57 pages • 1-hour read
The Family Next Door
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Chapters 18-35Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, pregnancy loss, child death, suicidal ideation, and sexual content.
Chapter 18 Summary: “ANGE”
At home that evening, Ange scrolls social media, irritated by the types of things other people post about. She feels agitated and recognizes her suspicions about Erin as the reason. Ange thinks about how she wanted daughters but has two sons, and how dishonesty surrounded Ollie’s conception. Her assistant sends a message about Isabelle’s employment verification: The Abigail Ferris Foundation reported that Isabelle doesn’t work there.
Ange decides to clean, climbs to dust a high shelf, and knocks a new iPhone to the floor. She ignores Lucas’s request to help him with Ollie while she turns on the mysterious phone.
Chapter 19 Summary: “FRAN”
Fran and Nigel enjoy an intimate evening after a day of “perfect family bliss” (115). She feels hope for their marriage but remains haunted by her secret, fearing Nigel will love Ava less if he learns the truth.
Nigel brings Fran a sandwich and proposes they hire Isabelle to babysit for a date night. Still torn between confessing and keeping her secret, Fran merely agrees.
Chapter 20 Summary: “ESSIE”
Essie struggles with a fussy Polly while Barbara visits. Isabelle arrives with wine just as Essie burns dinner and her hand. Isabelle treats the burn and suggests a night out. Essie asks Isabelle to go out with her, and Barbara reluctantly agrees to babysit.
At a restaurant, they share wine and talk until Isabelle says she wants children soon. Essie perceives sexual tension between her and Isabelle. When Essie returns home, Barbara voices concern about her and urges Essie to check in with her psychologist. Later, while intimate with Ben, Essie thinks only about Isabelle.
Chapter 21 Summary: “ANGE”
Several days later, Ange admires the newly installed Neighborhood Watch signs and cameras; she wishes she could use the cameras to confirm her suspicions about Lucas and Erin. Lucas had admitted the phone Ange found was his, but he made an excuse for it being “hidden” on the high shelf. However, Ange saw multiple calls to an unknown number, and a woman answered when she dialed it.
Ange recalls Lucas’s affair with a woman named Josie when Will was a toddler. Ange had said she was pregnant to stop Lucas from leaving her and then raced to conceive. That night, Ange posts a photo of a perfect family dinner on Instagram.
The unnamed narrator is in the hospital, wondering why she hasn’t been allowed to see her new baby. The doctor begins to give her difficult news.
Chapter 22 Summary: “FRAN”
Six weeks after Ava’s birth, Fran is in a doctor’s office with the baby. Her obstetrician, Dr. Price, asks about her mood and any suicidal thoughts. Fran denies suicidal thoughts and wishes her problems were as treatable as postpartum depression.
Desperate, she asks Dr. Price if she can get a paternity test for Ava without Nigel’s knowledge. Dr. Price explains the options while Ava squirms in Fran’s lap.
Chapter 23 Summary: “FRAN”
Fran and a distracted Ange go to Essie’s house. Essie suggests inviting Isabelle next time. When Polly starts to cry, Barbara appears and takes the baby, and Essie is visibly relieved.
Watching that support, Fran feels a sharp jealousy and starts to cry. She admits to Essie and Ange that she had an affair and that Ava’s paternity is uncertain. Ange erupts, saying infidelity destroys families, and storms out.
Chapter 24 Summary: “ANGE”
As Ange strides out of Essie’s house, she spots Isabelle outside and confronts her about the failed employment verification. Isabelle admits she has no current job.
As they speak, Isabelle points out Lucas’s car. Ange watches him turn right out of the cul-de-sac. The gym is to the left. Her suspicion grows.
Chapter 25 Summary: “BARBARA”
Barbara calls Ben to talk about Essie. She lists Essie’s exhaustion, irritability, and obsession with Isabelle. Barbara reminds him that Essie loses herself in intense friendships and says she’s worried.
Ben brushes it off, but then he remembers his own concerns and agrees to talk with Essie. He reassures Barbara that they will look out for Essie together.
Chapter 26 Summary: “ANGE”
On Sunday afternoon, Ange waits in her car outside Lucas’s photography studio and sees Erin arrive with her young daughter, Charlie. In a flashback, Ange remembers lying about being pregnant to keep Lucas, using ovulation kits to conceive Ollie quickly, and scheduling an early C-section while Lucas was away.
Back in the present, Erin and Charlie leave with Lucas. Ange watches Lucas and interprets his expression as one of fatherly pride. Charlie makes a gesture identical to one of Will’s, leading Ange to suspect that Charlie is Lucas’s daughter.
Chapter 27 Summary: “FRAN”
At midday, Fran runs laps in a park near Lucas’s studio with Ava in the pram, her guilty conscience gnawing at her. She spots Erin and Charlie leaving with Lucas and then sees Ange watching from a parked car. Fran now understands Ange’s reaction to her confession of infidelity.
The unnamed narrator, still in the hospital, doesn’t seem to register the doctor’s message that her baby was stillborn. She tries to climb out of bed to find the child, falls, and screams for her baby until she’s sedated.
Chapter 28 Summary: “ESSIE”
On Thursday afternoon, Essie struggles with Mia and Polly until Isabelle arrives and calms both children. Isabelle persuades Essie to nap, saying she’ll watch the girls. Ben wakes Essie, frantic, because the girls and Isabelle are gone. He’s about to call the police when Isabelle and the children return, having been playing outside.
Later, Ben confronts Essie about her willingness to trust Isabelle, who is practically a stranger. He justifies his concern by reminding Essie of the time she abandoned Mia. Isabelle calls during the argument. Essie answers and turns away from Ben.
Chapter 29 Summary: “ISABELLE”
Isabelle reflects on what brought her to Melbourne and her real connection to the Abigail Ferris Foundation. A baby named Sophie had been taken. The foundation had attempted to help locate Sophie, providing Isabelle with a lead on a woman who’d given birth to a stillborn baby the day Sophie was abducted and disappeared.
After the call, Isabelle takes reddish-brown hairs from Mia’s hair elastic, loads a DNA test kit, and seals the envelope. She mails the samples and believes that in seven days she’ll know the truth.
Chapter 30 Summary: “ANGE”
That evening, Ange cooks while absorbing the fact that Lucas has another family. Lucas comes home acting normally. When she asks about his day, he says he photographed a three-year-old girl. Ange keeps her expression neutral.
Lucas notices her stress and offers to run her a bath. She avoids a confrontation, nods, and leaves the room.
Chapter 31 Summary: “FRAN”
After a run, Fran resolves to tell Nigel everything. She finds him and Rosie building with LEGOs, and Rosie hands her a LEGO house. Nigel, warm and hopeful, suggests a date night.
His kindness undoes her. Fran admits that she had an affair last year and that Ava might not be his. Rosie wanders back in at that moment. Fran and Nigel stare at each other, stunned and silent.
Chapter 32 Summary: “ESSIE”
At a salon appointment Barbara arranged, Essie reflects on her suspicion that Barbara and Ben no longer trust her alone with the children. She admits to herself that she feels alive only with Isabelle, who knows the intimate details of her past. She shows photos to the hairdresser.
As the color is applied, Essie closes her eyes and lets the salon atmosphere distract her.
Chapter 33 Summary: “ANGE”
That evening, Ange takes a call from her mother-in-law, Leonie. After pleasantries, Leonie offers barbed advice, telling Ange not to overthink her marriage and insisting that life becomes perfect if you say it is.
Ange wonders if Lucas told his mother anything. She hangs up and recognizes that Leonie’s advice is to maintain a lie.
Chapter 34 Summary: “BARBARA”
In the afternoon, Barbara watches Essie walk up the path, her hair cut and dyed to match Isabelle’s. Mia runs out, delighted, and says her mother looks like Isabelle. When Mia tries to go home with Essie, Barbara holds her back.
Essie slaps Barbara’s hand away and takes Mia inside. Alone, Barbara shivers, fearing that Essie’s past mental health issues are returning.
Chapter 35 Summary: “ISABELLE”
At dusk, Essie calls Isabelle, sounding erratic, and begs her to come over. Isabelle agrees, but a knock interrupts her. Jules, her friend from Sydney, stands at the door.
He walks in, and they fall into bed. Isabelle protests weakly that she should go to Essie, but Jules pulls her close.
Chapters 18-35 Analysis
The narrative architecture of these chapters relies on a multi-perspectival structure to generate suspense and dramatic irony, reinforcing the theme of The Corrosive Power of Secrets in Suburban Life. By shifting between the viewpoints of Ange, Fran, Essie, Barbara, and Isabelle, the novel provides the reader with a composite understanding of events that no single character possesses. This technique highlights the isolation of the women, who live side-by-side but remain locked within their private traumas. For instance, the reader witnesses Ange’s discovery of Lucas’s secret phone and second family, which immediately contextualizes the anger she directs at Fran for her confession of infidelity. Fran, however, only understands Ange’s reaction later, when she observes Ange watching Lucas’s family from afar. This structural choice transforms Pleasant Court into a space of fractured knowledge, where the truth exists only in the aggregate view available to the reader. The Neighborhood Watch symbol operates as a further layer of this irony; while the residents install cameras to monitor external threats, the narrative’s internal cross-cutting reveals that the most significant dangers are already inside their homes.
This fragmentation of knowledge is intrinsically linked to deceptive appearances, which permeate the characters’ attempts to project an idealized suburban life, connecting to the theme of The Corrosive Power of Secrets in Suburban Life. Ange, in particular, embodies this conflict; her internal monologue reveals her view of social media as a competitive performance of happiness. Her carefully staged Instagram post of a family dinner, taken just moments after confronting the evidence of Lucas’s affair, is a deliberate act of constructing a false reality, juxtaposing appearances directly with reality. This fabrication is a continuation of the lie that founded her family: the feigned pregnancy that prevented Lucas from leaving her during a past affair. Similarly, Fran desperately clings to moments of domestic bliss with Nigel, attempting to use the performance of a happy marriage to erase the reality of her secret. The characters’ homes function as stages for these performances, where polished surfaces mask deep psychological turmoil.
Through the parallel struggles of its female characters, the novel dismantles the myth of a singular, idealized motherhood, presenting instead a complex spectrum of maternal experience that highlights The Cost of Maintaining Idealized Motherhood. Essie represents the disintegration of the maternal self under the weight of postpartum illness and unresolved trauma. Her exhaustion manifests as a deadened state in which she feels alive only with Isabelle, revealing a detachment from her own children and identity. Fran, tormented by her infidelity, channels her psychological distress into running and physical exercise, a ritual of self-punishment for failing to uphold the wifely and maternal ideal. Her confession to Essie and Ange is a cry for connection from within her self-imposed isolation. Ange, the apparent arbiter of neighborhood standards, weaponizes the ideal of motherhood, yet her private history reveals a desperate pragmatism rooted in the fear of abandonment. Her reaction to Fran’s confession stems from the raw pain of seeing her own marital compromises mirrored and exposed. Barbara complicates this spectrum further; she is the epitome of the nurturing, ever-present maternal figure, yet her entire relationship with Essie is founded on a criminal act stemming from her own maternal trauma.
The use of fragmented, italicized flashbacks builds suspense while simultaneously exploring the nature of repressed trauma. These sections, told from the first-person perspective of an unnamed woman, are sensory, disjointed, and emotionally raw, effectively mimicking the intrusive and disorienting experience of traumatic memory recall. The passages detail a harrowing birth experience culminating in the devastating news that the baby was “stillborn.” This technique is more than a simple plot device; it provides a direct window into the psychological origins of the novel’s inciting incident. The stark, simplistic language used in these moments conveys a mind under the stress of grief and trauma, elevating Barbara’s actions from a plot twist to fundamental support for the novel’s exploration of motherhood.
Ultimately, the unraveling of secrets forces each woman to confront a crisis of identity, challenging the roles they have painstakingly constructed for themselves in a powerful exploration of Defining Family and Identity Beyond Biology. Essie’s crisis is precipitated by the complete loss of her own identity, symbolized by her haircut, which makes her unrecognizable even to her own daughter. Her journey forward will require her to reconcile the life she has known with the biological truth of her origins. For Ange, Lucas’s betrayal shatters the perfect family she manufactured. The philosophy inherited from her mother-in-law, who advises that life becomes perfect if you simply insist that it is, is exposed as an untenable and destructive lie. Ange must now forge an identity for herself outside of her role as Lucas’s wife. In contrast, Fran’s confession is an act of agency that, while destructive, opens the possibility for an authentic future. Her blunt statement that she had an affair and that Ava might not belong to Nigel is a deliberate dismantling of her family’s facade. In each case, the collapse of their curated lives becomes the necessary catalyst for redefining who they are.
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