I live in a quiet street lined with Liquid Amber trees that signal the changing of the seasons by cloaking themselves in red and gold. There is a primary school in my street and each morning, children stream past my house, chattering to whoever is walking with them or they run ahead, young enough to still consider school a novelty. ‘Watch out for cars,’ a mother or father will call.
Once they’re safely inside school, the street clears and the cockatoos call to each other, their cries only disturbed by the sound of lawnmowers and the occasional passing car. It’s a peaceful street.
Five houses away from my own home, there is a small neat house. It never really drew my attention although I did wonder why sheets covered the windows instead of curtains. The cars parked in the driveway were old, a bit battered but nothing that would make me suspicious. I assumed that the people inside were renting the home and that’s why they hadn’t splurged on curtains. The right garbage bins were taken to the curb on the right days and no noise every drifted up to my house late at night. The garden at the front of the house is neat and tidy, the grass cut short. I like the stone pathway leading to the front door.
I never heard anything about the house from any of the other neighbours. I never knew the occupants of the house but that’s not unusual. I know most of the neighbours to nod ‘hello’ to but chat to only a few-usually those with dogs.
The house was never even on my radar until a few months ago. On a Thursday night I left my quiet street to pick my son up from his taekwondo class and retuned to see a police car in our street. It was angled out into the road, as though there had not been enough time to park properly; it’s blue and red lights whirring. I slowed my car and my son and I watched as a constable got out of the car, donned a yellow vest and hurried into the house.
We had never seen something like that happen, except on television or in movies. The police don’t come to my street.
We were intrigued. The next morning, I took the dog for a walk at around 7am and parked outside the house was a police van, it’s door open and inside, a constable playing on his phone. He nodded and smiled at me.
Half an hour later when I went to drop my son off at school, the van was still there. It stayed there all day. I desperately wanted to know what was happening but didn’t feel I could ask. Everyone in the street must have felt the same way but we all remained in our houses, keeping our questions to ourselves.
That afternoon, after school, my son walked the dog past the police van and found the courage to ask what we all wanted to know. ‘They were growing weed,’ he was told. In a small house on a quiet street where children go to school-marijuana was being grown. It’s still illegal in Australia.
No one could believe it. The police van remained outside for two days and then the house was shut up, the cars eventually towed from the driveway and left on the road. I pass the house every day and always wish I had the courage to creep up to the windows and peer through the gaps in the now drooping sheets that cover the windows. No one in the neighbourhood suspected a thing.
The idea that in my own street, something like that was taking place fascinated me. And it made me wonder what else was going on inside the houses in my quiet street where the most exciting thing that usually happens is my dog running away. Sometimes a yelling parent is heard, sometimes a door is slammed with force but there has never been a reason for me to knock on a neighbour’s door, to ask, ‘is everything okay here?’
The Family Across The Street is a novel that takes place on a quiet street in a lovely neighbourhood. The lawns are all manicured and the back gardens large. Most of the houses have pools, some even have a tennis courts but inside one of the homes on this lovely street, a woman is terrified for her children’s lives.
The novel begins with a delivery man named Logan attempting to drop off a computer for Katherine West. The computer needs to be signed for or it cannot be delivered. But Katherine won’t open the door. She answers the door but insists she cannot open it. ‘I can’t open the door,’ she repeats. ‘Please just leave the box...Please understand.’
Any other delivery driver would leave the house and get on with his or her day. They would not think about Katherine West again. But Logan is a man with a past, someone who’s had to rely on his instincts to stay alive and he hears something in the woman ‘s voice. And he knows she’s in danger.
The Family Across The Street takes place over one single day. One single life changing day.
On my street, the weed house as we now call it, remains empty, the sheets sagging at the windows, the garbage bins lined up by the garage door. The lawn out front is still mowed and the garden still looks fine but now we know that behind those closed doors, something very different was happening.
The Family Across The Street is a book that explores the truth behind nice front doors and neat gardens. And it’s a very frightening truth indeed.
The Family Across The Street by Nicole Trope (Published by Bookouture) Out Now
In a normal family, in a normal house, on a normal street, everything is about to go horribly wrong… You’d never know what secrets the house on Hogarth Street holds – what’s happening, right this second, behind closed doors. An emerald-green front lawn. Perfectly trimmed hedging. An ivy-covered front gate and the scent of honeysuckle in the air. In the yard, two scooters lie on the grass. One blue, one pink, belonging to five-year-old twins. But if you look closely, you’ll see the windows closed on the hottest day of the year. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the sound of a mother reassuring her precious children, the son and daughter she’d do anything for, as she holds their little hands. It’s OK, Mama’s here. If you manage to get past the locked doors, you’d find her blaming herself. For the mistakes she has made. The choices that have to led to this moment. Her regrets about trusting the wrong people. Inside the beautiful house on a quiet street is a mother making a desperate decision. Because somebody is threatening the life she has built and the children she worships. It’s down to her to protect her family. How far she is willing to go?
You can find her on Twitter @nicoletrope and you can also find her on Facebook.
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