Read The Girl Next Door Online
Authors: Elizabeth Noble
The Girl Next Door (44 page)
In 5B, Todd and Gregory, Ulysses between them on the rug, curled up with big glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon to watch
Infamous
on HBO. They were supposed to be at a reading in Barnes & Noble at Union Square – a friend of Todd’s had just published a guide to shopping for interiors in the city. But it was too cold, and they were too tired – Greg had been in surgery for most of the day and cried off before he got home. Todd didn’t want to go without him. And since said author was more of a frenemy than a genuine friend, neither felt guilty. They’d both seen the movie before, in the theatre, so they were half chatting, half watching. Greg sighed, rubbing his eyes.
‘Tough one?’ Todd asked, his arm around Greg’s neck.
‘Long one.’ Greg nodded. ‘They saved the kid I was working on, though. You wouldn’t have bet on it, when we went into surgery this morning. I thought we were looking at an organ donor.’
‘But he’s all right?’
‘He’ll be fine.’
‘I love that you do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘Save lives. Change lives.’
Greg smiled at him. He knew that. Todd had his very own kind of white‐coat syndrome – he always had.
‘Of course… I do, too… People seriously underestimate the psychological effect of fringe on a drape, you know . . .’
Greg picked up a cushion and playfully banged Todd in the chest with it. ‘Shut up. Truman Capote is about to hear the verdict … this is the best bit…’
Above them, Rachael sat at her desk, checking emails. Beyond her, in the sitting room, David sat reading. It was just like it always had been. Except that it wasn’t, at all. Everything was different.
She’d known it wasn’t going to work. Almost straight away. The shift in their bedrock had been too great – the crevasse between them was too wide. She’d done it for Jacob and Noah and Mia. She’d done it for herself. She’d done it out of pride, and shame and fear – that new feeling which had become horribly familiar over the last few months.
She’d believed she could make it work – she’d believed she could do what Milena had talked about. If she hadn’t, she would never have put them all through it.
But she was wrong.
In a while, he’d come over to her at the desk, and kiss the top of her head, and she would resist the impulse to flinch, to tell him he no longer had the right. He would tell her it was too late to be working. Lead her down the corridor to their bedroom. His eagerness to make amends was almost embarrassing. She’d let him make love to her, maybe. He was trying to do it as often as they had done before, as though that was a measure of success, of how the two of them had recovered from his infidelity. He’d be attentive and thorough. And she’d lie there. Thinking that this life – the life they had now – was sepia. The colour was gone. It had seeped away.
She told herself that the children were okay. And that because they were okay, it had to be okay for her, too. But she wondered how long she could do it for.
Across the hall Kim leant against the threshold of Avery’s room, watching her daughter sleep by the light from the landing, as she so often had. But like next door, now everything was different here. Jason was cooking a late supper, and the delicious scent of grilled lamb wafted down the corridor. One of Avery’s legs was sticking out of the blankets, but Kim knew that if she tucked it away, it would last two minutes. She’d already done it twice tonight.
Last night, she’d woken up, distressed by a nightmare, in the small hours, and they’d taken her into their bed with them. Kim couldn’t help but think of the times when she’d used Avery as a human shield against Jason. Not now. They’d lain, heads resting on their elbows, facing each other, smiling. She was surprised at how… mushy… the pair of them were. They’d never been like this – not even in the early days when they couldn’t get enough of each other. Getting each other back had done that. The outside world had receded and it was just about the three of them.
For just a moment, for the first time ever, as they lay there, Kim had thought about another baby. Not about the shots and the hospital visits and the endless roller‐coaster of excitement and disappointment. About another baby lying here between them. It was a thought she never believed she would have. This… this whole thing was something she never believed she would have. No hurry. They had all of their lives.
Outside, it had stopped snowing. The ploughs were hard at work on the roads, and doormen up and down the street were shovelling their stretches of sidewalk, and mopping their snowy marble floors. Hunter Stern’s last patient took the elevator with Jackson and Emily, on their way to dinner, and reflected that a relationship like this one was what she needed – not this $200 per hour therapy that her insurance wouldn’t cover and her parents didn’t know she had. This couple, young and handsome, fizzed with chemistry and affection, holding hands, and standing so closely together their bodies touched all the way down, her head on his shoulder. Why couldn’t she have that?
That was what Charlotte used to think. Now, making her way home from the subway, bundled against the cold, she saw them walking towards her. They didn’t notice her from so far away – they were absorbed in each other. Jackson was saying something, and Emily was laughing.
And Charlotte thought to herself – one day I will have that.
Acknowledgements
I’m writing these in New England at Thanksgiving, my favourite American holiday, which seems very appropriate… and so may I say how thankful I am for Jonathan Lloyd and his team at Curtis Brown.
My profound thanks also go to everyone at Penguin who has worked so hard on this novel. I am particularly grateful to Mari Evans, Debbie Hatfield, Shan Morley Jones, Mike Symons and Liz Smith, but there are many more of you besides, and you’re all stars.
I’m thankful, too, for the efforts and support of Fiona McMorrough and Annabel Robinson.
David, Tallulah and Ottilie Young – for the three of you, I am thankful every single day.
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We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it’
Sir Allen Lane, 1902–1970, founder of Penguin Books
The quality paperback had arrived – and not just in bookshops. Lane was adamant that his Penguins should appear in chain stores and tobacconists, and should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes.
Reading habits (and cigarette prices) have changed since 1935, but Penguin still believes in publishing the best books for everybody to enjoy.We still believe that good design costs no more than bad design, and we still believe that quality books published passionately and responsibly make the world a better place.
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First published 2009
Copyright © Elizabeth Noble, 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
ISBN: 978-0-141-91043-7
Prologue
Maggie
The dream, the one she had dreamt most nights for many, many months, always started out the same way. She sometimes thought she started dreaming it before she was even asleep. Willed herself into it, in some twisted, masochistic way. Sometimes it could even seem comforting, when it began, when it started. Familiar and warm, sound muffled, the world far away. She wondered if she thought, each time, that it might end differently. But it never did. Like an amnesiac, as though each night was the first, she forgot that the gentle, soothing start inevitably gave way to something much darker.
When she’d been a young girl, back in Australia, she and her brother and sister had often slept, on hot summer nights, on the family’s ancient deck boat. It was their thing. Their mum had kept some old sleeping bags and pillows on board, the faint scent of mildew mingling with her fabric softener on worn cotton pillowcases, utterly comfortable and familiar. The gentle rocking, small waves lapping against the hull, had been her favourite way to fall asleep. Her childhood lullaby.
In the dream, she was swimming. It had always been her favourite thing to do. It had always been what she did best. Her dad had called her Goldie. It made no sense to people – Maggie’s hair was espresso dark – unless you knew that it was short for Goldfish. Because she swam like one, he said. She loved to swim. In the dream, right at the start, she clearly felt the surge of joy she was familiar with in water. Strong, confident, able. Her arms moving forward, the backs of her hands together, fingers stretching, arms straight. Then pushing her arms apart, feeling herself moving forward. Her lungs were relaxed. She could feel all her muscles, in her shoulders and her back, in her thighs, moving the way she wanted them to, at her command, the way they had been taught, and how she had practised, over the days and weeks and months of her adolescence, in the perfect rhythm. The water around her was the mythical turquoise-aqua clear of her childhood, cool and refreshing, with rays of the bright sunshine on the surface shining through the shallows and dappling on the wet sand below her. She was perfectly happy here. She was perfect, here.
But then, without warning, the sunshine receded, not gradually, but at once, as though a light switch had been suddenly flicked off. The water became darker, and became agitated, not moving with its age-old ebb and flow. Now it was no longer clear, and she couldn’t see her hands in front of her face. She wanted to come to the surface – she knew she had to, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t even sure, after a few moments, which way the surface was – above her or below – only that she couldn’t get there. It was the feeling you got when a wave dumped you, body surfing on Manly or on Bondi: total disorientation. Her lungs were tense and rigid, and panic was rising in her chest. Her limbs, the same arms and legs that had been moving in their perfect dance, were flailing now, ungainly and ugly. She was in pain, and she was afraid. So, so afraid. And she couldn’t break the surface …
Kate
Kate Miller felt, every day, like she was fading out and away. Echoing around, getting fainter and fainter. The world, with all its sights, sounds and people, was getting further and further away. And what scared her the most about it – this process of becoming invisible – was how strangely comfortable it felt; how familiar and unthreatening. It was like life was being lived on the surface of a pond, and she was sinking towards the dark, silty bottom. People said, didn’t they, that drowning was soothing, almost peaceful: how ridiculous that was, when surely you should be fighting for breath, terrified, panicking. Apparently not – you read about some sort of surrender, some sense of peace, and almost hallucinatory happiness. And this was the same. Kate knew she should fight this feeling, this sapping apathy. But something about it, she realized sadly, suited her.
There were days when she didn’t leave the house. Her home, this place – it was safe and it didn’t challenge her. She knew every inch – everything in it. She slept poorly at night, but often drifted off as dawn broke and slept until ten. Waking so late, it felt as though the day had started without her and the energy to catch up sometimes – often – deserted her. She’d lost weight, though she had been slim enough before. The loss didn’t suit her, but cooking for one held no appeal, whatever Delia Smith might have to say on the subject, and anyway, she didn’t look at her shape much – she dressed without mirrors, and without variety. Most days the phone didn’t ring, and she didn’t dial.