I look back at Blue and force a smile, a feeling of inevitability beginning to settle uncomfortably inside me.
“Welcome to your new home, buddy.”
It’s then that the doorbell rings.
Chapter 2
First Impressions
I lean back and peer fromthe kitchen into the hall beyond; through the etched glass of the front door, I see a figure outlined.
The bell goes again, sending a sharp fizzle of apprehension through me.
I’m not expecting anyone, obviously. I’ve just moved in. I don’t have friends in London anymore, and certainly no one I still know well enough to have informed of my return. All my old uni friends and work buddies moved out of town to have kids, or get bigger places, long before I did.
I brace myself, head to the hall, and swing open the front door with as much optimism as I can muster.
It’s a woman, and she is smiling the most breathtakingly reassuring smile I may have ever seen—though, more important, she isnotone of the people I just saw arguing outside. Her expensive ash-blond hairstyle lies in soft, barrel-brush curls against her blouse, her light-hazel eyes instantly affable and on the level.
“Welcome, neighbor,” she laughs, with disarming self-awareness at the quaint social ritual she is performing. In her arms: a large blue-paper-wrapped bouquet and a condensation-beaded bottle of English sparkling wine, its neck decorated with a hand-tied, duck-egg-blue grosgrain bow and label on which is penned:Welcome to No. 18. X.
It’s the classiest arrangement of objects anyone could be holding. She hands the gifts to me with a “For you.”
“Wow, oh my gosh. This is so lovely, thank you so much,” I manage. The shock of my low expectations hitting this new reality makesme suddenly emotional and inclined to overshare as I take the gifts from her. “What an incredibly thoughtful—God, this is like a movie—I didn’t think people actually did things like this in real life. Welcoming the neighbors.”
My neighbor laughs.
“Well, I can’t vouch forreal life,” she says, with a wry wince. “I’m not best qualified to comment on that, but thisisa tradition in my family. Never show up empty-handed.We have our great-aunt Cordelia to blame for starting it all. Too much time on her hands.” She shakes her head, the scent of shampoo jostled into the air between us. “I mean, it’s all well and good until you run into another congenital gifter, then this whole thing is hell on earth and everyone’s bankrupt. Trust me. Back and forth forever. Arabella Spencer-James.” She stretches out her hand. “Number Nineteen. We had a whip-round, so this is from a few of us on the street. I’m an emissary. We come in peace!” She grins.
Number 19 is the house with the turquoise door, and the nanny, and the three children who listened to her.
“Francesca Green,” I say. “Frankie.” I attempt to free up a hand from my gifts to shake hers but it’s impossible, so I turn to place them behind me on the hall table. But as I do so, I feel something brush past my legs.
Blue darts out of the open door, slipping by Arabella, then down the front steps, and away into the bushes.
“Oh, shit,” I groan. Arabella turns following my gaze in the direction that Blue vanished. She looks back at me with mild concern. “He’s not supposed to go out for two weeks, post-move,” I explain. “They can get confused, lost, sometimes they try to head back to where they used to live—oh God.”
The idea of him wandering all the way back to our old home in the Cotswolds is beyond harrowing, as if he could somehow wander straight back into the past and Ben and I would be waiting there in the kitchen for him.
“Ah, I see.” She nods sympathetically, though without the urgency of a fellow pet owner. “He looked like a smart chap. I’m sure he’ll be back soon,” she offers. “Where was it you were…before?”
I don’t know why, but the question seems suddenly stilted,awkward, even, but when I look back at her, her relaxed smile couldn’t be further from awkward.
“Um, we…I…was in the Cotswolds.”
She registers my micro-correction, and everything that goes with micro-corrections of this sort, with an almost greedy inhale and nod.
“Cotswolds. Oh, so cozy,” she says, smoothly breezing us along, with her impeccable social skills, away from delicate matters that clearly interest her a little more than they should, “but then London is London, right?”
“Right. London is London,” I repeat, grateful for this tidy end to that element of the conversation.
It’s funny—I get the feeling that she already knew that it was just me in here. But then that’s not so bad. She may just have asked the estate agent who was moving in. I’m unsure if that’s weird or normal behavior—normal, I guess, for families with kids, who want to know what to expect.
I hear the distant mew of Blue from down the street, worryingly farther away than I would have expected. I wonder if I should push past this solicitous stranger and run to rescue my cat.
Is there a very real chance that I might never see him again? Like I’ll never see Ben again or anyone I used to know back in Oxfordshire. You only see the people, places, and things of your life until you don’t anymore.
Or maybe I’m overreacting. Blue’s obviously been on a street before, and the vet’s advice not to let him out straightaway was just cautionary.
