that we are the heroes of our own little worlds. We all like the sound of our own voice.
Chapter Three
Numatic Vacuum Cleaner Henry NRV 620 W, red
Sialoquent, adjective. Tending to spray saliva when
speaking.
I find it strange to look back at the person I was before they moved in. I feel almost sorry for myself, for my innocence. It was as if for my whole previous life I’d been holding my breath.
The first time I saw her she was standing in the middle of the pavement, arguing with a traffic warden. ‘Oh my God, come on,’ she was saying, both hands clasped together against one cheek, in a sort of winsomely pleading form of prayer. ‘Come on, I was only, like, two minutes. You can’t do this to me. My husband will kill me. Please. I’ll move it now. Don’t give me that ticket.’ Her arms crossed her chest. ‘Come on, tear it up. Please. For me.’
Next to her, half on the road, half on the pavement, was a lopsided navy Fiat 500. She’d clearly parked up to unload her shopping (their off-street already taken by their main car, a huge silver beast I believe one calls a ‘Chelsea tractor’). Rookie mistake. We live on a red route and to slow the traffic down here is pretty much a crime against humanity.
‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, ‘thank you very much.’ He had slapped the ticket under her windscreen wiper and got back on his moped. ‘Have a fucking nice day,’ she called after him, raising her palm in a salute.
I pushed through my gate and onto the path. ‘Bastards,’ she said, noticing me for the first time. ‘They’re all bastards.’ I only half smiled, and let the lock click shut behind me. I had no intention of agreeing. I’m not big on generalisations. I was already wary maybe; something about her coiled energy reminded me of Faith. Plus Nathan’s worked round here for years. He’s a bit of a sweetie.
She took a step towards me then and introduced herself. ‘We moved in next door,’ she said. ‘Yesterday.’ She pointed over her shoulder at number 422, as if I needed geographic guidance, and I said, ‘Oh really?’, summoning the requisite note of surprised interest. It’s not unique to her, this tendency of people who have ‘done up’ a house to ignore their impact in absentia. Of course I knew they’d moved in the day before. The whole neighbourhood knew they’d moved in the day before. Most of us had anticipated little else for the last thirteen months but their moving in the day before; thirteen months of drills and bulldozers, the clatter of scaffolding, the whining of saws, the bangs and shouts and music and oaths of the increasingly frantic builders. I knew their taste – from the original iron claw-foot bath that arrived, the plastic shower unit that departed. I knew, for example, that their sofa and their washing machine came from John Lewis, and the coffee table and a weird headboard thing from Oka. I even, to be honest, knew her name, that she was Ailsa Tilson, in HR, married to Tom Tilson, a record company executive; that they had three children, including twins (possible IVF?), and that they were moving to London after a failed stint in Kent. Please don’t think I had sought out this information. It’s just what comes your way if you live next door to a building site for a year and you’re not so inhuman you can’t make the occasional cup of tea.
About me, of course, she knew nothing.
‘I’m Verity,’ I said.
Ignoring the 319 bus, still idling behind her car, she stretched her arm over the gate to shake my hand, and then left her elbow there, propped, like she was leaning on a desk. On first inspection, she had rather pointy features, with large nostrils in a sharply upturned nose, and skin tightly drawn across the cheekbones. I noticed her mouth had a prominent philtrum and a mole sat just below her lower lip. She was wearing a bulky khaki jacket with a fur-trimmed hood, a common garment among ‘yummy mummies’ round here, which is how I can date this encounter to mid-February, during the return of what people persisted on calling another Beast from the East. We’d had a couple of mild weeks, but a cold front had swept in more biting winds and freezing rain. It’s hard to imagine it, after the summer we’ve just had, but I do remember I’d