The Visitors Book

by Sophie Hannah

  Contents

  The Visitors Book

  The Last Boy to Leave

  Justified True Belief

  All the Dead Mothers of My Daughter’s Friends

  An Excerpt from Closed Casket

  An Excerpt from A Game for All the Family

  About the Author

  Also by Sophie Hannah

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The Visitors Book

  I am not a snob. My parents are snobs and so were my grandparents. Every member of my extended family apart from me is a snob, and I am nothing like any of them. I wasn’t the one who bought a black cat with one white paw and named it ‘Paw White Trash’ – that was my cousin Lydia. She called it ‘Trash’ for short, and thought it was hilarious. My aunt Philippa commits the details of the Sunday Times Rich List to memory; I never even look at it.

  And yet Aaron has just called me a snob. Which is ridiculous. Of the two of us, he’s the snob. At the very least he’s a pretentious idiot.

  He’s standing with his back to me, opening a bottle of wine. I shouldn’t say anything. I should let it go. Except that, after what I’ve just discovered about him, I want to have the row more than I want this thing between me and Aaron to work. No doubt my desire to argue the point would pass if I gave it a chance – like a mosquito bite that stops itching if you can resist scratching it for long enough – but I lack the self-discipline.

  ‘I might be a lot of things, but I’m not a snob,’ I say.

  When we got out of the cab last night and I saw his house for the first time, my reaction was entirely neutral. It was a house – no more and no less. I can honestly say that I had no thoughts about it at all. Only in the light of what happened later did it occur to me that Aaron’s home is a two-up, two-down terrace on a street lined with similar houses, London brick on one side, white render dirtied to grey on the other. Aaron’s is on the brick side.

  What else did I notice? Washing hanging on lines in one or two front yards, net curtains to ward off nosy passers-by. Some clean cars, some dirty; one half collapsed, missing its front wheels. A man with a shaved head, wearing a puffa jacket and white trainers with huge, protruding tongues. But also . . . wasn’t there an elderly man in an expensive suit and a long black overcoat? Yes, I’d swear there was. Now that I come to think of it, I nearly commented on it at the time, how bizarrely smart he looked. Christ, I’m glad I didn’t. Aaron would be throwing it back at me now as proof of my snobbery: shock horror, a smartly dressed man on a down-at-heel street! But I’m not like that, really. When I saw Aaron’s house I didn’t think, Oh dear, it’s not a moated mansion. Why would I? I didn’t expect him to be landed gentry. He’s an ordinary person, not an aristocrat, and that’s fine.

  ‘Snobbishness is my least favourite character trait,’ Aaron says matter-of-factly now, as if he might not be talking about me.

  ‘I’m not a snob,’ I insist.

  ‘When I asked you to sign the visitors book, you sniggered as if it was the most ludicrous thing in the world. “Flick to the end and add your name,” I said.’ Aaron smiles and hands me a glass of wine. ‘You refused, and looked as if you were struggling not to laugh. Tell me what you found so funny and we’ll see if there’s snobbery involved.’

  He doesn’t sound angry. He sounds bored, as if it doesn’t matter to him; he’d quite like to win the argument but he isn’t emotionally invested in it. It makes me feel uneasy. So does the way he avoids my eye.

  I stare down at the large green leatherbound book on the kitchen table. The visitors book: that’s what he called it and that’s what it appears to be. It has the words ‘Visitors Book’ on the cover in gold cursive writing.

  ‘You could sign it now,’ Aaron suggests. ‘Why don’t you, if only to make me happy? It might convince me you’re not a snob.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Aaron. I don’t need to prove anything.’

  I can’t work out why he cares so much about me signing his silly book.

  I open it and start to flick through the pages, skimming the comments: ‘Netterden is a fantastic house! We shall remember our visit with great fondness – The Flemings’; ‘We had such fun and will take away with us plenty of memories to treasure – Winifred and John Santandreu, Islington, London’; ‘The views from the terrace at dusk are breathtaking – Richard and Sue Graham’. Different inks, different handwritings. All are barely legible – shaky and erratic, as if the writers were sloshed, or too old and doddery to care.

  The book appears to be genuine. How preposterous. I close it, not wanting to read any more nonsense.

  ‘Are you seriously telling me that no-one else has found this book at all weird and been less than eager to sign it?’ I ask, wondering if I’m the only person in Aaron’s social circle who isn’t deluded.

  ‘So you’re refusing, are you?’ he says. His face is impassive. Since we met, I’ve been on the look out for signs that Aaron cares about me at all. He seems so remote – even when angry, as he is now. I’m physically close to him, but I feel as if he’s miles away and there’s a barrier between us that I’ll never be able to get through. When we talk, I feel ignored. It’s odd. And horrible. I ought to end it instead of hoping things will change.

  ‘Have you never signed a visitors book before?’ Aaron asks me.

  ‘Yes. Some friends and I hired a manor house in Devon once, to celebrate finishing our degrees. Wortham Manor. It was several hundred years old—’

  ‘Exactly the kind of place where you’d expect to find a visitors book,’ Aaron cuts me off.

  ‘I also . . .’ I stop, realising that what I’m about to say might be taken as further evidence of my snobbishness.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘One of my aunts is married to a lord – you know, in the House of Lords.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t think you meant a lord in the heavens above,’ says Aaron.

  I try to feel relieved at this rare sign of humour, but there was nothing warm about his joke. Somehow it made me feel even more alone. I read once in a women’s magazine that being with the wrong partner, someone who doesn’t understand you or who criticises you all the time, can be a lonelier experience than being single. I think it must be true, though I wouldn’t have thought so before I got involved with Aaron.

  ‘They’ve got a visitors book in their Hampshire house – my aunt and her husband,’ I say. ‘Well, it’s a mansion, really.’

  ‘Of course it is. And you signed their visitors book without almost bursting out laughing?’

  ‘Credit me with some manners,’ I say impatiently.

  ‘Yet you were so tempted to laugh at me,’ Aaron observes – again, apparently without emotion. ‘And you refused, and still refuse, to sign my visitors book.’

  I hate the way he speaks to me – as if I’m some sort of experiment he’s in the middle of, not a fully fledged person in my own right. Now – this moment – is when I should tell him to fuck off and that I never want to see him again.

  I can’t leave yet. I’m too stubborn. I have to win this argument first.

  ‘Aaron, you don’t live in a mansion or a historical manor house. Those are the sorts of houses that have visitors books. Your house just . . . isn’t. Look, is this a prank? Did you forge all these different handwritings yourself when you were drunk one night? This is too ridiculous. I can’t take it seriously.’

  ‘You think I’ve got ideas above my station,’ says Aaron. ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘It’s not about above or below. It’s . . .’ I break off, frustrated. He must be able to see what I’m getting at.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ he repeats.

  ‘It’s about context,’ I try to explain. ‘If I saw Prince Charles walking down the road w
earing a babygro, I’d laugh and think he was an idiot. Whereas I wouldn’t laugh if I saw a baby wearing a babygro! I don’t think Prince Charles is worse, or less deserving of a babygro than a baby is. I’d laugh because it’s a weird and surprising context in which to see a babygro, just as a two-bedroom terraced house belonging to a twenty-nine-year-old inner-city, secondary-school history teacher is an unusual context for a visitors book!’

  ‘Mightn’t a history teacher want to keep a record of the people who visit his home?’ Aaron asks, sipping his wine. ‘Think about it: history. Do you even know what year this house was built?’

  It’s the first good point he’s made. For a second, I wonder if he’s the sensible, open-minded one and I’m a bigoted fool. Then I come to my senses. ‘Netterden,’ I say. ‘One of the comments in the book referred to the house as Netterden.’

  ‘Really?’ Aaron smiles. He nods at the book. ‘Show me.’

  ‘No! I’ve looked at it enough, thank you.’

  ‘You don’t want to touch it, do you? Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s so utterly absurd! I don’t need to show you. It’s your book – you must know its contents better than I do. I saw it, plain as day: Netterden. The name of your house, apparently. The Flemings think so, anyway, whoever they are. Whereas your front door seems to think it’s called number thirty-two.’

  ‘So it’s pretentious to give a house a name?’ Aaron asks. ‘This from the woman who buys a car with the number plate LM04 LYX and immediately christens it Elmo Forelicks.’

  ‘That’s different,’ I protest. Why do I feel as if he’s winning? He isn’t. He’s plainly losing. Elmo Forelicks is not a name that anyone with delusions of grandeur would give their car.

  ‘I bet your aunt’s Hampshire mansion has a name, doesn’t it? And you don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.’

  ‘My aunt’s house needs a name, for the simple reason that it isn’t on a street. They could hardly call it 27, The Middle of a Load of Greenery, could they?’

  Aaron closes his eyes. ‘Will this argument ever end?’ he murmurs.

  ‘Would you prefer me to back down and say, “You’re quite right, I’m so sorry”?’

  ‘Yes, I would. And then I’d like you to sign my visitors book.’

  ‘Jesus! Your obsession with getting me to sign that stupid book is bordering on the creepy, Aaron. Why does it matter so much to you?’

  I won’t sign it. I won’t. No matter what.

  ‘I’m the creepy one, am I?’ Aaron laughs and shakes his head.

  ‘You’re suggesting I’m creepy for refusing to sign? No, sorry, that doesn’t work. It’s not logical. It’s the wrong word. Intransigent, petty – possibly. Not creepy.’

  ‘Like all snobs, you lack imagination. You can’t think of one single hypothesis that would allow me to have a visitors book in my house and not be unbelievably pretentious, can you?’

  ‘No, I can’t. And I’m not sure I care any more.’ I stand up, blinking back tears. ‘I’m going home. Do you want to ring for the butler, or shall I show myself out?’

  ‘Right.’ Aaron chuckles. It sounds snide, as if he’s mocking me in order to entertain someone else, but there’s only us here. ‘Because, while it would be acceptable for some people to have butlers – your aristocratic relations, for instance – it would be unthinkable for me to have one. Against the natural order of things, eh?’

  ‘Fuck off, Aaron.’

  I slam the front door behind me and march down the street without looking back. I have no idea where I’m going, where the nearest bus stop or tube station is. The wise thing to do at this point would be to banish Aaron from my mind entirely – all his stupid misconceptions and accusations – and be thankful I’m free of him, but I can’t.

  I don’t feel free, neither of Aaron nor of the row we’ve just had. As I walk in no particular direction, I start up the debate again in my mind. Silently, I list all the excellent points I made and after each one I think, Too bloody right! It shouldn’t even need saying! Arguing is so much more satisfying when your opponent isn’t there to spoil your fun.

  Netterden, for God’s sake. Did Aaron decide to give his house that name, thinking a mere number wasn’t good enough? I bet he did. I’m annoyed that I didn’t think to ask him. If the house has been called Netterden for generations, why is there no sign on the door, the gate, anywhere? I’d bet everything I own that Aaron made up the name, aiming for something grand-sounding. Like Manderley, the house in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.

  Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again . . .

  Manderley, in the novel, is a vast country estate. Would Rebecca have become a classic if Maxim de Winter had lived in a two-bedroom terrace in Walthamstow? No, it would not. Mrs Danvers would have had to sleep in the second bedroom, a stone’s throw from the first; she’d have heard her boss and his new wife having sex through the thin partition wall.

  All of this proves that I’m right and Aaron is either deeply pretentious or outright crazy. And who the hell are all his freakish friends who wrote those pompous comments in the book? I mean, were they just humouring him? They must have been. Or do they all also have two-bedroom houses with fancy names? The Flemings, Winifred and John Santandreu from Islington, London . . .

  I stop walking.

  Islington, London. Walthamstow, where Aaron lives, is also in London. Why wouldn’t the Santandreus simply have written ‘Islington’? Surely you wouldn’t write ‘Islington, London’ unless you were writing in the visitors book of a house that was outside London. And . . . was there something else?

  Yes. I’m sure of it. I saw something that really jarred in that awful visitors book, something I can’t put my finger on. It’s like a shadow snagging at the back of my mind. What was it?

  I turn round to check Aaron hasn’t followed me. There’s no sign of him. I decide it’s safe to stand here and allow myself to work it out.

  Safe.

  Since when have I been scared of him?

  A woman passes me on the pavement. She smiles rather intrusively, as if to let me know I owe her a smile in return. She’s wearing an expensive-looking coat over a red velvet dress, and high-heeled black shoes with gold and pearl buckles. Around her neck there’s a string of pearls tied in a knot at the bottom.

  Is it possible that Walthamstow is the new Chelsea and I’ve just not heard about it? Maybe everyone who lives here these days is a Russian oligarch, or related to one.

  I look away. The smartly dressed woman looks as if she’d speak to me if I smiled at her, and I need to think.

  I try to remember the other entries I read in Aaron’s visitors book. There was one from a Richard and Sue something or other. ‘Richard and Sue Graham’, I think. ‘The views from the terrace at dusk are breathtaking.’

  Wait . . . is that it? Is that what I was trying to bring to mind a second ago, the detail that was wrong? It certainly strikes a false note. No one would say that about a terraced house. No one would call it ‘the terrace’ in that context. I am sure of this. Not Richard and Sue Graham; not anybody. They would say instead, ‘The views from the house at dusk are breathtaking.’

  Except they aren’t. The view from Aaron’s perfectly ordinary house, at dusk or at any other time, is nothing special, no matter which window you look out of.

  Why didn’t this occur to me before, when I first read those words in the visitors book? I was too busy skimming the pages for evidence of Aaron’s pretentiousness. I must have seen ‘terrace’ and assumed that, since Aaron’s house is a terrace, it made sense.

  It doesn’t. When you think carefully about it, it makes no sense at all.

  I feel sick, and unsteady on my feet. I’m certain those words weren’t written about the house I’ve just left. Richard and Sue Graham can’t have meant Aaron’s home. Wherever and whatever Netterden is, it isn’t a terrace in Walthamstow; it has a terrace – with a stone balustrade and a fantastic view of the grounds. It’s the sort of terrace where peo
ple might sit and sip champagne cocktails as the sun goes down. I can see it in my mind’s eye, the whole scene. The real Netterden.

  Why didn’t Aaron tell me the truth? And, if Netterden isn’t his house, why does he have its visitors book? Why did he try to insist I sign it, when he had no right whatsoever?

  I close my eyes and go over exactly what happened when Aaron and I arrived at his house. The visitors book was on the kitchen table, closed. There was a pen next to it. I asked Aaron what the book was and he said, ‘Isn’t it obvious? It’s a visitors book, as it says on the cover.’ Then he ordered me – rather than asked me – to sign it. He very quickly called me a snob when I didn’t comply, before I had time to focus on how strange it all was, how the comments couldn’t possibly have been referring to the house I was in. Was Aaron gambling on being able to distract me, to make me focus on defending myself instead of on the oddness of the book and the words written inside it?

  He told me no outright lies. He never explicitly said that his house was called Netterden. ‘So it’s pretentious to give a house a name?’ were his exact words, and then he asked me if I couldn’t think of another hypothesis to explain his having a visitors book.

  I can now: he must have stolen it from the real Netterden. It shouldn’t be too hard to find out. There can’t be many houses with that name.

  If only I had access to the internet. My phone’s battery died some time ago. A library would do. How far am I from a library?

  I’ve no idea, and I’m not calm enough to set about finding out. I fumble in my bag for my phone, shake it hard, then press the button to turn it on. ‘Please, please,’ I mutter, though I know it’s pointless.

  I don’t believe in miracles even when they happen to me. There’s always a catch. Yet my phone appears to have woken from its deep sleep. I’ll need to be quick. The battery symbol’s flashing red. I ring 118118.

  When a woman answers, I ask for a number for Santandreu in Islington. I have to spell the name twice.

  ‘I’ve got a Winifred Santandreu on Dunphy Road, Islington,’ she says. It must be the right one. How many Winifred Santandreus can there be in London? I ask to be connected. A few seconds later, a man’s voice says, ‘Michael Santandreu speaking.’