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laughs.
    â€˜Sol spent most of his childhood in refuges,’ Olga tells Eve. ‘He was in a young offenders’ institute for a while.’
    â€˜And this is the guy we gave a key to our house,’ says Danny.
    â€˜But that’s my point,’ says Olga. ‘Sol’s not like that. He’s left that world behind. He’s a brilliant craftsman, he’s got a successful business, a happy family. He’s done really well. From what he’s told me, his two brothers seem to be going the same way as his dad, but Sol’s different. Maybe it’s his little… Buddhist words of wisdom that keep him on the straight and narrow.’
    She has heard enough. She makes her excuses and leaves.

    Her father is the director of the British Council office in Venezuela. Her mother was a ballet dancer and now teaches dance. One of her two sisters is a cellist and the other is an editor at Faber and Faber. Her brother is an immunologist. They are a happy family; she has always felt loved and looked after.
    Sol Barber’s father is hired muscle: a debt collector, a killer. And his brothers are ‘going the same way’, whatever that means. She thinks it means that, in all likelihood, Sol is entirely to blame for what he did to her on that day, and she is not at all to blame. One only has to look at the two families, at the respective track records.
    She remembers, often, Sol’s shamefaced expression when he said, ‘Look…’ just before he left her bedroom. Because human beings are basically selfish and self-absorbed, she decides that she can safely assume Sol’s thoughts over the past two months have not centred on her fear and defeat and disgrace, but on his own failure to stick to the resolution he must surely have made a long time ago: to prove, with his every word and deed, that he has escaped his miserable, brutal origins, that he is a more enlightened man than his father.
    Less comforting is the idea that, in the Barber family, all one needs to do in order to be impressive – a high achiever – is not kill somebody. Among her own relatives, not killing anybody is taken for granted; it is not a matter for pride orcongratulations. Not so for the Barbers. How much does it matter that Sol once, when provoked, wrote something in lipstick on a woman’s forehead and, all right, got a bit rough with her? He didn’t do her any serious harm, did he? And he could have done, he easily could. He restrained himself. For Sol, given his background, this could constitute a significant accomplishment.
    Either that or he barely remembers the incident. Most of his relatives probably do more damage daily than he did that one time. He might expect her to be over it by now. If he hadn’t mentioned Locke and Rousseau (Marx doesn’t count – everyone’s heard of Marx), maybe she would be. But he did, and so she cannot dismiss him. The wardrobe he made for Olga and Danny is beautiful, a work of art. She has been attacked by a clever and talented man. This is what she cannot bear. This is why she decides to kill his children.

    Because it would be pointless to kill him, wouldn’t it? To murder an enemy is a dimwit’s revenge. If he is dead, he cannot suffer, and if he is not suffering, you’ve failed. Even if you arrange for him to die slowly and painfully, you know (assuming you do not believe in an afterlife) that his agony will end, he will escape into blissful nonexistence.
    She wants Sol Barber to live until he is a hundred and fifty.
    She knows where his children go to school: St Anne’s Primary, on Glasshouse Lane, in a village that she always suspects will disappear as soon as she has driven through it. Agnes is seven. Wilfred is five. She does not know what they look like but she has seen their mother. Twice while Sol was working in her house Tina Barber brought him things: once some sandwiches and once some jump leads, when his van broke down.