The Secrets of Strangers

A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick

Charity Norman

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781911630418
• eBook ISBN:
  9781760872007
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction
• Index: Literature

From the authr of Richard and Judy Book Club pick After The Fall comes a gripping and moving novel, perfect if you love books by Jodi Picoult.

'Tautly plotted, gripping and emotional' - Clare Mackintosh, bestselling author of After the End

A regular weekday morning veers drastically off-course for a group of strangers whose paths cross in a London café - their lives never to be the same again when an apparently crazed gunman holds them hostage. But there is more to the situation than first meets the eye and as the captives grapple with their own inner demons, the line between right and wrong starts to blur.

Will the secrets they keep stop them from escaping with their lives?

Shortlisted for 'best novel' in the 2021 Ngaio Marsh Awards

TWENTY-NINE

Sam

It took years for Robert to break down his mother and rebuild her in his own image, but he seemed to enjoy the journey. He liked to be God.

Selling poor Bouncer and Snoops into slavery seemed to be a decisive victory for him. He got away with it and sowed the seed in Mum’s mind that her brain might be going the same way as her father’s. From then on he began to do pretty much whatever he wanted. He was still keeping up his Santa Claus act, but the devil began to show its pointed teeth. And for every incident Sam saw, every nasty comment he heard, there must have been a hundred that he didn’t.

The practical changes came first. The whole house was redecorated, the furniture exchanged for newer, fancier stuff. It wasn’t Sam and Harriet’s house anymore; it was Robert’s. Pictures and ornaments ended up collecting cobwebs in the old milking shed, replaced by arty photos taken by Robert’s trendy friends. Photographs of Dad or Granny were swapped for ones with Robert in them. He was photogenic, all right: white teeth, broad shoulders, that crinkly-eyed smile Aunt Monique used to drool over. He installed a snazzy chef’s kitchen. Out with the old, in with the new. Out went the shabby cabinets with their peeling blue paint and drawers that stuck; out went the comfy yellow armchairs and the rag rug Sam had played on since he was a baby. In came stainless steel: a vast fridge, two sinks with a weird kind of tap like the proboscis of a giant insect. Black marble slabs covered all the surfaces, just like a morgue. The wall into the pantry was knocked down, making it all open-plan. Granny nearly fainted when she dropped by. She kept whispering hideous, utterly hideous under her breath.

Mum protested too, because the renovations involved an increase on the mortgage. She lost the argument. Of course she did. Remortgaging Tyndale Farm was part of Robert’s dastardly plan. He was playing a long game.

The kitchen got plenty of use. Robert was always throwing spur-of-the-moment dinner parties and asking people around for drinks. His friends, of course. Not hers. Mum was his precious, perfect princess—until suddenly she wasn’t.

‘Are we piling on the pounds a bit?’ he remarked one day, when she was wearing her favourite short-sleeved top. He jabbed her arm with his forefinger: poke, poke, poke. Sam saw the red marks on her skin.

‘Ouch!’ she yelped, rubbing her arm.

‘I hardly touched you.’ He laughed at her. ‘Good grief, my love, you can be quite the drama queen, can’t you?’

‘You don’t know your own strength.’

‘For God’s sake.’ His laughter morphed into a scowl. It suddenly seemed colder in the room. ‘Don’t make this into something it isn’t.’

She tried to suck her tummy in.

‘D’you really think I’ve put on weight?’

He was still scowling. ‘Best if I don’t say any more. I’m in enough trouble.’

Mum looked perfect to Sam, but later he saw her standing on the bathroom scales, squinting down at the dial. She jumped off again with a muffled squeal as though there was a scorpion between her feet. She never wore that short-sleeved top again.

That was the start of her dieting, of Robert ‘helping’ her—controlling what she ate and even what she drank. There were no more sticky goodies from Jackson’s. From then on he did all the shopping and every month he’d scan the credit card bill. What’s this? What’s that? He set goals for her weight loss. He gave her a gym membership for her birthday and exercised alongside her. He bought her fitness gear—not too figure-hugging, though, because you’re lovely, darling, but let’s face it, you’re no gym bunny.

Sam saw her refusing apple pie on one of the rare occasions when she and Sam visited Granny. It was a shame, because Granny had made the pie especially.

‘Robert’s right,’ Mum told her. ‘I’ve let myself go. I need to try harder.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s not fair on him.’

Granny’s left eyebrow shot way up. ‘On him?’

‘He has to look at me.’

‘He’s bloody lucky to be able to look at you.’

But Mum wouldn’t budge, so Granny cut Sam a simply enormous piece of pie and poured on about a pint of custard, heavy yellow folds concertinaing onto his plate. She looked thin herself; her cheeks didn’t have that lovely granny-ish bloom anymore.

It was several years before Sam began to suspect that Robert had been messing with the bathroom scales to trick Mum into thinking she was heavier than she really was. He once caught his stepfather sitting on the edge of the bath with the scales on his knees, fiddling with the dial. Robert smiled when he saw Sam watching. He said he was fixing them. He probably was fixing them, but not in a good way.

It wasn’t long before he started controlling what Sam ate too. Things disappeared from the cupboard. Random things. No more cheese strings. No more crisps or pasta or sausage rolls—Sam loved sausage rolls, they made him happy. No more popcorn, for God’s sake.

‘Why can’t I have cheese strings?’ he complained. ‘I always have them in my lunchbox on a Friday.’

‘They’re processed rubbish,’ said Robert. ‘Make you hyperactive. You’re like a flea in a box.’

Mum was cleaning the oven, kneeling on the floor and wearing yellow rubber gloves.

‘Couldn’t he have a cheese string once a week?’ she asked. ‘They’re not so bad, are they?’

The words weren’t out of her mouth before he was rounding on her.

‘Really, Harriet? Really?’

‘I just think we need to be a bit flexible. They’ve always been Sam’s Friday treat—his little reward for getting through the week. He loves his cheese strings.’

Robert looked as though he couldn’t believe her treachery. ‘We agreed about this!’

‘When?’

‘Are you serious?’

She was kneeling at Robert’s feet. Sam didn’t like that; he wanted her to get up off the floor and tell him to pack his bags and sod off out of their house.

‘Do you realise how often you undermine me?’ he demanded furiously. ‘It’s incredibly destructive.’

‘I didn’t mean to undermine you. I’m just wondering—’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘No, really, I promise. I—’

‘You do it constantly!’ Suddenly he was shouting. ‘You do it all the time! All the bloody time!’

Mum covered her face with her yellow-gloved hands, rocking backwards and forwards.

‘Robert, please,’ she whispered.

He took a breath, held it in for a long time, let it out. When he spoke again, his voice was super-calm. Super-angry-calm. That was worse than the yelling.

‘Now you’re making me out to be an ogre. Seems pretty unfair when all I’m trying to do is help your son. I just can’t win, can I?’

‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m so sorry.’

It was like a magic password. As soon as she’d apologised, he pulled her to her feet and kissed her really hard on the mouth. It didn’t seem like a happy kiss to Sam. He couldn’t believe she’d just said sorry when he was the one in the wrong.

‘It’s all for you,’ he muttered in her ear. ‘Everything, everything. My whole life. It’s all for you.’

‘They’re just cheese strings,’ whined Sam. ‘They’re not some kind of deadly poison.’

‘Sammy, shush. Robert knows about nutrition.’ Mum’s voice was firm, but her face wasn’t. She looked as though she was about to be sick.

She never bought cheese strings again. There were no more Friday treats. No more treats at all, in fact, unless Robert provided them.

It was around this time that Robert introduced the homework rule: Sam had to do sixty minutes of homework in his bedroom every night. He wasn’t allowed to skip it, ever. Robert said he needed structure and routine, and would thank him one day. He was wrong about that. Sam never did thank him.

Those miserable years are jumbled in Sam’s mind. He was about twelve when Robert killed Sundance. Mum and Sam went away for a weekend with the school soccer team and came home to an empty stable. According to Robert, Sundance had been in agony with colic. The vet thought he was suffering, that it was bound to keep recurring, he was very old and it would be kindest to euthanise him. The death sentence had been carried out straight away. Sundance had already been shipped off to a furnace somewhere. All done and dusted—literally. Sam’s remaining childhood friend had been his calm, apple-munching self when Mum and he had left on Friday; now he’d been turned to dust. Like Dad. Just dust.

Granny, Mum and Sam stood at the stable door and cried their eyes out.

‘Robert killed him,’ said Sam.

Of course Mum protested. ‘It was the colic. He’s as upset as we are.’

‘Robert killed Sundance,’ Sam repeated stubbornly, and he added a silent promise to himself. One day I’m going to kill Robert.

After Sundance died, Sam threw in the towel. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Darkness filled his heart and his head. He stopped playing soccer because he couldn’t be bothered. He didn’t want to be in the band with Jake. He gave up any pretence of trying at school. As the months passed and he became a teenager, he went from bad to worse: throwing things around in class, getting into fights, never doing his homework (despite Robert’s stupid rule) and—most maddening for the teachers—staring out of the window for hours at a time. Mum hated going to parent–teacher meetings because it was one bitter complaint after another. She said she might as well wear a T-shirt with SAM BALLARD’S MOTHER on the front and YES, I KNOW, I’M REALLY, REALLY SORRY on the back.

One awful day, Sam accidentally broke Jake’s brand-new Gameboy. It was par for the course, he was always breaking ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Fifteen
• Sixteen
• Seventeen
• Eighteen
• Nineteen
• Twenty
• Twenty-One
• Twenty-Two
• Twenty-Three
• Twenty-Four
• Twenty-Five
• Twenty-Six
• Twenty-Seven
• Twenty-Eight
• Twenty-Nine
• Thirty
• Thirty-One
• Thirty-Two
• Thirty-Three
• Thirty-Four
• Thirty-Five
• Thirty-Six
• Thirty-Seven
• Thirty-Eight
• Thirty-Nine
• Forty
• Acknowledgements