Southend U3A

August 2023

The Family Next Door - Anne Wilson

Suzy pouted. She always did when they played Snap together and she was losing. It was one of her less attractive features, but otherwise she was great company: the best friend anyone could have and Lizzie blessed the day she and her family had moved in.

They were both only children and, despite her tender age, Lizzie perceived that this is what made them bond, although she was too young to articulate it. It was probably the mutual situation that neither had any siblings, or even cousins, with whom they could share their frustrations regarding the idiocy of their parents.

‘Daddy’s stupid,’ Suzy had once confided. ‘He keeps calling me ‘Soozey Q in front of other people and I hate it.’

‘He thinks you’re a child,’ sympathised Lizzie, little realising the irony of the remark. ‘I wouldn’t worry; I think your parents are lovely.’

‘I know they are,’ Suzy conceded smugly. ‘He’s just being silly, but I love him anyway.’

Lizzie wished that her father’s worst fault was silliness. The friendship was escalating at an alarming rate, but Lizzie still retained a self-protective awareness that there were certain things she should keep private.

‘I have to get back home for tea,’ she told Suzy after several games of snap – all of which she had won.

‘Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Smith for having me,’ she said dutifully on the way out. ‘I enjoyed the cake. It was yummy.’

‘It was our pleasure,’ they chorused. ‘Come and visit us whenever you want.’

Thus it was that Lizzie returned next door, feeling reasonably sated with food, having munched her way through not only one, but two slices of cake.

Tea had been set out for the three of them and she gazed at hers with little enthusiasm.

‘Eat your tea, dear,’ exhorted her mother.

‘I’m full up,’ sighed Lizzie. ‘I had a piece of cake next door.’

Her father sighed deeply.

‘You might as well go and live there if you like it so much,’ he said in a scathing voice.’

‘Don’t . . .’ begged her mother. ‘Just let her be.’

Her father’s tone was hostile and her mother’s imploring: this was clear, even to a child of eight and she made the inference, as she so often had, that her mother was frightened of her father. How could that be? After all, they were married to each other, just like Suzy’s parents and they both adored each other; it was plain to see from her visits.

She picked at her tea and her parents finished theirs in stony silence. Her father got up from the table abruptly.

‘Don’t eat cake in your room again before you’re due to have your tea,’ he warned his daughter in irritable tones.

‘I so didn’t,’ Lizzie protested in a petulant fashion. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith next door made me eat it when I was there.’

‘I don’t know why I bother with either of you!’ he exclaimed to mother and daughter on his way out of the door.

* * *

Whenever she could, Lizzie escaped to the sanctity of the family next door for respite. The Smiths were obviously a devoted couple; it was evident from the looks of adoration they gave each other and the way they touched each other solicitously to ensure the other’s well-being.

Suggestions by Suzy every now and again that they play at Lizzie’s house were met by the latter with some trepidation. Lizzie had introduced her briefly to her mother, who had been charming and welcoming – just as Mrs. Smith always was to her – but she strongly suspected that her father would be an entirely different matter if they met face to face. There was a limit, though, to the number of times she could defer the inevitable and so it was the two girls found themselves playing in Lizzie’s family’s kitchen/diner one Sunday afternoon.

Chattering incessantly is a not an unusual characteristic of little girls – particularly those in the throes of forging an intimacy with each other – and the chattering was punctuated with occasional high-pitched giggling and bursts of music played at a high volume. It was not, however, music to the ears of the Man Of The House, who had ensconced himself in a comfortable living room chair and was trying to read the Sunday paper. He rose from it in a semi-drunken state brought on by too much alcoholic accompaniment with his roast lunch.

His disgruntled face appeared before them.

‘Can’t you shut up for even a moment?’ he thundered. ‘I can’t think with that racket going on.’

Lizzie felt emboldened and decided to adopt a tactic she had sometimes heard her mother employ.

‘Do you mind?’ she admonished him. ‘Can’t you see I have company?’

It was an eerily adult remark and, despite himself, he chuckled – although it was not a reaction sounding as if it were born of humour or affection.

‘Well, perhaps your ‘company’ can keep her mouth shut too,’ he retorted.

Charm offensive over, he went back into the living room.

‘He’s mean!’ exclaimed Suzy.

Lizzie blushed with embarrassment and her upper lip trembled.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Suzy’s touched her hand in a gesture of wisdom and affection beyond her years.

‘You’re always welcome to come over to our house. My Daddy’s lovely.’

‘I know that too,’ Lizzie replied bitterly.

* * *

As the months went by, the unfavourable comparison between her own family and the Smith family widened. It was not really fair on her mother, who tried her best; but her mother was a weak woman, in thrall to her father. Lizzie observed that they were not equals like Suzy’s parents and certainly not a team, as they were.

Family mealtimes brought out the worst in both of them; simmering resentments surfacing in which she would find herself a pawn between them; an easy excuse for a row to be started and then be prolonged. Her mother’s self-pitying defence from her father’s sharp tongue only seemed to anger him the more and Lizzie had to reluctantly concede to herself that, despite her hatred for him, the gap was closing marginally and her mother was beginning to aggravate her. One teatime she could stand it no longer.

‘I’m going next door,’ she announced. ‘I’m going to have tea with the Smiths. I hate the both of you!’

‘You’re a freak.’ her father thundered. ‘Do you know that?’

Words were said – although she could not remember the detail clearly. Her father stood over her, mocking not only her but far, far worse, the family next door and it was too much to bear for her. She knew she had to stop him from saying any more at all costs. Before she knew it, she had grabbed the knife in front of her and plunged it into his stomach with some ferocity. A look of complete surprise passed over his face and her mother screamed and screamed in the background – the noise echoing round the room. The rest was a complete blank.

* * *

Never before had she seen so many people crammed into their living room. Some were in uniform and some weren’t and the only one she knew was her dishevelled mother, whose mascara had run down her face and made her look like a panda.

A nice man in a suit spoke to her gently. ‘Lizzie. What made you do this?’ he asked. At first, she couldn’t speak, but then she started to sob and the action acted as a catharsis.

‘I wanted to live next door with my best friend, Suzy Smith and her parents,’ she sniffed. ‘I didn’t want to live here anymore.’

He smiled in sympathy.

‘Why don’t you go into the other room with this lady,’ he suggested, indicating a nearby policewoman. ‘I just want to have a word with your mother.’

She went obediently and he approached a distraught wreck of a woman leaning with her back against the kitchen sink – mugs and utensils stained in blood where the victim had staggered before collapsing in a heap.

‘I must wash up,’ she said illogically.

He repeated the conversation he had just had with her daughter.

She looked at him as if in a daze.

‘There is no Suzy Smith,’ she told him in a dull voice. ‘She doesn’t exist. Nor do her parents.’

‘Then who lives in the house next door?’ he asked.

‘No-one,’ she replied. ‘It’s empty. It’s been on the market for over a year. The Executors are asking far too much money for it and they won’t budge.’

‘So, Suzy Smith is what you’d call an imaginary friend,’ he clarified.

She laughed bitterly.

‘Lots of children have imaginary friends,’ she told him. ‘We were so awful she had to invent a whole family and visit them in her head to get away from us.’

* * *

Lizzie liked the policewoman. She liked her so much she had even showed her some of her drawings. The sound of her mother’s voice, flat and monotonous, floated in from the next room. What a non-entity she was, really. Not like the warm and comforting Mrs. Smith next door. Never mind: she would bide her time. If something happened to her, she would be able to move in with the Smiths. She smiled contentedly.