The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets

by Sophie Hannah

  He plants his knees on either side of my legs and kneels over me. ‘Right!’ He rubs his hands together. ‘Let’s see what turns you on.’ I remind myself that this is an important ritual, and try not to think about how ridiculous the scene would appear to an outside observer.

  Edwin puts two of his fingers inside me, then three. He then commences an activity which I can only describe as rummaging around. There is a distracted, straining expression on his face, as if he thinks he might have left his car keys somewhere near my cervix. It is so absurd that I cannot even scream or moan convincingly, so I remain silent and just stare at him, bemused. Can he really believe that this is what one is supposed to do?

  After a while he gives up rummaging (no car keys – oh well!), extracts his hand, leans back and sighs. ‘That didn’t seem to be going anywhere,’ he says. Then his eyes light up. He bounces off me and lands cross-legged to my right. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘Do you masturbate?’

  Marvellous. Absolutely bloody marvellous. If I say no, he will attribute it to spinsterly frigidity. He will begin to wonder if I collect lace doilies. If I say yes, he’ll think I’m a sex-crazed nymphomaniac who doesn’t get serviced often enough by real men. I opt for what I hope is a compromise answer. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ he says.

  ‘What?’ Oh, shit.

  ‘Masturbate.’

  ‘Er…no!’ I sit up.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because… Look, no offence, Edwin, but I hardly know you.’

  ‘So?’ He smiles at me indulgently, as if he might be thinking that I am charming but difficult. ‘All right, you don’t have to. Why don’t you tell me what your favourite sexual fantasy is and we can act it out, if you want.’

  ‘I don’t want.’ Heat behind my eyelids tells me that I might be about to burst into tears.

  ‘What? What have I said?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s just… Look, you’re probably going to think I’m a prude, but I don’t care! The whole point about masturbation is that you do it when you’re on your own! And the whole point of sexual fantasies is that they exist in your head and nowhere else! If you start trying to act them out it turns into a pantomime. It’s ludicrous!’

  Edwin looks peeved. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ve done my best with you, but…I’m going to have to ask you: what’s really going on here?’

  ‘What?’ This I was not expecting.

  ‘You’re tense as fuck, and you seem determined to…close down all the avenues of possibility. I’m going to have to go to the bog for a sly wank at this rate. What the fuck’s the matter with you? Come on, out with it.’

  I stand up and dress as quickly as I can, my skin buzzing. Edwin doesn’t bother. He puts his hands behind his head and leans back, stretching out like an artist’s model. Once I have the protection of clothing, I sit down on the bed beside him. ‘I had a… bad experience recently,’ I say. It is true, and I suppose there is no reason why I shouldn’t tell Edwin, but I am alarmed by how low I am prepared to sink. Do I really intend to use the most terrible trauma of my life so far (and hopefully ever) as a way of getting Edwin off my case, rather than admit that, even in a brilliant mood and in the best of all possible worlds, I am simply not the sort of person who masturbates in front of live audiences and/or turns my sexual fantasies into am-dram productions?

  ‘What, were you raped or something?’ Edwin asks.

  ‘No,’ I say crossly. ‘Why does it always have to be that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Everyone is always getting raped! Any time someone has some bad event in their past, it always turns out to be rape. It’s such a cliché. It’s almost like, if you haven’t been raped, shut up – you’ve got nothing to complain about.’

  Edwin shakes his head. ‘You’re a real nut case. You sound as if you’re jealous of rape victims.’

  ‘No, but at least their trauma is all in one…register. It’s horrible and grim and vile and nothing else. Whereas what happened to me is too ridiculous to be considered properly tragic. Except for me it is tragic. And if I tell you, you’d better not laugh.’

  ‘Tell me, tell me!’ Edwin rubs his hands together. The prospect of hearing about my misery has cheered him up.

  I know I should be offended by his manifest glee, but I’m not. Rather, I am encouraged by his eagerness to hear my story. He wants to join in, which pleases me. The worst thing about suffering is the loneliness of it. Noone ever seems to care enough. ‘There was this man. We were…going out, I suppose, although the relationship hadn’t got very far. Everything was fine, better than fine.’

  ‘Was it lurrrve?’

  ‘Yes. On my part, anyway. And he said he loved me too. He was the perfect gentleman. He treated me as if I was some precious, fragile object he was afraid might break…’

  Edwin makes a loud noise, an impression of a buzzer. ‘Sorry, I’ll have to stop you there. Do you mean in bed?’

  ‘Everywhere. He opened doors for me, held my coat out for me – you know like waiters in restaurants do?’ Edwin nods, frowning. ‘He insisted on paying for everything…and he had a real thing about getting to places before me. So if we were meeting in a pub or a restaurant, he’d always make sure to be there half an hour early. I asked him about it once and he said he’d never leave a woman waiting on her own…’

  ‘…in a rough den of iniquity like a pub!’ Edwin rolls his eyes. ‘The guy sounds like a twat.’

  ‘What?’ I’m puzzled. ‘No, this is the good bit. This bit I’m talking about now, that was when everything was fine. Everything was brilliant.’

  ‘No it wasn’t. Why did he think you couldn’t put your coat on, or sit in a pub on your own? You’re not some ethereal waif. You’re an opinionated, loud-mouthed ball-breaker.’

  ‘Great. Thanks,’ I say crossly. I do not want to be that, if I am. There is a love story in my head, albeit a desolate one. But its protagonists are not a loud-mouthed ball-breaker and a twat.

  I doubt Edwin has been properly in love. I can tell, from his willingness to draw attention to himself. He is one of the breezy untouched. He is not like those of us who walk around with targets on our chests, desperately trying to cover them up, living in fear of the arrow. No, Edwin has no idea how it feels to meet someone and feel that instant tug, that flash of connection as you stare at what you suddenly realise is your idea of physical perfection.

  Objectively there is no such thing as physical perfection, of course, but each of us has our own private definition. And when we meet it in human form we are unrescuable. A previously strong, secure person can be ruined by nothing but a face, or a body.

  Not me, though. It was more than the right face that did for me (though the face was right – that square smile, those teeth one could easily imagine tearing into a hunk of flesh in the jungle, even when the attached body was wearing a suit, sitting in a Michelin-starred restaurant). It was the wooing, the well-organised chasing, the launching of what could only be called a campaign to win me over, one that spanned nearly a whole year and involved meals out that cost four hundred pounds and a necklace and earrings that cost even more than that. I wasn’t used to it or prepared for it. It isn’t the sort of thing that happens to women like me in the normal run of things. It might happen to ethereal waifs rather more often.

  ‘Tell me about in bed, then,’ says Edwin. ‘Go on. Was he a missionary man?’

  ‘Yeah. It was a bit odd, actually. I think he tried to be gentle with me, but… he was a bit too gentle. I mean, his kisses always started off light and sort of… stayed light. It was like having your mouth stroked by butterfly wings. There was never any sense of things accelerating or… becoming more urgent. He certainly never allowed himself to get carried away. It was like he was thinking, Right, I’ll do this now, I’ll do that now. And the way he touched me… his touch was so careful and almost weightless, almost imperceptible. It didn’t seem at all spontaneous. You know those bits in films where Bruce Willis or someone is tr
ying to defuse a bomb, and there are lots of different-coloured wires and he has to handle them so delicately or the whole place will blow up? It was like that. But the funny thing was, he kept saying, “I feel as if I’m being too rough with you.” I kept telling him he wasn’t, but privately I was thinking What? How can you possibly feel as if you’re being rough when you’re barely allowing your fingers to brush against me? I mean, did he think I was made of eggshells or something?’ It is a relief to let all this pour out, finally. I haven’t even told Susan and Susan, but I can tell Edwin and it won’t matter, because he’s only Edwin.

  He groans, and covers his face with his hands. ‘Don’t tell me – you thought he was loving and sensitive.’

  ‘Yeah, I did. I was quite…touched, I suppose, even though physically his moves were much too tentative to have any real impact. But noone had ever treated me like a delicate flower before.’

  ‘Of course not, because you’re a harridan! You’re a shrew-bag.’

  I feel it would be demeaning to point out to Edwin that ,even though I am opinionated, I still crave romance. I am still keen for men to be willing to sacrifice everything for me. I can’t tell him this, though, or about the compliments: my clear eyes, my smooth skin, my hands. There is absolutely nothing beautiful or remarkable about my hands, yet even they attracted lavish praise.

  ‘The guy sounds fucked in the head to me. He likes his women nice and helpless. He’s a wife-beater waiting to happen.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ There is, perhaps, more to Edwin Toseland than I realised. If only his mother’s bedroom were not so hairy and didn’t smell of a hamster’s toilet.

  ‘The fairer sex are a fucking nightmare – any sensible bloke knows that. Only the screw-ups who can’t handle reality put women on pedestals as the embodiment of purity and innocence, or some such shite. Show a man like that a real woman and he turns into a frothing-at-the-mouth psycho. Oooh – is that what happened?’ Edwin leans towards me, eager for the rest of the story.

  ‘He is married,’ I say, though I decided a few moments ago not to mention this.

  ‘So you were a mistress. Goody! Well, go on, tell me. I’ve often wondered.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do wife-beaters beat their mistresses as well?’

  ‘I don’t know that he is a wife-beater. I hope he is.’ To admit this is liberating. I would never say it to anybody else, but Edwin, being himself, is in no position to disapprove. I feel quite safe.

  ‘Because then you’d be able to label him a grade A shitbird. Nothing that went wrong would be your fault,’ says Edwin.

  ‘Yes!’ I am amazed that he understands.

  ‘And never mind his poor missus, being beaten to a pulp every day of her life.’

  ‘No. Never mind her.’ We grin at one another.

  ‘So what happened, for fuck’s sake?’

  ‘It was his birthday. I couldn’t bear the thought of not getting him a present, even though I thought he might be annoyed if I sent one to his house, so in the end I decided to send it to his work.’

  ‘What does Dickhead do?’

  ‘He’s a fireman.’ But he is also writing a book about the history of the village where he grew up. And I’ve seen him in uniform, and with a pen in his hand, frowning, leaning over his notebook. And his voice is both hard and soft in a way that’s impossible to describe. I hate the idea of trying to sum up why I was so drawn to him, but I try nonetheless, and suspect that the answer lies in the precise ratio of sensitivity to toughness.

  ‘Fireman! The sort of job you choose if you’re worried about the size of your dick. Or if you’re gay and don’t want to admit it.’

  ‘Why are you so against him?’ I ask. ‘I mean, you keep saying he’s a psycho and a dickhead and a wife-beater, but you don’t even know what happened yet.’

  ‘I know he’s fucked you over. I’m just waiting to hear the details. Well?’

  I sigh. ‘We once had this conversation about baths. I said I’d never dream of having a bath in just water. I always put oil or bubbles or something in, something smelly…’

  ‘Of course! Plain water! Pah!’

  ‘He said he never put anything in the bath. He said he didn’t know they did bubble bath and stuff like that for men. So for his birthday I sent him – I sent it to the fire station – what I thought was a nice bottle of bubble bath for men. I mean, it looked all masculine, the bottle was kind of dark and the letters on the label were in a sort of macho font. I made sure it wasn’t at all girly.’ Edwin is shaking his head despondently. ‘It was from that range “The Tub”. Do you know it?’

  ‘Yeah. I might even have some. I have, in fact. At home.’

  Rabbit cage flavour, I think to myself. I stop, to check that I feel reasonably all right. I do. I have succeeded in telling the story, so far, without feeling it, without reliving it. The crucial thing is not to picture the scene: me strolling along the aisle in Sainsbury’s, picking up bottle after bottle, unscrewing cap after cap, comparing scent with scent. I was so determined to choose the perfect one. I considered smell, packaging, cream versus foam versus oil, suitability for his skin type (rough, dry). I consulted the shop assistants, and gossiped with them too, telling them the present was for someone special. I cannot stand to look back and see the old me, the innocent, hopeful Joanna, dawdling between the counters, not knowing what is about to happen to her.

  I take a deep breath. ‘A couple of days later, there’s a ring at the doorbell. I go and answer it, and it’s him. I smile, but he looks awful, his eyes are sort of dead. And he says nothing; he just slaps me across the face really hard and walks away.’

  ‘Aha!’

  There is a detail I cannot bring myself to tell Edwin. Before he turned and left, he stood still for a few seconds and watched me stagger backwards, clutching the side of my face. I steadied myself and was about to speak, and it was then that he turned and marched away, his hands in his pockets. He waited and watched deliberately, to check that he had hurt me enough, as much as he’d hoped to.

  ‘I spent the next couple of days frantically trying to get in touch with him…’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ says Edwin. ‘You bought him a thoughtful gift, he slapped you across the face – of course, you’d be keen to track him down.’

  ‘I never got to speak to him,’ I say sadly. ‘He was determined to avoid me, and he succeeded.’

  ‘But you couldn’t stand to do nothing. That’s your Achilles heel. You steam in and fuck things up even more. I’m the same.’

  ‘I couldn’t bear not understanding what had made him turn on me. I had to know. So I rang his best friend Dan, who’d introduced us in the first place. Dan’s a colleague of mine at the lab. It was at his party…Anyway, he wouldn’t talk to me at first, but I kept on at him and…well, I found out. And it was so ridiculous, I could hardly believe it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He thought I was taking the piss out of him for being fat.’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘Because the bath oil said “The Tub” on it. You know, like, tubby. He thought I’d chosen it because I thought he was fat. But he wasn’t, he isn’t. He’s got a bit of a beer belly, I suppose, but nothing serious. I never thought of him as fat; it just never crossed my mind. But when Dan told me, I remembered all the times he’d described himself as “lardy” and out of shape. Obviously he had more of a hang-up about it than I realised.’

  Edwin scratches his testicles. ‘The guy’s a fucking freakshow.’

  ‘I thought he was the love of my life. I still think he might be.’

  ‘He isn’t. Trust me, you’re not that pathetic. He’s made you pathetic, temporarily. You’ll snap out of it.’

  ‘I know it sounds wet and ridiculous, but I felt as if we were destined to be together, like Heathcliff and Cathy or something.’ My one true love, my other half. A symbol, a bad idea. But nobody else has ever pursued me so determinedly. Noone will again. I took the highest opinion of me on record and
dragged it down as low as it would go. I must be the worst kind of vandal. Edwin looks unconvinced. ‘Heathcliff had a bad temper too,’ I add defensively. ‘He hanged kittens.’

  Edwin, who I know believes Wuthering Heights to be overrated because of its reliance, for narrative purposes, on bad weather conditions, says, ‘Jo, this guy isn’t “the rocks beneath”. He’s just a twat.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Anyway, once I knew the truth, I was a total wreck. I couldn’t stand the thought that I’d hurt him when it was the last thing I wanted to do. I loved him.’ The worst kind of pain is to know that you’ve hurt someone you love. It can never be undone, which makes you all the more desperate to try. You would give anything to have been hurt, rather than to have done the hurting. ‘I wrote him a long letter explaining that I only wanted to buy him something really nice, and I honestly didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘And did the fuckwit reply?’

  This is hard. It’s like sticking a needle into a scab and making it bleed. ‘Well…this is, in a way, the most awful part. A few days later, he sent back the bubble bath, with a note that said, “If you kept the receipt, you might be able to get your money back”.’ I say this casually, as if it is just any old phrase. Edwin cannot know that these fourteen words dominate my waking life, that often I also dream about them. Fourteen utterly mundane yet impossibly mysterious words, stuck in my mind like stringy meat between teeth, impossible to dislodge.

  ‘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.’