Simone
They are so quiet.
Others might not notice that.
Others might see his flash BMW, and her perfect, unscratched arms struggling under the weight of boxes, nails cut sensibly, not plastered with gelled glamour. They might see the easy way they touch each other around the waist, the sharp contours of his rugby-chiselled frame, and the way that her eyes look outwards as though she intrinsically knows she is allowed to do this, entitled to see everything. Except, of course, they are both blind. They haven’t even noticed Simone, standing, watching, from the other side of the tree-lined street. If she wanted, she could already have swiped one or two of the smaller boxes without anybody blinking. The ones right at the opening of the removal van would be easy, or a couple from the pile balanced by the front door. But she doesn’t want their boxes. It is their quiet she is absorbing.
Simone stubs out her cigarette and starts another. It’s not that she minds noise. When she was a teenager, lack of noise was one of the things she despised – the silences over dinner, the closed door to her father’s small study behind which there came only the scratching of pencil on paper, the muted moments when she let herself in after school and there was no music, no laughter, nothing to pull her back. But Terry’s noise is so robustly noisy. It swirls around him like a cyclone, sweeping away everything not chained to the ground. He won’t be pleased that she’s got herself a job. It’s only part-time, just a little bit-work on reception at the gym down Camden High Street. She’s opening barriers and arranging leaflets on counters. There’s no glitz to it. But it’s money. It’s legal. And it’s doing. Doing something.
Terry will tell her she’s a mug. What’s the point of slaving away for less than she gets on social, he’ll say, less than he can give her for pocket money, another hamster on the big wheel. Why belittle herself? Or, he’ll think she’s trying to be like them: the quiet people moving in next door. Or not them specifically, but the girl two doors down who leaves for work every morning at five-thirty in Manolo Blahnik heels, and a taxi. Or any one of their other neighbours who are out all day, doing, and from their well-kept houses look at them, her and Terry – not doing – as if they’re scum to be picked off their polished railings.
Attached to the new neighbours’ balustrade, there is already a beautiful pale blue bicycle. It has one of those old-fashioned baskets into which you need to balance things like French baguettes or fresh flowers. The slim woman and her rugby husband stand behind it on their new doorstep and wave goodbye to the removal van driver. The woman is white blonde, her hair long and loose, dancing around her elbows. She has that sharp, petite nose you see on the BBC, and the kind of skin tone that suggests it’s regularly deepened by trips to sunny mountaintops and sprawling beaches. Simone sees her visibly breathe in, as if inhaling an imagined future. And the man breathes out, as though unburdened of his charge to provide it. Then together they turn and go inside where Simone can still see them in the front room, standing close together, encircled by boxes, and, she imagines, brightly coloured dreams.
Terry is not dreaming. He’s not sleeping much at all. He’d had no idea how difficult the move from the estate was going to be, and Simone wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.
Looking up, there is a movement of curtain from the bedroom window of their flat. It’s possible that Terry has seen her standing there across the street. It’s possible that he has been watching her for a while. Watching her watching.
She’ll go in in a minute.
She’ll just finish her cig.
By then the new neighbours might be done with their boxes and their quiet.
Simone takes one final inhalation of smoke. The nicotine should steady her, but as soon as she throws the stub to the ground her hands feel empty. Looking up at the flat, her stomach tightens. She crosses over slowly. The road is devoid of further distraction. On the corner, there’s a gastro pub where at lunchtime there are trendy mums with stylish buggies, or artsy professionals, not in suits; but it is now too late for lunch and too early for the school kids and not even a floaty-skirted cyclist to delay her passage home. As she reaches her doorstep, however, searching inside her bag for the key, the door to the new neighbours’ house flies open, and the woman she has been watching appears – blondeness and shininess and a gentle scent of coconut. Up close, an audaciousness Simone hadn’t noticed before dances across the woman’s lips, like the edges of laughter. She’s holding a wrapped box. Remaining on her doorstep, the woman lifts a hand in greeting, then leans boldly over the dividing iron boundary.
“Hello.” Her tone is cheery and confident, her skin smooth and perfect, her smile alluring. Simone doesn’t answer. “Sorry, I’m your new neighbour,” the woman clarifies, laughing and withdrawing her body slightly. “We’re finally in. So sorry about all the building work, it must have been absolutely irritating. I hope it wasn’t too awful.” The woman has a plummy, boarding school, house-in-the-country voice.
“That’s alright,” says Simone. She speaks flatly, but in more clipped tones than she would normally employ. The fact that she has done this is immediately irritating to her and she winces internally. Terry never does that, never puts on a pretence. Why should she? She doesn’t care what this woman thinks of her. But there is an unfamiliar scrabbling inside her, an uncalled-for desire to make a good impression. Finding her key, she forces that feeling away and turns without further comment towards the door.
“Oh, they’re for you!” the woman declares, laughing again and thrusting the box forwards. “Just some chocs. A little thank you for your patience. But we’re in now.” She glances up at her house and inhales again. “I’m Veronica.” She puts the chocolates into Simone’s hands.
“That’s alright, you keep them,” says Simone.
“Don’t be silly. Please.”
Silly? Who does this woman think she is? Simone glances up at Veronica who is still smiling, sillily. She could put this condescending woman in her place in a second if she wanted to. She could wipe that smile right off her face. But, something she can’t quite discern holds her back. She finds herself noticing Veronica’s assured, easy poise. She finds herself admiring it. An image flashes through her mind and all at once she sees herself, or a different version of herself, in a different life, leaning with Veronica against the railing, both laughing with equal ease. Then on the other side of the door, Simone hears movement on the stairs.
Terry is waiting for her. He isn’t a large man. There was a time when he used to box, flyweight, and then there was a certain width to him, but too much coke has sucked the muscle away. Both of them are rakes these days, Dominic too. Only Jasmine is rounded with flesh. She is growing taller finally, but her legs still fold into dimpled layers. Simone hears her daughter cry out from upstairs.
“Hi, Tel,” she says breezily, smiling at him as she climbs a few steps of the stairwell to where he stands, and touching him gently on the arm. “Everything alright?”
“Where the fuck have you been?”
He isn’t a large man. But he has a way of dominating space.
“Shall we go in?”
Terry allows Simone to pass him and together they enter the flat where the quiet of the street dissolves into the blaring of the TV, and the bawls of their daughter, Jasmine, sat screaming in her high chair. Jasmine’s hair is matted together with something sticky and there are remnants of the cheesy puff crisps she loves dried onto her skin. Her nappy is full and smelling.