by Emma Rowley
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED
My room is cool—I’ve left the window open—and I close it quickly, before I change into my pajamas: oversized, patterned with unicorns. What would Sabrina think of them? Not much, I imagine.
Then I wash my face in the bathroom mirror. I look drawn, a crease between my eyebrows. I am just tired, I tell myself, and I rub moisturizer between my hands and smooth it over my face, the familiar nighttime ritual soothing me, before I rummage in my wash bag. Why can I never find anything in here? There it is, my lip balm—I smear the stick onto my bottom lip in a practiced stroke––
“Ow!” I suck at my lip, tasting copper.
At first I can’t understand, as I stare at the smear of red on the white waxy stick, then something glints under the overhead light, and a chill runs through me.
I twist the tube so the stick of balm is exposed as high it goes, and scratch away with my thumbnail, unconcerned about wrecking it.
I can see it now, shining silver and sharp: a needle . . .
Books by Emma Rowley
WHERE THE MISSING GO
YOU CAN TRUST ME
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
YOU CAN TRUST ME
EMMA ROWLEY
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prologue
PART 1 - NICKY
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
PART 2 - OLIVIA
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
PART 3
Chapter 64 - NICKY
Chapter 65 - NICKY
Chapter 66 - NICKY
Chapter 67 - NICKY
Chapter 68 - NICKY
Chapter 69 - NICKY
Chapter 70 - OLIVIA
Chapter 71 - NICKY
Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2020 Emma Rowley
Previously published in the U.K. by Orion Books, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-4768-0
Electronic edition:
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4770-3 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0-7860-4770-4 (e-book)
Prologue
The house is framed by the thick dark trees, ink-black in the summer night.
There is nothing to see from the outside yet—just a few wisps of smoke barely visible against the clear starry sky.
No one is trying to stop it, and no one is coming to help.
It is the noises that point to what is happening within, disturbing the quiet of the night. The shatter of glass breaking. The crack of wood under stress. A heavy thud as something falls unseen. And all of it underscored by that deep muffled roar, like a beast is stirring at the heart of the house.
No one is trying to stop it, and no one is coming to help.
Then the stillness of the night splinters, and an orange flower blossoms forth from one of the downstairs windows. The flames are quick and hungry, reaching up into the air like hands clawing at the sky, streaking the white walls with soot. The fire is taking over the house now.
No one is trying to stop it, and no one is coming to help.
Someone is watching, though. And now it is time to go.
PART 1
NICKY
Chapter 1
Ghosts are real.
I should know: I am one.
That’s what I sometimes tell people at parties, just to watch them stutter for a second. It livens up the usual and-what-do-you-do conversations, when you tell someone you’re a ghost.
They stand there looking confused, and then I relent and smile, and say, “A ghostwriter, I mean.”
The conversation, from my side, goes as follows:
“Yes, I ghostwrite books.”
“Yes, you’d have heard of them.”
“In bookshops, yes.”
“No, I can’t tell you who. Sorry.”
“No, really.”
Then I do a conspiratorial lean in: “If I did, I’d have to kill you.”
That’s a joke, too.
* * *
They say everyone has a book in them. Perhaps they have, perhaps they haven’t. What interests me is whether they can get it out of themselves and onto the page.
The reality is most people can’t—or won’t—or just don’t have the time, what with the job and the commute and the kids and the in-laws coming on the weekend, and have you seen that latest Netflix series, it’s really very good.
Pile success and a public profile on top of that, a calendar packed with TV shows and award ceremonies, add a thirty-date one-man (or woman) tour, and maybe a collapsing marriage and a rebound toy boy, and it becomes even more impossible.
And that’s where I come in.
It’s Saturday and I am working again: up against my latest deadline.
I’ve nearly finished the book I’m currently writing, the memoir of a celebrity chef known for the cheeky twinkle in his eye. Which should, the publisher hopes, help his sales figures to rise as quickl
y as his Victoria sponge.
This afternoon, I’m finishing off his acknowledgments, that final flurry of thank-yous that I’m never sure if anyone reads (yes, I write them, too, if my subject can’t be bothered). I scan what I’ve got so far:
First, many thanks to my agent Gerry. And huge thanks to my editor Frances and the rest of the team at my brilliant publisher. But above all, thanks with a cherry on top to my wonderful wife Tracy, who was so helpful in getting my memories straight for this autobiography.
Let’s face it, some of it was tricky for me to piece together—especially that colorful spell just before rehab! And some of it, of course, I didn’t want to mention to my ghostwriter at all.
The truth is, I’ve really made a cake of myself in more ways than one, not least over my assistant—
With a decisive tap, I press the backspace on the keyboard in front of me and watch the words I’ve just written disappear off the screen. There’s no way I can submit that, I am just letting off steam. I had thought I was finished with the book, until the editor called to ask if I had seen the papers. There might be a little bit of rejigging needed . . .
I should have known. Whenever I visited the chef, there was far too much meaningful eye contact between him and the over-officious Ruby, his PA. Meanwhile, poor Tracy would be hovering in the background, fiddling nervously with her cardigan sleeves.
He is still denying it all officially. His team wants to give it a decent amount of time before he announces the sad news of his separation. And of course I won’t really out him as a cheater in his thank-yous. After all, I am nothing if not reliable.
That’s what I am paid for: to make sure pages get filled, deadlines are hit, and books make it on to the shop shelves in time for Christmas, regardless of the author’s last-minute panto rehearsals or discreet trip to Thailand to dry out. I am a professional.
So I think for a second, then start clacking away again.
A special thank-you, I type, for the people who’ve been with me from the start. I really wouldn’t be here without you.
That’s for poor heartbroken Tracy. Let him explain to the publisher why he wants it taken out.
I keep going:
And thanks also to Nicky Wilson, who made this book possible.
I stare into the air above my screen, then tweak that:
Thanks also to the supremely talented Nicky Wilson, who made this book possible.
Might as well give the credentials a little polish—it’s not as though as I can shout about this on a CV. Because that’s me: Nicky Wilson. I tell other people’s stories.
* * *
You might even have read one of my books already, though you didn’t know it. Remember that not-so-chatty footballer with the best-selling autobiography? He didn’t actually park himself in front of a computer to bash it out between ball drills. That TV presenter busy with three shows whose lifestyle guide is in every good bookshop? She didn’t, either. And that always-smiling influencer whose perfume, pencil case, and (rather short) memoir your preteen daughter insisted on buying? You guessed it . . .
They all talked to someone like me. Talked for hours, days, weeks—and always with a tape recorder rolling. Then, once we’d covered everything I needed in our interviews—had heard their whole life story, or collected all their thoughts on the subject they’d picked—I went away and wrote their book for them.
Other ghosts might focus on victims of true crime or moving “real-life” tales; I tend to work with celebrities, or people on their way to that—lighter fare. Relatively.
Afterward, the only trace of me will be somewhere in the acknowledgments, if at all. There will be a thank-you “for all your expertise” or for “helping to get my story out there,” or maybe—if the person’s decided to do the acknowledgments themselves—I’ll find my name sandwiched somewhere between their hairdresser and their dog.
I don’t care. I’m good at it, even if I do have to say so myself. The authors get the praise, that’s true, but I take my money and move on to the next job. And I enjoy it, even if I kind of fell into it. I can set my own hours, and mostly it’s interesting work.
* * *
Now I prop my elbows on the kitchen table, my makeshift desk, and look out of the window, to the leaves of the trees that shade my little patch of South London. A bumblebee—a lone survivor of the summer—is batting half-heartedly against the glass, and I get up to let it out. I’m glad I’m nearly done with this particular project; this job’s much easier when you like the person.
I have promised Frances at the publisher that she’d have the revised manuscript back imminently. For the last few days, her e-mails have been getting shorter and terser, as mine get ever more filled with upbeat exclamation marks. “All going well!” “Getting it back to you ASAP!!” “I will call you back as soon as I can! Thanks!!!”
For the next hour or so, I work hard, doing a few final checks and tweaks to the text. I am concentrating, going as quick as I can, so when my cell phone rings, shrilly breaking the silence, I jump.
I register the “private number” flashing on the screen—like that’s going to make me pick up—and watch the phone vibrate, slowly sliding closer to the edge of the table. Then I punch the disconnect button and turn back to my screen.
But after a few minutes more, I close my laptop. My concentration has gone now. Anyway, I tell myself, it’s getting late, and I have a date . . .
Chapter 2
“So, Nicky. Do you like working in—uh—what Syou do?”
I smile at the man in front of me. “I do, mostly. I’m a writer,” I add, guessing that he’s forgotten. “I ghostwrite books.”
“And how did you get into that line of work?” he asks me, raising his voice over the clamor of the bar we’re in.
“Well, I started off as a reporter in newspapers,” I explain. “Then my grandparents got to the stage where they needed a bit more looking after, so I was going back home a lot to help. Getting into ghostwriting was a bit of a sideways move—I needed to be able to organize my own time—but actually, I found I liked the work.”
We met on an app—no flirting by the photocopier when you work from home. He’s a lawyer, has been telling me all about it. He seems nice enough, if unable to talk about anything but work. Although I can’t really criticize him for that.
I keep thinking about the manuscript I’m working on. The chef hasn’t taken much of an interest in the project, beyond worrying whether the cover photo gives him a double chin. You never know, though, when a subject might choose their moment to become A True Writer, whipping a red pen through half your carefully written words.
“But doesn’t it annoy you, seeing someone else’s name on your book?” Phil—it is Phil, isn’t it?—asks me. “When you’ve done all that work?”
I smile again. “Not really. It’s not my book, you see. It doesn’t feel like mine.”
“But even so,” he says earnestly—his way of making conversation, I notice, is by arguing with everything I say—“don’t you ever want to write your own book?”
And maybe it’s because he’s a stranger, and I am already sure I won’t see him again, that I tell him.
“Actually, yes, I’ve been thinking recently . . . I’d like to do something a bit different.”
Tell a story of my own, you could say. I even have an idea, have taken tentative steps toward making a start—though I haven’t mentioned it to my agent Barbara, or anyone else.
“My father’s writing a book,” he says.
“Oh,” I say, trying to switch gears mentally. “Well, that’s great.”
“Military history.” He pauses. “Do you know much about military history?”
There’s a certain type of person, I’ve learned over the years, who hears you’ve written a book—any book—and feels the urge to test your credentials. “No, I couldn’t say I do.”
“Hm,” he says, with satisfaction.
There’s another silence between us. Don’t fill it, I tell
myself, don’t—
“So your profile said you’re into current affairs.” I wince inwardly: current affairs.
“Well, up to a point. There’s really no need to follow domestic politics.”
“There isn’t?”
“No, no.” He pulls his glass of expensive red a little closer. “It’s all about China these days . . .”
He’s off, me nodding like my head is on a string. I can’t help it: I’m a good listener.
It’s not deliberate, not really. I’ve just had a lot of practice, through my job: listening to people tell me all the details of their lives, childhoods, relationships, careers. People really will tell you anything, if you just shut up and listen.
Sometimes, a person will realize they’ve just unburdened themselves of all the details of their fraught relationship with their father, or confessed to some minor lawbreaking their boss mustn’t know about, and feel suddenly exposed.
“What did you say you do?” they’ll ask crossly, like I’ve just tricked them. “Where are you from again?”
But some people are just thrilled to find an audience. My ex, Rob, was an actor. So it worked well for a while, until we both realized even I had tuned out.
This guy’s on a roll now. “It’s important to carve out thinking time, you know? I like to set time aside in my schedule. Just to think.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s such a good idea.”
But these days I’m trying not to repeat my mistakes, trying not to get lost in someone else’s life again. I pick up my glass and down the last sickly dregs of my rosé. I paid for our round, so I’m not going to let it go to waste.