He sighs. ‘Lindsay, I always believed you. I just…I wanted out. I couldn’t see a way to extricate myself – you were so clingy. So I…’
I am no longer listening to him. My proof, my precious evidence: Nathan has made it worthless with a few casual words. I feel as if he’s shot me in the gut.
I couldn’t believe my luck when Greg told me. He hadn’t been planning to, he said, but then I was honest with him so he decided he ought to be honest back. When I finally decided, months after he started pursuing me, to tell him about Nathan, he admitted he’d first noticed me one afternoon long before we met. He hadn’t mentioned it, in case I was embarrassed by his having witnessed my distress. He told me he’d thought I was beautiful and wished he could cheer me up, stop me crying. His sister had had her first baby that morning, he said, and he was so happy that he wanted everyone else to be happy too. Especially a woman as stunning as me.
That was when I started to realise that there was hope, that I could finish my unfinished business with Nathan. I had proof. I could exonerate myself. After that, I let Greg kiss me, though I wouldn’t go all the way with him. I won’t, not until my mind is free of Nathan.
‘Did you do it deliberately?’ I ask. ‘Last August. You suggested the venue. “Betty’s in Harrogate”, you said. Did you know there were two in…the Harrogate area? Did you hope I’d go to the wrong one?’
‘Course not. I was going to tell you, if you turned up, that it was over. Or rather, that it couldn’t start. I’m married, Lindsay. I’ve got kids.’
‘But I didn’t turn up.’ The truth settles over me slowly, like a fine mist that penetrates to my bones. ‘And you were relieved. Of course you were. And when I rang you later, distraught because I’d missed you, you decided it’d be easier to blame me. I told you I’d waited for two hours, panicking and desperate, trying to get you on your switched-off mobile, before it occurred to me to ask a waitress if there was another Betty’s in Harrogate. Do you know what she said?’
‘Lindsay, what’s the point of this?’
‘She said, “Not in Harrogate, no. But there’s the one at Harlow Carr, just outside town. And I raced back to my car, drove there at a hundred miles an hour…’
‘I’m not proud of my behaviour,’ Nathan interrupts me.
‘…and you’d gone. And when I phoned you to explain, you savaged me. You said I’d stood you up, and when I told you my story, you called me a liar. You said you didn’t want anything to do with someone who could lie so easily.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Nathan opens a menu to avoid having to look at me. While he offers me his apology, he is looking at the words ‘Fat Rascal’ and ‘Apple and Cinnamon Pancake’. An enlightened person would choose to believe that that didn’t necessarily invalidate his apology.
‘Someone who could lie so easily,’ I repeat. ‘You were describing yourself. You don’t want anything to do with yourself.’
‘Must we drag this out?’ Nathan asks irritably.
I say, ‘I came to tell you that I’m healing.’
‘Have you been ill?’ he asks.
‘I pitied you when I thought you didn’t believe me. And, since it now turns out that you did, I pity you for the lack of self-esteem that allows you to harm yourself by lying to me and rejecting my love. You can treat me as if I’m worthless if you want, but that doesn’t make me worthless. I don’t have to internalise your attitude to me.’
Nathan mutters, ‘You could do worse.’
‘I’m lovable and valuable,’ I tell him. I wait for a sense of inner peace to suffuse me. I’m sure it will happen soon.
‘And I’m not normally a liar,’ Nathan snaps. ‘In fact, I can’t think of any other significant lies I’ve told in my adult life. I was…so desperate to get rid of you, Lindsay.’ He shrugs. ‘Maybe it’d do you good to…internalise someone else’s view of you once in a while, or whatever the mumbo-jumbo terminology is. You might end up behaving more normally.’
All he had to do was accept that he was a liar. That was all.
‘I want to show you something,’ I tell him.
‘Where? What?’
‘Come on.’
I am not at all enlightened. It isn’t going to work. It only works for people like my psychotherapist – calm people.
Nathan follows me outside, around the back of the building. When we get to the right door, I pull a key out of my pocket and unlock it. ‘Where are we going?’ he asks.
‘There’s a flight of steps. Be careful. You go first.’
‘Where are we…? Lindsay, it’s dark. Is this really necessary? I can’t see a thing. I don’t care if you’ve got forty people waiting down here to tell me how lovable and valuable you are. I still…’
I cut him off by saying, ‘Do you still smoke?’
‘Yeah, why?’
‘You’ve got your lighter on you?’
‘Yeah,’ he says.
‘When we get to the bottom of the steps, spark up the flame. That way you’ll be able to see what I want to show you.’
In the dim glow of the small flame, he surveys the room, the large pile of sacks in one corner. ‘Greg and I come here,’ I say. ‘When the gardens are closed. Those sacks are comfortable to lie on.’ Greg made a copy of the key for me. He calls this ‘our place’, says it’ll do for now, until we move in together.
‘Am I supposed to be jealous?’ asks Nathan. ‘I’m not. Good luck to you and Greg. I hope you’ll be happy together. Can I go now?’
‘Do you know what’s in the sacks?’ I say. ‘Fertiliser. Tons of the stuff. For the gardens. And see there?’ Against one wall are dozens of containers full of petrol. ‘For the lawnmowers,’ I explain, walking towards him. ‘It’s a bit odd, isn’t it? We’re directly under Betty’s. You’d think they wouldn’t be so stupid as to store fertiliser and petrol under a busy café. It’s an explosion waiting to happen.’
Nathan opens his mouth, says nothing. I am quick: I grab the lighter from his hand. The cellar goes dark. I hear him running to the steps. ‘Don’t bother,’ I tell him. ‘I locked the door.’
He can’t see where I am. While he screams, pleading with me, I pick up a canister of petrol, open it, and start to pour it over the sacks of fertiliser. When they’re soaked, I flick the lighter with my thumb. A bright flare; heat. Terrible heat. And a glow rising from my body, blazing in the dark. I am the most enlightened person in the world.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people: Jenny Geras, Adele Geras, Dan Jones, Morgan White, Peter Straus, Nat Jansz, Mark Ellingham, Ray French, Tom Palmer, James Nash, Suzie Crookes, Susan Richardson, Chris Gribble, Michael Schmidt
About the Author
SOPHIE HANNAH is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous psychological thrillers, which have been published in 27 countries and adapted for television, as well as The Monogram Murders, the first Hercule Poirot novel authorized by the estate of Agatha Christie.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Sophie Hannah
Little Face
The Wrong Mother
The Truth-Teller’s Lie
The Dead Lie Down
The Cradle in the Grave
The Other Woman’s House
The Orphan Choir
Kind of Cruel
The Monogram Murders
The Carrier
Woman with a Secret
A Game for All the Family
Closed Casket
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE FANTASTIC BOOK OF EVERYBODY’S SECRETS. Copyright © 2008 by Sophie Hannah. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been
granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
The Octopus Nest won first prize in the 2003 Daphne du Maurier Festival Short Story Competition.
Originally published in 2008 (and as an eBook in 2011) by Sort Of Books, PO Box 18678, London, NW3 2FL.
EPub Edition OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780062562098
Print ISBN: 9780062562111
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