Outline New Neighbours
New Neighbours is a breathtakingly exciting and provocative thriller about sex and love, about the desire for freedom and the overpowering fear of it.

Eve, a kindergarten teacher, and Peter, chief sports editor at a regional newspaper, are in low spirits when they move into their newly completed villa in the Sun Polder. Both are mourning the loss of their daughter Lieve, stillborn after an eight-month pregnancy. Peter feels he has failed because he is unable to give Eve, the love of his life, a child. Eve is desperately trying to come to terms with the situation.

Together they try to give new meaning to their life amidst the model families that have come to live in the Sun Polder. At a neighbours’ garden party they meet up with an unconventional couple: Steef, former UN soldier and motorcycle cop, and Rebecca, a sensual home hairdresser, and their son Sem. Both couples look for happiness in their own way in a society that offers them every possible opportunity. Together the four break boundaries until they reach the point of no return. Slowly but surely their dream turns into nightmare...

Press
‘The strenght of Saskia Noort lies in the creation of her main characters. Lifelike dialogue and recognizable people and situations make the story unfold like a sharply focused film. In New Neighbours Noort again plays this trump card very skilfully.’
De Telegraaf

Sample translation
He had been working at The Kempervennen Park for more than two years and it wasn’t unusual for guests to leave their sandwiches hanging on the front door. Mostly it meant that they had checked out earlier than scheduled and that reception had forgotten to notify him. So when he saw the bag of sandwiches still dangling from the doorknob of vip cottage Squirrel 1553, he immediately started grumbling silently at the girls behind the counter, who obviously preferred gossipping and polishing their nails to running the organisation. He got out of his green Kempervennen van, slammed the door shut with a scowl and walked over to the grey, concrete bungalow to remove the sandwiches and yesterday’s newspaper. He grabbed the white plastic bag from the doorknob, detached the radio telephone from his belt and peeked in through a side window. He saw coats hanging on the hooks. It looked like there were still visitors. He checked his watch. Seven o’clock. He peeked at the newspaper in the bag. It was indeed yesterday’s. He stepped aside and pressed his nose to the window again. Coats. Firewood. A pair of women’s shoes beneath the coat hooks. He shrugged, decided not to get involved and walked back to the van where he dropped the old bag on the passenger seat and took out a fresh one. He hurried, almost stumbling over his own feet, holding the bag in front of him as if it was filled with vomit. He wanted to get out of there quickly.
Then he saw the child. A boy or girl, it was hard to tell, which stared indifferently at him, chewing persistently on a big yellow dummy. Its face was covered with dark stains, sticky blond curls were plastered to the dirty cheeks and the pale green pyjamas were drenched and soiled. A nappy hung halfway down the tiny legs. With its grubby little hands the child clasped a threadbare, worn-out teddy with long ears.
This wasn’t good. This was really fucking not good. He considered turning around, jumping into his van and banning the image from his mind. He had done his job. The sandwiches hung in their place. He would throw the old bag into the garbage can. He had seen nothing, heard nothing. But the scrawny kid reached out for the doorknob. Its little fingers didn’t reach it. The child’s face contorted, it was about to cry. It pointed with its arm in the direction of the room, then its eyes turned away and it collapsed onto the linoleum floor with a soft thud.
He grabbed the knob. The door was unlocked.
The only corpse he had ever seen was his grandmother’s. She’d lain in a light, wooden coffin. Her hair and face had been neatly done up and she wore a tidy, green suit and the pearls she had once got from Grandfather. Her small, shrunken head had shocked him the most. She had always been a large woman, sweet and chubby, with a friendly, understanding smile. But in the coffin lay an austere witch whose eyes and mouth were disapprovingly tight. His parents, aunts and uncles, grandmothers, neighbours, brothers and sisters, all said she lay there so peacefully, as if she was asleep. They lied. They were just saying things. Grandmother lay there all but peacefully. Bitter, disappointed, deprived, mocking, yes, but not peaceful. He had been angry about it and resolved never to attend another vigil. So even though he had only a  little experience with death, he immediately felt that there was someone dead in vip cottage Squirrel 1553. He could smell it.
‘Do I need this? Do I need this? Do I need this?’ He mumbled the words like a mantra, not knowing what to do. He hunkered down next to the child to listen if its heart was still beating and heard the child breathing superficially. He slapped its dry cheeks gently but the child did not react. A pungent, chemical smell came from its mouth. He pulled the radiophone from his belt, turned it on and called the receptionist for police assistance, an ambulance, quickly, a matter of life and death, and he sat next to the kid. Stroked its hands. Felt its forehead, which was cold, drew it close and folded his arms around it. He sat there, with the child in his lap, near the open front door, desperately sucking the cold air from outside into his nostrils to prevent himself from throwing up. ‘Come on, come on...’ he stammered more to himself than to the child, as he rocked it awkwardly back and forth. He turned his head away from its quiet face, looked through an open door into the drawing room. Blood, everywhere.
When the first police cars pulled up he began to cry. He was scared that the child lay dead in his lap, or in coma and that it was his fault. At secondary school he had taken the compulsory first-aid course, he could remember resuscitation vaguely, but for a child? This filthy child? He hadn’t had the nerve to bring his own lips to that crusted mouth ringed with dried snot.
The ambulance arrived just seconds after the police wagon had stopped in front of the bungalow. Two policemen and two paramedics ran towards him. One threw an arm around him and called him sir. The other quickly examined the child. Took its pulse, felt its blue-veined tummy, lifted its eyelids and shone a small torch in its eyes. He whispered comfortingly that it was still alive, that it was probably malnourished and dehydrated. The kid was lifted out of his arms and put on a stretcher. Someone pulled him to his feet and led him outside. He heard screams of panic from inside.
‘Assistance! This one is still alive!’
The medic let go of him, apologizing, and ran inside. To this day he doesn’t know why he walked after him. What made him feel he had to see it? Probably because death attracts like a magnet. He walked through the hall like a zombie towards the open door, shoes sticking to the blood-soaked carpet. The screaming.
‘Get him out of here!’
No one did.
‘There are four! Here are three!’
The first body he saw was a man’s. He was cowering against the kitchenette behind the small home bar. By the looks of the bloody streaks on the beige floor tiles, the man had dragged himself there with his last energy. The medic bent down next to him, muttering into his radiophone.
On the red sofa in the living room lay the entwined bodies of two women. One of them had sought refuge in the lap of the other, who had protected her as a swan protects her cygnet. The broken wineglasses, the wine bottle, the untouched cold dinner and the half-smoked cigarettes on the light coloured laminate floor made clear that the start of the evening had been pleasant. Until someone had pulled over the pine coffee table, perhaps the man with the cropped, blond hair who lay like a rag doll against the wall next to the fireplace, bathed in a pool of coagulated blood. The weapon to his right was immediately identified by the police officers: a Walther P5 9x9 mm. A duty weapon.
He kept himself standing upright against the doorpost. Shuffled backwards, leaned against the wall. His head grew light. He clenched his fists to his stomach. He wanted to run but his knees were too weak. Someone started cursing.
‘What’s that man still doing here, go dammit!
He was taken by the hand.
Would you come with me, Sir?’
A soft voice, friendly. He looked into the gentle, green eyes of a policewoman. She put an arm around his waist.
Inquisitive guests came out of the neighbouring cottages. Noise everywhere. He stumbled and held his head with both his hands. The policewoman put him in the back seat of the car and told him to bend over and put his head between his legs. She gave him a brown, plasticized bag. Stroked his back. His stomach pulsated and he threw up till the tears streamed down his cheeks. The dead faces would never leave him.