The People at Number 9

There had been no attempt to prettify the kitchen, or create atmosphere. It was just a watering hole and looked, as far as Sara could remember, exactly as it had when the house had gone up for auction. Perhaps Lou and Gavin had spent all their money converting the basement, or perhaps, seventies retro being back in fashion, they considered its brown floral tiles and yellow melamine cupboards a stylistic coup.

“Ooh, champagne! Crack it open then.”

“Carol, hi!” Sara was a little surprised, herself, at the grudging tone of her own greeting. Carol was wearing one of her Boden wrap dresses, accessorised with earrings, tights and nail varnish in the precise jade green of every third zigzag. Her short ginger hair had been freshly coiffed. She looked like a home-economics teacher who had wandered into a seedy jazz club and – unworthy impulse – Sara did not want to be seen with her. Not that Carol wasn’t a great girl, she was. She was stalwart and practical, clever and kind. She was as good for a heart-to-heart as she was for a cup of couscous. There had been confessions over the years and there had been tears. Carol ran a mean book group and threw a decent dinner party and if the guest lists for both tended to overlap, and the conversations repeat themselves, her hospitality was never less than generous. She was, however, no Bohemian.

Even now, as Sara reluctantly filled Carol’s glass with champagne, Carol was assessing the fixtures and fittings.

“Do you think this kitchen’s retro, or just old?”

“I don’t really know,” said Sara. She was trying to eavesdrop on a nearby conversation about rap music and misogyny, but with Carol prattling in one ear and Neil and Simon talking football in the other, it was impossible.

“I thought it’d be state of the art,” Carol went on. “Fancy having the builders in all this time and the kitchen still looking like this.”

“They’ve been making a studio, Carol.”

“Oh yes, I forgot he’s an artist.” Carol widened her eyes satirically and then returned her gaze to the sea of much-pierced humanity surrounding her.

“Do you know any of these people?” she asked. Sara shook her head. The thing was, though, that she wanted to know them, and if Carol stuck to her like glue, that wasn’t going to happen. The crowd was starting to thin a bit now, as guests topped up their drinks and wandered out to the garden. Carol leaned in to make some fresh observation.

“Hold that thought,” Sara said, laying an apologetic hand on her friend’s arm, “I’m busting for the loo.”

Walking down the steps to the garden, she could at last make sense of the intensive tree pruning that had gone on earlier. A gazebo had been erected at the far end, which had been filled with cushions and kilims. Paper lanterns winked with promise from within. You had to take your hat off to Lou and Gavin; they knew how to create a sense of occasion. She supposed it was some sort of chill-out zone and wondered what might take place there as the evening wore on. There would be more pot, certainly, but would there be other drugs? She wondered what she would do if someone offered her cocaine – turn it down, she supposed. There were the kids, for one thing and besides, she’d only do it wrong and look an idiot.

There was still no sign of the hosts, but clusters of people were milling about on the grass, drinking, smoking, weaving their heads, serpent-like, to trip-hop. Most of them seemed to know each other. This must be how it felt to be a ghost, Sara thought, as she floated from one huddle of people to the next, hovering on the periphery, smiling hopefully, yet never quite plucking up the courage to introduce herself. A few guests made eye contact, one or two smiled back and shuffled aside to accommodate her, but their conversations were too bright and smooth and fluent to allow her an entrée – it was like trying to wade into a fast-flowing stream. It was a relief, then, to bump into an acquaintance from a few streets away, who, it turned out, had done an art foundation course with Lou, but who now wanted to talk school catchment areas. After twenty minutes nodding and smiling, shifting her weight from foot to foot, and twirling the stem of her glass, Sara had had enough. She made her excuses and was threading her way back through the throng towards the house, when she met the host coming down the steps.

“Top up?” he said, tilting a bottle of wine towards her glass.

“Thanks,” she said. “You’re Gavin, aren’t you?”

“Guilty as charged.”

He filled her glass and started to move off again.

“We’re neighbours, by the way,” she added, quickly.

“Ahhh,” he said, turning back and re-engaging with genuine interest, “you must be Sara.”

3

Gavin apologised for taking so long to be neighbourly and explained that he had been like a dog, circling round and round in his basket, except in his case, his basket was his studio and it had had to be “not so much hewn from the living rock, as dug out of the London clay.’’ He nodded in the direction of the basement, which was still cordoned off with blue tarpaulins. At close quarters, Sara was relieved to discover he was only moderately handsome. One eyelid drooped fractionally, making him look faintly disreputable, and an otherwise fine profile was marred by a slight overbite. He spoke with a Lancastrian burr, which made everything he said sound vaguely sardonic, and prompted a certain archness in Sara’s response. She didn’t believe, she told him now, that the basement-conversion was a studio at all, but one of those underground gymnasia, beloved of Chelsea oligarchs. He said he’d happily prove her wrong, but not tonight, because he didn’t want just anyone – jerking his head towards his increasingly unruly party guests – traipsing through. At this whisper of a compliment, Sara felt a flutter of excitement in her belly.

“So what is it you do, Sara?” he asked after a pause.

“I’m a copywriter,” she said.

“Great! Advertising. Must be fun.”

“Oh it’s not Saatchi’s or anything,” she said quickly, “it’s really boring. Just in-house stuff for companies mainly. And consumer-y bits…”

He nodded, and turned his head, scanning the garden for someone more interesting to talk to, she assumed.

“… But I write,” she added quickly, “just for myself, you know.”

“Cool,” he said, turning back to her. “What sort of thing?”

“Short stories, the odd poem. I’ve started a novel, but it’s run out of steam.”

“You should talk to Lou.”

“Oh?” said Sara warily.

“Yeah,” he replied, nodding, “she’ll give you a few pointers – depending on the kind of thing it is, of course.”

“Lou’s a writer?”

“A writer-director.”

“What, films?”

“Yeah. She’s working on a short at the moment. Terrific concept.”

“She never said…”

“Oh, she wouldn’t. She’s very humble, my wife. One of those quiet types that just beavers away in the background and then comes up with this gob-smackingly amazing thing. Know what I mean?”

“Mmm,” said Sara miserably. She had only just got comfortable with the idea of Lou the style maven, earth mother and muse; now, it seemed, she had to contend with Lou the creative genius.

“Well…” Gavin looked around for more glasses to fill. It suddenly seemed imperative that she detain him.

“What do you make of Spanish cinema?” she blurted. He looked taken aback.

“I’m no connoisseur,” he said, “Almodóvar can be fun, but he’s so inconsistent.”

“I know what you mean,” Sara agreed, hoping she wouldn’t have to elaborate. “And doesn’t it get on your nerves how sloppy they are with the subtitles?” she rolled her eyes despairingly. “Some of the French films I’ve seen….”

“You speak French?” He looked impressed.

“I get by,” she replied, then shrugged.

“Ce qui expliquerait le mystère subtil de votre allure,” said Gavin, with a very passable accent and a twinkle in his eye.

“Er… yeah, okay, I did it for A level.” She pulled a rueful face. “I’m a bit rusty.”

There was a pause, then they both burst out laughing.

“Great!” he said, shaking his head. “I love it.”

“Good joke?” Neil appeared at Sara’s elbow.

“Oh hello,” she said, trying not to feel annoyed with him. “Gavin, this is my husband, Neil.”

They shook hands.

“It’s ten thirty,” Neil said to her, meaningfully.

“’Scuse me,” Gavin said, touching Neil’s shoulder, “if it’s that time, I should probably be helping my missus with the food. Great talking to you, Sara.”

He walked away, still shaking his head and smiling.

“Don’t you think it’s time we left?” Neil said.

“Why?”

“Well, the boys are on their own, for one thing.”

“Go and check on them, if you’re worried.”

“Are you having that good a time?” He seemed surprised.

“Yes, because I’m not stuck in the kitchen with Carol and Simon.”

“They’ve gone now,” he told her. “They said no one talked to them.”

She felt a twinge of guilt.

“I’ll go and check on the boys,” she said.“You, you know… put yourself about a bit. These are our new neighbours.”

He glanced doubtfully at the clusters of people – the beautiful, waif-like women, the men with statement sideburns and recherché spectacles.

“All right,” he said with an unconvincing air of bravado. He raised his glass to her and she felt a pang of love for him. It reminded her of the day she had left Patrick in Reception for the first time – the brave smile he had given her, that she knew would become a major lip-wobble as soon as she walked away. Neil might be CEO-in-waiting of Haven Housing Association, but they both knew that wasn’t going to cut any ice here.

The boys were fine. Patrick was snoring lightly, sweat glistening on his top lip. Sleep had stripped back the years, restoring the cherubic quality to features, which, by day, he worked hard to make pugnacious. She turned down his duvet and smoothed his hair to one side with her palm.

Caleb was in bed reading Harry Potter, his eyelids drooping.

“Good party?” he said.

“Not bad.”

“It’s very loud.”

It was. They were having a Hispanic interlude. Sara could feel the salsa rhythm pulsing through the brickwork. They had a bit of a nerve really, subjecting people to this when they had only just moved in; a lot of families nearby had young kids. She suddenly wondered whether that was why she and Neil had been invited – so they wouldn’t complain about the noise.

“I’ll ask them to keep it down,” she said. She went to kiss him, but he pulled the duvet up over his face to prevent her. She smiled sadly and stood up.

“’Night, Mum,” he called, as she went downstairs.

“’Night,” she called back, in a stage whisper.

Their front door was shut now. She leaned on the doorbell, but she knew she didn’t stand a chance of being heard above the racket. Then she noticed that the gate to the side passage stood open. She hurried through it and into the garden, just in time for the music to come to an abrupt stop. For a moment she thought she had timed her return to coincide with the end of the party, but something in the atmosphere told her that was wrong. The guests had formed a circle around the edge of the grass. As she squeezed her way through to the front, she saw Lou and Gavin standing close together in the middle, Lou’s face inclined submissively against Gavin’s shoulder. At first she thought they must have had a row, but then she noticed a guitarist sitting on a stool in front of the gazebo. There was a hush of anticipation. Rat tat tat; three times the musician slapped his soundboard and the loudness of the cracks belied the absence of an amplifier. Then he summoned a high-pitched, tuneful wail from his upper chest and started to thrum and sing the opening bars of a tango. Sara felt a shudder of embarrassment as Lou and Gavin flung their arms out at shoulder level, intertwined their wrists and began to dance. As the virtuosity of the guitarist and the commitment of the dancers became apparent, however, she found herself spellbound. Lou and Gavin circled the improvised dance floor, their ankles weaving intricately in and out of one another’s path, Lou’s slinky red dress flowing around Gav’s thighs, as they embraced and parted, attracted and repelled one another. The crowd clapped along, not in a spirit of solidarity but of daring; an egging on of something dangerous and illicit. Despite lacking the polish and timing of professional dancers, Gavin and Lou had something even more compelling – a quality that utterly faced down any ambivalence or awkwardness in the watching crowd – they really meant it. As they glanced off each other, brought their cheeks together and their thighs together, closed their eyes and jutted their chins, the sexual chemistry between them was flagrant. It was like watching a cataclysm; a slow-motion car crash with pulverised metal and shattered bone and rending flesh, and knowing that one shouldn’t be watching, but being unable to tear one’s gaze away. Sara could feel it undermining her, as she stood there, cutting away the ground beneath her feet.

The dance finished, one of Lou’s legs high on Gavin’s hip, the other trailing, her posture limp in surrender, and the audience erupted, clapping and whistling their appreciation. Laughing now, Lou hitched her other leg around Gavin’s waist and he spun her round, a gleeful child where moments ago had been a femme fatale. Sara clapped too and smiled, but she felt upset.

She went in search of a drink and found Neil, reclining on a beanbag inside the gazebo; he hauled himself guiltily to his feet when he saw her coming.

“That was awesome, wasn’t it?” He was grinning, in a slack-jawed foolish way. She realised he was stoned.

“Yes. Very impressive,” she said.

“Did you see that guy? Fucking amazing. His fingers were just a blur.”

“You must have been the only one watching the guitarist.”

“I might ask him if he could give Caleb a couple of lessons.”

“He won’t want to teach Caleb. He probably doesn’t even speak English.’

“Well I’m gonna see if he’s got a CD we can buy anyway. He’s gotta have a CD. Talent like that.”

“Don’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“It’s embarrassing.”

He looked a bit hurt, so she slipped her hand into his. His palm felt clammy.

The music had started up again.

“Dance with me,” said Neil. He pulled her in towards him and nuzzled her neck.

“I thought you wanted to get back,” she said.

“Just one dance.”

It wasn’t a good track; neither fast enough to pick up a beat and move, nor quite slow enough for a neck-encircling smooch. They revolved self-consciously on the spot, his hands holding her hips limply, hers clasping first his shoulders, then his elbows, in an effort to encourage him into some kind of rhythm. Fortunately, most people had gone back to refill their glasses, so their only companions on the lawn were a pixie-ish woman who danced with a strange wrist-flicking action, and a little girl wearing fairy wings over her pyjamas.

The track came to an end and Sara kissed Neil lightly on the lips and lifted his hands off her hips.

“Right then,” he said, looking around in a daze, “shall we say our goodbyes?”

“I’ll catch you up,” she said.

Sara stayed at the party for another hour or so, but she felt like a spectator. Lots of people smiled at her goofily, but no one offered her any drugs. She danced on the periphery of some other guests, who politely broadened out their circle to include her; one man even wiggled his shoulders at her in an “I will if you will” invitation to freak out to Steely Dan, but despite having consumed a whole bottle of wine over the course of the evening, she found she couldn’t commit to it, and drifted off to the kitchen. Here she stood by the table, absent-mindedly feeding herself parcels of home-made roti, dipped in lime pickle, until it dawned on her that Lou and Gavin had retired for the night, and she might as well go home.

4

Sara stood at the bedroom window watching the neighbourhood wake. She saw the man from the pebble-dashed semi walk his scary dog as far as the house with the plantation blinds and allow it to cock its leg on their potted bay tree before heading back home. She saw Marlene from number twelve, ease her ample behind into her Ford Ka and head, suitably coiffed and hatted, for Kingdom Hall. She saw a bleary-eyed man bump a double buggy down the steps of the new conversion and set off towards the park. She saw Carol’s front door open…

“Where’s she off to,” she murmured. A faint groan came from under the duvet.

Sara watched her friend cross the road carrying an envelope.

“Oh, my God, she’s not… She is! She’s sending them a thank-you note.”

Neil hauled himself up to a semi-recumbent position.

“Can you believe that?” She turned towards him with an incredulous grin.

“Christ yeah, good manners.” He shuddered.

“Oh come on,” Sara protested, “they didn’t even enjoy themselves, you said.”

With the pillows piled up behind him, wearing an expression of lofty tolerance, Neil’s profile might have been carved into Mount Rushmore.

“Maybe it’s something else.”

“What else could it be?” Sara eyed him sharply.

“A birthday card?” Neil shrugged and picked up his phone.

“Don’t be daft, they’ve only just met.”

All the same, she didn’t like the idea of Carol stealing a march on her. She was the one on the fast-track. Everything Carol knew about Lou and Gavin, she knew because Sara had told her. Their children’s ages and genders; the family’s recent migration from Spain; the medium in which Gavin worked; these nuggets she had doled out, with more than a frisson of satisfaction, keeping the confidences – the trout and the tears – to herself. The idea that the two women might have established their own rapport was ridiculous. They had nothing in common.

“What happened, anyway, after I left?” Neil didn’t lift his eyes from the phone, nor did his lightness of tone betray much curiosity, and yet he was eager to know, she could tell.

“Not much,” she said, returning to bed and yanking the duvet towards her. “Gavin and Lou disappeared. I talked to a couple of people, had a dance. Came home.”

“Disappeared where?” Neil said.

“To bed, one imagines,” said Sara, sounding a little prudish, even to her own ears.

“What,” Neil said, “bed bed?”

“You saw them,” she said, “that dance looked like foreplay to me.”

“Really?” Neil looked appalled and delighted, like a randy schoolboy.

“Bit much, don’t you think, at their own party?” she muttered.

Neil shrugged.

“Maybe they couldn’t help themselves.”

They lay there for a while in silence. The cacophony of kids’ TV from downstairs competed with the buzz of a hedge trimmer outside. Neil returned to his phone, but the theme of sex hung in the air between them. Sunday morning was their regular slot and she guessed from the intense way Neil was scrolling through the football results, that he had an erection. She felt aroused herself, but it was all mixed up now with Gavin and Lou and their stupid tango. She felt hungover and annoyed and horny. She sighed huffily and flopped a hand down on top of the duvet. With every appearance of absent-mindedness, Neil clasped her wrist and started to stroke it gently, whilst still apparently absorbed in the match report. It was the lightest and most casual of caresses, but he couldn’t fool her – he wasn’t taking in a word he was reading. She closed her eyes and tried to enjoy it, but she kept thinking of the party: the strange atmosphere; the music; the extraordinary behaviour of the hosts. Neil was nuzzling her neck now, burrowing his hand beneath the bedclothes, working his way dutifully, from base to base. A tweak of the nipple, a quick knead of the breast, then onwards and downwards. She threw her head back and tried to surrender herself to pleasure, but she couldn’t get in the zone. She moaned and wriggled, took his hand and, after demonstrating how and where she would like to be touched, closed her eyes, only to find her thoughts invaded once again by Gavin and Lou, this time, naked, Gav’s head at Lou’s crotch, her face contorted with ecstasy. Appalled, she banished the image, stilling instantly the butterfly quiver of her nascent orgasm. By now, Neil’s cock was pulsing against her thigh. To self-censor, she reasoned, would be to disappoint them both. No sooner had she given herself permission to go there than she was there, on the other side of the party wall, in their bedroom watching them fuck, like dogs, on the floor, Gav thrusting harder and harder, Lou’s hands beating the floorboards, head jerking back, sweat flying everywhere, groaning, screaming, coming, coming, coming.

“Oh God! Oh God!”

She opened her eyes and the room and the day fell back into their right order, but still there was a muscular twitch against her leg and a misty look in the eye of her husband. She touched his shoulder and, with the air of a family dog given a one-off dispensation to flop on the sofa, he clambered on board, and could only have been a few thrusts shy of his own orgasm, when the bedroom door burst open. Sara turned her head in annoyance, ready to remonstrate with whichever son had forgotten to knock before entering, but found herself, instead, eyeball to eyeball with a strange nappy-clad toddler, whose shock of blond curls and penetrating blue-eyed stare made her gasp in recognition.

***

“Well, that was interesting…” Sara called, breezing back into the house some fifteen minutes later and poking the front door closed with her foot. There was no response, so she followed the appetising scent of cooked breakfast into the kitchen and stood in the doorway, arms folded.

“They hadn’t missed her!” she said.

Neil continued frying eggs.

“No idea she was even here. Pretty shocking really. Poor little thing’s not even three. Hey, you’ll never guess what her name is.”

Neil didn’t try.

“Zuley, short for Zuleika,” she told his impervious back. “I can’t decide whether I like it or not.”

“You can get back to me,” he said.

“I wonder where they got it from…”

“The Bumper Book of Pretentious Names?”

“She must have tagged along with Dash and Arlo. Voted with her feet. It’s not exactly child-friendly round there. You should see the place – weirdos crashed out on every sofa, overflowing ashtrays, empty bottles… God knows what she could have put in her mouth!” Try as she might, she couldn’t quite banish a grudging admiration from her tone.

“Anyway,” she said, her mouth pursed against a smug grin, “upshot is… we’re invited round for dinner later.”

“Can you set the table, please?”

Coitus interruptus seemed to have rendered Neil selectively deaf.

Sara shuffled aside the Sunday paper, clattered plates and cutlery onto the table and called the boys. They hurtled into the room – a tangle of limbs and testosterone, jostling each other for the best chair, the fullest plate, the tallest glass. Dash won on all counts, even snatching the tomato sauce out the hands of his younger brother and splurging a wasteful lake of it onto his own plate, before Arlo had a chance to object.

“Er, we take turns in this house…” Sara said firmly, and was met with Dash’s signature smile – sunny and impervious – more chilling, by far, than defiance. He was a handsome specimen, no doubt about it, and possessed of an easy, insincere charm, but she wondered that she could ever have mistaken him for a girl. Neither his physique nor his behaviour struck her, now, as anything other than self-evidently Alpha-male. Arlo, on the other hand, had the unhappy aura of the whelp about him. Slight of build and weak of chin, he had his mother’s rabbity eyes, without her intelligence, his father’s thin-lipped mouth, without his redeeming humour. He was the kind of kid, who, even as you intervened to stop sand being kicked in his face, somehow inspired the unworthy impulse to kick a little more. She was touched therefore, and not a little humbled that, long after the older boys had left the room, Patrick sat loyally beside this “friend”, whose friendship he had not particularly sought, prattling cheerfully, while Arlo chased the last elusive baked bean around his plate.