The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets Read online

  ‘But…So they wrote the graffiti?’

  ‘Well…look, I didn’t want to interrogate the guy! He sounded quite upset when he said about the bullying.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ I should have known, I thought, from the other things that I’d read on the wall, about the Tories and military intelligence. Of course. The Dysons were ardent lefties; we’d always known that about them. They had sometimes had posters up in their window announcing an imminent revolution. They thought that the Labour Party was too right wing. I remembered Greg telling me this at the time of the last general election. He had made a point of voting, instead, for a solitary eccentric in an unravelling jumper whose party had an implausibly long name, ‘on principle’, he said. ‘What principle’s that, then?’ John had sneered. ‘The principle of treating real life as if it’s just another jolly evening at the public school debating society? The principle of wasting your vote, instead of actually using it to stop the Tories getting in? Stupid tosser!’

  ‘The Dysons don’t know the difference between socialism and imbecility, that’s their problem,’ I joined in. ‘Like, have you noticed, they will not send a Christmas card? I mean a proper one, with a Santa or a snowman on or anything. Nothing Christmasy. Instead they send some sort of handwoven picture of some South American peasants…and it’s the same with birthdays!’

  ‘That’s their stand against the crass commercialism of the card industry!’ John laughed. ‘It’s all part of the struggle. It’s sure to bring about global equality!’

  As John yelled at me, I remembered this conversation from several years back and felt sad. We used to turn on our acquaintances together. Now John was turning on me. ‘You fucking dolt!’ he grumbled. ‘We’ll have to move! I can’t face them ever again. We’ll have to move today. Why couldn’t you just keep your mouth shut for once? I can’t believe you accused Kay like that. I can’t believe it!’

  I was glad I’d never told him about the nursery bear. I didn’t have the energy to defend myself, or to point out that, until he’d spoken to Greg Dyson, John had agreed with me. I was thinking, instead, about Kay’s reluctance to tell me how Brendan – her Brendan – had died, even before I said anything about the graffiti. I was thinking that I had never seen a smile on Anya’s face, or Celia’s. ‘I’d love to move today,’ I told John. ‘But we can’t, can we?’

  ‘No, we bloody well can’t! So you’d better go round and grovel and get her to forgive you!’

  ‘Why? You don’t even like them!’

  ‘Because, if you don’t, Mark’ll come round and stick an axe in my skull! He’s exactly the sort of guy who would! Just think of his insistent heartiness, his donkey’s bollocks attitude.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, it’s all a bit…feverish, isn’t it? Imagine him putting the same amount of zeal into a grievance…’

  ‘All right, all right!’ I shivered. ‘I’ll go and apologise.’

  ‘Good. And then try not to do any other stupid things before I get home.’

  I put the phone down and cried a bit. John’s view of me, our relationship, had fallen under the shadow cast by next door and I didn’t know what to do about it.

  I felt numb as I left the house again and walked up the Devines’ drive. Which was lucky, because underneath the numbness lay, I suspected, fury and resentment. I knew that I was basically right, yet thanks to the Devines I had been made to feel wrong three times. Right about what, though? What exactly was my contention about them? I still needed to work that out.

  This time Kay walked slowly down the hall to open the door. Through the frosted glass panel, I tried to see her hands, to check she wasn’t carrying any sort of weapon, but all I could see were two pink blobs. ‘I’m here to apologise,’ I told her. Mercifully, she was empty-handed. ‘I shouldn’t have…’

  ‘I bet you went and phoned the people who used to live here, didn’t you?’ she demanded.

  ‘I…Yes.’ There seemed no point in denying it. You can’t lie and apologise at the same time.

  Kay’s eyes seemed to bulge a little in surprise, but she recovered quickly. ‘So you didn’t trust me. You had to check out my story.’

  I shrugged. ‘Look, what can I say apart from I’m sorry? Brendan is an unusual name. It seemed too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘Well, coincidences happen, don’t they?’ Her voice was bitter, the words clipped.

  ‘Kay, I really am truly sorry.’ Please don’t get your husband to put an axe in my husband’s skull.

  ‘Fine. Well, let’s not discuss it any more. But…Mark thinks it’s better if we don’t see you.’ She looked vaguely guilty and afraid as she said this, as if she expected me to challenge her.

  ‘That’s understandable,’ I said. Relief seeped into my bones. Maybe we wouldn’t have to move after all. Plenty of people had nothing to do with their neighbours. We could be like them. The shadow might lift, disperse. And if nothing else happened, if an absence of noteworthy events became the norm… Kay and I exchanged sombre half-smiles full of wisdom and suffering. She closed the door. I imagined she felt shielded by the barrier between us, as I did.

  I was about to turn and make my way home when I registered something green on the edge of my vision. I looked to my left and noticed that the curtains of the Devines’ best lounge were not quite pulled shut; there was a multicoloured sliver of space bisecting the beige velvet.

  My feet propelled me in the direction of this tantalising gap. I recalled what I had said to John about a room full of sex toys, and wondered if I was about to see something disturbing: chains, vibrators. Not that a vibrator was particularly disturbing, I corrected myself, embarrassed by my own prudishness.

  I peered in, cupping my hands over my eyes and against the glass to get a better look. The first thing I saw was the Georgia O’Keeffe print on the wall, Black Iris. In a black frame. I began to shake as my eyes completed their inventory of the room: green sofa against the wall under the O’Keeffe, opposite a silver flat-screened television. A red chair and a blue chair. Behind these, a whole wall of shelves. A white rug on the beige carpet. A Kasimir Malevich print, Red House, directly above a green-glass-topped Ikea coffee table. Two cacti in clay pots in the corner. Everything was there. Everything.

  I was looking at a replica of my own living room.

  I gasped and staggered back a few paces. I was too shocked to move effectively in any particular direction and, although I was desperate to be back inside my own house with the front door locked, my legs wouldn’t do the necessary work. I closed my eyes and leaned against Kay’s wall, breathing and counting as I had in labour. It had helped then.

  I heard a noise and jumped. It had come from the window. I turned, but saw only beige fabric against the glass. Kay must have yanked the curtains properly closed. The idea that she might have seen me, might have worked out what I had seen, got me moving, finally, and I sprinted back home.

  When John returned from work that afternoon, I tried to open my mouth to tell him what I had seen, but the words wouldn’t come out. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Try to be more normal.’ He would have said I’d imagined it, just as I had imagined that the Devines were dead in their car. ‘Perhaps their lounge is a bit like ours and you got carried away. As usual!’ That’s what he would have said.

  But I knew I had seen only what was there. I could prove it. Not factually, which would be the only sort of proof John was interested in. I could prove it psychologically. The green sofa, the red chair and the blue chair had not been identical to ours. Nor had the cacti. The wall of shelves hadn’t been stuffed full of books, videos, DVDs and photograph albums, as ours were. They had been empty, totally bare. The carpet was a lighter shade of beige, the rug more cream than white.

  Oh, yes, there had been differences. There would have to be, I reasoned. Mark and Kay would not have been able to replicate our lounge with total accuracy, not without asking us where we’d got certain items. And of course that would have giv
en the game away. The things that were easy to come by were exact replicas: the prints (mass-produced, available from any decent art shop catalogue), the television (in every branch of Comet in the country), the stupid Ikea coffee table that had always wobbled because John had assembled it in an impatient mood and thrown half of its components away, claiming they were ‘spares’.

  That’s how I knew I was right. If I had been hallucinating, why wouldn’t I have seen our lounge as it is, in every detail? Why would I have seen this subtly altered version?

  I tried again to tell John that evening, but as I began to speak he started to check the washing-up I had just done. He found some salmon still stuck to a pan. Then he rearranged all the kitchen cupboards, replacing my haphazard system with a superior one of his own devising. He went to bed at ten, without asking me if I was coming too.

  After he was asleep, I drank three glasses of wine and wondered if I should risk talking to anyone else, any of my friends, about what had happened. Would I alienate them as I had alienated John? I could imagine people laughing about the non-suicide and even the nursery bear, but not the Brendan business. I knew I would get nothing but sharp intakes of breath if I confessed fully, and a partial confession would be pointless. And nobody would believe me about the Devines’ best lounge.

  And even if it’s true, so what? They’ve done up their lounge like yours – what’s so terrifying about that? That question was one I couldn’t answer – not because I didn’t know, but because the knowledge was so instinctive, so deep-rooted, that it would be impossible to explain. Only I will ever know how I felt when I saw that room. I will always know, but I will never be able to paraphrase it, summarise it away.

  That night I lay awake in the spare room and began to doubt the very things I had been so positive about earlier. The sofa and chairs had been different. And most people have some shelves in their living room, and a television, and plants. If it hadn’t been for the two prints… and perhaps I had imagined those.

  In the morning, I lay in bed in the hope that John would come and find me, but he didn’t. I heard him whistling in the bath, signalling his intention to punish me for a while longer. ‘Okay, then,’ I imagined myself saying to him, next time he deigned to speak to me. ‘You tell me: why didn’t the Devines paint over that graffiti, that coincidental graffiti? How could they live with it in their kitchen, even for a second? And why don’t they talk about Brendan more? Most people who lose a child mention them occasionally, as a way of keeping their memory alive.’ He would see my point instantly and I would be the one to receive an apology for a change.

  Or I could smash the Devines’ front window and show him the best lounge. Then he’d see that I wasn’t crazy. But the more I considered the options, the more certain I was that I didn’t want to say or do anything about the Devines any more. All I wanted was to move house. This was more than an idle wish; I knew that I would have to do it, however upset the children might be at the prospect.

  Eventually I got out of bed and began to fold clean, dry clothes into piles: me, John, Matt, Em. Through the open curtains, I saw Celia Devine playing in the garden. She sat cross-legged on the grass. She kept trying to bend the nursery bear in the middle so that it would sit up. It was missing its yellow Moorlands T-shirt, I noticed. Today it was wearing some sort of sleepsuit – blue with little white sheep on it. Anya appeared behind Celia, holding a large, maroon school bag, and leaned against the back wall of the house for a few minutes, watching her sister, not saying anything.

  I closed my eyes, pinched the back of my hand hard and looked again. Yes, the scene was exactly as it had been. Still, who could say how long a delusion might last? A ghostly tremor passed through me as I wondered if I had misjudged my own underlying essence all these years. Had I looked at myself in the mirror every morning and seen a rational, sane woman who did not exist?

  I was about to retreat when Anya suddenly ran on to the lawn and snatched the bear out of Celia’s hands. Celia called out ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ Anya laid the bear down flat on the grass. I saw its single eye, the black scar on its arm: two things I hadn’t imagined. Anya took her school bag and pressed it down on the bear’s face, holding it there. I could see the energy vibrating through her body as she pushed and pushed the bag, as if trying to drive it, and the bear underneath it, into the ground.

  ‘Mummy!’ Celia wailed. A few seconds later, Kay came outside. She stopped when she saw what Anya was doing. I knew what was going to happen. I actually saw it in my mind, plain as day. This time I knew I was hallucinating; I was seeing the very near future, the events that would take place only a few seconds from now, maybe sooner, less than a second. And it unfolded precisely as I had foreseen. Kay didn’t hurry over to rescue the bear from Anya, as Celia had clearly expected and hoped that she would. Instead, her first reaction was to turn and stare at my house. I saw her eyes, nervous and sharp behind the lenses of her glasses, dart from window to window until, finally, they landed upon the small one at the top, and met mine.

  The Tub

  I AM STANDING IN A ROOM THAT HAS A LOW CEILING AND SMELLS faintly of stale cigarette smoke and the cage of a rabbit or some other small animal – a guinea pig or a hamster, perhaps, though no such creature is visible in the surrounding greyness. I am standing in the lounge of Edwin Toseland’s parents. They don’t know I’m here. They are fast asleep in their bed, or so I’m told. When I first walked into the lounge, I trod on something soft that turned out to be a pair of tartan slippers, each one with a thin, crumpled sock inside. It is half past midnight. I am about to spend the night with Edwin Toseland, a man whom I have heard described, diplomatically, as ‘not universally liked’.

  Sleeping with Edwin will no doubt turn out to be a mistake. Not because he is Edwin (although that feature of the situation is bound not to be without its drawbacks) so much as because he is – to me, at any rate – a symbol. He is almost more a symbol than a person. One should never copulate with one’s symbols. It invariably disrupts their imagery; often they come to signify something far less welcome.

  So, a mistake, then. Still, if I know that in advance, perhaps I am armed. And it isn’t as if I’ve never made a mistake before. Mistakes are survivable. Mostly. And it might be comforting to do the wrong thing deliberately, rather than to try to do the right thing, only to have your attempts end in catastrophic failure. In any case, there’s no point ruminating on the matter, because the tiny, shadowy, calculating part of me that makes all the decisions without ever consulting my brain is dead set on the plan. Tonight, it tells me, I will sleep with Edwin Toseland.

  The hall light illuminates drifting motes of dust in the doorway. The lounge is dark, apart from the computer screen’s square of radiant blue, with a column of icons, smaller squares of different colours, arranged down each of its sides. I stick my head round the door. ‘Can I check my emails?’ I call out as quietly as possible. Edwin is in the kitchen making coffee.

  ‘Sure,’ he shouts back. I wonder why he isn’t worried about his parents waking up and finding us together. Of course, he’s a grown man, and only staying here tonight because his parents are going on holiday tomorrow and he’s cat-sitting, but still... for them to discover us would be embarrassing, I would have thought, especially for Edwin. But then he has never given a toss what anybody thinks of him. That is one of the reasons why he is not universally liked.

  My mind is not really on my emails, but I need an activity. I don’t want Edwin to return and find me standing here, unoccupied. I feel that would give him the advantage, somehow. I do not know him particularly well.

  He comes in holding two cups of coffee and puts mine down on the table in front of me. Then he rests his head on my shoulder, not as a gesture of affection but in order to read the message on the screen. It is from my mum, asking if I would like anything special for lunch on Sunday. ‘Fascinating!’ says Edwin. ‘Your mum’s obviously a scintillating woman.’ I sign out of my Hotmail account and turn to face him, smiling.


  Edwin is a small, skinny man with bad posture. His blonde hair is greasy enough to be mistaken for mid-brown. He has high cheekbones, a sharp nose with a bumpy bridge that brings to mind the word ‘corrugated’, and full, pouting lips. He looks like a cross between a pretty girl and a ferret. The sight of him, dressed in a suit that’s made of some sort of furry maroon material, reminds me that I prefer tall, big men. This leads to an area of thought into which I am determined not to stray, and solidifies my resolve to have sex with Edwin. I need a night off from all that. And Edwin is the opposite – physically, symbolically, in every possible respect. He can help me to fend off the feelings that would lay into me if I were alone.

  I smile when he insults my mother. I cannot afford for this night to end badly, and it won’t, as long as I decide right now that I will accept whatever Edwin says or does. More than that, I will welcome it. I will make a success of this venture, so that when I look back on tonight it will be as a fond memory.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you,’ says Edwin, taking the mouse from my hand and jabbing me with his elbow. ‘Shift!’ I allow him to push me off the chair. As he clicks, I stand behind him, sipping my coffee. It’s too strong and the rim of the cup is slimy. I rub my lips together and it is as if I am suddenly wearing lip balm. I turn away, pull a tissue out of my handbag and wipe my mouth until it hurts.

  Why does Edwin want to sleep with me? I cannot possibly be a symbol for him in the way that he is for me. Nobody’s mind works in the same strange way that mine does. When I figured this out, I stopped explaining my behaviour to people. Nobody’s understanding is enhanced by an explanation, I realised, unless it is one they themselves might give.

  My eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness. I notice that there are three walking sticks in one corner of the room, leaning against the wall behind the sofa. Two have smooth sides. The other has a rough, gnarled look, rather like an enlarged pretzel.