As she walked past the house Sophie looked at the front door, silently willing it to open so that she could meet the new neighbours, but it remained resolutely shut. With a small wave of disappointment, she carried on walking down Pemberton Road towards the school. She’d stop at the supermarket and pick up a bottle of bubbles and a card, she decided. Then she could drop it round over the weekend. The children were going to be thrilled when she told them the news: they loved a bit of excitement, especially the prospect of making new friends. She’d probably have to prise them down from the top of the back-garden fence when they got home that afternoon, the nosy little sods.

She reached for her headphones, plugged them into her ears, turned on a pop playlist and made her leisurely way towards the park. As the music lifted her spirits, she smiled to herself. The sun was shining, the white wine was chilling, she had the whole weekend ahead of her and Alan was coming home early. So what if she hadn’t done any actual work for longer than she cared to remember and she was feeling unmotivated? Life, she decided, could be worse.

Later that evening, after Tom and Katie had gone to bed, Sophie and Alan chewed over the prospect of the new neighbours as they chewed on their curry.

‘They’ve definitely got young children,’ Sophie confirmed. ‘I saw child seats in the car.’

Alan swallowed his korma thoughtfully as he digested the new information. ‘They’ve got a hell of a job ahead of them doing up that house if they’re planning to live there at the same time. It looks like it hasn’t been redecorated since the First World War.’

‘Come on, Alan, that’s an exaggeration, it’s not that bad. Anyway, it’s good for the area, this regeneration. It pushes up the property prices.’

‘Tell me about it: it’s keeping us in kormas.’

Alan ran a building company and his bread and butter were families buying run-down houses and paying him a fortune to do them up. And there were enough projects in Finchley alone to keep him busy for life. You couldn’t walk down a single street without seeing skips and vans parked up, builders chatting on the pavement outside while having a break from doing rear extensions and loft conversions. But Alan had a strict three-mile no-work zone around the house. ‘You’ve got to be able to leave your work behind when you come home,’ he always said.

‘I hope they’re nice,’ she said. ‘It’ll be lovely to have some friendly neighbours, and some pals for the kids to play with. I wonder if they’ll go to the same school as Tom and Katie?’

Alan shrugged and reached for a second helping of naan bread. She could sense him losing interest already. It was different for him: he left the house early each morning and returned home in the evening, tired and ready to put his feet up and doze off in front of the TV. He enjoyed socialising but only when Sophie organised it. Alan was a family man but new people moving in next door were of little concern to him. For Sophie though, their home and neighbourhood were her whole life. It was where she lived, worked, made friends and raised a family all in one. And new people moving into the street was her equivalent of office gossip.