The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets (4 page)

‘His father's in prison for manslaughter.'

‘Really?' says Eve. She smiles in a detached sort of way.

‘Yup. He was a…what do you call it? Bailiff? He frightened money out of people for a living.'

‘A debt collector,' says Eve.

‘Beat them up if they couldn't pay. One of his beatings went a bit too far – the bloke died.'

‘That's one way to avoid paying your debts,' Danny quips. No one laughs.

‘Sol spent most of his childhood in refuges,' Olga tells Eve. ‘He was in a young offenders' institute for a while.'

‘And this is the guy we gave a key to our house,' says Danny.

‘But that's my point,' says Olga. ‘Sol's not like that. He's left that world behind. He's a brilliant craftsman, he's got a successful business, a happy family. He's done really well. From what he's told me, his two brothers seem to be going the same way as his dad, but Sol's different. Maybe it's his little… Buddhist words of wisdom that keep him on the straight and narrow.'

She has heard enough. She makes her excuses and leaves.

Her father is the director of the British Council office in Venezuela. Her mother was a ballet dancer and now teaches dance. One of her two sisters is a cellist and the other is an editor at Faber and Faber. Her brother is an immunologist. They are a happy family; she has always felt loved and looked after.

Sol Barber's father is hired muscle: a debt collector, a killer. And his brothers are ‘going the same way', whatever that means. She thinks it means that, in all likelihood, Sol is entirely to blame for what he did to her on that day, and she is not at all to blame. One only has to look at the two families, at the respective track records.

She remembers, often, Sol's shamefaced expression when he said, ‘Look…' just before he left her bedroom. Because human beings are basically selfish and self-absorbed, she decides that she can safely assume Sol's thoughts over the past two months have not centred on her fear and defeat and disgrace, but on his own failure to stick to the resolution he must surely have made a long time ago: to prove, with his every word and deed, that he has escaped his miserable, brutal origins, that he is a more enlightened man than his father.

Less comforting is the idea that, in the Barber family, all one needs to do in order to be impressive – a high achiever – is not kill somebody. Among her own relatives, not killing anybody is taken for granted; it is not a matter for pride or
congratulations. Not so for the Barbers. How much does it matter that Sol once, when provoked, wrote something in lipstick on a woman's forehead and, all right, got a bit rough with her? He didn't do her any serious harm, did he? And he could have done, he easily could. He restrained himself. For Sol, given his background, this could constitute a significant accomplishment.

Either that or he barely remembers the incident. Most of his relatives probably do more damage daily than he did that one time. He might expect her to be over it by now. If he hadn't mentioned Locke and Rousseau (Marx doesn't count –
everyone's
heard of Marx), maybe she would be. But he did, and so she cannot dismiss him. The wardrobe he made for Olga and Danny is beautiful, a work of art. She has been attacked by a clever and talented man. This is what she cannot bear. This is why she decides to kill his children.

Because it would be pointless to kill him, wouldn't it? To murder an enemy is a dimwit's revenge. If he is dead, he cannot suffer, and if he is not suffering, you've failed. Even if you arrange for him to die slowly and painfully, you know (assuming you do not believe in an afterlife) that his agony will end, he will escape into blissful nonexistence.

She wants Sol Barber to live until he is a hundred and fifty.

She knows where his children go to school: St Anne's Primary, on Glasshouse Lane, in a village that she always suspects will disappear as soon as she has driven through it. Agnes is seven. Wilfred is five. She does not know what they look like but she has seen their mother. Twice while Sol was working in her house Tina Barber brought him things: once some sandwiches and once some jump leads, when his van broke down. Tina is a thin, mousy woman with bandy legs, no waist, and a face like a collie dog.

It is that face that she hunts for in the crowd, sitting in her car on Glasshouse Lane at five past eight in the morning. She has got up especially early to be here on time.
Dishevelled
mothers, their messy hair stuffed into hoods, haul their offspring around as if they are sacks of soil. Grooves of exhaustion carve the women's faces into defeated chunks. And these are the lucky ones, she thinks. These are the ones whose children will not be killed. Tina has not arrived yet.

She contemplates what she intends to do, the effect it will have. Sol's life will be ruined, which is what she wants, so there is no problem there. But when she thinks about Tina, or the children themselves, she is surprised to find that she feels no anguish, no empathy. Even when she puts the matter to herself in a deliberately emotive way (which she does often, as an experiment), she is unmoved. All she has is a cold sense of necessity. This is what has to happen. She must harm Sol more than he has harmed her. Her heart is a brick; therefore, in order to win, she must turn his into a vast purple lesion, a pulsating carnivorous tumour.

And she can do it, that's the beauty of the scheme. She has the ability. Anyone can harm another person, if they don't care what happens afterwards. She might not be able to fit a kitchen or a carpet, rehang a door or remove an oil stain, but she is confident that she can kill Sol Barber's children.

Not today, though. She will not murder Agnes and Wilfred today. She doesn't even know what they look like, and she hasn't brought an implement with her. As yet, she has given no thought to the practicalities of ending two lives. All she wants, at this stage, is to see the children's faces.

She yelps when she spots Sol walking down the road towards her car. Although there are a few other men in the playground, it didn't occur to her that Sol might bring his children to school. Agnes and Wilfred are on either side of him, holding his hands. He is talking to them, smiling. She draws her knees up to her chest and buries her face in them.
A moment ago she was a woman; now she is a ball of fear, rocking back and forth in the driver's seat of her car. What if he sees her? Instinctively, she knows that it would be worse than last time.

A few seconds later, or it might even be minutes, she dares to look up. She sees his broad back. He is kissing his children goodbye. She cannot see them clearly because of all the people, but she notices Agnes's coat. It is brown with a fitted waist, and has a ridiculous collar made of some shaggy, trailing, furry material, as if someone has skinned an animal and draped the scrapings around Agnes's neck.

None of the other girls has a coat like that. It will be easy to spot at break, or lunchtime, when Sol isn't there. She ducks when he turns to leave, keeping one eye half open to check that he doesn't look in her direction. He doesn't. Her body feels as if it has been shaken in a hard box.

Gradually, she recovers her composure. She settles in for the wait, feeling guilty because she could and should be working. She has done nothing, achieved nothing, since Sol attacked her, and she must achieve, substantially and soon. She must prove that she is not worthless. Also, there is something else bothering her. Why are the children called Wilfred and Agnes? What sort of names are those for young, happy, twenty-first-century children?

Agnes and Wilfred. Exploited worker names, victim names, early-tragic-death names. She pictures a downtrodden
Victorian
servant girl in an apron, curtseying before a tyrannical master; a tubercular chimney sweep or coal miner with a searing cough, broken shoes and a face black with dust from being forced to crawl into holes noone would choose to enter. Agnes and Wilfred. She knows, absolutely knows beyond all doubt, that Sol chose the names. Tina had nothing to do with it. Poor little Wilfred. Poor brave Agnes.

Suddenly, she is crying, gulping, struggling for breath. Why couldn't they be called Francesca and Hugo, or Megan and
Josh, or Eleanor and Zachary? It would make killing them so much easier. Sol Barber has ruined everything all over again.

She needs to see their faces close up. It is possible that they will be vivid, boisterous creatures, capable of peeling away from the names Wilfred and Agnes all connotations of shabby pensioners dying alone in cold houses.

She wonders about Sol's real name. Is is bad? Is that why he calls himself after his favourite beer? It occurs to her that she, by chance, shares her first name with that of the lager she usually drinks. She shudders, wanting to have nothing in common with Sol. She will never drink that beer again.

After what feels like an age, she hears the blare of a tinny bell coming from inside the squat school building, and a few seconds later there is a colourful spurt of children into the playground. Carefully, after having checked that she has not had any kind of embarrassing accident (she checks often, these days) she climbs out of the car and walks over to the railings.

She sees Wilfred Barber first and is surprised to
recognise
him. He looks like Sol but in miniature. She wonders if Wilfred is calmer and kinder than his father, if the Barbers are improving with each generation. Wilfred is with four friends and a football. He speaks and smiles occasionally, but he is not one of the main ones; she can see that straight away. She thinks she can also tell that he wishes the others would pay more attention to him, give him more of a chance to shine. She is sure he could and would shine, if a suitable opportunity presented itself.

Agnes's coat appears, with Agnes in it. She pulls her collar – which, on second viewing, looks like the torn-off scalp of a witch – around her ears. Agnes is alone, standing with her arms folded by the wall of the school building, looking as if she does not expect anybody to join her any time soon. Her skin has a yellow tinge; she is a little tawny scrap, like a doodle Dr Seuss might have rejected as being not quite up to scratch.

Oh, my God, those poor children
, she thinks, and begins to fantasise about befriending Agnes and Wilfred Barber. She could be their secret confidante and benefactor. They might grow to love her more than they love Sol. She has seen his temper in action. How many times have the children seen it? How many more times will they see it? She pictures Tina hiding behind an armchair while Sol beats Wilfred with a curtain rail, while he drags Agnes round the house by her hair. Oh, yes, the children are bound to prefer her, almost as soon as they meet her, to their brute of a father.

She closes her eyes, knowing that at some point she will need to draw a line under this sort of behaviour, this sort of thinking. The bell rings again and, when Agnes turns to go back inside, she notices a hearing aid above one of her ears.
So
, she thinks.
So Agnes is partially deaf
.
That must have
made Sol angry, when he first found out. And Tina.

Agnes is deaf. It is a new detail. It is too much; she doesn't want to know any more about Sol's family. Already, she is too close, close enough to feel involved, confused. She must get away. She cannot, after all, kill Sol's children. She runs across the road, fumbles with her car door, slams it shut once she is inside and speeds off, feeling chilly, sad and empty.

It takes her two minutes to drive out of his village. It is a nothing sort of place, with an A road running through it, robbing it of any charm it might otherwise have had. The green, a triangle with one curved side, is scruffy and patchy, littered with empty crisp and cigarette packets. Behind it, a sign saying ‘Mary's Tea Rooms' is fixed above the door of a detached stone house that, over the years, has been blackened by traffic fumes. There are net curtains in the windows. She hates this place and everything about it. The idea of Sol Barber, the flavour of him, is like a huge, swollen spider, crouching over the part of the country where he lives.