Page 11 of The Family Across the Street
‘You can and I can call you… I’m afraid I have forgotten your name.’
‘Logan.’
‘I’ll see you at five, Logan.’
She wasn’t afraid of him, even though she must have known he was someone to be afraid of.
After they had been together for months, she told him, ‘I saw something that night, the night I treated you. I figured you had gone to prison. I saw the boy you must have been once, and I knew you were mostly a threat to yourself. I mean, I wasn’t stupid. I was shocked to see you again, but the way you held yourself told me something, and I was interested in who you were. I was a little scared, and I told about five people where we were going, and I didn’t let you take me home. But I was just being safe. I knew you were a good bloke.’
And he has tried to be that ‘good bloke’ since he got out of prison. It hasn’t been easy. Getting a job as an ex-convict is near impossible, which is why so many people end up back in prison. He has experienced moments of desperation since his release and when he thinks about the risk he almost took – a risk he prefers not to think about – he is grateful that he caught himself in time, that he didn’t go through with it. He can only hope that nothing is ever going to come back on him.
His phone pings but he doesn’t look at it as he pulls up outside the next delivery. He knows who it’s from and he’s not going to respond. Not today.
He looks at the clock on his dashboard. It’s nearly ten and he could use a coffee and something to eat.
He thinks about the woman in the house again as he slides open his van door and grabs the right box. When he was breaking and entering, he developed a keen sense of danger. He would feel his heart rate speed up and his skin tingle, even when the house was silent, and he knew to be extra careful because it meant that something was off, that there was something he was missing, something that was a threat to him. That’s what he felt speaking to that woman this morning, he now realises. He felt danger.
He stands at the front gate of this house for a moment, his skin tingling as he understands that this is what happened this morning. Old instincts returned, telling him to pay attention.
‘Is that for me?’ asks an old man who is standing in the front garden with a spade in his hand. Logan hadn’t even noticed him. ‘Oh yeah, sorry,’ he says.
The man laughs. ‘This kind of heat can make you lose your mind.’ He opens the gate and takes the parcel from Logan.
‘Thanks,’ he says, and Logan nods and walks back to his van. His instincts are never wrong except for the one time when he was out of his mind on ice. Instinct kept him safe in dangerous situations for years.
And he knows it now, for sure. The woman is in danger.
6
Gladys
Gladys loads the dishwasher before going into the living room to check on Lou. He’s fallen asleep again, something that happens more and more often these days. Just being awake seems to tire him out.
The children have still not walked past the house. She and Lou ate breakfast and watched carefully. She would like to sit and read, but she feels a little jumpy for no particular reason. She goes into the spare room again and looks at the house next door. The blinds are still down, the windows closed. Maybe Katherine is just taking the advice given on the news to keep windows and blinds closed, to keep the heat out. But this is not the first heatwave this year and she knows that Katherine has never before kept the blinds and windows closed during the day.
Gladys is aware that she is known as the neighbourhood busybody, and perhaps that’s what she is, but when she was growing up, everyone knew everyone in their neighbourhood. Her mother regaled them all with tales of everyone’s lives over dinner each night. It was not considered nosy to ask questions about your neighbours and to be involved in their lives. It seems that people now are open and honest about their lives all over the internet and then coy about exactly the same things in person. Perhaps because it’s difficult to tell the truth about yourself when you’re looking directly at someone.
When she and Lou first bought this house, the neighbourhood was filled with people who became their friends. Where Katherine lives now is where Roberta and Geoff lived with their three children. Gladys watched those children grow from babies to adults. Roberta would pop over for tea during the school holidays when Gladys was home and Lou still working. She had known when Roberta and Geoff had had an argument, when the children were sick and finally, she was one of the first to know when Roberta got her cancer diagnosis. Geoff sold the house after she died and then another family moved in – less friendly but still, Mira did like a chat over the fence every now and again. When she and her family moved to Melbourne, they sold the house to Katherine and her husband John. Even though Gladys welcomed them with a cake and tried popping over for tea once or twice, she got the feeling that Katherine needed her space. It’s the same with Margo over the road, who always seems to be looking at her watch when they see each other, keen to keep her baby, Joseph, in a routine. She never seems to have time to talk.
She thinks about the first time she met Katherine. She and John were both so happy, a couple at the beginning of the big adventure of becoming a family. Even from a distance, they seem… less happy now. It’s the stress of raising twins and of being the parents of young children, Gladys is sure. It isn’t that she hears them argue, but then of course she wouldn’t. She is sure that they are responsible enough to keep any arguments quiet. It’s more that there is something odd between them when she’s seen them together lately.
Last Sunday the whole family were in the front garden. John is a keen gardener and he was weeding, and Katherine was holding the hose so that the children could run in and out of the water, even though they have a pool at the back. Gladys had left Lou to have a stroll around the block, just to stretch her legs. It wasn’t an overly warm day so it was pleasant to walk and admire the gardens filled with their summer flowers and magnificent colours.
‘Hello,’ she called, stopping at their front gate.
‘Hello,’ replied Katherine.
‘Look what we’re doing,’ shouted George, running under the arc of water from the hose.
‘I see,’ said Gladys, ‘it looks like fun.’
‘Not so much for the one who has to hold the hose,’ Katherine said.
‘Then don’t do it,’ muttered John.
‘I’m doing it for George and Sophie, not for you.’
‘I never claimed you were doing anything for me.’
