All This Could End Read Free

family—she doesn’t own any books herself, she doesn’t have enough space in her bag, but she loves libraries. She’ll find the nearest one soon, get a card, and spend as much time there as possible. Sometimes books feel like the only thing that keep her sane. Actually, she knows that they’re the only reason she’s still even vaguely okay right now. That’s what she clings to: reading great books and seeing great films and, for as long as she’s immersed in them, being able to forget, if only for a short time, about the reality of her own life.
    ‘All right then,’ says Paul. ‘You’re coming to the shops, Tom.’
    On her way into the apartment building, Nina had seen the school across the river. It’s a state school. Usually Sophia is very picky about their education, making sure she enrols them in the best school possible at every new place, even if they’re living in a humble house (humble so as not to arouse suspicion, naturally—everything is done with the intention of being as inconspicuous as possible, rather than actually living comfortably). Nina allows herself to think that perhaps her mother is becoming a little more relaxed and is actually going to let them make their own decisions. She only allows herself to think this for a second.
    They’d arrived that afternoon after driving all day, and kids were out of school, still in their uniforms, looking for shells on the river bank. Once again, Nina thought about how much simpler their lives were than hers. Sure, things probably felt complicated to them but if she could swap with them, life would be bliss. She wouldn’t be scanning all the cars on the street, and their occupants, sussing out whether any of them could be plain-clothes police. She wouldn’t be constantly making sure she wasn’t attracting too much attention to herself. She wouldn’t be checking for security cameras out of habit. She wouldn’t be feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt about the five-year-old boy wailing in his mother’s arms at the bank they’d robbed two weeks before, as she’d taken all the money from the till. And about so many people before him.
    Nina unzips her bag and starts putting clothes in the drawers, folding and re-folding. An assortment of jeans and T-shirts, a few hoodies, a cardigan. Nothing too special or showy. When her life is so much at the mercy of her parents—well, Sophia—she needs to be in control of something. She’s very particular about her few possessions, her room. Small things matter when you don’t have control over the big things.
    She has a notebook, too—it’s nondescript, small and black and spiral-bound. Not a diary or journal, they could never risk that. The thought of detailing her life is so ridiculous, so dangerous, so dumb, Nina almost laughs. Pointless trivia, useless facts, that’s what she records in the notebook. Things that will never come in handy, but that are helpful because they are distracting. As long as her head is filled with facts she can’t be overcome with guilt, she can’t worry, she can keep her mind off the bad things. A giraffe’s heart can weigh up to ten kilograms. The smoke detector was invented in 1969. Polar bears can run at up to sixty kilometres per hour.
    It’s not a question of whether they can afford the private school or not, or whether the school will have places or not. With the money the Prettys have, anything can be bought, although offering school principals exorbitant amounts of money to enrol kids in the middle of the year would probably arouse more suspicion than living in a decent-sized house. But Nina doesn’t bring this up with her parents. She’s grown used to her mother’s irrationality.
    She doesn’t really care where they go to school. She used to, when she was younger, and she’d invest a lot of thought into making a good impression on everyone, making friends. But it’s only four months this time. Even if it were longer, she’d always know that it was only