The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets (19 page)

‘Kay, you've got “Brendan pooey monster” written all over the wall here,' I said, thinking
John will kill me.
He
will absolutely kill me
. I do not usually behave in a rash and unwise manner, but I was having trouble keeping my mounting desperation at bay. I felt as if I were travelling towards something, and needed to get there as soon as possible. I had to make things happen, if they didn't happen of their own accord.

Kay's eyes widened. ‘You think
I
wrote that? That wasn't me!'

‘Who was it, then? Mark? Anya?'

‘No! How could you think that? I was a bit upset when I saw it too. It must have been the people who lived here before us. It's not about our Brendan.'

I felt my eyes narrow. ‘Really?' I said. ‘Well, that's… Isn't that a bit of a strange coincidence?'

‘Yes!' said Kay. ‘It is! I'm not sure I want you in my house. I think you've got it in for me and my family, that's what I think. First you call the police and say we're dead, then the business with the nursery bear, and now this!'

If she was lying, she had a talent for it. And, looking at her wobbling mouth and moist eyes, I suddenly feared she was telling the truth. ‘Look, what was I supposed to think? I mean…'

‘I don't care,' said Kay, who had started to cry. ‘I just want you to leave. Please.'

I sighed and did as she asked. I phoned John at work and told him what had happened. To my surprise, he didn't berate me for breaking our agreement to avoid the Devines. ‘She's lying,' he said. ‘And we can easily prove it. We can ring the Dysons.' These were the people who had owned the house before Mark and Kay.

‘What if she's telling the truth, but it wasn't the Dysons?' I said. ‘It could have been the people before them.'

‘Westlife haven't been around for that long,' said John. ‘I'm going to phone Greg Dyson now.' He was eager to seize the reins. Things were getting serious.

I sat on the sofa, waiting for him to ring me back, wondering how the children would feel about moving to another street, or another town. Why shouldn't we do it? I worked from home and John could easily manage a slightly longer commute. I had always loved our house – it was a happy, relaxed home that, everyone agreed, had an air of holidays and fun about it – but now I felt as if it had fallen under a shadow.

The phone rang. ‘You've really done it this time, you idiot!' John yelled at me.

‘What?'

‘Kay was telling the truth. I've just spoken to Greg Dyson. Their kids were bullied by a lad called Brendan at their school.'

‘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
hand-woven
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 given 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.