Chapter 33 Instructions for Anna
Instructions for Anna
Blue is meowing loudly on the stairs.
He wants out, having finished the meager portion I put down in the kitchen and desperate to try his luck elsewhere. I take a breath. It’s now or never.
I hope he’ll make a beeline straight back to Anna, especially after that tin of tuna she gave him yesterday.
She’s clever—she must have given him something the first time, too, knowing he’d keep coming back for more.
I take off his collar and head to the kitchen; he follows fast on my tail.
I grab a pencil and tear a scrap from a pad, scrawl on it, and tightly fold it before taping it to the back of the tracker disc, just hidden from view.
Instructions for Anna.
Blue looks up at me, impatiently, his meow strong and insistent.
“Right, young man,” I tell him. He stares at me with mild interest, hopeful for more food.
“I need you to do something for me, Blue. Can you do that?”
He meows, whipping around in tight circles, burbling in anticipation.
I bend and secure the collar, with difficulty, as he continues to weave around. Once the collar is secure I open the back door, and he’s away into the bushes in three long, bounding leaps.
On my phone, I watch the small blue dot of the tracker blink a route already forming. And now I wait.
I pop on the kettle to make a tea, and that is when I hear a ruckus coming from out on the street: raised voices, the clatter of something hitting the ground.
I head straight for the front door. Across the road, a few houses down, an estate agent is trying to hammer a For Sale sign in front of Richard’s expansive villa while Greg is shouting at and baiting him.
The estate agent, clearly harassed, drops the sign again, the wood clattering down onto the tarmac.
A minor scuffle ensues when Greg tries to physically grab the sign from the agent, a well-built young man in his late twenties. The pair briefly tussle, the younger man easily winning.
Greg falls to the ground, then quickly bursts up, finger pointed, legal threats issuing forth. It would be funny if the power dynamics weren’t so grossly off and if Greg weren’t quite so angry. I find myself hoping that he is Simon, hoping I find the right house and it is his.
Marina and Chris are also standing in their open doorway, watching, Chris’s hand protectively resting on Marina’s shoulder.
They are too invested in the scene to notice me.
But up the street Arabella spots me, our eyes locking, and she shrugs as if to say, “No idea.” It looks like she was unloading her car when the argument broke out, her boot still open.
Daylesford Farm bags hang from each of her hands, and I realize she’s gone to and returned from a Saturday morning trip across the breadth of London in the time it’s taken me to get up and feed the cat.
I wave at her and she smiles back, clearly as keen to be friends as she was the day she came over. She gestures with one laden arm for me to join her.
Across the street, I notice that Chris is staring at me now, deeply suspicious, which is frankly ironic, given whatever is going on in his house. I’m on your side, I want to shout. Instead, I give Arabella a thumbs-up, then pop back inside and grab my house keys.
When I lock the front door, Marina has disappeared back inside her house and Chris is out on the street, attempting to talk Greg down.
The sign is now up outside Richard’s house, the estate agent pulling away in his logoed car.
I wonder why he’s selling. His Bentley isn’t in the drive, so I suppose he must be in Switzerland or Tuscany with the mystery wife, lucky him.
Lucky her. Either way, I doubt they care a jot about whatever it is that has made Greg apoplectic with rage.
Perhaps Greg wanted to buy the property from them directly. He seems to be treating this area of London like his own mini–Monopoly board, with himself in the role of angry little top-hat man.
Arabella pulls open her front door before I can raise my hand to knock.
“Welcome, welcome,” she trills, stepping aside for me to enter.
The hallway is spacious and suitably chaotic for a family of five.
Raincoats have been haphazardly thrown on pegs, a few having even fallen into a heap on the Persian rug beneath, while tiny Crocs and sandals are piled higgledy-piggledy under the hall bench.
Oil paintings of other houses and very old-fashioned-looking people line all visible walls.
My parents were middle class, so I have no real idea if these are meant to be her relations or if they are important pieces of art. And I’m way too middle class to be gauche enough to ask.
A large marble-topped hall table holds an impressive Atmos clock, its inner works in constant motion. Beside it is a large, yellow fresh-flower display and a hefty stack of mail.
“Well, well, well, what a bit of excitement,” Arabella says, smirking, as she shuts the door on the tête-à-tête between Chris and Greg.
Ten minutes later, ensconced in the drawing room, a fresh pot of tea and some hastily gathered provisions on the table in front of us, I dive straight in.
“So, Greg’s not happy again. That seems to be quite a regular thing?”
She emits a short, tight cackle. “I think you have a knack for nailing people down. Has anyone ever told you that?” She offers me a cup and saucer.
“It comes and it goes. I’ve been known to get people wrong,” I confess. She acknowledges this solemnly, my divorce inference clear.
“Well, love is blind. Don’t I know it,” she says with a little eye roll, and I wonder again where the hell Mr. Arabella is and why I’ve never seen him.
“Oh, you, too?” I try, but instead of the confession of marital strife that I’m now half anticipating, she gives me an enigmatic smile and places a hand on her flat, cashmere-clad stomach.
It takes me a second to work out that she doesn’t mean she has indigestion.
“Three in school and now…one on the way,” she says, beaming. “Will likes even numbers—what can I say. Love is blind. Or has a short memory at least!”
“Oh, my goodness, congratulations,” I enthuse, plastering on joy over the emotional sink hole that has unexpectedly appeared in our conversation.
Suddenly all I can think about is the smell of the bakery department in Morrisons supermarket the last time I miscarried and how a shelf-stacker had to help me out to Ben’s car when he arrived to collect me.
That won’t happen to Arabella, though; she has three healthy examples of the opposite already.
I now know her husband’s name, though: Will, not Simon. That means nothing, of course.
“Only mentioning it because the tea’s decaf,” Arabella says with a smile. “Anyway, back to Greg. Yes, all very intense. He’s a very competitive man.”
Glad of the topic shift, I jump back on the disclosure. “Why is he angry about the sign?”
“He’s not angry about the sign; he’s angry Richard is selling.
Not sure how much I can say, but Greg’s got a lot of property in the area, home prices can fluctuate a lot, given certain circumstances, and he’d asked Richard to hold off listing until the new year.
But as we can see, Richard did not listen.
And has conveniently skipped town, as they say.
” Arabella pops half a buttered scone in her mouth.
“Did Greg actually think someone would wait to sell for his benefit?” I ask.
Arabella nods, sips some tea. “Well, it would technically be for all of our benefit. We’re all dependent on house prices.
It’s good to stay as liquid as you can right now—they’re constantly changing the tax rules on us.
The children’s fees alone have gone up sixty percent in the last year.
Switzerland or Dubai is looking pretty good at the moment.
The children can always stay here and board.
Will is keen to move, to be honest—he’s down in his office all the hours in the day.
He’s finally agreed to cut back; after all, he can work anywhere. ”
The idea of Will being downstairs in his office all day sets alarm bells ringing in my head.
I muster up the courage to ask the question that’s been on my mind since I heard it.
“Is there something I should know about my house, Arabella?” I ask.
Her eyebrows fly up, and she doesn’t answer immediately, seemingly confused by the question.
“What do you mean?”
“I overheard Greg saying if I knew something about my house, I never would have bought it.”
She lets out a chuckle.
“Maybe you wouldn’t have bought your house if you had known that Greg would end up being your neighbor, on both sides?”
She’s deflected the question with humor. Or maybe she hasn’t; maybe Greg is worse than I thought.
On the way to the restroom, I take a detour from the route Arabella described and land by the basement door.
It has no lock and the door stands ajar, the sound of an air-conditioning unit whirring loudly down there, its cool air wafting up to hit my tea-flushed face.
I hear a throat clearing coming from the kitchen.
And, chancing my luck that Will is busy back there, I snap forward, emboldened as I creep down a few steps and peek into the basement room.
It is an office. A desk takes up half the room, on it various computer screens with technical-looking scrub bars and time codes.
I am about to straighten up and turn on my heel, when I suddenly notice another door, beside a coatrack, on the opposite side of the room. It has a lock, the large keyhole gaping.
A shot of adrenaline pumps through me as I listen for noises from above. There are none, just the gentle whir of the air-con down here. I can always plead ignorance if someone catches me, I figure.
I dart down the remaining stairs into the basement office, dodging furniture as I beeline for the door.
I pull the handle but, just as anticipated, it is locked. Without thinking, I drop onto my knees and peer through the keyhole.
In the pinhole darkness, I can make out the bobbled walls of a soundproofed cell—
“Er, hello?” a sharp male voice comes from behind me.
I promptly smack my face into the door, then turn, rising to my feet, hand to head.
A smartly dressed man in a navy jumper, his shirt collar popping, is staring at me, a coffee mug in his hand, a vaguely irritated look on his face.
“Can I help you?” he adds, clearly grateful I’m no longer on my knees.
If I’m not beetroot red, it’s a miracle.
“Oh God. Sorry—I was being nosy. Then really, really nosy. Sorry. I’m an awful person. Frankie, Number Eighteen.” I apologize, immediately, surrendering all sense of dignity and the will to live.
His face contorts, then he lets out a laugh that comes off as a little rude.
“Oh, a friend of Arabella’s. I think I’ve seen you around, yes. Welcome, Number Eighteen. I’m Will. Were you looking for anything in particular in my recording booth, or are you just a fan?”
It’s a recording booth. I suddenly recall Arabella mentioning Will was a composer for film.
I weigh my responses and hope for the best.
“Just having a neighborly snoop, really.”
“Ah, well, carry on—don’t mind me.” Will goes back to sit at his desk, flips off the air-con, pops on his headphones, and resumes work in spite of me still standing there right beside him.
I linger momentarily after the mildly psychotic dismissal, then, when it’s clear he’s being serious, I slink out behind him, somewhat cowed.
Back upstairs, deeply embarrassed, I fudge facts and tell Arabella I got lost and walked in on Will while he was working. I’m sure they’ll discuss it further once I’m gone, but thankfully I won’t be here for that.
As I listen to Arabella tell me more about her children, her job in public relations, and her charity work, I take in the silver-framed photos that crowd the baby grand positioned by the front bay windows.
My eyes pluck out the ones with Will, his look distant in almost all of them, his eyes cast off camera, away from where everyone else’s are trained.
“Does Will have another studio?” I ask when the conversation finally loops back around. “A workspace somewhere else?”
Arabella frowns slightly, as if the answer eludes her before finally landing on it.
“Yes, he did rent one, not too far, a few years back. Before Stevie was born. But then we converted the basement so it seemed silly to keep it. Why?”
“No reason,” I answer, knocking back the last of my tea. “I guess I just wondered if it’s strange always being in the house together?”
“Oh, we aren’t. I’m only work-from-home every now and then days, mostly in the office or traveling for work. And he overnights every now and then in a hotel—to get the creative juices flowing.”
By the time I leave Arabella’s, I have serious concerns that Will may still have a studio nearby. That and the absolute certainty that Arabella does know what Greg meant about my house, but is refusing to tell me.