The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets (8 page)

Tom had felt faint when he'd first read it; he'd phoned Selena at the show home, aghast. ‘Couldn't you have put it more diplomatically? What if my mum sees it, or hears about it?'

‘Your mum lives in Canterbury.'

‘Yours doesn't! Your parents live four streets away! And what about James, who works about two hundred metres from…'

‘What about them?' Selena had sounded mystified. ‘I'm not scared of them seeing my ad.'

‘But they'd be horrified, devastated. They'd never speak to us again!'

‘Yes, they would. If any of them sees it, I'll just explain.'

‘Explain what? What will you say?'

‘That ever since the kids were born we've found their level of support disappointing, and we finally decided to take some action.'

‘Oh, that'll really help! That's bound to pacify them!'

‘Tom, pacifying our families is not my objective here,' she'd said patiently, kindly, as if he were a bit slow. He gave up. Selena would never see his point; she wasn't like him. Either you were terrified of how everybody might react to everything or you weren't, and Selena wasn't.

The motorway was particularly clogged that evening, and there had been an accident at junction seventeen. Only one
lane remained open, and the traffic crawled along. What was normally a forty-five minute drive took Tom nearly two hours. An hour into his ordeal, he realised he wouldn't have time to go home and change; he would have to go straight to the show home.

The sales office was locked, dark. Tom hovered
uncertainly
for a few seconds, wondering what he ought to do. The middle floor of the show home was illuminated, the curtains open. Tom heard laughter, some of it Selena's. He wanted to turn and leave, but he wasn't brave enough, and he didn't want to let Selena down. She was doing this for them. For Venice. He rang the doorbell.

The hall light came on, and Selena trotted downstairs to let him in. The show home was arranged on three levels, as were all eighteen houses in the development. On the ground floor there was a long, narrow hall, a utility room, a
cloakroom
and a large, L-shaped bedroom with a built-in study area. The lounge, kitchen and dining room were on the first floor, arranged around a spacious rectangular landing, where there was also a small bathroom. The top floor comprised an even larger rectangular landing, the main bathroom, two single bedrooms and the master bedroom, which had an
en-suite
bathroom with a big, round Jacuzzi-bath in its centre.

Most of the houses on the development were empty shells, waiting for new owners to fill them with evidence of good or bad taste, but the show home had been furnished and decorated. Selena had shown Tom round when she'd first got the job with Beddford, saying, ‘Don't you wish we could afford one?' All the walls were custard-coloured, all the duvet covers and scatter cushions bright yellow. The curtains in every room were checked – red, orange and yellow – and had belts around their middles on each side that held them permanently open. The carpets were fudge-coloured and fluffy.

Tom would never have chosen to decorate a house in this way, but as he'd moved from one custardy room to another,
he'd felt oddly comforted; it was like being inside a big, new dolls' house.

‘Sorry I'm late,' he said to Selena. ‘Are they…?' He jerked his head in the direction of the stairs.

‘Yup, they're all here,' she said. Then, lowering her voice, she added, ‘Oh, Tom, they're great. I can't believe how well it's worked out.'

Tom felt frightened. ‘You've only known them…' – he glanced at his watch – ‘…fifteen minutes.'

‘No, they were all early. They've been here since half past six. Which is the first thing I realised we've got in common. When aren't I an hour early? Come up and meet them, anyway – they're all dying to see you. Oh Tom, it's so amazing! I feel as if I've known them for ever.'

With a leaden heart, Tom ascended the stairs. His new family was in the lounge, the show home's most
impressive
room. It was big and square, and had a balcony that overlooked the river. On the yellow leather sofa, an overweight old woman with grey cropped hair and frameless, bifocal glasses was reading a book to Lucy, who was sitting on her knee. The book was called
The Big Red Bath
. Tom had never seen it before. He was about to ask Selena about it when she said, ‘Look, Audrey's brought books for the kids.' Tom noticed a pile of them on the floor at the old woman's feet. He took in Audrey's bright-red lace-up shoes with their funny, stitched ridges that reminded him of pastry round the edge of a pie-dish.

Audrey looked up and smiled. Lucy said, ‘Hi, Daddy Paddy-whack-whack.' Then they both turned back to the book. ‘Water on the floor, bubbles mount, the bath is starting to bob about!' Audrey recited. Joe was lying under the
rectangular
coffee table, holding an orange plastic gun that Tom did not recognise. Above him were two empty bottles of red wine and three full. Seven cheeses were artfully arranged on
bright-yellow
plates, which, Tom worked out, Selena must have
borrowed from the dining table. ‘I'm Butch Cassidy, Daddy,' said Joe. ‘And Clive's the Sundance Kid. Bang bang! Bang!'

A round-faced, bald young man in immaculate navy jeans and a white Aran jumper stood up and shook Tom's hand. ‘I'm Clive,' he said. ‘Twenty-nine, forensic pathologist. Nice to meet you. I hope you don't… you know, disapprove of… pretend shootings.' He nodded in Joe's direction. ‘I'm actually a pacifist!'

At that moment, Tom wasn't convinced he disapproved of real shootings. He had himself in mind as his first victim. This was intolerable. ‘Clive…?' He prompted, not because he cared what the man's surname was, but because he could see that he was expected to say something.

‘We've decided not to bother with surnames,' said Selena, ‘since the aim is for us all to be one big family. Actually, we were thinking, if this works out, maybe we should all change our names to a new name, you know, so that we'd all be called the same thing.'

‘Kilkenny,' said the third imitation relative, a teenage girl with dreadlocks, two nose rings in her left nostril and a Scottish accent. She was wearing a short leather skirt over patterned leggings, and big black boots. ‘I've always liked the name Kilkenny.'

‘This is Petra,' said Selena. ‘Don't mind Tom being silent and awkward, everyone. This whole thing was my idea, and he's a bit apprehensive. Aren't you, Tom?'

‘Well, no. I mean, I'm sure…' Tom began to mumble.

‘Maybe we should all introduce ourselves formally,' Petra suggested. ‘I mean, so far all we've done is chat. Maybe we should explain why we're all here, why we don't see our own families. Would that help, Tom?'

‘Erm, well, I'm fine, really, but, I mean…'

He couldn't concentrate, couldn't finish a sentence. In the background, softly, Audrey was whispering to Lucy, ‘
Rub-a
-dub-a-giggle, rub-a-dub-a-laugh, let's tell Mum about our big, red bath.'

‘I see my family,' said Clive. He turned to Selena. ‘We don't have to have ditched them, do we?'

Selena assured him, to Tom's relief, that the comprehensive shunning of one's original set of relatives was not a requirement.

Petra looked a bit upset, but said nothing.

‘If we start to talk about the various family problems we have, we might get dragged down into a bitchy, negative vibe,' said Audrey.

‘Good point,' said Clive. ‘I don't really want to bad-mouth anybody.'

‘You don't?' Selena grinned. ‘I want to badmouth almost everybody.' Audrey, Clive and Petra all laughed. ‘And you should hear Tom when he gets going. Who was it at work that you said deserved to have her brain diced and sold as dogfood?' There was more appreciative laughter.

Tom's eyeballs prickled. He felt dizzy, unsteady on his feet. Gillian Bate, and it was fishfood, not dogfood. ‘I… could you all excuse me a moment?' he said. He climbed the stairs to the top floor and lay down on the double bed in the master bedroom. When Selena appeared in the doorway, he groaned and rolled himself up in the yellow duvet. ‘See what a great dynamic there is between us?' she whispered energetically. ‘Do you see how they all totally accept me for what I am?'

‘Well, I'm not sure I do,' said Tom through the quilt. ‘I can't stand this. Get rid of them.'

There was no response. When Tom finally peeked out from under his shield of bedding, Selena was smiling bravely. ‘Look, I know this is weird, but can't you give it a chance?'

‘No! Has it occurred to you that you could lose your job? What if Brian Ford drives past and sees you using the show home to host your freakish cheese and wine party?'

‘If that happened, I'd just explain.'

‘And he'd listen and then he'd sack you!'

‘No, he wouldn't. Noone else could sell these houses as quickly as I can, and he knows it.'

‘You're deluded, if that's what you think.'

‘For God's sake! If I get sacked, I'll find another job. I'll pick up litter at the station with one of those long metal sticks with pincers on the end. I'll become a life coach. I'll start my own telephone sex business, telling lonely men what
underwear
I've got on. I'm a very resourceful person. We're not going to starve. Is that really what you're worried about? I'll have to get a new job anyway, once I've sold all the houses.'

‘You'll need a reference.'

‘What, for phone sex?'

‘Don't be ridiculous!'

‘I'm not. You should applaud me for having ideas noone else would have, not condemn me.'

‘You're not being fair. You'd never let me take a mad risk with my job.' Tom shivered, wondering if he had already done so. Johnny Eyebrows. It would be almost impossible to explain with a straight face, he saw that now. What had he been thinking of?

Selena's eyes widened. She stared at Tom as if he were crazy. ‘Of course I would, in a good cause. You hate your job. I've always thought you should take more risks.'

Tom sat up. ‘You have?'

‘Yes,' she said, as if it should have been obvious. ‘Now, stop being so unsociable and come and join in.' She swung out of the room.

Tom listened for her footsteps on the stairs. He heard nothing. The house was a new-build; Selena had told him it didn't even have floorboards. It had something more modern than floorboards under its carpets; Tom couldn't remember what, precisely. In his own house, he could always work out where Selena, Joe and Lucy were from the creaks and groans and echoes. Things were changing at a pace that was a little too fast for him. Since when, he wanted to know, had Selena viewed the risking of their respective livelihoods as such a lark, to be dismissed so lightly?

He wondered how much he could earn picking up litter at the station. Or perhaps he could be a gamekeeper, or fight forest fires, or work for the Red Cross. He wondered why he had never, until this moment, explored the
possibility
of leaving Phelps Corcoran Cummings. Was it because the company was so successful? When Tom told people he worked there, they were invariably impressed.

He heard Selena's voice in the lounge. ‘He'll be fine in a minute,' she said. He groaned. For a few seconds, caught up in his fantasy of freedom, he'd completely forgotten the three inconveniences downstairs. ‘Now, joking and my bitchy streak aside, I think Audrey's right,' said Selena. ‘We don't want to start laying into our blood relatives. They're irrelevant to this. So why don't we approach it from a more positive angle, and focus on us, the prospective new family? What are we each hoping to get out of it?'

Tom, who was hoping for just that – to get out of it, right out, out and away – heard a low, approving rumble from the others. They all liked Selena's idea. ‘Great,' she said. ‘That's a good way to start. We go round, one by one, and we all say what we want.'