The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets (23 page)

‘That's it? That's all it said?'

‘Yup. And I've been in fucking torment ever since.'

‘
Why
? I don't understand why you didn't just tell The Tub to stick it up his big, hairy arse. Anyone who reacts like that to being given some bath oil is too neurotic to live.'

One hears about epiphanies from time to time, but I have never had one before. I feel the clouds that have covered my heart for the past six months begin to disperse. Only slightly – I am still basically a soul in agony, condemned to suffer for ever, deprived for all eternity of the forgiveness of my one true love – but still, even a minor interval between bouts of anguish is welcome. And Edwin has created such an interval, by nicknaming my tormentor ‘The Tub'. In doing so, he is making light of the situation, as well as, in some strange way, claiming it as his own, taking some of the burden off my back. He wants to turn the source of my misery into a shared joke.

I want to let him. I wonder if I can let the nickname stand, or if the ceiling will fall in or I'll be struck down by
lightning
if I do. I decide to risk it. ‘I'm worried about myself,' I tell Edwin. ‘You know I'm not usually a victim or a wimp, and I know, rationally, that The Tub's treated me appallingly. But I still love him, and that scares me. I don't think there's anything he could do to me that'd make me stop loving him. And that's worrying.'

‘Beat you up, put you in hospital?'

‘No, I'd still love him.'

‘What if he raped you?'

‘He couldn't. I would always sleep with him willingly.'

‘Killed your mum and dad?'

‘At least it'd prove he was bothered about me.' What am I saying? I don't mean it. I don't want him to kill my parents. I want the proof that he's bothered, minus the killing.

Edwin laughs. ‘Forget him. He's a neurotic nincompoop. People should use the word “nincompoop” more often, don't you think? Look, clearly no sex is going to be had here tonight, so shall we go for a curry or something? I'm starving.'

‘Okay. But…what about that note he sent me: “If you kept the receipt, you might be able to get your money back”?' Again I say the line that has flashed across the screen of my brain several hundred times a day ever since I read it. I am obsessed. I say the words to myself over and over again, unable to reach a conclusion, picking away at what I know in order to discover what I don't know, what I probably can never know. ‘What do you think he meant by that? Was it an attempt to re-establish contact without losing too much face? Or was it an aggressive move, trying to hurt me by sending back my present? Sometimes I think he must have hoped I'd respond somehow, try to get in touch again. Maybe write back and apologise just once more, so that he could forgive me without feeling it was a climb-down. Because, let's face it, if he wanted nothing more to do with me, it would have been easier for him not to write at all.'

‘Who cares?' says Edwin cheerfully. He is dressing. On with the maroon furry suit, no underpants. On with the pointy boots. I wish he would keep still and look at me, listen more carefully. He might miss something: a clue, a nuance.

A few minutes later we are strolling across cobbles towards a dingy Indian restaurant with a grubby purple sign outside it. I am no longer concentrating on our physical movements, so am unsure how we got to this dark road that is almost an alleyway.

I shout after Edwin as we go through the restaurant door, ‘I've thought of writing to him and saying, “I need to speak
to you.” He'd have to say yes, wouldn't he? What if I had herpes and needed to tell him? That's bound to be the sort of thing he'd think of first. But there's always the chance he'd say no, and I'd never get to say what I need to say to him. So maybe I should write to him and say what I'd say if we met, and then at least I'd know he'd heard it.'

I have to pause as a waiter shows us to a table, takes our coats, hands us a menu each. It is torture, and I want to scream a torrent of hysterical abuse at him, for making me stop at such a pivotal point in my examination of the options. As soon as I can, I begin again. ‘If I thought he wanted me to get in touch I would, of course I would, but I can't risk it. Because if him sending back the bubble bath was an act of aggression, a missile thrown into enemy territory, he'll be pissed off if I write to him. And then he might do something that'll hurt me even more and I can't risk that. As it is, he's nearly finished me off. I can't take any more.'

‘Then don't. Shall we have popadoms or just a main course?'

‘But what if my cowardice is the only thing standing in the way of some sort of resolution? If only I could know if he wanted a resolution or not. I can't even bring myself to ask Dan about it any more. I'm so afraid of hearing something that'd do even more damage to my psyche. Like that he's told Dan he hates me and was totally wrong about me. That's what I really don't want to hear.'

Edwin sighs. ‘So what do you want, weirdy?'

‘I just want to clear my name. I want an official pardon. I want him to know, and tell me, that I did nothing wrong.' And for him to love me again, and to die of pain whenever he thinks about the pain he's caused me, to burn for ever with regret. One of us has to, and I'd rather it were him. ‘The thing is, if I wrote him a letter, what I wrote would inevitably be a defence. And in an odd sort of way, defending yourself only makes people keener to attack you. Whereas if you say
nothing, they are more likely to come up with a defence of you all on their own. And if it comes from them, they won't resist it as much as they would if it came from you. Do you see what I mean?'

‘Do you think they'll bring popadoms automatically?' says Edwin. ‘I prefer it when they do, without you having to order them.'

I want to see Edwin again after tonight. I'd quite like to see him tomorrow night. I will have to come up with some sort of incentive. Perhaps I will need to masturbate in front of him after all. Talking to him is doing me good. I can feel some of the poison beginning to drain from my system as I talk. ‘The awful thing is, you start to doubt your own behaviour. I've asked myself over and over again: what if he was right? What if, subconsciously, I did choose that bath oil because I saw the word ‘tub' and associated it with him because he's…well, not thin. I mean, I didn't choose Radox, did I? I didn't choose Dove. Maybe I am guilty.'

‘Oh, bollocks! Jo, put your menu down,' says Edwin. ‘If the waiter sees you holding it, he'll think we aren't ready to order, and I'm fucking starving.'

‘And the absolute worst thing is that, even though I know I'm not going to do anything, I can't allow myself to decide, officially, to do nothing, and then let it go. I keep having to go over and over the decision-making process, considering all the alternatives – I'm talking maybe twelve times a day, and it takes at least an hour each time – and I always arrive at the same conclusion. Which is that I'm trapped in this… inactivity.'

Our waiter brings us a basket full of popadoms and some small silver pots of various chutneys on a silver tray. This time I do not bother to wait until he's gone. I talk loudly over his attempts to take our order. ‘I have to know, you see. I have to know if he'll
ever
forgive me, ever regret losing me enough to contact me. If he never does…well, then, I guess I'll know he
isn't my one true love. That's the only thing that can prove it to me. And if I contact him, I'll never know what he would have done if I hadn't, will I? So I never can.'

‘Forget The Tub,' says Edwin, through a mouthful of popadom and pickle. The waiter has gone. ‘He's already forgotten you.'

‘But what do you think was in his mind when he wrote that note?' I ask. It doesn't matter that I am obsessed, boring, trapped in a vice, screwed up beyond belief. I am with Edwin Toseland, who would have a cheek expecting better from me. ‘What do you think he meant?' I demand. ‘Was he being genuine or sarcastic? Was he paving the way for
reconciliation
, or was he having one last twist of the knife?' I ask the question over and over again, altering the wording slightly each time.

‘A
DULTERERS FALL INTO TWO CATEGORIES,' SAID FLORA
Gustavina. ‘Those who have a talent for making more than one person happy, and those who have a talent for making more than one person miserable.'

‘That's nonsense,' said Erica Crossland. ‘There must be some who make their wives miserable and their mistresses happy. Or their wives happy and their mistresses miserable.' She spoke quickly. Through the window she could see TP, Flora's gardener, sitting cross-legged on the lawn, his large hands wrapped round a mug of Flora's milky hot chocolate. As soon as he'd finished, he would unfold his lanky body and lollop to the back door to ask for more. If he perched on the counter while Flora made it, he would be there for hours.

Erica dreaded the possibility of TP coming in and perching. It had happened before, several times. His knobbly knuckles repelled her; they stuck out, as if each of his fingers had swallowed a marble. She didn't like his dragging walk, or that he took Flora's money and never did anything to the grass apart from sit on it. Erica wanted to talk to Flora about money today, but she didn't want to cut short the
conversation
about adulterers. Like much of what Flora said, Erica
thought it might turn out to be important, though she was not sure how. Nor was she convinced that she was the sort of person who would benefit from hearing important things.

Flora's house made Erica nervous. Other people were always appearing, interrupting. Frank, Flora's husband, was one culprit. TP was another. And sometimes there was Vesna the cleaner, Paul the financial adviser, Vicky the personal trainer, Craig the mechanic.

Flora didn't seem to mind them. She was the only
interesting
person Erica had ever known who was interested in boring people. She encouraged them all to speak. Erica listened with gritted teeth as they lumbered through their pedestrian anecdotes. And then she had to go. There was never enough time for Erica to listen to Flora, or for Flora to listen to Erica.

‘Mistresses and wives?' Flora frowned. ‘Spouses and lovers, please. No need to be sexist about it. Hmph. One would certainly expect there to be a third category – the postive-negative adulterer. But, actually, I'm not sure. I think they – we, rather – are all either double positives or double negatives.' She spoke as if she expected Erica to take notes.

Erica didn't need to; she had a good memory. The two women sat in the lounge part of Flora's kitchen. All the rooms in the Gustavinas' house had bits of other rooms in them, as if to convey the message that one might wish to do anything anywhere, and what would be wrong with that? So, the lounge had a bar and a large, curvacious, pistachio-coloured fridge at one end, the kitchen and bathrooms all had sofas in them that were more comfortable than the one in Erica's living room, her only one. The study contained two single beds, and there were desks, filing cabinets and bookshelves in many of the bedrooms.

When Erica stayed the night, as she often did, she slept in the easel room, so called because a large easel with a blank sheet of vellum attached to it stood in the centre of the
carpet, with a box of watercolour paints and a brush on a table nearby. On her first overnight visit, Frank had noticed Erica's puzzled expression as he dropped her suitcase on the bed. ‘Oh, didn't Flora tell you? This is Van Gogh's room. It's only avaible tonight because he's away.' Frank's demeanour was solemn. ‘Gauguin's stag weekend.' He nodded, as if confirming the details to himself. ‘They've gone to a rave in Milton Keynes.' There was a short, awkward pause. Then he bellowed ‘No, not really!', making Erica jump, and hunched over, puffing out his chug-chug laugh.

Erica had stayed in Van Gogh's room many times since. She liked the easel and paints, at the same time as believing their presence to be almost daringly pretentious in a home where noone was an artist. If it was possible to be too fond of a house, then Erica was too fond of the Gustavinas'. She loved the stained-glass windows depicting rings within rings of multicoloured turtles (Flora had had them specially made and installed by a friend of hers), the elongated, light, cluttered rooms (Flora had knocked down walls like dominoes on the ground and first floors), the spiral, see-through staircase that fell through the centre of the house (‘I got rid of the boring stairs,' said Flora), the single, fat, cylindrical gatepost with its enormous round head that looked like a little man standing guard outside.

‘You see, adultery isn't about the characters of one's wife and mistress, one's husband and lover,' Flora said now. ‘The specifics of those people are almost completely irrelevant to the adulterer.'

‘That sounds unlikely,' said Erica.

‘I know. But think about it. Not everyone who's unhappy with their spouse has a fling, do they?'

Erica found herself unable to disagree with this.

‘Exactly. And some people are perfectly content at home – like me – yet still have the odd… liaison. Because adultery isn't about dissatisfaction with one's partner. It's about appetites.
Take you.' Flora was for ever taking Erica, in her speeches. ‘You'd probably never be unfaithful.'

‘How do you know?' asked Erica, who had nobody to be unfaithful to, or with. Nevertheless, she might be unfaithful. She liked to think she would. Erica couldn't rid herself of the conviction that, if she spent enough time with Flora, something would happen. She didn't know what; it was partly the suspense that kept her at Flora's side.

‘The chocolates.' Flora nodded at the empty Guylian box on the table. ‘All gone, and you only had one. I ate all the rest. And so far this morning I've had three lattes. You've had one cup of camomile tea. You're a person of small appetites.'

She made camomile tea sound like a puritan's
soul-improving
broth. For Erica it was a treat, one she only had when she came to the Gustavinas'. At home she drank instant coffee, the local supermarket's economy brand.

‘I smoke,' Erica reminded her. Flora allowed her to smoke in the house when TP was in the garden. Flora found Erica's aversion to TP amusing.

‘Yes. That's why we get on so well. You've got that little touch of transgression about you, just enough to make us compatible.'

‘Smoking isn't transgressive,' said Erica. ‘My parents both smoke and they're churchgoers.'

‘It's different. They're old. For people of our age, smoking's a real no-no, and it's getting worse.' Erica was forty-nine. Flora was thirty-one, but assumed that Erica, as her friend, was the same age as her. They'd met at a yoga class, which was supposed to be the first of eight, but neither of them went back – Flora, because there turned out to be no men there, and Erica, because she couldn't afford it. ‘Actually, even as a smoker you've not got much of an appetite. If I smoked I'd be on sixty a day. And that's the thing about adulterers – they inhabit the realm of excess. They're sensation-seekers, thrill-chasers on a grand scale. An ordinary amount of anything –
but in this case, of romantic and sexual experience – isn't enough for them. For us, I mean. We have all this spare energy, all this extra capacity that we have to use or we feel empty and wasted. An adulterer without an affair on the go – like me now, for example – feels like a gorgeous extra-large Ivan Grundahl jumper with only a size eight anorexic inside it. Do you see what I mean?'

Erica did. It was easy to see what Flora meant. She always provided lots of illustrations of whatever point she happened to be making; a sensible practice if one is more imaginative than one's audience. Flora was not more imaginative than Erica, but she assumed she was. Coloured sunlight fell in beams around the two women – blue, pink, green, yellow – filtered through the plump bodies of the stained-glass turtles.

‘So,' Flora went on, ‘add to that the idea that each of us has, essentially, either an enhancing or a detracting force about us – and my point is proved. You're either the sort of person who brings joy, or you're the sort who brings misery. You don't vary your effect from person to person. An adulterer is someone who's attached but has joy-making energy or misery-making energy to spare, that's my point.'

‘That can't be right,' said Erica. Flora giggled, wide-eyed. She often laughed when Erica disagreed with her, not sneerily, but with a sort of astonished admiration. Erica had noticed this, and tried to contradict Flora whenever she could. ‘What about someone who has an enhancing force, or could have, but they're just in a bad relationship at the moment, so they're miserable, and they make their husband or wife miserable? And then they meet the right person, and suddenly they're happy and they make their new partner happy too. That must happen all the time.'

‘Those people aren't who I mean when I say adulterers. I'm talking about habitual adulterers. Those for whom adultery is a hobby, like golf. Or an addiction. For them, it's not about a one-off transition from despair to fulfilment. No, they're quite
content with their emotional landscape, whether it's a constructive or a destructive one. They just want a bigger portion, second helpings. And that initial heady rush, the massive novelty buzz of making someone happy or unhappy for the first time. Why do you think so many adulterers are fat?'

‘I'm sure I could name some thin adulterers.'

‘Fast metabolisms,' said Flora.

Erica saw TP spring up from the grass. He adjusted his pony-tail, fiddling with the blue elastic band that held it in place. He looked as if he might be about to come inside. Fearing her time would soon be up, Erica launched in. ‘Flora, we still haven't talked about the work you want me to do.'

‘Oh, yes! That.' She still sounded enthusiastic about it.

Erica was relieved. ‘What exactly…?' But she got no further with her question. Frank Gustavina appeared in the doorway with a half-eaten pear in one hand and his briefcase in the other. ‘Hi, Flor. Hi, Erica,' he said with a full mouth, his right cheek bulging.

Erica turned her grimace into a half-smile. Damn, damn, bugger, she thought. She could hardly bear to wait until next time to find out what Flora wanted her to do, to ask about the money. And Flora wouldn't say anything else about adultery now that Frank was home. Frank knew nothing of his wife's affairs.

‘I might as well go,' said Erica.

‘Darling, you're home early,' said Flora.

‘I got run over at lunchtime,' said Frank. ‘Big white lorry. Saw me in the road and just ploughed straight into me. I've felt a bit dizzy ever since, so I thought I'd better come home and see if I can get an appointment with the doctor.' He continued to munch on his pear as he wandered over to the fridge. ‘No, not really! I just got bored, so I called it a day.'

Flora giggled. Frank opened a beer, raised it. ‘Cheers!' he said. ‘I'll leave you ladies to talk about Princess Diana's eyebrows, or whatever it is you talk about.'

‘Oh, it's that,' said Flora, winking at Erica. ‘See you later, darling.' The two women listened to his feet as they clattered up the transparent stairs. ‘I'm worried about Frank, actually,' said Flora. ‘I think he's feeling a bit insecure. He craves external validation. He was too successful too soon, and you know what it's like – the maintenance of success begins to feel like failure. Plus everyone assumes he knows how successful he is, so noone tells him.'

‘Oh?' said Erica, wondering if it was worth raising the issue of the work again. TP was leaning against the shed, closer to the house, but, for the time being, not moving.

‘He's started doing that awful mock-modesty thing.'

‘What's that?' Erica wasn't interested in Frank's possible insecurity – he seemed fine to her – but she wanted to know what the awful mock-modesty thing was, to check it wasn't something she also did.

‘Oh, you know. If Steven Spielberg did it, he'd say, “I made a film in the seventies, about a shark that ate people. It was called
Jaws
, and….” Etcetera, etcetera. And then the person he's talking to butts in and goes, “
Jaws
! Don't be ridiculous, I've heard of
Jaws
, it's a world famous movie!” And Spielberg gets to look all surprised. He says “Oh, really? Oh, how kind of you to say so.” He gets the reassurance he was seeking that his film's as famous as he hopes it is, and at the same time he knows the other person's going to think Gosh, that Steven Speilberg's a really modest guy.
He didn't even assume
I'd heard of Jaws
.'

‘Right,' said Erica. She was fairly certain she didn't do the mock-modesty thing. She had no achievements that she could pretend she didn't assume people ought to have heard of.

‘Until a few moths ago, when people asked Frank what he did, he used to say, “I'm Frank Gustavina.” Now he says “I run a business, an estate agent's.” And then, when people drag it out of him, and go, “Oh, wow! Frank Gustavina! I've seen your signs outside loads of houses!”
he feigns pleasure and surprise – and it's boosted egos all round.'

TP knocked at the back door, making a plop-plop sound, as if his knuckles couldn't quite get it together to land on the wood at the same time. ‘Give him a chance,' Flora whispered, getting up to let him in. She wore a square-necked jumper which, Erica noticed, appeared to be green from a distance, but when you looked closely you could see that it had bits of brown, yellow, orange, grey and mauve in it.

‘Throat Pastille!' Flora exclaimed. ‘Come in and talk to us.'

‘All right.' It wasn't clear whether this was a greeting or an expression of agreement. TP slouched into the kitchen. He wore his usual outfit: skin-tight black jeans, a grey sweatshirt, grey fingerless gloves, a puffy blue waistcoat that reminded Erica of an inflatable bed, muddy white trainers. ‘Well, I think the new version's finally finished,' he said.