Editor’s Note: One of the founding writers behind the genre known as "chick lit," Jane Green now writes novels that reflect the lives of real women today, with all the trials and tribulations that come with real life: from in-laws, motherhood, midlife crises and loss, all of which are told with Green’s trademark warmth, wit and wisdom. Winner of a Cosmopolitan Fun Fearless Fiction award, her tenth novel, The Beach House, is currently on the New York Times bestseller list. A native Londoner, Green now lives in Connecticut with her partner and four children.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about good neighbors, and why neighborliness seems to be a disappearing kindness.

I grew up in England. We have a bit of a warped sense of America in England, mostly thanks to movies and television shows like "Friends." I grew up believing all Americans are super-friendly, have great teeth and end every sentence with "Have a nice day."

I moved to a smallish town in Connecticut, seven years ago, fully expecting a cavalcade of neighbors turning up on my front doorstep bearing apple and cherry pies, with big white smiles, naturally. Erm. Quite. There was nothing.

Still, our neighbors when we first moved to the States, to a neighborhood on the other side of town, were wonderful. It took a few weeks for us to meet them all, but we all became friends, our children became friends and summers were spent in and out of one another’s houses for impromptu barbecues.

We have lived in our current house for two years, and we still don’t know most of our neighbors. I understand that everyone leads busy lives today, and with the houses we now build, we’re lucky if we see anyone at all. Cars pull out of garages, zoom off into the distance, then reappear later in the day, disappearing into the garage again. No one seems to be outside other than to collect the mail, and even that can be done from the safety of the car (unless you’re me, in which case it involves scraping off the side of your wing mirror every time you’re lazy enough to try).

We build houses today that aren’t so much houses as fortresses, castles, complete with high stone walls, wooden fences, arborvitae squeezed tightly together to provide screening just in case we are made aware that there are people living next door. Heaven forbid moats and drawbridges should ever come back in fashion …

But here’s what bothers me. A few weeks ago we had an incident at our house. We had a babysitter, a former au pair, in her early 20s, who we adored, but the problem with having a young babysitter is it’s a bit like having another child, and they often don’t make choices that are good for them, wise or that employ any common sense.

She met a man in a bar a few weeks ago, had a few dates with him and realized there was something amiss, and ended it. Not before giving him our home address.

He didn’t go away. He turned up at our house, with a deadly weapon, while I was alone with the children.

To say I was shaken is to put it mildly.

Since that day, I have heard from many friends that this is the topic du jour. I have heard from friends, who know my neighbors, that my neighbors know what happened, and they know it happened to us. They know because we live on a tiny private road, and everyone was talking about it.