Here we are, in the wrong place: Wyddial Lane. It’s a private road, as the sign unsubtly proclaims in letters larger than those spelling out its name, in a village called Hemingford Abbots. I switch off the engine, stretch my back to release the ache from two hours of driving, and wait for Ben to notice that there’s no football ground in sight.
He’s buried in his phone. I can’t help thinking of it like that – as if he’s stuck inside the machine in his hand, unable to get out. Quite happy about it, too. Zannah’s the same. Most teenagers are, as far as I can tell: they spend all day and half the night in lock-eyed communion with an addictive device. No amount of my children telling me it’s ‘the way life is these days, so stop being so old and just chill’ will ever persuade me to think it’s okay. It’s not. It’s frightening and depressing.
Sometimes it’s also useful, to a parent who doesn’t want to be scrutinised. It’s likely to be a while before Ben notices the intense quiet – almost total silence, apart from the occasional bird-chirp or gust of wind rustling the branches of the trees that line Wyddial Lane on both sides – and realises that there are no teenage boys in football strips traipsing past our car or anywhere nearby. He’s completely immersed: head down, lips moving as he types with his thumbs. I’ve probably got two minutes at least.
Plenty of time. You can take in a lot in a hundred and twenty seconds, and that’s all I came here to do: have a good look. Many times over the past twelve years, I’ve wondered about Flora’s new house. Technically it ceased to be ‘new’ at least a decade ago, though that’s still how I think of it. I checked last year to see if the ‘Street View not available in this location’ message still came up, and it did. Maybe that’s got something to do with it being a private road. I can’t think what else it would be. Until today, I assumed that Wyddial Lane was very remote, but it isn’t. Despite the peaceful rural vibe, it’s only two minutes from a main road.
I’ve no idea what kind of house I’d buy if, suddenly, money were no object, and I’ve always been curious to see what Flora and Lewis chose – certainly not curious enough to devote half a day to the four-hour round trip, especially when I might be spotted on my spying mission and I’d have no way to explain my presence, but interested enough to recognise a perfect opportunity when one presented itself. As soon as the list of impending football fixtures arrived and I saw ‘St Ives, Cambridgeshire’, I knew what I was going to do. It felt like a reward for all those Saturdays spent driving Ben around, all the hours I’ve stood shivering by the sides of muddy fields far from home while he played. Finally a perk had been handed to me and I resolved on the spot to take full advantage of it.
Today, if by any chance Flora or Lewis catches sight of me here, my excuse will be so close to the truth that it might as well be the truth: I’m driving my son to his Regional League match nearby and I took a wrong turn. Ben, sitting beside me in his red and white football gear, would be all the proof I’d need. Only the ‘wrong turn’ part of the story would be false.
For a better view, I’ve parked across the road from number 16, not directly outside it. To the left of the thick wooden gates, there’s a square sign, grey stone, attached to the high brick wall that protects all but the very top of the house from prying eyes like mine. The sign says, ‘Newnham House’.
I shake my head. Unbelievable, that they chose to call it that. And those gates, a foot higher at their uppermost point than the top of the wall … Most of the houses here have high walls surrounding them. Being on a private road doesn’t offer these people enough privacy, apparently.
Of course the home of The New Flora and Lewis Braid looks like this. I should have been able to predict it all: the ugly, sprawling modern mansion, the private road, the gates kidding themselves that they don’t appear superior and unfriendly because they’ve got curly flourishes at the top that