The Secrets of Strangers

by Charity Norman

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Granny calmly. ‘Are you? Will you?’

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  At this point Mum spotted Sam listening with his mouth open, and her expression went blank. It was as though she’d closed a door in her face.

  ‘I’m not discussing my personal life with you, Patricia,’ she said. ‘And Sam doesn’t need to hear your sordid insinuations. Robert is a loyal friend. End of story.’

  Granny said hmm, chucking a pile of cutlery across the table. Usually Sam’s mother and grandmother chattered over a meal—like two budgerigars, his dad used to say—but this evening they were more like two angry cats. Sam was wolfing down his third helping when Granny started up the argument again.

  ‘You own Tyndale Farm now,’ she said. ‘Angus left it all to you. Not in trust for Sam. Just you.’

  Mum lifted one shoulder. ‘So?’

  ‘It’s been in the Ballard family for four generations, if you count Sam. Angus hoped Sam would take over from him one day.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I’m worried.’

  ‘Patricia, this really is none of your business. You were bought out long ago. I’ve got the mortgage payments to prove it.’

  Granny looked really upset. She put her knife and fork down on her plate before reaching out her hand to touch Mum’s sleeve.

  ‘Please, just be careful. That’s all I’m asking.’

  ‘Careful of what?’

  ‘Convolvulus.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ Mum snatched her arm away. ‘You seem to think I’m a brainless bimbo who can’t make decisions for myself.’

  ‘I think the exact opposite. I admire you, Harriet. I know you’re heartbroken to lose Angus, but you’re not the sort to be defined by widowhood and you’re more than capable of managing the Hamley House garden. I just don’t understand why that smiling assassin, Robert Lacey, is deliberately trying to undermine your confidence. I think it’s sinister.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to be running Tyndale Farm yourself? You never wanted to leave in the first place.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ Granny laughed aloud. ‘There’s a new one. Is this the gospel according to Mr Toothpaste?’

  Mum opened her mouth but shut it again without replying, and Sam knew why. That was exactly what Robert said about Granny. Good old Patricia, she never really gave up this place, did she?

  He listened to every word the two women said, and understood much more than they might have liked. It used to amaze him, the way adults could have what sounded like two different conversations at once—the farm and Hamley House—and yet really it was all about another thing altogether. Robert.

  •

  The following evening the man himself turned up, carrying two bottles of red wine and a cloud of what Sam now knows was ridiculously expensive aftershave. He strode into the kitchen on his long legs, sat and listened and tutted while Mum complained about Patricia being so patronising and controlling. At one stage he covered her hand with his. She had gardener’s hands: freckled, often a bit muddy. Short fingernails. Robert’s hands were large and hairy and … yeuch. How could she stand it? By the end of the first bottle she’d decided not to take the job at Hamley House. Halfway through the second, she agreed to see less of both Granny and Tammy.

  ‘They’re motivated by love,’ she said, sounding uncertain.

  Robert moved a little closer to her along the sofa.

  ‘Oh yes—of course they are! But they’ve each got their own agenda. Tammy struggles with jealousy. She can’t get over the way your life turned out, while she’s bitter and single and childless. She’s pretty loud, isn’t she?’

  ‘Um … I’d call her bubbly.’

  ‘Has to be the centre of attention. It’s all about her. She sees you as the foil to her flamboyance.’

  Mum was fiddling with her wedding ring. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And Patricia just cannot—will not—let go.’

  ‘You could be right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right. I’m always right.’ He stretched his arm along the back of the sofa so that his fingers touched the back of her neck. ‘You are what matters now.’

  Sam was on his way to bed when Robert remembered that he had to drive home, and he’d be well over the alcohol limit. Mum said that was no problem. They made up the bed in the spare room at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Can’t he get a taxi?’ asked Sam, as he watched the pair of them wrestling with a duvet cover and plumping up pillows. They were giggly. Two bottles of wine.

  ‘Much more fun if he stays, though,’ said Mum. ‘He can make some of his special pancakes for breakfast!’

  ‘Lacey’s gourmet stack,’ said Robert, and then they giggled even more. They fell about laughing.

  Hours after Sam had gone to bed, two sets of footsteps passed his door. Creaks. Whispering. Quite a while later he heard Robert cry out as though he’d been tickled. The sound made Sam feel horrible.

  When everything had gone quiet, he slid out of bed, fetched the Robert devil out of his cupboard, took the sock off its head and began to bash its two faces against the wall. Ten times. Twenty times. Bash, bash, bash, as hard as he possibly could.

  But the devil doll didn’t care at all. Neither of its faces would stop laughing.

  •

  He’s talking and he’s talking and he’s bloody talking like a maniac, and someone is finally listening. He’s telling Eliza his whole life story—not every detail, but a hell of a lot of it—and the more he talks, the more he remembers. He dredges for memories, sitting there with a gun in his hand and a phone clamped to his ear. He needs her to understand. He needs her to see how Robert slithered into the space where his father had been and poisoned Sam’s world.

  It’s as though the past is pushing itself out of a chrysalis, opening its wings to reveal all those patterns and colours that make a childhood: Dad’s boots crunching in the frost in the early mornings; his parents chuckling in the front of the car while he dozes on the back seat. A flying clay exploding into fragments, Dad shouting, Good shot, son! The snuggliness of lying between Snoops and Bouncer, the peaceful clanging sound of the Rayburn door. The blue-grey of a dead father’s face. Robert’s smile.

  Granny tried her best, but in the end she couldn’t help. The more they saw of Robert, the less they saw of her. He was coming around all the time, cooking meals and ‘staying in the spare bedroom’. Huh! Did they really think he couldn’t hear their voices through the wall? He didn’t want to know what they might be doing in there. He tried not to think about it.

  ‘He treated Mum like a princess at first,’ he tells Eliza. ‘Always saying she was talented and beautiful and unique. And the presents—bloody hell, you should have seen the presents! A bunch of roses every week. Poetry books. A mohair throw for her bed. He bought me things too. Stuff I really, really wanted, like a camera for my ninth birthday.’

  ‘That’s quite a gift for a child who’s not your own.’

  ‘Mm, and this was a digital one, back in the day when they weren’t in every phone. Poshest thing I’ve ever owned. He knew full well I was going through a photography-mad phase and I’d sell my soul for one of those. And I did sell my soul, because I had to make him a card to say thank you. Mum insisted I draw a picture and write at least three sentences, in legible handwriting. Almost killed me. It was like being invaded by presents. I know how those poor sods the Trojans felt when the wooden horse turned out to be full of crack troops.’

  That bloody camera. He still feels like throwing up when he remembers the stupid card he made, a goofy picture of a horse with the caption SUNDANCE KID. The horse looked as though it was on some serious drugs, but the writing inside was the most humiliating thing. Trying to write legibly was torture for Sam. Writing to thank Robert was triple torture.

  Dere Robut,

  Thank you for the camra. Its digtal which is grat. I will take a lot of fotos.

  Yours faythfly,
>
  Samuel John Ballard

  Robert laughed out loud at Sam’s stoned horse and stupid baby handwriting and bad spelling and general uselessness. Mum said, Sorry, he’s terribly dyslexic, top end of the scale, and he also has dysgraphia so his handwriting doesn’t reflect his intellect at all. Robert ruffled Sam’s hair and claimed to admire his boundless energy.

  ‘You’ve got the patience of a saint, Harriet,’ he told her. ‘You give this fellow every ounce of yourself, don’t you?’

  What a wanker. What a mealy-mouthed, evil snake.

  One night, Sam saw something that made him want to gouge his eyes out. He’d gone to bed—which took a while because he always strung out the rituals of teeth, pyjamas, reading, hugs—and after the lights were out he rolled around and fretted and his mind seemed to race. This happened most nights. He started thinking about an experiment he wanted to do with his camera, using the flash. He decided to nip downstairs and grab it. Mum wouldn’t mind, he was often up and down like a yo-yo. He’d left her watching telly by herself. She might make him some hot chocolate.

  He slid down the bannisters, trotted into the sitting room and skidded to a halt with a scream in his head. Mum wasn’t alone anymore. Robert must have parked in the lane and crept into their house. Mum was sitting in her usual armchair with one leg stretched out, toes pointed like a queen. Her skirt was all up around her waist. Robert was kneeling on the floor, kissing the arch of her foot with the whole of his mouth. She was laughing—low, slow laughter, not her usual giggle—hair all over her face in a happy tangle of curls. Robert’s pink stripy shirt was unbuttoned. Sam glimpsed the dark shadow of hair on his chest. He was making pretend growling noises as though he was eating her foot. Sam was gobsmacked. He couldn’t imagine what on earth they were playing at. He honestly thought they’d gone nuts.

  ‘Oh, Sam, darling!’ gasped Mum, when she caught sight of him. Her cheeks flushed crimson as she shot out of the chair. ‘What are you doing up? It’s after midnight!’

  There was his camera, on the mantelpiece. He darted in, grabbed it and scurried out again without a word, hating Robert’s deep laughter that seemed to chase him as he fled back upstairs and pulled the duvet over his head. He wished—wished—Robert would drop dead. You can’t unsee a scene like that. It’s still seared into his memory: Robert’s horrid mouth all over Mum’s tanned foot, and the weird way she was laughing. The musky-lavender-rum smell of Robert’s cologne was still lingering in the house the next morning—in fact he keeps getting whiffs of it now, years later, in Tuckbox. It’s on this phone he’s using, making him feel sick. It’s a snazzy phone, silver-shiny. Of course it is. Robert would have the best and flashiest. All bought on stolen money.

  Not long after the freaky foot incident, Robert came to live at Tyndale and all those lies about the spare bedroom went out of the window. He was quite openly sleeping in Dad’s bed, with his head on Dad’s pillow. His clothes were in Dad’s chest of drawers, his toothbrush was plonked into Dad’s mug. The house was full of Robert: his voice, his smell, his things, his rules. A thousand digital cameras wouldn’t ever in a million years make that okay.

  Robert moving in was the worst thing that had ever happened to Sam, apart from Dad dying. One day Mum and he were still a team: the two of them against the world. The next day Robert was making him eat mushrooms—he hated mushrooms—and enforcing bedtimes and chores. He reckoned Sam had run rings around his long-suffering mother for too long.

  ‘It’s our house,’ Sam protested to Mum when she was driving him to soccer. ‘Yours and mine. Not his! I don’t want him here.’

  ‘I know you don’t like change, Sammy.’

  ‘I don’t mind change. I just don’t like Robert.’

  She wouldn’t look at him. She kept on staring through the windscreen.

  ‘That’s because you’re still grieving for Dad. I am too. But Robert wants to make us happy. We make him happy. Poor man, he’s not had an easy life. His wife was cruel to him.’

  Tammy hit the roof when she heard he’d moved in. She drove straight down to the farm, bailed Mum up in the kitchen and told her she was making a catastrophic fucking mistake. Sam was under the table at the time, playing with the amazing Lego set Robert had given him. Pieces were scattered all across the floor.

  ‘Harriet, wake up and smell the fucking coffee!’ raged Tammy. ‘Can’t you see what he is?’

  ‘Actually I can. He’s a good man who’s been quietly carrying a candle for me for years.’

  Tammy pretended to stick her fingers down her throat. ‘Oh, puh-lease. Do me a favour. That sleazeball?’

  ‘It happens to be true, Tam.’

  ‘Loving you from afar! Bring me the sick bucket.’

  It took Mum a while to answer. She was finding mugs in the dishwasher and filling the kettle.

  ‘That’s right, loving me from afar. His marriage was a nightmare.’

  ‘Yeah, it was—for Connie! She’s only just getting her mojo back.’

  ‘Connie’s not a victim. She’s a manipulative, nasty woman.’ Mum was putting coffee powder into mugs. ‘Robert and I have both been given a second chance at happiness. I don’t think Angus would want us to throw it away. I think he’d be giving us his blessing.’

  ‘The man’s a narcissist, Harriet! A sociopath. I can see straight through him.’

  ‘With your X-ray eyes.’

  ‘How d’you know it isn’t Sam he’s really after? I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to have kiddie porn on his computer.’

  ‘Oh dear God. Seriously?’ Mum slammed the coffee jar down on the bench. ‘Listen to yourself. Just listen to yourself.’

  Tammy was picking up her car keys. Her voice had gone flat and quiet. ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘I do, thank you.’

  ‘Good. Great. Marvellous.’

  But Tammy obviously didn’t think it was marvellous at all. She didn’t stay for her cup of coffee. She clenched her jaw and said she was leaving and don’t worry, she wouldn’t be back in a hurry. She crouched down to plant a kiss on top of Sam’s head, muttering poor little bastard, and then she slammed out of the house.

  Sam crawled out from under the table. He ran to the door to watch her car headlights as she drove away. He felt lonely.

  •

  As soon as Robert had officially moved in, Granny stopped visiting Tyndale. Amir the cat was run over by a lorry, and that seemed to break her heart all over again. It broke Sam’s too. Amir had been his friend. They wrapped him in a sheet and buried him in Granny’s back garden. They both cried as they filled in the hole. When Granny collected Sam after school—which was less and less often in those days—she looked sadder than he’d ever seen her. She’d lost her sparkle. She seemed to float around like a ghost in her empty doll’s house.

  ‘Why don’t you come and visit us anymore?’ he asked her.

  ‘Well, you know. I don’t want to get in the way.’

  ‘Is it because of Robert?’

  ‘Winds of change,’ she muttered hoarsely, sipping her brandy. ‘Winds of change, Sammy. They’re blowing. And by golly they’re cold.’

  •

  She married him. Of course she did. He was eleven years old and their bloody pageboy, all dressed up and on display for a ceremony he was dreading. Mum kept asking him if he was happy. He kept saying no, he wasn’t—to which she’d smile sadly, promising he’d understand when he was older.

  She’d suggested a quiet wedding, but Robert wouldn’t hear of it. Harriet, you deserve a party! It was years before Sam worked out that his father’s life insurance paid for his widow’s lavish wedding. Granny booked a holiday to India so that she could avoid the whole thing. Tammy wasn’t even invited. It was mostly Robert’s friends who showed up.

  Sam had to do a reading in the registry office: a soppy poem about love. He rehearsed it about a million times but when his big moment came he messed up all the most deep-and-meaningful words, missed out whole lines and gabbled s
o fast it didn’t make any sense at all. This was nothing to do with dyslexia. No. He couldn’t read it because he wanted to tear out the page and spit and shout the filthiest words he knew. He could feel a hundred pairs of eyes fixed on him as he stumbled through it. He could feel Mum’s embarrassment.

  Robert winked at him as he trotted back to his seat with his cheeks on fire. Sam was scowling to stop himself from crying. Robert’s grin never slipped at all.

  The reception was in the ballroom at Jackson’s Lodge, filled with round tables with white cloths. There was a dance floor and a band playing jazz. Mum was wearing a floaty blue dress that matched her eyes, her hair pinned up in a bun on the back of her head and spangled with blue flowers, lots of little curls falling around her face. She looked like a summer’s day. Robert wore a silk waistcoat in the same blue as her dress. He gave a speech in his deep voice, choking up when he mentioned Angus, the finest friend a man could ever have. He finished by turning to Mum. I’ve made a few false starts, but today I married the love of my life. He took her face between his two hands, smiled into her eyes, and kissed her. Everyone in the room went awww! as though they were watching a cute cat video. Sam didn’t. He was thinking about Dad’s shotgun, which was in Mr Appleton’s safe. He imagined shooting Robert with both barrels. He imagined his enemy falling face first into his own wedding cake.

  Most of the guests drank a lot and either ignored Sam or asked stupid questions—And what do you think of your new stepdad?—to which Sam knew he was not allowed to reply: I think he killed my actual dad, I hate his guts and I’m imagining how fun it would be to shoot him. For most of the evening he wandered around by himself, taking photos with his precious camera and feeling like a total goon in his pageboy outfit. People kept slapping Robert on the back and telling Mum what a great bloke she’d landed, but Sam felt as though there was something else going on at that wedding. Something fake. Something mean. He stopped to listen to a loud group, yelling to one another across their table—they’d overdone the bubbly and were wrecked. Is the merry widow knocked up? Five years older than him, what a cougar! I reckon our Rob’s after the money.