You Can Trust Me

by Emma Rowley

  * * *

  Before I know it she is talking at me rapid-fire, leafing through a rack of clothes. I am confused by the change in mood: it’s Olivia the influencer in front of me, as though she’s in one of her style videos. Her appeal doesn’t translate as well as you might think to video, she is a little stiff, but the fashion ones do very well.

  “Now this would look great on you, just with the jeans you have on—and this jacket might be worth a try, why not . . .”

  I let her talk, as she rifles through the rails with practiced speed.

  “I’m not so sure about that on you.” I have a soft pink mohair sweater slung around my neck, “just for the color.” She has put me in front of the full-length mirror. “But see this? This is perfect. Go on, try it,” she says, handing me the next item.

  “Lilac fur?” I say, swinging it over my shoulders. “I look like a Muppet. Literally. Like I’ve just wandered off Fraggle Rock.”

  She laughs. “I used to love that program.”

  We both look at my reflection, and she shakes her head. “But you’re right, I thought you might do that boho glam thing but—maybe not . . .”

  Next I shrug on a navy peacoat with flashy brass buttons, a swingy red trench, and a structured jacket in yellow tartan, each of which looks increasingly bizarre on me.

  “They don’t look quite right,” I say. You’ve lost your mind, my tone conveys.

  “I know!” she says. “That’s the thing, right? You should be going for a classic look. I just wanted to show you. You’ve similar coloring to me, actually. Try this, I just got it,” she says, pulling a long loose camel coat off a hanger and draping its weight over my shoulders. “See how the color makes your eyes pop? That really suits you.”

  She’s right: my teeth and eyes look whiter somehow, the tailored coat transforming my nondescript outfit into something pared back and chic. I turn a little, half-heartedly striking a pose in front of the mirror. “I guess.”

  “Oh come on, admit it! You’ve got the Olivia look,” she says with a grin, wisps of fair hair escaping from her ponytail. She puts her hands on her hips to assess me.

  For the first time since I met her, she seems genuinely enthused and happy.

  “It is lovely,” I admit. I run one lapel through two fingers, feeling its velvety thickness. I’ve seen this coat in a magazine. The price was a penny less than a thousand pounds.

  “Have it if you want.”

  “I can’t take it!”

  She shrugs. “I’ve got one just like it.”

  I feel my mood sour a little. She has so much.

  She gives me an appraising look. “Have you ever thought about cutting your hair?”

  “My hair?” I touch one frizzy strand.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t get the scissors out. But what about just pulling it back maybe”—and she’s already sweeping it all back to my crown, away from my face—“this will show off your bone structure, keep you from hiding away. See?”

  For a moment our eyes meet in the mirror, our faces framed side by side, both of us with hair up; her fair, me dark. Then I duck my head down, shaking her hands away, laughing embarrassedly.

  “Oh gosh, it’s just—just not me,” I say, already sliding the coat back onto its hanger. “I’m not really into appearances.”

  That last word comes out with more emphasis than I intended, hanging in the air between us. Shallow, I might as well have said. Superficial.

  Olivia looks surprised, then collects herself. “Well, of course,” she says quietly. She starts to hang the rest of the clothes she’d pulled out for me back on their hangers.

  “Thanks, though,” I say awkwardly.

  “You’re welcome,” she says, not meeting my eyes.

  I hesitate a second longer, then hang the coat that I’m holding back on the rack.

  “Actually,” she says. “I’ve got to take Bea to the dentist—and my goodness, is that the time?” She looks at her slim gold watch. “I can give you a lift into town, if you want.”

  Her tone suggests she’d rather not.

  “Oh no, I’ll get on with writing if that’s OK.”

  “It would be great to see something soon.” To make sure I’m happy with what you’re doing. “Now, help yourself to milk and tea, there’s food in the fridge. You know where the spare key is.”

  “Annie won’t be here?”

  “She needs a break, she’s been helping out so much at weekends—but we’ll be back before six. Right, sorry to rush.”

  I’m dismissed. “Sure. See you later.”

  * * *

  I messed that up, I think, I should have found some way to go along with her gesture of friendship, however uncomfortable I felt. But I just . . . got spooked, under the scrutiny.

  Never mind, I tell myself, as I follow the back stairs all the way down; as I suspect, the door at the bottom brings me out into the corridor by the kitchen, so the servants could once creep about the house unseen.

  Fitting, really. Because now I wait in the family room until I hear them leaving—Bea’s piping voice, Olivia’s measured responses, I can’t make out the words—and check through the window to make doubly sure: there are no cars left in the driveway but mine.

  Time to get to work.

  Chapter 17

  It was the mantelpiece in the sitting room that gave me the idea: it is almost an exact replica of the one I saw in Joey’s photos, if that were not blackened and cracked by the heat beyond repair. Really, you would never know the difference.

  That got me thinking. I’m going to go around the house with his photos, comparing what is in them with what I see now.

  Maybe they got taken down simply because Joey’s gran felt they were intrusive—that would be totally reasonable. But maybe I will see something in them in a different light.

  At the very least, I hope it will mean I can stop thinking about them.

  * * *

  I start on the ground floor, shuffling through the photo printouts: I see now that there is another page, too, that I gathered up as I left Joey.

  Applicant’s name: VANE it reads at the top, phrases jumping out: “Demolition of remaining interior walls . . . Listed Building Consent . . .”

  This must be from the planning documents for the restoration. Everyone seems to have been roped in: “Westcott & Westcott, architectural practice,” “G. Rafferton, specialist heritage consultant,” “Hayden Ltd, specialist contractor” . . .

  Below the text is a floor plan of the building, ground and first floor mirroring each other, with smaller shapes for the attic and cellar. On the ground-floor diagram Joey has drawn little numbers that match numbers written on the back of each photo, marking where he took them.

  I start to wander through the house, mapping the photos from its burned-out carcass onto the luxury of today. This photo of the ruined staircase was taken here, in the main hall; the tall boarded-up windows match these in the dining room, now showing the terrace outside; this damaged panelling belongs here, in the study.

  The family did a fantastic job with the restoration. It is just a little . . . spooky to think how much of what seems to have been here forever was wrecked and replaced.

  But soon I am done with Joey’s map and photos. He kept getting distracted by details: a rusted metal fork still in the rubble, an umbrella turned to blackened spokes, a thick airport thriller with a curling cover. They tell me nothing new.

  And yet after that, I find myself wandering through the rooms upstairs, too, even with no photos to compare them to. It was all so rushed when Olivia showed me round, I just want to see everything properly.

  This time around I go into bathrooms, pulling open cupboards to look at toiletries, sniffing at a bottle of expensive liquid soap. No stolen hotel miniatures for Olivia. I pull open drawers, lift out a pillowcase, unfold it, put it back.

  I am haphazard, not sure what I am looking for—despite my digging, I wouldn’t normally go this far. But this place, Olivia’s refusal to gi
ve me anything of her past, is getting under my skin. I’ve that prickly feeling I get when I might have come across something that could take me somewhere interesting . . .

  And so I keep going, up to the top floor into her office, ignoring the closed silver laptop on her desk. I am not interested in the present so much as finding some trace of the past, some proof that something happened here.

  Of course, I know the place has been rebuilt and redecorated, with huge care. It’s just a little unsettling somehow, that you’d never guess. I’ve been over the whole house now. There is just the cellar left.

  * * *

  Downstairs in the kitchen, I flick on the switch by the cellar door and hear bulbs blink on below. The wall to my right is chilly to the touch as I follow the steps down; then duck to avoid the decorations spilling from a shelf above my head. Olivia always goes all out for Christmas, Easter, Halloween.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the little hall is filled with family stuff, a surfboard or windsurfing board propped in a corner, I can’t tell. On one wall is a vast wine rack, full of bottles, stretching almost to the ceiling.

  Down here, the air is cooler, and I can’t hear anything from the house above or the outside, nothing but the very faint buzzing from one of the bare bulbs overhead, as I wander through the windowless rooms.

  The biggest has a table tennis table and a dartboard, but the dust suggests no one uses either. The second is full of metal shelves stacked with trays of screws, old cans of paint, stuff left by workmen I’d guess. The third room, smaller, is empty, bare brick showing where the carpet doesn’t quite meet the painted walls.

  I have hit a brick wall—literally. There is nowhere else to go.

  * * *

  Back in the kitchen, I make myself tea, feeling like an intruder as I look in the cupboards for sugar—silly, really, when I’ve just been over their whole house.

  With my mug in hand, I head into the family room and slump down on the floor, leaning against the sofa base. I used to get told off for sprawling over the furniture, kicking my legs over the arms of armchairs and teetering back on kitchen chairs. You’ll crack your head open, they said, but I kept doing it.

  I tip my head back against the seat cushion, feeling the ache of tight muscles in my neck and slowly roll it from side to side. I blink and think of nothing for a second.

  To my left, on the bottom shelf of a bookcase, big coffee-table books have been lined up, perhaps to be rotated on to the table at a suitable season. I stretch out a finger and run it along the smooth spines. It comes away with a thin film of gray dust, I note with bitchy satisfaction: nobody reads them.

  And then I see the untitled one at the end, a little smaller, more worn.

  I pull it out an inch. Not a book, a photo album. I open it up. The inscription just says “Olivia Vane” in rounded letters.

  The first few pages are given over to school photos of Olivia: chubby-cheeked at four, in a too-big blazer; serious at eleven.

  But it takes me a moment find her in the next few. It’s almost a puzzle, spotting a young Olivia in the groups of children pictured: slick-haired in a swimming pool; in white Aertex shirt and shorts at a sports day; pretty in a paisley party dress as someone else blows out a cake.

  And then I realize the reason she is always off to the edges, never the focus . . . The original albums can’t have survived the fire. That’s why I’m seeing Olivia’s childhood pieced together through the eyes of other people’s parents, coaches, and camp helpers. I imagine the school photographer asked to check his archives, “it’s a very sad story”; the rest collected from friends in the aftermath . . .

  I look up at the arch linking the living room to the kitchen. I had a sense, just then, of being watched. No one is there. But something disturbed me; did I hear a car outside? I am exposed, sitting here with the album in my lap.

  Hurriedly, I straighten the photos that weren’t stuck down—those are footsteps in the house, definitely—and now I try to slide the album back into its space on the shelf, but the heavy books have shifted in place and my hands are sweating.

  The footsteps are closer now, coming down the hallway, unhurried but steady. I am still trying to get this stupid album to fit—and I do, suddenly. It slips back into the shelf, and I slide myself back to where I was sitting, against the sofa.

  Whoever it is is in the kitchen now, dropping something on the table, and I grab my phone out of my jeans pocket and stare at it, like I am engrossed.

  I wait a beat, then look up slowly. But it’s not Olivia, it’s Josh in the archway.

  “Oh hi. Did you want to watch something on TV? I can go—”

  “No, no,” he says, giving me a nod. “You stay there.”

  And he ducks out: I can hear him in the kitchen, pulling open the fridge. “Can I get you anything? We’ve food, drinks . . .”

  “No, but thanks,” I call back, “I’m fine, really!” Before he goes away again.

  I hug my knees. I am a little disgusted with myself, prying all over their house, going through old photos. But underneath that, I am still curious.

  That scrappy photo album can’t be all that she has left of her life before. Can it?

  Chapter 18

  After lunch, some bits from the fridge that I take back up to my room, I get a phone call from Joey Crompton.

  Joe, I correct myself. But he feels more like a Joey.

  I wonder if he is already regretting giving me the photos, but he sounds excited.

  “So what did you find out?” he says. “Did the photos help?”

  “Oh, right. Hi. No, I’m afraid not.”

  He doesn’t seem abashed. “I have an idea. We should talk to Pete Gregory, the policeman.”

  I register the “we.” “What policeman?”

  “He’s my gran’s neighbor. That fire was the biggest thing that happened round here in years. He’d know all about it.”

  It’s not a bad idea. “So you could introduce me?”

  “Well, ah. He’s retired now, he’s getting on. I don’t think he’d like it if we just went round. I’ve already asked Gran to put in a good word.”

  I think for a second: Joey’s a bit presumptuous, but it’s going to be a pain to track this policeman down without him.

  “Why not? Thanks.”

  “Uh, Gran wants to meet you first. Make sure you’re nice.”

  “I’m very nice,” I say. “But that’s fine. When would be good?”

  “Now? She’s going out later, she has Zumba—you don’t need to know that. Have you a pen to write down the address?”

  “Yes, and yes,” I say, scrabbling for a pen. I have mostly been in my bedroom since Josh came back, trying not to get in the way. “But what will you tell her? I don’t really want anyone else to know I’m working with Olivia. If it gets out that I’ve been asking around—it could look a bit . . . unprofessional.” That’s an understatement.

  “No worries. Say you’re writing a local history book. She’ll love that.”

  * * *

  “So you’re the young lady writing this book about Olivia Vane. Hayes, I should say.”

  It’s almost the first thing Marie Crompton says, after Joey’s introduced me and the three of us are sitting in her cozy front room, a plate of shortbread in between us.

  I pause with my shortbread halfway to my mouth and look at Joey.

  He looks at me, surprised: I didn’t say anything.

  Joey’s grandmother must be in her seventies, small in a navy tracksuit with immaculate pink sneakers, pale hair cropped in a bob. She lives a couple of turns off the main road that runs through the village.

  Hers is one of a row of neat little cottages of mottled red brick, straight out of a period drama. Inside, however, her home is bright and modern.

  “You’re right,” I say now, “I am writing a book.”

  “So you want to know all about that fire,” she says.

  “I’m just trying to fill in a few gaps, without upsetting Olivia. I di
dn’t mean to be less than straightforward.”

  “It’s all one to me,” she says, in a tone that suggests it is not.

  “And of course she’ll see the finished book. Can I ask who mentioned it?”

  “A little bird told me.”

  There’s a short silence. I should have known that me being here would get around. It’s a village.

  “Well,” I say, “Joey thought it might be an idea to speak to your neighbor, the policeman. Do you think he might talk to me?”

  “He might,” she says. “He might not. It’s a tricky thing, stirring all that up again.”

  I’ve made a mistake by not being honest; she’s annoyed.

  “And you were living round here yourself, at the time of the fire?”

  She nods. “But we were on vacation ourselves, thank goodness. Awful business. I made my Derek get rid of our heating tank after that. Theirs exploded in the fire, you know—fuel to the flames.”

  “Did you know them? Alex and Elsa Vane?”

  “Just to say hello to in the street.”

  “What were they like?”

  “He was always very pleasant. And good with the children, too. Olivia, of course, and, what was it, little Alex. Named after him, of course.”

  I try to interpret her tone. “So people didn’t like his wife so much? Elsa?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she says, snappishly. “Lovely family.”

  Time for another tack. “What about the people who called the emergency services that night? For background—”

  “I know who it was,” Joey interrupts. “The neighbor who lived in the barn then, you said, Gran. What was the name—Gibbons, something, Simon—Si—”

  “Sam Gibbons,” Marie says, after a pause. “He’s gone now.”

  It takes me a second. “You mean—he died?”

  She nods. “I’m afraid so.” She gets up and puts her cup of tea in the sink. “There are really not many people left round here who remember all that. People move away, they get older.... Now. I’ve got to pop out. But Joey, do look after our guest.”

  “And you’ll put in a word with your neighbor, Pete?” I say.