Keep your secrets close and your tech support closer
Addison Square is one of those hidden enclaves where well-heeled Londoners tuck themselves away to create bubbles of "civilised life" from which they can exclude the riffraff surrounding them in the mega-city they call home. Of course, much like our own capital Dhaka, what goes on behind closed doors in such exclusive neighbourhoods is often far from civilised.
And in this story, nobody knows that better than 50-something Colette, sometimes dismissed as "the geek" and the "IT woman" by her customers. She services the tech needs of several of the residents in this upmarket location and in other similar areas, but lives somewhere rather less impressive herself.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Collette's access to her clients' private lives—in an indirect but very real way—reminded me of the IT guys (and I think for most of us in Bangladesh they are almost always still guys) whom many people have on speed dial. While discretion is a watchword for such individuals, and necessarily so given the nature of their business, I have managed to glean—from personal conversations with my tech guy—just how many strategic matters he knows about his clientele!
The IT person has a role in the average professional's life that is some unholy mixture of friend, confidant, essential worker, and father confessor. From what I am told, one of the most frequent issues that comes up in Bangladesh relates to the use of x-rated sites that the internet has made easily accessible in private homes worldwide.
According to one of my IT guys, he has had to extricate more than one of his customers from the consequences of an ill-advised download, or otherwise reckless online tourism. Because of this, he now knows more about this person's "tastes" than he would ever want to, which is a rather uncomfortable thing to think about—even for me, just hearing about his experiences second-hand, and even after he was very careful not to give away any identifying characteristics of the individual concerned.
That does not appear to be as much of a problem for Collette, who lives in a country where social sanction of this kind is an issue of far less concern. Her work is also made easier by the fact that Collette likes most of her clients in Addison Square.
Some more than others, of course. After all, who could feel friendly towards the repulsive Adrian, married to the intelligent, long-suffering Emilia? Not only does the man regularly address Collette as Lynette or Yvette, his predatory behaviour also marks him out as a poster child for the rationale behind sexual harassment policies.
But things in this tight-knit group are about to get a shakeup. When a young, glamorous French-Moroccan woman named Leila moves into the area, she leaves no-one unaffected by her arrival. Least of all Colette.
Leila is standoffish and very conscious of her attractive exterior. She does, after all, take extremely good care of it! Having already achieved significant success as a dancer in well-known music videos, Leila is also—surprise, surprise—a social media influencer.
To his wife Emilia's horror, Adrian swiftly and all too predictably becomes preoccupied with Leila. Without his wife's knowledge, he starts dangling potential opportunities for Leila to work in TV, in a transparent attempt to lure her into his orbit. As an agent, Adrian does have an extensive network of contacts in the sector, but are his offers of help genuine?
After Leila contacts Collette privately, asking for her help with a stalker on social media, the IT expert's first suspect is Adrian. It is evident from the pictures that have been posted of Leila that the stalking is being done by one of the Addison Square residents, since only those living in this gated community have access to the garden where the younger woman has been intrusively filmed in one such instance.
Clearly, something is broken when it comes to the social contract in this wealthy area. Nevertheless, the techie initially turns down Leila's request to help her identify the sleazebag involved because it would require Collette to abuse her privileged access to the neighbours' computers.
It is only after Collette accidentally views a chat thread on an online bulletin board about the forthcoming neighbourhood party, that she realises how almost all of her clients see her as a pathetic nerd with no life of her own. Unsurprisingly, this changes not only Collette's view of her own place in this community, but also of the people who live in Addison Square, including those whom she had previously considered to be friends.
Meanwhile, although Sylvia, an older woman, is flattered to have glamorous Leila seeking out her company, tensions quickly develop between the newcomer and some of the other residents, such as Guy and Zoe Mulligan, whose apartment sits just below Leila's. Still, no-one expects things to end in murder. Not in this postcode...
Celia Walden has done a terrific job of creating an entertaining storyline, with several good subplots involving the various people living in The Square, as its inhabitants like to call it.
It is always good to get a handle on the key characters early with this kind of an ensemble cast—especially as there is an interesting subplot here featuring some of the children. Nevertheless, the author does a good job of utilising all the characters to play their parts in her novel, since the effectiveness of the book is closely tied to successfully pulling off the interweaving of the storylines featuring various protagonists.
There are a couple of major twists in this novel, along with several minor ones. One of the former took me entirely by surprise, because it turned the nature of this story on its head. It's rare to find a book that has original things to say about the common trope of a neighbourhood that guards its secrets carefully, but The Square delivers well on that front.
Handling the multiple strands of the plot with impressive skill, Walden neatly pulls everything together at the conclusion, gifting us quite a few surprises along the way. I loved this book. It is clever, engaging storytelling that will keep the reader absorbed throughout.
Farah Ghuznavi is a writer, translator and development worker. Her work has been published in 11 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe and the USA. Writer in Residence with Commonwealth Writers, she published a short story collection titled Fragments of Riversong (Daily Star Books, 2013), and edited the Lifelines anthology (Zubaan Books, 2012). She is currently working on her new short story collection and is on Instagram @farahghuznavi.
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