ Freddy exclaimed, appearing at her side clutching his favourite toy dinosaur. ‘Thanks, Mummy and Daddy! T-rex loves it too!’

  Angie looked at Jack who nodded at her. ‘See, Ange, it’s going to be okay.’

  Looking around at the peeling wallpaper and piles of unpacked boxes, she couldn’t imagine how it was ever going to be okay, but it was done now and she had to make the best of it. This was their home sweet home, for better or for worse. She took a deep breath and said, ‘Now, I don’t know about you reprobates but I’m absolutely famished. Who fancies walking to the high street and finding somewhere to get a spot of lunch?’

  With a flurry of activity and a hunt for sun hats and sandals, Angie grabbed Freddy by the hand and followed the rest of the family out of the house, locking their new front door behind her and making her way down the road, under the relentless gaze of the midday sun.

  Sophie was doing the ironing when she heard sounds coming from the street outside. She glanced out of the window and saw the new neighbours walking past. The younger two children were holding their mother’s hands while the older girl was a short distance ahead, her headphones clamped over her ears. The older boy was in front, chatting to his dad. Crikey, there were a lot of kids. How anyone managed to raise four children and have a high-powered career was beyond her. As she watched them disappear, Sophie reflected on their meeting earlier that day.

  Angie had seemed nice enough. She hadn’t been up for much of a chat but then she had a lot of unpacking to do, so Sophie could hardly blame her. There was something about her though, something that Sophie couldn’t quite put her finger on. She had come across as a bit reserved, not frosty but lukewarm perhaps. She was absolutely beautiful, though. How did she find the time to look like that with four kids and a job? And her husband looked like a cardboard cut-out of the perfect man.

  The whole encounter had made Sophie feel a little intimidated and she had been struggling to shake off the feeling ever since she got home. She should make more of an effort to do some exercise, she thought to herself now, and stop stealing chocolate from the kids’ treat jar. And from Monday, she was definitely going to get back to work. Although the children would be breaking up for the summer holidays in less than two weeks, so perhaps she should wait until September now. Yes, she felt better already.

  Sophie still told anyone who asked that she was a writer, but the truth was that she hadn’t had any work in months. When she first started out on her own, she pitched story ideas all the time and, because she knew lots of people in the industry, she quickly gathered a regular list of clients. This is easy, she thought. Why didn’t I do this sooner? In her first year she had made good money and she’d been so proud of herself.

  But then the economy had dipped into a recession and the newspaper and magazine industry, already in a downhill spiral, had started making even more journalists redundant and slashing its budgets for freelancers. It got harder and harder to get jobs and the ones she did get paid a lot less, sometimes half what she’d earned before. At the same time Alan’s business was struggling as well because no one wanted loft conversions when they were worried about losing their own jobs, and he’d had to make some cuts.

  ‘Why don’t I come and work with you for a while?’ she suggested to him one evening, while he was poring over the accounts with a grim look on his face. ‘I can help you with admin, answering the phones, booking in jobs, invoicing, that sort of thing. I could even do a bit of publicity. It’ll save you having to pay someone.’

  Alan had looked up at her in surprise. ‘Are you sure, love? I mean, I could really use the unpaid labour but what about your work?’

  ‘Things are slow with work anyway. I can still pick up the odd job here and there and then when the business gets back on its feet, I’ll build up my own clients again.’

  He’d looked at her with such relief and she could see the emotion in his eyes. ‘Thanks, Soph, you have no idea what this means to me.’

  ‘We’re a team,’ she told him. ‘Stronger together, remember?’

  They’d always been a team, ever since they first got together twelve years ago. Before Alan, Sophie had been stuck in a pattern of dating commitment-phobic men and it always ended badly.

  ‘It’s because you’ve got horrendous taste in men,’ her friends would tell her over tearful debriefs. ‘You always go for the bad ones.’

  Sophie knew they were right but she couldn’t seem to break the pattern. Then one evening, on a night out for someone’s twenty-fifth birthday, she bumped into Alan while queueing for drinks at a bar. He grinned at her and she looked away self-consciously before curiosity got the better of her and she met his eye again. He was fairly handsome in his own way. Tall and broad with sandy hair, a lived-in face and extensive laughter lines, he seemed relaxed in his own skin. They chatted briefly before she was dragged off by her friends to the next bar, but he asked for her number and the next day he called and invited her out for a drink.

  It was that simple. She couldn’t believe it. Where was the game-playing? The angst? The staring at her phone willing someone to text her? There was none of that with Alan. From the very beginning he was a true gentleman, and he made it crystal clear that he had no intention of messing a woman around and that he wanted to settle down and have a couple of children. He was such a contrast to the men she normally went out with that she nearly dumped him several times. It all just seemed a bit too easy and part of her still craved the fireworks. But as she got to know him, she fell in love with his warmth, honesty and kindness. He loved her and he would do absolutely anything for her, and in time, she realised that he was the one.

  Ten years of marriage and two kids later, she hadn’t regretted her decision once and if anything, she loved him even more now. And that’s why she’d known that she had to do this thing for him. She had started working for him the next day and she stayed on for a year, by which time the economy had improved and business was coming in again.

  ‘It’s time for you to go,’ he told her
one day over dinner. ‘You’ve been amazing, I can’t thank you enough but let’s face it, it’s hardly your dream career. I’m making enough money to hire someone permanent now and I think you need to get back to your proper job.’

  ‘So you’re firing me?’ she said, in mock outrage.

  ‘Yep,’ he replied, wagging at finger at her. ‘Sophie Brennan, you’re fired.’

  She had laughed along with him but she also felt sad and realised how much she’d enjoyed working alongside Alan and being part of the family business. She also knew that he was right, it was time for her to go back to her day job.

  But getting back on the horse after a year off wasn’t easy. She’d lost touch and her motivation seemed to have fallen by the wayside. It didn’t help that Katie had just started school and wasn’t settling in well. She’d always been a sensitive child but it was still a shock after Tom had adapted to school life so easily. Peeling her weeping daughter off her each morning and watching her being dragged away by her teacher took its toll and the last thing Sophie felt like doing afterwards was getting rejected by editors.

  At around the same time, she was asked to join the parents’ committee at the children’s school, a role she’d agreed to because she was terrible at saying no but found herself enjoying. She got increasingly involved, made some new friends and found that she didn’t mind how much of her time it took up. It was the perfect excuse to avoid the inevitable fact that she’d lost her way in her career. She told herself she didn’t mind – she had a wonderful husband, two amazing children and with Alan’s business doing well again they had enough money to pay the bills. But occasionally she found herself feeling lost at sea, especially now the children were both settled at school and didn’t need her in the way that they used to when they were tiny.

  ‘Do whatever makes you happy,’ Alan always told her whenever she tried to talk to him about it. ‘If that’s writing, then go for it. If you want to study and retrain, we’ll make it work. If you want to take a break and focus on the children for a while, do it: you’ve earned it, love.’