The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets (5 page)

But eventually she is free; she is on a road that seems to have nothing to do with Sol. His domain has an end, and
she has passed it. She smiles, feeling better than she has for a while. Because it would be wrong to think she has achieved nothing today. She has taken a form of revenge. If she had children, the thought that somebody she knew, somebody she had once wronged, had driven to their school, stood at the railings and watched them in the playground, and fantasised about killing them, would be too terrible to contemplate. What if the person came back a second time to turn the fantasy into a reality? One might live in fear for ever.

The revenge, she clarifies to herself, is not the killing,
therefore
, but the thinking about killing. Or the thinking about befriending, poaching. And she can continue to think
obsessively
about Sol's children in a way that, were he aware of it, would fill him with the worst kind of dread. But never mind the future; this morning, in isolation, is enough. An
unbalanced
woman has stood and stared at his children, unsure about whether she wants to harm them or not. That is worse than what happens to most people's children, in a civilised society. That is sufficient revenge.

She laughs at herself. So that's it? Some thoughts she had one morning? Big deal, she can imagine Sol saying. Thoughts? Water off a duck's back, oil stains off a carpet. Do you really think you could ever seriously harm anyone, you pathetic bitch? 

T
OM
F
OYERS WAS NOT A STRAIGHTFORWARD MAN.
H
E WOULD
have liked to be. He admired straightforward people, like his wife Selena, and like Idris Sutherland, with whom he now stood in the lift. They had both got on at the ground floor and would both get off at the eighth. ‘How's life?' Idris asked.

‘Fine, fine.' Tom smiled. But it wasn't. He loathed his job at Phelps Corcoran Cummings, which hogged about two-thirds of his waking time. He resented this lift that took him up to his office every morning, the way it spoke to you as you ascended – ‘floor number three, floor number four' – in a perky, bodiless voice. He detested the building in which his firm was based. It was shaped like a slice taken out of the middle of a cone, glaring white all over, inside and out, menacing in its blandness. It had always reminded Tom of a spaceship that never quite managed to take off. The work itself was boring, and he was treated as a resource, not as a human being. Nobody appreciated his talents or his
personality
, so he had stopped using the former and hidden the latter. Top of Tom's list of hates was his own office, which was the same size as the coat cupboard under his stairs at home, and had no windows – only a long, thin, glass panel
in the door that looked out on to a gleaming white corridor. Idris's office was the same. Inside the building, one was encouraged to believe that there was no outside.

‘How are you?' Tom asked Idris.

‘Shit. I hate this fucking place. I wish someone'd plant a bomb here. I wish someone would release Sarin gas in the foyer. Sorry, the
atrium
,' Idris added with a sneer.

I'd love to be as straightforward as Idris, thought Tom. He didn't pursue the idea, however, because he knew it was
pointless
. He had never actively decided on the policy of saying the opposite of what he meant; it was simply what happened every time he opened his mouth. This had been the case ever since he was a child. His mother was prone to hysterical outbursts; she did enough unrestrained reacting for the whole family. At a young age, Tom had learned to tailor everything he said and did to pacify her. As for his own responses to life and the world, these he inspected under the microscope of privacy, like a secret, valuable stamp collection.

Idris was grinning as the lift announced that they had reached floor number eight. He feels better, Tom thought glumly, now that he's got a bit of the poisonous discontent out of his system. ‘Have you met our new line manager?' asked Idris.

‘Nora?' said Tom. The two men stepped out of the lift and walked along the corridor, swinging their briefcases. Idris swung his higher.

‘Yes. She's just like a Nora. A dowdy, mumsy cow. In a meeting last week she showed me photos of her kids. Jesus! Nathan got a look at her CV – she's a complete nonentity.'

‘She seems friendly enough,' said Tom, though what he would have liked to say was this: ‘She called me into her office last week and introduced herself. She made a point of being very, very nice to me. Instantly, I recognised a fellow non-straightforward person. There must have been an ulterior motive behind her pleasant and confiding manner. She cannot
possibly think I'm a good thing, because she's in Gillian Bate's pocket, and Gillian can't stand me because she knows I know that she's a lightweight who doesn't deserve to be high up in any organisation. A suitable job for Gillian Bate would be circus accessory. To be tied to a revolving wheel and have knives thrown at her by a man with an impractical moustache – that would be about the right level for Gillian, given her intellect.' Tom wanted to say all this to Idris, but couldn't, even though he knew Idris would probably have become his best friend on the spot if he had. Tom would have found it easier to do the can-can naked in the atrium than to say what he really thought. Honesty, openness, the direct approach – Tom felt about these the way most people felt about hand grenades.

‘She only got the job because she's Gillian's lapdog,' said Idris. ‘As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said, “Mediocrity only recognises itself. It takes talent to recognise genius.” Later, alligator.' Idris unlocked his office and swung into it in one fluid movement.

Tom sighed and carried on walking. Did that mean that Idris was a genius? Or that he thought he was? One advantage of Tom's reveal-nothing approach was that he had an
invigorating
inner life. He conducted with himself all the stimulating conversations he failed to have with other people.

He emptied his pigeonhole and took the contents to his office to read. He had six letters – two in internal mail envelopes – and two faxes. If he'd had seven letters, or three faxes, there would not have been room for him and all his correspondence in his airless cubicle. As it was, he and his mail fitted snugly.

He tackled the two sky-blue envelopes first. Internal communications were always the deadliest and it was as well to get them out of the way. One was from Imrana Kabir in Human Resources. It told Tom that he was entitled to free eye tests and that he should contact her to arrange one. He
balled it up and threw it in the bin. The second was from Nora Connaughton, the new manager. It read as follows:

Tom seethed. Here it was, the first subtle attack. Oh, yes, there was no doubt that Nora was a fellow indirect
communicator
, an experienced passive aggressor. He knew what she must have wanted to say to him: ‘Why weren't you in the office last Thursday? You didn't ask my permission to work from home. Remember, I'm the new boss. Frankly, I doubt you were working at all. I bet you were in the pub playing darts, or having mud and seaweed rubbed into your back as part of a spa day, cheating the company, you lazy bastard. And, look, I'm telling on you. I'm telling the even bigger boss.'

The inclusion of ‘cc Gillian Bate' was the proof. If Nora trusted him, was genuinely concerned for his wellbeing and had no doubt he'd spent last Thursday working, she wouldn't have felt the need to send a copy of the letter to Gillian. Nor would she have done something so formal as send a letter; she'd simply have emailed him. What did ‘cc' mean, anyway? Complete cunt, thought Tom. The company email template offered one the option of ‘bcc' as well. Both complete cunts: Nora and Gillian.

The phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, said ‘Tom Foyers,' hoping, as he always did, that Jonathan Ross would be on the other end. Jonathan would be phoning from Barry Norman's house. ‘Look, Tom, if I don't have a few months off I'm going to go crazy. Barry and I have been having a chat, and we've decided you'd be ideal to present
Film
2005
. You
wouldn't, by any chance, fancy it, would you? All you need is a reassuring smile and a stylish yet comfortable jumper to wear.'

It was not Jonathan Ross. It was Selena, Tom's wife. Still, he was reasonably happy to hear from her. Selena was the only person with whom Tom shared some (though by no means all) of his real thoughts. He didn't quite know how this had come about, but he knew that Selena had arranged it. She had constructed a supervised area in which Tom could safely say anything. So could their two children, Joseph and Lucy. Lucy, who was two, had taken to saying, ‘For fuck's sake!' every time she encountered a practical difficulty. She said it when she couldn't slot the Piglet piece into her Winnie the Pooh jigsaw, and when her Baby Annabel doll rolled off the changing mat. She'd learned the phrase from Selena, who laughed every time Lucy parroted it. ‘That'll give the girls at nursery a shock,' she said. Joseph, who was four, screamed, ‘I hate you, Mummy! I hate you, Daddy!' every time he was told that he couldn't have chocolate mousse for dinner and then again for pudding.

‘How are you?' Tom asked his wife.

‘Extremely pissed off,' said Selena. ‘Furious, in fact. Can you come and meet me, now?'

‘Not really.' What Tom meant was, ‘Not at all.' Selena's current job was to sell eighteen townhouses for Beddford Homes. She worked alone in the sales office, which was the double garage of the show home. This was at least ten times the size of Tom's office, and her bosses, Andrew Beddington and Brian Ford, had installed a fully equipped little kitchen for her at the back. They'd also judged Selena worthy of a carpet, three armchairs, a fan to cool the stifling summer air, and a television. She had already sold four of the houses for them, and they liked and trusted her. They knew she could and would sell the lot. Selena was an extremely persuasive woman. Andrew and Brian didn't even mind that on quiet days she closed the office and went shopping or to get a manicure.

Selena sometimes had trouble understanding the constraints of Tom's working life. ‘Why not?' she said crossly.

‘Because it's not up to me when I come and go from the office,' said Tom, running amok in this rare opportunity for honesty like a toddler in a Wacky Warehouse ball pit. ‘It's up to a fat, snide, glorified tealady called Nora Connaughton.' Last Thursday, Tom had worked at home from seven in the morning until eight in the evening. He had asked Ruth, one of the secretaries, to send the Burns Gimblett files to his house because he hadn't wanted to lose an hour and a half of work time. ‘Why, has something happened?'

‘Not yet,' said Selena viciously. ‘But it will.'

‘What? What will happen?'

‘Do you remember that…oh, no. There are some people coming in. No, they're not. Yes, they are. I'm going to have to take them round the show home. Just meet me here as soon as you can.'

Tom put the phone down. He turned on his computer and began to draft an email to Nora. What would Selena write? What would Idris write?

Selena or Idris would then almost definitely add, ‘I infer, from your cc-ing of Gillian Bate, that you intended your letter as a
criticism at best or, at worst, a threat. If you have any
reservations
about the way I work, please could I ask you to be more direct in future?'

Tom smiled. If only. Then he deleted everything he had typed apart from ‘
From: [email protected], To: Nora. [email protected]
'. He kept the ‘Compose message' box open, but reduced it to a small square in the corner of his screen so that he could also read his new emails. As soon as he looked at his in-box, he spotted the words ‘Staff circular – Idris Sutherland'. He opened this message immediately, half expecting it to be from Gilbert Sparling, the managing director of Phelps Corcoran Cummings, and to say, ‘Have all colleagues noticed that Idris Sutherland is much more straightforward, and as a result happier, than Tom Foyers?' But no, the email was from Ruth, informing all colleagues that Idris was to take six months of unpaid leave, starting next Monday, in order to spend some time with his new baby, Oliver.

Tom shook internally. He was not the sort to shake
externally
. Six months' leave! It was unheard of. Had Nora agreed to this? No, it couldn't have happened so quickly. Gillian must have set it in motion before she was promoted. Right, that's
it
, thought Tom. He often thought this, and nothing ever happened as a result. Several things were immediately apparent to him: Idris was the sort of person who asked for what he wanted, straight out. Therefore, Idris got what he wanted more often than not. Tom would never have dared to ask for six months' unpaid leave, even if he could have managed financially, which he couldn't. If he dared to ask, Gillian or Nora or whichever revolving-wheel-ornament was in charge at the time would say no, without even having to consider it. Tom thought so, anyway. He was pretty sure.

Inwardly, he vibrated at the injustice. He was in a trap and could see no way out. He'd worked for the company for seven years and had never had either a promotion or a pay
rise, apart from the minimal, token one that all employees got every year. He knew he ought to try, as Idris had, to improve his situation at Phelps Corcoran Cummings, but once he had tried and failed, what would he have then? Nothing. In realising this, Tom came closer than ever before to identifying the cause of his problem. For as long as he kept his wishes, his fat stack of grievances and his hatred a secret, he still had some power, power he told himself he might one day choose to exercise, even though, deep down, he knew he never would. But the power was there all the same; the sheer force of his illwill towards the company that employed him was awe-inspiring. As long as it continued to grow, Tom was able to feel like a man who could do serious damage if he chose to. He was aware of the steaming bile inside him all the time, energising him, like a hearty dose of steroids. Every time he bumped into Gillian Bate by the water machine and told her he was fine, everything was fine, he felt like David pulling back his catapult, ready to launch a hefty rock at Goliath's head. And not launching it was the whole point, for once the rock lay on the floor at Gillian's feet, once she'd looked down, sniggered at it and stepped over it on her way to her next meeting, it would all be over for Tom.