Everything and Nothing. Araminta Hall

      Contents

       Title Page

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Begin Reading. . .

      Acknowledgements

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Begin Reading. . .

      The tube spat Agatha into one of those areas where people used to lie about their postcodes. Although why anyone would ever have been ashamed to live here was beyond Agatha’s understanding. The streets were long and wide, with trees standing as sentry guards outside each Victorian house. The houses themselves towered out of the ground with splendour and grace, as if they had risen complete when God created the world in seven days, one of Agatha’s favourite childhood stories. They were stern and majestic, with their paths of orange bricks like giant cough lozenges, their stained-glass window panels in the front doors reflecting light from the obligatory hallway chandeliers, the brass door fittings and the little iron gates which looked as correct as a bow tie at a neck. They even had those fantastic bay windows, which looked to Agatha like a row of proud pregnant bellies. You never saw anything like this where she had been brought up.

      The address on the piece of paper in Agatha’s hand led her to a door with an unusual bell. It was a hard, round, metallic ball which you pulled out of an ornate setting and was probably as old as the house. Agatha liked the bell; both for its audacity in daring to protrude and its undaunted ability to survive. She pulled the ball and a proper tinkling sound rang somewhere inside.

      As she waited, Agatha tried to get into character. She practised her smile and told herself to remember to keep her hand movements small and contained. It wasn’t that she couldn’t be this person or even that this person was a lie, it was just that she had to remember who this person was.

      The man who opened the door looked ruffled, like he’d had a hard day. A girl was crying in the background and he was holding a boy who looked too old to be sucking on the bottle clamped in his mouth. The house felt cloyingly warm and she could see the kitchen windows were all steamed up. Coats and shoes and even a bike lay across the hall.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ said Christian Donaldson, as she supposed him to be, ‘we’re in a bit of chaos. But nothing terminal yet.’

      ‘Don’t worry.’ Agatha had learnt that people like the Donaldsons secretly, or maybe not even secretly, liked to appear chaotic.

      He held out his spare hand. ‘Anyway, Annie, I presume . . . ’

      ‘Agatha actually.’ His mistake unnerved her and she tried to save herself from instant rejection. ‘Well, Aggie really.’

      ‘Shit, sorry, my fault. I thought my wife said . . . she’s not home yet.’ His flustered response reassured her. They were just one of those families. He stood back. ‘Anyway, come in, sorry, I’m keeping you standing on the doorstep.’

      The wailing girl was sitting at the kitchen table and the kitchen itself looked as though a small and mutinous army had attacked every cupboard, spilling all their contents onto every available surface.

      ‘Daddy,’ screamed the girl from the table, ‘it’s not fair. Why do I have to eat my broccoli when Hal doesn’t have to eat anything at all?’

      Agatha waited with the child for the answer, but none came. She hated the way adults found silence sufficient. She looked at the man whom she hoped would employ her and saw a thin film of sweat on his face which gave her the confidence to speak. ‘What’s your favourite colour?’

      The girl stopped crying and looked at her. It was too interesting a question to ignore. ‘Pink.’

      Predictable, thought Agatha. Her daughters were going to like blue. ‘Well, that’s lucky because I’ve got a packet of Smarties in my bag and I don’t like the pink ones, so if you eat that one tiny piece of broccoli I’ll give you all my pink Smarties.’

      The girl looked stunned. ‘Really?’

      Agatha turned to Christian Donaldson, who she was relieved to see smiling. ‘Well, if that’s okay with your dad.’

      He laughed. ‘What’s a few Smarties amongst friends?’

      Christian couldn’t stand the girls who moved into his house to look after his children. He wondered what he looked like to this one. He wanted to explain that he was never usually home at this time, that it was only the result of a massive row he’d had with Ruth at the weekend. Something about his children and responsibility and the fact that she’d be sacked if she took another day, all of which simply boiled down to how bloody brilliantly self-sacrificing she was and what a selfish shit he was. Besides, after a full day of childcare he felt like his kids had flung him against a wall and he was too tired to think of anything to say. And where the fuck was Ruth anyway?

      The girl didn’t want tea but she did allow Betty to lead her into the part of the sitting room overrun by plastic toys. Christian pretended to busy himself in the kitchen, shifting piles of mess which Ruth would properly home later.

      Other people in his house always shrunk it for Christian. It became all it was in the eyes of guests. Two small rooms knocked together at the front and a kitchen unimaginatively extended into the side return. Overcrowded bedrooms and a space squeezed into the roof. It felt like a fat man who had eaten too much at lunch, gout ridden and uncomfortable.

      When he had been fucking Sarah they had always met at her flat, for obvious reasons. But that had been worse. As he had lain on her creaking double bed, he would feel old and foolish surrounded by posters for bands he didn’t even recognise, stuck onto walls whose colour he knew hadn’t been chosen by anyone who lived there. He would find himself perversely longing for the subtle shades and carefully crafted beauty of his own house. And what a trick for his mind to play because he had so hated Ruth when she had cried over builders running late or been more excited by the colour of a tile than the touch of his hand.

      There had been a park bench which had also reminded him of his wife during that time. Predictably, because don’t all affairs need a park bench, he would sometimes meet Sarah there and it had an inscription which read: For Maude, who loved this park as much as I loved her. He had imagined an old man whittling the letters to make the words, tears on his gnarled face, a lifetime of good memories in his head. All of which was of course crap as no one had good memories any more and the bench had no doubt been gouged by some council machine.

      Not that it would have been enough to stop him anyway. Ruth had been so easy to fool it had almost cancelled out the excitement, and this annoyance had spurred him on. He had always worked unpredictable hours and his job in television had often led him far from home, so staying away over night was commonplace in their marriage. More than anything though he had felt vindicated. He told himself that Ruth had always smothered him, that she had repressed his true nature, that his real