The Street Party
The Street Party
An unputdownable, gripping domestic psychological thriller
Claire Seeber
Books by Claire Seeber
The Street Party
The Stepmother
24 Hours
Available in Audio
The Stepmother (Available in the UK and the US)
Contents
Prologue
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Nella
Jan: Mum Of The Iced Gems
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Ruby
Melissa
Melissa
Nella
Melissa
Ruby
Nella
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Nella
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Jan: Mum Of The Iced Gems
Ruby
Nella
Melissa
Ruby
Ruby
Jan: Mum Of The Iced Gems
Melissa
Nella
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Nella
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Nella
Ruby
Melissa
Ruby
Melissa
Nella
Ruby
Melissa
Nella
Melissa
Ruby
The Struggling Mama Blog
Epilogue
The Stepmother
Hear More from Claire
Books by Claire Seeber
A Letter from Claire
24 Hours
Acknowledgements
*
For Nicola Smyth
And in memory of
Louisa Haswell Coles,
Beloved light and laugh much missed.
‘Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you.
You just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.’
Anonymous
‘Every contact leaves a trace.’
Locard’s Exchange Principle
Prologue
RUBY
SUNDAY 1 OCTOBER
Afterwards.
I kept thinking, if only I hadn’t fallen asleep when I’d got home, things would have been completely different.
If I hadn’t been so daft, so tired, so naive.
He would have been OK.
It was always afterwards when things made more sense, by which time it was also always too late.
I should never, ever have left him alone at the Jacksons.
But they’d all worked so hard to persuade me that he was safe.
The minute my eyes had snapped open, lying on my sofa, head in a muddle, I knew there was something different, something about the quality of the stillness in the flat.
In the darkness, I scrabbled on the floor until my fingers closed round the phone. The call went straight to voicemail.
I hauled myself up and searched for the Snapchat app I’d insisted Ali install when she was pulling her disappearing tricks a while back.
‘Got twenty thousand snaps,’ she’d boast to her brother, pouting at her camera.
He’d make a face at me over his cornflakes, and I’d wink back, relieved that, however hard Ali pushed at the boundary, I still had my little boy.
But now he was also counting snaps every day, pushing back.
I pulled up the Snapchat map. Fiendishly bright in the shadows of my living room, West London blinked at me. And I blinked back: my tousle-haired, grey-eyed avatar, grinning like a lunatic. I scrolled over – ah! And there, phew! There was my smiling cartoon son: hovering over—
Northgate Square: Nella’s house. I exhaled unsteadily.
Where he was meant to be.
I jumped as the phone began to vibrate in my hand.
‘Did I wake you?’ said the adult voice on the other end. ‘Sorry!’
Just as friendly as ever. Calmly reassuring: my son was fine with them.
There was no reason he wouldn’t be. No reason to question it.
But I was more than naive, as it would turn out. An idiot.
My one true role was to protect my son – and I failed.
But that realisation came much later, after my world flipped on its axis for the second time in three years.
Ruby
FRIDAY 14 JULY
If Melissa had been at the corner at the time we’d arranged to meet, she might have saved me from the inexorable fate hurtling around it.
But, although I’d lingered long enough in the fading light to elicit at least two twitches from expensive curtains nearby, along with the cold gaze of a silver-haired duchess-type in patent buckled shoes – a gaze that matched the blank-eyed stare of the grand houses on this side of the square – Melissa hadn’t arrived. Worse, nor was she answering my calls.
A droll ‘Where’s the tea dance?’ from a man in pinstripes didn’t reassure me about my choice of outfit either, although the teenager’s polite nod as he strolled across the street was much more welcome. A football mate of Zach’s, I thought, from our block; out of his natural habitat, perhaps, tracksuit bottoms adrift around his hips, giant headphones jammed down, but he reminded me my own home was only streets away – albeit in a different universe.
The uncomfortable polarity of Kensington and Chelsea – Britain’s richest borough – with the poorest neighbours. Double-gated Victorian mansions, sleek , Georgian townhouses: all overshadowed by the ugly inconvenience of concrete tower blocks. Immigrants and council tenants living centimetres from countesses, celebrities and oligarchs, while down the famous Portobello Road, market traders vied with foreign princes and media moguls for parking places.
Listen carefully and you might even catch a distant echo of the 1958 race riots, when an overspill of anger led to the eventual creation of the world-renowned Notting Hill Carnival.
So who exactly did it all belong to these days?
Not me, that was for sure. I’d ended up here by way of Yorkshire and marriage to a local lad – but it was home enough, today.
Nearly seven thirty and still no Melissa. Rare indeed for a woman who lived by her stopwatch: one of the many things I’d loved about her since she left an M & S steak pie, a bottle of Chardonnay and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s (melted) on my doorstep two years ago, at the very peak of my crisis. Her very reliable reliability.
Except for right now, apparently.
And, given that I couldn’t get hold of her, I had two choices – the more attractive of them being admittedly pathetic.
I took a deep breath and set off to find the house – alone.
Past the bijou boutique selling dresses more expensive than our monthly rent, past a subtle-looking restaurant boasting two Michelin stars, looking for number 74 proved more difficult than anticipated, but eventually I found it.
And when I did – the most imposing house on this side of the square, naturally – I rather wished I hadn’t.
Set safely behind iron railings, garlanded casually in wisteria and ivy, it was as perfect as something from a Jane Austen adaptation, its handsome facade marred only slightly by a building site next door.
And yet, for some reason, the house gave me the chills: the many windows both impassive and implacable, the side-run down to the tradesmen’s entrance below stairs sounding a warning to take heed of.
Beware, it said, interlopers aren’t welcome here.
Yet there I was, loitering in the shade of a real palm tree in an enormous hand-carved urn, too late to attend what was called, on yesterday’s WhatsApp thread, a ‘casual kitchen supper’ – a term I’d had to look up to check I’d understood.
When a get-together had been suggested, I’d expected custard creams around a tea urn in a draughty church hall – not a full-on dinner party, or kitchen supper, or whatever on earth this called itself when it was at home.
Held at Nella and Marcus Jackson’s very exclusive home, at that: a couple I barely knew, a couple well outside my usual circle.
Facts I did possess: Melissa taught Nella yoga, privately, hence our invite to help with the street party. The high-powered husband, Marcus, was standing in the upcoming local by-election. We’d met once, at a local fundraiser, introduced by Melissa; he’d been polite but distracted – looking past me to see who else he could charm.
Conversation exhausted, I’d moved on to safer pastures by the time Nella herself rocked up, late after a rumoured meeting with TV executives.
No one could miss Nella: all shaggy blonde pony hair and iridescent smile. Clad in soft tawny fur, tall and glamorous as a film star, she’d glided in, oblivious to admiring glances, slipping her hand girlishly into her husband’s. I’d escaped soon after, never wanting to leave Zach for long.
Now, slowly, I opened the ornate gate, thinking wistfully of my own small flat. The idea of arriving in tandem with my best friend was a very different proposition to arriving at this mansion alone, and I was starting to feel uncomfortable in my own formal frock and high-heels – 1970s open-toed mules I’d snapped up in Portobello Market last year, on a whim: just a little too tight.
Don’t get me wrong, I believed wholeheartedly in the proposed street party, following the disasters in the community – not least the terrible accident at Christmas that had claimed the lives of seven people.
But I could help in other ways, without attending this supper thing, couldn’t I? Even if those ways weren’t entirely clear to me now, no one would notice, surely, if I just slipped away.
‘Hello, lovely!’ The glossy front door swung open above me, silent on slick hinges. ‘So glad you could make it.’
Nella Jackson, in all her gorgeous – if extremely casual – designer-clad glory, framed in the twilight, like one of Raphael’s angels, or a Botticelli goddess perhaps.
Or Amanda Holden on Britain’s Got Talent! I imagined my mother coo; she’d be having kittens in her poky Northern cul-de-sac if she knew the company I was about to keep.
‘Hi! I’m Ruby.’ Did Nella have an actual clue who I was? ‘Melissa’s friend? Thanks so much for inviting—’
‘Now stop that immediately!’ Nella wagged a coral shellacked nail down the stairs at me. ‘Everyone else has been here for ages, of course – but there’s no need to apologise, really.’
Too late, I realised I hadn’t. ‘Um… so sorry.’ What could I say that she could possibly understand? ‘Been wrangling teenagers, you know…’ I gestured apologetically at myself, suddenly feeling horribly overdressed. ‘So I thought I’d glam up a bit—’
‘Glam up?’ Nella looked concerned. ‘Sorry, I’m lost—’
‘Need an A to Z?’ I grinned hopefully. ‘No, I just meant, you know, herding teens takes it out of you, doesn’t it? So I went for glamour.’
Nella’s polite face suggested she simply thought I was mad.
‘Don’t worry.’ Her elegant arm beckoned me up towards shapely shins, gleaming beneath moss-green velour pedal-pushers. ‘It’s all cold food, mainly, so nothing’s spoiled.’
‘Oh gosh, sorry.’ The familiar feeling sharpened. ‘I brought you these, for afters.’
I waved the shiny red packet of my corner shop’s finest chocolate: a safer bet than a cheap bottle of Pinot, I’d decided an hour ago – and expensive at £6.99 a box.
‘How lovely!’ Nella glanced at them. ‘You shouldn’t have, darling. Can’t do dairy or sugar at the moment, but the others will love them.’
‘Oh, I… sorry…’ I trailed off. ‘So, is, um, is Melissa here?’
‘She was early actually.’ Nella flicked her tawny blonde locks over the tanned shoulder peeping from a faded, retro T-shirt of a lion as majestic as her. ‘Along with that lovely headmaster of hers. But…’ She gazed over my head at the pavement. ‘Oh…’
‘What?’ The familiar metallic taste of loneliness flooded my mouth; one I’d begun to recognise these days.
‘Just… silly of me. On your own tonight, are you?’
‘Yes.’ Absolutely alone. I nodded stupidly, the cold hard grasp of shame arriving fast behind the pain. ‘Just me and my shadow, I’m afraid.’
‘Shadow?’ She peered over my head again, even more worried.
‘No I mean’ – Oh God – ‘my, like, actual shadow.’ I gestured at the ground beside me.
Was there even a shadow, though, at this time of evening?
Jonny would have known – but Jonny wasn’t here.
‘Well, that’s wonderful. Single pringle, eh?’
But I caught the expression following on the heels of Nella’s surprise. What was it this time: pity? Or maybe its uglier friend, suspicion.
‘Quick bite in the kitchen, then down to business, OK?’ Already turning in her elegant stilettos, she didn’t wait for my endorsement. ‘Come.’
Heart plummeting into my own second-hand shoes, I saw there was no way my vintage dress and jaunty scarf were cutting it here: land of Miuccia Prada and manuka honey.
Forlorn, I slipped the scarf into my pocket, feeling like a little girl caught dressing up by her mum. Nella was tall enough to be my parent, that was for sure.
But, following her up and across the big porch towards the door, my eye was caught by something high above me.
I paused, squinting up at the elegant rank of top-floor windows.
A figure, I thought, watching us? Now moving into shadows cast by the dying sun – or, maybe, just fading light, sliding slowly across the glass.
‘Sorry!’ I repeated, yet again – straining to see better. ‘But I think…’
Was that a pale face, pressed against the pane – or only my overactive imagination?
I knew what Jonny would have said – but who could I ask?
Nella had already disappeared inside.
And Jonny? Well, Jonny was long gone.
Along with my heart.
‘It’s years since I went to a dinner party.’
‘Oh, me too,’ I agreed carefully. But was it even one? I wasn’t sure because, honestly, I never went to them at all. We used to splash out occasionally on a pub roast, but usually we’d been happy with a takeaway and a rerun of Cool Runnings to ease the pain of real life. Every Christmas, in fact, the whole family re-watched Notting Hill, just for the bittersweet hilarity of it being absolutely nothing like where we actually lived, blue door or not.
But that was before.
‘Casual’s where it’s at these days, isn’t it?’ Nella’s husband Marcus swung a bottle of champagne around as I fiddled with my strapless bodice again, ruing the moment I thought this dress might give the impression I belonged on this side of the square. ‘Gotta let it all hang out sometimes, eh, Rex?’
Marcus was svelte, though, in his white T-shirt and faded Levi’s, whereas Melissa’s husband Rex was definitely letting it hang out, the swell of belly above his golf shorts more than obvious.
‘Oh yeah,’ Rex – a middle-aged man-child, shaped like a bear – nodded enthusiastically. ‘Kitchen’s cool with me.’
But was this room even a kitchen? I wondered. It was like something from Vogue or Elle Decoration in the hairdressers – huge and decorated exactly like the photos of every other kitchen this size, all glass and slate and islands.
You haven’t arrived if you don’t have a kitchen island, I could hear my sister mutter from her own fake-Shaker kitchen in York – and this one was the size of Cuba. Floating in the midst of a shiny floor, bowls of exotic fruit and framed posters with bright words, the Jacksons’ pièce de résistance was a pink neon light, hanging above a squidgy sofa, that read:
F*** me Now, Don’t Forget me Later
‘That’s a Tracey Emin.’ Marcus followed my eyeline. ‘Or maybe a new artist Nella discovered, can’t remember. Not very… PC, maybe, these days.’
‘Well, I think it’s…’ But his effort to include me was rendering me more self-conscious. ‘You know’ – what was the correct answer? – ‘kind of – exciting.’
‘Maybe.’ He nodded sagely. ‘That’s an interesting view.’
Only when he turned away did I manage to exhale.
The printed menu said: Lime and dill jus over salmon mousse souffle & delicate salad, followed by white peach granita.