You Can Trust Me

by Emma Rowley

  I slide my feet forward carefully, remembering the stuff stacked in the little hall, but still I knock into something, the jangle of gears and chains telling me it’s a bicycle.

  They surely can’t hear me, upstairs in their bedroom, but I am fast-forwarding to my embarrassment, my cheeks flushing, as Olivia and Josh listen with polite bemusement to my excuses . . .

  Better that than getting stuck in here.

  Shut up, shut up.

  I stop for a second to try to figure out where I am. But I hate this darkness, so thick it’s almost a living, pulsing thing against me.

  I put my hands out a little in front of me, and shuffle to the left. I can’t bring myself to stretch them out properly, afraid to touch something I don’t expect . . .

  Then—oh thank you God—one foot hits something hard: the bottom step. I put out my right hand and fumble for the banister, and there it is, relief is flooding through me, I’m nearly out of here, and I relax enough to let out a shuddering sigh, almost a gasp. I didn’t want to admit how scared I was, lost in the bowels of the old house—

  And that’s when I hear it: soft, but crystal-clear.

  Someone sighs back at me.

  Chapter 35

  I break—someone is in here with me—and I am running headlong up the flight of steps and reaching for the door, fumbling for the handle.

  It isn’t locked; I slam it open and I am out of the dark kitchen and through the hallway, round and up the main stairs as quick as I can, my speed born of sheer fear, and I am almost at my room when—

  “What on earth is going on?”

  Olivia is behind me, wrapping her dressing gown around her, feet bare, her hair mussed by sleep.

  “What’s all this noise?”

  I can’t think for a second, adrenaline still driving me.

  “I was downstairs—getting a drink—and I heard something.”

  “You heard something?” she says.

  I make an effort to control myself, out of breath. “I thought I heard something.”

  “Well, do you think someone is down there? Should I wake Josh?” She sounds confused.

  I look at her, a pale figure in the darkness. The moonlight from the hallway windows is behind her, so I can’t see her expression.

  “No, don’t wake him,” I say finally. “I’m sorry. I must have been mistaken.”

  And then I go into my room, shutting the door on her. There is a key on the inside, I haven’t bothered locking it before.

  Now I do.

  * * *

  I check the bathroom and the wardrobe, old habits I thought I’d left behind in childhood, then climb into bed, huddling the duvet round me.

  Now that I am safe in my room again, I am angry with myself, even ashamed. Because I lost it. I was only on those cellar stairs for a second before I bolted. It felt like longer, as I waited to feel a cold finger reaching for me, breath on my neck.

  Did I really hear what I thought I heard?

  Yes. Whoever it was must have been right up next me, close enough to touch.

  And I know what I should have done. I should have turned round at the top of the stairs, I should have switched on the lights and exposed whoever followed me down there, whoever was trying to scare me, whoever—because this is what I think now—shut the trapdoor, and left me in the dark.

  That was my chance. I could have faced my fears and maybe even got to the heart of what is happening in this house. But I didn’t.

  And now images flash through my mind: Olivia, a white figure on the landing; Josh, drinking alone in the dark; Sabrina, standing over me, I’m very protective of her; and, hidden in the garden, the stone marker for Alexander Vane. You shouldn’t be looking there . . .

  I shudder, thoroughly spooked now. Someone died in this house.

  No. Stop it. The dead can’t hurt you. And there is that back staircase, isn’t there, so someone could move about the house unseen . . .

  And I have what I wanted. I pull the photo out, from where I tucked it in my pajama pocket, before I hid its smashed frame at the bottom of that box. I wanted it to look at it properly, in a good light.

  The colors are faded, but it is intact. It was in a bedroom upstairs, maybe, protected from the falling debris and water hoses by its metal frame and glass cover. So did she forget it was in that box? I think again of that patched-together album downstairs, and hold the photo under the bedside lamp, wanting to take in every detail.

  It must have been taken at Christmas. To one side a huge dark tree is just visible, wrapped in beads and baubles. And they’re standing in the big formal sitting room just off the main hall, I recognize the mantelpiece now, thick garlands of greenery sweeping from it over the fireplace. That’s a fire risk—not that that would matter, in the end . . .

  And that’s when I realize exactly what is hanging over the mantelpiece, in the room where they found the body. And now I see why this photo is not in any album, or on show anywhere. Because it is clear what that is, the only thing it could be . . .

  Not locked away in a cupboard. Not checked by forensics. Not accounted for by police. Not accounted for by anyone.

  Yet there it is, hanging over the family’s heads: its two long barrels shining, its wooden stock gleaming. A gun.

  Chapter 36

  When it starts to get light, I get up and slip the photo from under my pillow and put it into my suitcase, with Joey’s photos and the floor plan. I haven’t slept yet, still full of adrenaline, but, reassured somehow by the lightening sky, I drop off for a few hours.

  When I wake, the same thoughts are still running through my mind, as if on repeat.

  The gun looks old: rich shining wood and decorative metalwork. An heirloom—it could have been in the family for years. But old doesn’t mean broken, does it?

  You might even like to keep a gun in the house, loaded for pests and . . . anything else.

  Sam Gibbons thought there were poachers about, but then I think how Mr. Vane, the newspaper said, has adopted the role of squire, embracing countryside sports . . .

  I keep thinking, too, of Rafferton, in his antiques shop, explaining how after the fire, Elsa had never come back. Simply couldn’t face it.

  Then Josh, drunk in the kitchen the other night, rambling about his wife. You know she wouldn’t even go to the funeral? Has she told you that?

  Whose funeral? I’d asked. Her father’s—Alex’s?

  No, he’d replied . . .

  He had talked about it like it was some awful thing, but why would that be—unless it was someone else’s funeral that she absolutely should have gone to. Say, her mother’s . . .

  And finally I remember Olivia herself, talking about Elsa like she was a stranger.

  Are you and your mother close now? I had asked.

  Not exactly . . . She’s dead.

  But what might have split them apart long before that?

  * * *

  It crosses my mind again, as it did through the night, that I could alert the authorities. Surely this photo is enough to get them interested. I can hand all I know on to other people and step back to my own life. But the first thing to do is to leave here, so I can think everything through and stop just reacting. I just need to go.

  * * *

  Downstairs, I hear Olivia before I see her. “I don’t care if Sabrina’s upset, Josh. She’s got to respect my house if she’s staying under my roof.”

  I pause in the hallway to the kitchen, waiting for Josh to answer, but he doesn’t. So Sabrina’s in her bad books—it hardly matters now, but I can’t say I’m not pleased.

  “Morning,” I say brightly, from the kitchen doorway.

  Even if I hadn’t heard Olivia, it would be obvious I’d walked in on something from the way they are facing off. Josh breaks first, turning to lean on the counter, his head down.

  “Well, I think I’m going to set off soon,” I say.

  “You’re going?” says Olivia.

  “I thought with everything that’s go
ing on you wouldn’t want to do a session today,” I say bluntly. “We can pick it up again over the phone. I’ll e-mail over the sample chapters later.”

  Something in her face flickers. “Nicky . . . let me think, we can still have a session. Let’s say early afternoon, we’ve guests coming later.”

  “Are you serious—after all this?” says Josh, turning to look at her.

  “Everyone is coming,” she says calmly. “They’re not on these forums. And they’re always telling me how little they know about what I do.”

  Josh doesn’t say anything.

  “Well, it’s tricky,” I say. “It’s a long drive, and the traffic will be bad as it’s Friday . . .”

  Now that I have a plan, I don’t really want to change it.

  Olivia looks thoughtful. “You’re right. You should stay for dinner.”

  I look at her, puzzled, and she continues: “You’d be very welcome. And now we’re one short. You’d be doing us a favor. Wouldn’t she, Josh?”

  His manners kick in after a beat. “Yes, of course.” He walks out, clearly still angry.

  So they’re missing a guest. It could be anyone, but I would bet money that Sabrina’s husband, Leo, is the no-show again, after I was drafted in to cover him in their tennis match. It doesn’t take a genius to work out there’s something going on with their marriage: he does not seem keen to be reconciled with his wife.

  “But I haven’t brought anything to wear to a dinner party.” I say, as a last-ditch excuse. I am guessing the dress code will not be jeans and a sweater.

  Olivia looks amused. “You’ve seen my wardrobe. And then we can wrap up the sessions, finish the week with everything done, like we planned.”

  She brushes invisible crumbs off the counter into her hand and tips them into the sink. “I’ve a few things to be getting on with. I told people to start coming from seven.” She turns back to me. “So, can we meet at say, four?”

  “Four it is, then.”

  “And Nicky?”

  I turn round, already at the door.

  “I’m going to talk about it. It’s out there now. I’m going to talk about what happened to my family.”

  * * *

  I go back upstairs, a little bewildered at the change in plans. But it makes sense, to hear what she has to say. It was what I wanted, wasn’t it?

  And the panic of the night is receding rapidly. The way Olivia and Josh were bickering just then, it was so normal. If you’d seen someone snooping in your own house, wouldn’t you just call them out? And now Olivia is opening up to me, too.

  I can picture it now: what must have happened. Sabrina hearing me going past her door last night, following me downstairs. The woman must be cracking up—like her relationship. If she says anything to Olivia about what I was doing in the cellar, I will have explain it away. But maybe I needn’t have felt quite so scared . . .

  I spot a missed call and voice mail on my phone screen, interrupting my thoughts. Joey.

  Chapter 37

  He doesn’t bother to introduce himself on the voice mail, launching straight in.

  “OK, it was just something I got interested in when I was twelve, thirteen, how fires began. So I started a few in the garden, but that got old, so I went off into the countryside. I ended up setting a whole field on fire, and no one knew it was me, until I told some of the kids at school. I suppose I thought it might impress them . . . then the police turned up at my door.”

  He carries on: “I haven’t done anything like that for a long time. They said, actually, photography might be a very good hobby for me, that was how I got into it. Gran just worries what people might think. So can we meet?”

  I click delete, then stand there for a second. I’m not angry with Joey, not anymore. But he has given me an idea.

  * * *

  “Joey’s been very upset,” Marie Crompton says, setting a cup of tea in front of me.

  She looked surprised to see me at her door. Her grandson was out, she told me—but she let me in when I said it was her I was hoping to talk to. Just a quick word.

  “I’m sure he is upset,” I say now. “But Marie, I’ve been a little upset with you, for suggesting that Sam Gibbons was dead. When he was very much alive and kicking.”

  She looks away. “I just thought it was best not to stir things up. Joey can get very single-minded, and I didn’t want him to get caught up in that . . . that horrible fire, of all things. But I am sorry if it caused you any trouble.”

  “I appreciate that. And now I understand why you didn’t want to talk about the Vanes, the other day. But can I ask you about them, without Joey here?”

  “I suppose . . .”

  I don’t see the point of being anything other than direct now. “I know that Olivia and her mother weren’t close. And something someone mentioned to me . . . am I right that she didn’t even go to Elsa’s funeral?”

  She nods, thoughtful.

  “Do you know why?”

  She purses her lips. “I can guess. Grief does funny things to people. But it was indecent, how Elsa behaved after the fire. Taking little Alex and waltzing off without Olivia. Packed her off to her grandmother, didn’t she?”

  “Her grandmother?”

  “Old Mrs. Vane, in London. Who was a cold fish, from what I’ve heard of her, though I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. So Olivia could go to a posh new school down there, they said. But it wasn’t right.”

  “What was she like—Elsa?”

  No one has really given me a sense of how they saw her, the way that they have with golden, charming Alex. There’s a blank where she should be.

  “Well, it’s hard to say.” She sniffs. “Her ladyship didn’t get involved with anything in the village; even when everyone’s children were at the primary school together. Preferred to waft around up there in her big house.”

  “So she kept herself to herself.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t like to . . . but no. Let’s just say, she wasn’t a woman’s woman.” She raises her eyebrows meaningfully.

  It takes me a second to interpret. “You mean—she liked men a bit too much?”

  “So they said. Gave that poor husband of hers quite the runaround. But she liked money more, and he had enough of that.”

  “Who she’s supposed to have—would you know?”

  “Oh no, it wouldn’t have been around here. They’d go off to London, there’d be parties, vacations, I suppose.... Then, after the fire, she just took off.” She shakes her head. “So there was talk. But I didn’t agree with that, either, for all her faults.”

  “Because she was seen driving away, hours before it happened. So it was nothing to do with her, really,” I say, slowly.

  “Well, quite.” Marie is surprised by the suggestion that it could have been anything but that. “Of course not.”

  “Of course not. Marie, this shortbread is amazing. What do you do to get it like that?”

  * * *

  We chat until I’ve finished my tea, then I thank her, meaning it, and she shows me out.

  “And will you tell Joey you’re not annoyed?” she asks, hesitant. “He doesn’t have a lot of friends out here.”

  “I will.” Feeling awkward, I pick up a photo on the hall table: Joey at primary school, one lick of sandy hair sticking up. “He was very sweet.”

  “He still is,” she says, her face brightening. “Now, that was taken when he was, ooh, six or seven . . .” I admire it dutifully. Grandparents love to show off their grandchildren, don’t they? And something nudges at me, some memory . . . What it is?

  As she opens the front door, I feel a pang of sympathy—for Marie, as well as Joey.

  “Thanks again. And Marie?” I add impulsively. “When you see Joey, would you tell him”—I don’t want to alarm her—“tell him, it’s turning out to be a good week after all. Very productive. And I’ll stop by tomorrow morning to say bye, on my way back to London.”

  * * *

  Sitting in my car, I wait a second befor
e setting off again. Because I’ve just remembered what Joey’s photo reminded me of.

  I was in Pete Gregory’s front room, trying to look at the photos on the mantelpiece behind him. His grandkids, I thought then, a family man.

  But I didn’t really get to look properly, because he stood in my way, didn’t he, blocking my gaze. So I only got a fleeting impression.

  Young smiling faces. Freckles. Red curls.

  And now I have one more place to go.

  Chapter 38

  “We’re not open yet.” Paul Bryant is outside his pub, moving a big metal canister, when I park up at the Bleeding Wolf.

  “I know.” I follow him in anyway. “I just hoped you might help me with something,” I say, as he goes behind the bar. “Something that confused me a little.”

  “Go on.”

  “Did anyone else see Elsa’s car passing through the village the day of the fire?”

  “Anyone else? I don’t know.” He’s not as friendly as the last time.

  “OK. And when did you see the car?” I ask.

  “I told you, didn’t I? Around midday, I couldn’t be exact.”

  “You did. But just one more thing, if you don’t mind—a lot of cars go past here. Why did you remember hers, in particular?”

  “I . . .” He closes his mouth then opens it again. “I’ve always had a good memory for cars.”

  “That makes sense.” I glance behind me, checking something. “So what kind of car do I have?”

  “What?”

  “Humor me,” I say pleasantly. “You saw me drive up. So what kind of car do I have?”

  From where we are, I know he can’t see it through the windows.

  He is silent.

  “Never mind the model, then. What color is it? That’s easy.”

  “I’m not playing games—”

  “It’s a Fiat. Lemon. But I’d have given you yellow.” He won’t meet my eyes. “So why did you remember her car, that day? Because it was so late? Because Elsa Vane was driving so fast? Or because you had already seen the flames from the house?”

  He laughs, but I hear the infinitesimal silence before he does.