Felicity Everett - The People at Number 9 - a gripping novel of jealousy and betrayal among friends

“So that’ll be quite nice, don’t you think?” Sara said to Neil when they were alone again and she was stacking the dirty plates in the dishwasher, “dinner tonight. Just the four of us?”

“We were only round there last night,” said Neil.

“Yeah, us and fifty other people.”

“I just don’t get what the hurry is.”

“There isn’t any hurry , but nor is there any reason to say no. Unless we want to say no.”

“And in fact you’ve already said yes.”

“Well, not yes as such. I said I’d ask you.”

“Thanks very much. So now if we don’t go, they’ll think I’m a miserable bastard.”

Sara raised a meaningful eyebrow.

With a sigh, Neil returned to his task of scraping the leathery remnants of fried egg from the base of the pan.

“Neil, they’re nice, interesting people and they want to be our friends. I’m trying, I really am, but I’m struggling to see anything negative in that.”

Neil shrugged resignedly. He was a simple soul really – affable, straightforward, curious. He had constructed a credible carapace of manliness, which, on the whole, he wore pretty lightly. When he picked up a work call at home (which he seldom did), it was impossible to tell whether he was talking to his PA or to the Chairman. This, really, rather than the recent improvement in tenant satisfaction ratings, or the number of newbuilds completed under his jurisdiction, was the reason he was a shoo-in for the big job. The downside of his instinctive and wholly laudable egalitarianism, however, was, in Sara’s view, his reluctance to recognise that some people just were exceptional.

“Eleven o’clock, absolute latest, okay?” he muttered to Sara, as they stood on Lou and Gavin’s doorstep for the second time in twenty-four hours.

“Hell-o-o-o!” Neil said, as Lou opened the door and you would have thought there was nowhere he would rather be. He handed his hostess a bottle of wine and kissed her on both cheeks – a little camply, Sara thought.

“I brought dessert,” Sara told Lou, when it was her turn, “I thought, you know, with all the clearing up you’d had to do… it’s nothing fancy, just some baked figs and mascarpone.”

“Oh thanks.” Her hostess looked surprised and faintly amused. In truth, she didn’t appear to have done much clearing up. The house looked only marginally less derelict than it had when Sara had delivered Zuley back that morning. Empty bottles were stacked in crates beside the front door and a row of black bin-bags bulged beside them. A wet towel and a jumble of Lego lay at the foot of the stairs. The kitchen was chilly and smelled of stale cigarette smoke. No cooking smells, no piles of herbs or open recipe book hinted at treats to come. If it weren’t for the fact that Lou had obviously taken a certain amount of care with her appearance, Sara might almost have thought they had come on the wrong night, but Lou looked gorgeous – like a sexy sea lion, hair slicked back with product, eyes kohl-rimmed, in a tie-necked chiffon blouse and jeans, which could not have contrasted more sharply with the eye-popping maxi dress she had worn the night before. She had the enviable knack, Sara had noticed, of making every outfit she wore utterly her own.

Lou ushered them in and Sara and Neil sat down a little gingerly, on grubby chairs at a kitchen table still littered with half-eaten pizza crusts and spattered with juice.

“Shall I open this?” Lou asked, waving their wine bottle at them. “Or are you in the mood for more fizz?”

She flung open the door of the fridge and pulled out a half-full bottle of Krug.

“A party with booze left over,” Neil said. “Must be getting old.”

“Or more catholic in our tastes,” said Lou with an enigmatic smile. She filled three glasses and handed them round.

Watching her hostess pad around the kitchen, to the strains of John Coltrane, the grimy lino sucking at her bare feet, Sara found herself at once repelled by the squalor and intrigued by Lou’s indifference to it. She wondered what it might be like to live like this – to dress how you pleased and eat when you felt like it, and invite people round on a whim. There was, after all, a certain charm in the larky informality of it all, in stark contrast to Carol’s well-choreographed “pot luck” suppers. Lou cheerfully admitted to being “rubbish” at entertaining. She had once, she said over her shoulder, arms elbow-deep in washing-up water, served undercooked pork to Javier Bardem and given him worms. Once again, Sara found herself at a loss for words.

By the time Gavin bounded into the room, at 8.05, wearing jeans and a creased linen shirt the colour of bluebells, dusk had darkened the windows and Lou had brought about a transformation. She had cleared the table and put a jug of anemones and a squat amber candle on it. Around this centrepiece, she had placed terracotta dishes of olives, anchovies and artichokes, as well as a breadboard with a crusty loaf. All it took was for Gavin to draw the blinds and pour more wine and suddenly the atmosphere was one of gaiety and promise – the room felt like a barge or a gypsy caravan – some ad hoc combination, at any rate, of home and vehicle, in which the four of them were setting out on a journey. Now the informality of their reception felt less like negligence and more like a huge compliment. Gavin caught his wife around the waist and kissed her neck, glugged back most of a glass of wine, changed the music on the stereo and began to cook.

As the candles burned down and the alcohol undid the kinks in the conversation, Sara stopped worrying about her choice of outfit and Neil’s unappealing habit of sucking the olive juice off his fingers, and started to enjoy herself. The tone of the evening became relaxed and confessional. She heard herself admit, with a careless giggle that she’d been intimidated when Gav and Lou had first moved in.

“By us ?” Lou looked askance. “Why on earth…?”

“Oh, you know – the car you drive, the way you dress…” Sara said, “… the s tag’s head above your fireplace !”

“That’s Beryl,” replied Lou, dismissively, “no one could be intimidated by Beryl. She’s cross-eyed and she’s got mange on one antler. As for the Humber, I can’t even remember how we ended up with that…”

“Damien was getting rid of it,” Gav reminded her, “and we were feeling flush...”

“ That’s right!” said Lou, “because you’d just won the Tennent’s Sculpture Prize. So you see, pretty random really. Anyway , Madam,” she said, leaning forward in her seat and fixed Sara with a gimlet eye, “it cuts both ways, let me tell you. That day you first spoke to me, remember?” Sara did. “I was a nervous wreck!” Lou glanced at Neil and Gavin, as if for affirmation. “There she was, all colour-co-ordinated and spiffy from the school run, and me looking like shit in my filthy work clothes and, what’s her name? Carol , watching me like a hawk from across the road. I felt like I was auditioning for something. And then you invited me round for a drink and I was, like, yesss! ”

Sara didn’t know what to do with this information. She blushed with pleasure and pushed a crumb around the table with her forefinger.

“Well,” said Gav huffily, “if no one’s going to tell me how fucking marvellous I am, I suppose I’d better serve the dinner.”

They laughed. He had a knack for putting people at their ease, Sara had noticed. She’d imagined an artist to be the tortured, introverted type but Gav was neither. You couldn’t call him charming, quite, because there was no magic about it, no artifice. He was just easy in his skin and made you easier in yours. He pottered about the kitchen, humming under his breath, pausing occasionally to toss some remark over his shoulder, and then served up a fragrant lamb tagine as casually as if it were beans on toast. When at last he sat down, he didn’t hold forth about himself or his opinions, but quizzed Neil about his work, with every appearance of genuine curiosity.