by Emma Rowley
“What are you two talking about?” says Lucy from across the table, directing her question to her husband and Sabrina.
“Oh—just our trip to Antibes, did you know Sab lived there for a bit?” says Harry. Then he turns back to Sabrina to continue their hushed conversation.
Lucy looks annoyed. On her side of the table, Josh and Leo have pushed their chairs back to talk about cricket; while Olivia has gone out again.
“. . . what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” I hear Sabrina say darkly.
“Well,” says Harry. “You know I’m a big fan of Leo’s. Hope you two can work it out.”
I catch Lucy’s eye—we are both being ignored—and regret it instantly.
“And you, Nicky, tell me about yourself,” she says in a loud voice. “You’re working on Olivia’s book, I hear?”
Oh great. She’s using me to show how social and unbothered she can be.
“That’s right. I’m a ghostwriter . . .”
Before I can launch into my usual explanation, she interrupts with questions: how fast can I type, to keep up with Olivia; how good a speller am I; and how many pages will the book be?
I answer as best I can: quite quickly, but it’s not dictation, actually; pretty good at spelling; and it really depends...
But she’s not finished drawing me out. “And do you have children, Nicky?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Oh.” Lucy tilts her head at me. “I suppose at least that means you have lots of time to write . . .” she says, doubtfully.
“Actually, yes,” I say. “I like my freedom. I set my own hours, I’m in control—”
“But don’t you want to write a book of your own?”
“Well, maybe I am doing,” I say, needled. I’ve drunk too much. “I mean, I will.”
“Oh?” Lucy raises her voice: “Did you hear that Olivia? Nicky is writing her own book, too.”
Olivia, who has come back in with coffee, smiles politely. “I’m sure it will be great.”
“When yours is done, I mean.” I don’t want to sound unprofessional.
“Well, of course,” she says. “It must be hard to write your own story when you’re trying to tell someone else’s.”
“That’s right,” I say, feeling a flash of rapport with her, for once. No one has asked a single question about her work, I noticed.
“Now,” says Olivia to the table, “would anyone like more pudding with coffee?”
But Lucy, having been locked out of the other conversations, isn’t about to let this one go.
“Isn’t it a bit strange, Olivia,” she says earnestly, “to have someone write a book all about you?”
“I suppose.” I don’t think she is going to say any more, but then Olivia adds, thoughtfully: “It’s not exactly what I expected.”
“Oh,” says Lucy, pleased to get a reaction. “Don’t you like it?”
“It’s not that, really.” I wonder if Olivia is drunk, too—more likely, she knows that none of them will remember. “It’s just . . . different. After all,” Olivia directs this at me, “you know everything about me. And I know nothing about you.”
I don’t know what to say to that. “Not everything,” I reply eventually.
“What’s that?” Sabrina has caught the end of our exchange. “Not everything, does she, Sticky?”
She laughs, looking around the table for attention, so doesn’t notice the expression on Olivia’s face. It is so quick I could almost think I imagined it, as Olivia tips her head down to pour the coffee.
But I am chilled, still seeing the hostility in Olivia’s eyes.
With sudden clarity, I want nothing more than to go back to my own life, tough and messy as it can be. I don’t like this world. Her world. I want to go home.
Leo gets up then to open the French windows, heading out to smoke, and everyone starts to scatter, the way people do when the evening gets on.
I get up, too, trying not to wobble on my heels.
* * *
Upstairs, I look a little wild-eyed in the bathroom mirror.
“Keep it together,” I tell myself. “You’re nearly there.” Downstairs, the nearest bathroom was occupied, so I headed up to my room.
I touch up my makeup, reluctant to go back down, but eventually I move toward the bedroom door.
“Hello?”
I stop on the threshold, before I hear the whisper again.
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
Chapter 41
“Hello? Yes, I can hear you now.”
For a second, fuddled by wine, I think my phone is on speaker and a caller is talking.
“No, I’m so glad you caught me.”
Then I realize: it’s just Olivia’s voice on my recorder. I reach for it on my bedside table—
“Yes, that would be great for a conference call.”
It does this if I forget to switch it off: just keeps playing the recording on a loop. Some digital setting I don’t know how to correct, but it drains the battery.
“Actually,” she says briskly, “could your team make 3 p.m.?”
There is another brief pause as I look for the off button: the recorder has only captured her side of her phone conversation.
“Perfect. Thanks so much. Bye.”
Although—when exactly was this? I don’t remember her taking this call when I was there.
On the tape, there is silence for a few seconds, then footsteps, then I hear my own voice, tentative.
“Hey, I don’t want to intrude—I just wanted to check you were really OK . . .”
“Thank you. I just needed a moment.” Olivia’s voice is full of sadness again, mournful.
And now I know when this was.
I had wandered downstairs to check on her after, what, twenty minutes? She was exactly where I had left her after our final session, tear-stained on the sofa.
“Really,” she sniffs on the tape, “I’m fine.”
Against the big cushions, she had looked very small.
“Well,” I say, awkwardly. “I appreciate you sharing your story with me.”
Did the recorder somehow splice two different recordings together? Because it’s like two different sessions, that phone call just then and her now . . .
“It’s just a lot, you know?” She gives a little sob.
And suddenly I understand: I had gone out of the room, and before I returned Olivia had taken a work phone call, quickly. Why not?
On the tape, she is still talking to me: “Do you think you have enough, on this part of my life?”
There is a silence—I was nodding.
So she had got it together, I tell myself now, what else was she going to do? Cry down the phone to a client?
“Good,” she is saying, giving a delicate little sniff. “I do think I’ve given you all I can.”
The only question is, why did she start to cry again?
There is a comforting murmur from me. “Absolutely. We can stop there.”
But I know why. Olivia wasn’t crying because she was upset, not really. She was crying so that I’d stop pushing—so that I’d leave her alone.
She didn’t open up. She seemed to say so much, get overwhelmed, but really . . . she was fobbing me off. And I bought it.
Because I have never questioned whether she loved her father. That she grieved. That she was sad that Alexander Vane was dead.
Until now.
* * *
I go back down the stairs, feeling off balance in every way.
It’s the alcohol making me feel so fluttery and anxious, I tell myself. Because I have got it right, I have it all wrapped up. I just need to shuffle my view of things a little, to make this bit of information fit with the rest.
But how exactly? I wish I hadn’t drunk so much. My head feels so muddled.
Downstairs, the dining room is echoing with chatter—too noisy for thought—so I push through the long glass doors, my movement making security lights click on.
&
nbsp; On the terrace, Sabrina blinks in the bright light, swaying slightly. It’s hard to see her as a threat right now.
“Mind if I steal one of those cigarettes?” I don’t smoke anymore, not really, but I want to steady myself.
“Sure.” She offers me her pack.
“Thanks.” The air is cool out here, the trees dark shapes all around us.
“That one of hers?” Sabrina points at my dress: black and simple but with that indefinable something—cut? finish?—that shows its quality.
“Yes, she loaned it to me.”
“Thought so. You look like a cut-price clone. No offense.”
“None taken,” I say, but my inhibitions are gone, and I rise to the bait. “You know, I don’t think anyone expected Leo to come tonight, I hope that means everything is OK between you again,” I finish insincerely.
But the jab sails over Sabrina’s head: she must be very drunk. “Leo? He loves a party. No, I told Olivia I’d have to think about it, when I went home yesterday. I’d had quite enough of her and her rules. Bloody rude, if you ask me.”
Oh. So that means Sabrina didn’t stay here last night, after all . . . that feels important, too, but I can’t think why right now.
“So you’ve known Olivia a long time?” I want to drown out this feeling, like everything is shifting around me. “How’s that, then?”
“School, mostly,” she says. She names a day school in London that I’m supposed to be impressed by. “But our parents were friends before that, from living up here. Though we’d moved away from Annersley by the time of the—you know.”
I nod, acknowledging the fire.
She pulls out a lighter. “But I came back eventually. Like Sticky.”
I lean toward the flame to light my cigarette, inhaling the bitter smoke. “Why ‘Sticky’?” I realize I’ve never had a chance to talk to Sabrina with her guard down.
She seems to consider for a second. But she is drunker than I am.
“You know how it is with nicknames.” She leans closer to me, so that I can smell the wine on her hot breath. “Sticky Fingers. Sticky stuck.” She sniggers.
I don’t want this cigarette after all, I am already feeling nauseous. “Sticky Fingers?”
Sabrina pulls back from me, theatrically. “Oh, so she didn’t mention that . . . Not the sort of thing you want to put in a book, I suppose.”
“You mean, Olivia was—stealing things?”
Sabrina, distracted already, is scrabbling in her little jeweled bag. “Hm?”
I glance through the window behind us, but Olivia is talking to Lucy.
“What you said,” I say more quietly. “She was stealing?”
Sabrina starts clicking the lighter again. “Stupid thing,” she says, a new cigarette clamped between her teeth.
I try again. “I can’t imagine Olivia ever doing anything like that. She just would never—”
It’s a childish tactic, but it gets her attention.
“Oh yes, everyone at school loved Little Miss Tragedy,” says Sabrina bitterly. She takes the cigarette out of her mouth, her lipstick gleaming wetly on the paper. “But they didn’t know, did they, that she was a thief.”
“A thief?”
She raises her eyebrows, happy to be sharing the gossip. “And that’s why,” she jabs a long finger in the air, for emphasis, “her parents sent her away.”
* * *
I must still look confused, because Sabrina spells it out for me. “She was pinching money,” she says, then rubs her thumb and two fingers together.
“No . . .” I frown, then almost smile, amused. She’s embarrassing herself, she’s so patently jealous of Olivia. “No, she went to her grandmother’s because of the fire, that’s why she started at school down there.”
Sabrina shrugs. “That’s what everyone thought. But I knew she was going to be starting at my school, even before the fire. Her parents had spoken to my mine about it. They thought somewhere more insthtitut . . .” she gives up on the word, “stricter would help. Because it did so much for moi,” she says ironically, then hiccups.
“But why would Olivia need to steal money?”
She rolls her eyes. “Course she didn’t need to.” She takes a deep drag of her cigarette. “My mother said they blamed the boyfriend, thought he was a bad influence. The Vanes never loved the prospect of Olivia ending up with a pub landlord for a father-in-law, however remote. Sending her away would solve that little problem, too.”
At my expression, she straightens up.
“Of course, I didn’t say anything to anyone when she did start,” she continues, reading my look of shock as disapproval. “It was all very sad. ‘Sticky’ was just my little joke . . . Look, this is strictly entre nous, yes?” She gestures between us with her cigarette.
“Absolutely,” I nod. I try to rearrange my face to look more normal.
“OK!” someone cries inside, and I look to see Josh is standing, getting people to their feet. “Everyone out. It’s a bit early in the year, but who cares. Let’s go!”
And now everyone is already pushing back their chairs, Lucy exclaiming: “Oh how fun . . .” and heading out through the French windows to join us on the terrace.
I linger near the house—I want to digest what I have just learned, as the night air sobers me up—but then a hand in the small of my back gives me a shove, harder than necessary. Lurching forward on my heels, I turn to see Josh’s unapologetic grin, showing gleaming white teeth.
“Can’t miss this,” he says.
Chapter 42
As we are herded to the edge of the terrace, everyone is shouting and whooping around me, drunk and excited—and not only drunk, I realize, placing the manic energy and remembering how everyone had disappeared together earlier.
The night is taking on a surreal air, the garden lit up like a stage by the security lights, Lucy shrieking with laughter. In front of us, Josh and Leo are kneeling on the flat stretch of lawn, fiddling with something on the ground.
“Get a move on, boys!” bellows Sabrina.
One thing is clear to me now: this woman is not so much protective of Olivia as protective of her position by her side—and deeply envious, too, some toxic old dynamic dating back to their schooldays. She’s a mess.
And yet . . . I shiver, though I am not cold.
That money that went missing, that Alex’s business associate first told me about: Vane had thought it might be someone who’d worked for him.
Then the old policeman had confirmed that, yes, there been some unpleasantness with one of the staff. But that was all resolved, after the money turned up again.
Or was it? What if the problem went away, not because it was all a misunderstanding, but because they found out it was Olivia who was stealing?
That would make sense, too. The family would want to deal with something like that privately. And so she was being sent away, to a strict new school, like Sabrina said.
The idea puts a whole different light on the end of that summer, that happy family . . .
The group parts for a second, and I am looking at Olivia, standing at the front. She isn’t flushed with wine or disheveled like the rest of us. She is still composed, her face expressionless, her golden hair gleaming under the security lights. The whole evening has been perfectly executed, another triumph.
How might she have felt, to be caught being less than perfect, and punished for it? She would have been furious.
“The pheasants will think we’re firing guns,” says Sabrina, next to me. “Bloody stupid birds,” she adds mildly.
I’m trying not to listen, not to lose this train of thought; the fresh air is starting to help me. What else did Sabrina say just now, about some boyfriend, and his landlord dad?
Because Olivia said she didn’t have any boyfriends before Josh, she was very sure—and yet there was this boyfriend, who Olivia never mentioned at all.
And I find myself thinking about someone else who grew up round here and is, yes, about the same
age as Olivia. Paul Bryant, who took over the Bleeding Wolf from his parents.
Paul, who lied about when he saw Elsa’s car driving away from the fire—because his uncle, the policeman, was paid off, I had thought. But what if it wasn’t Elsa who Paul wanted to protect? What if it was his girlfriend—Olivia?
The night air is taking effect, clearing my mind.
And now my focus is not on Elsa, I can think of someone other than her who might have wanted to save that painting from the fire. “Liv likes it,” Josh had told me.
Panic is starting to rise in me, and something I don’t want to name—I need to get out of here. I start to squeeze my way past Sabrina and Lucy, but everyone is clustered around me.
“Oh, you can’t go,” says Lucy, grabbing my arm. “You’ll miss it all!”
And now the mood is changing, everyone hushing, as Josh and Leo scrabble up the steps toward us, shouting: “Back, get back!”
With an electric wail, the first firework soars up over our heads, then explodes.
* * *
For a moment it feels like daylight again, as if someone in the sky has flicked on a huge switch. The flash illuminates the wide terrace, the smooth sweep of lawn, and the trees all around.
Then a shower of green sparks arches across the sky, like a vast umbrella opening up. I feel the noise through my whole body.
“Leo ordered them from China,” says Sabrina. “Good, aren’t they?”
“Wow,” breathes Lucy, “but aren’t they a bit close to the house, it’s been so dry . . .”
I am shaking. I’ve never liked fireworks. That is why my whole body is trembling, like I am afraid. Not because something else has just clicked into place in my mind.
That Sabrina was the one they thought wouldn’t turn up tonight, not Leo. Because, she said to me just now, she had flounced off home yesterday after being told off by Olivia for smoking. So I got that wrong. Which wouldn’t matter, only . . .
That means Sabrina wasn’t sleeping here last night. That whoever followed me down into the cellar in the night to scare me, it can’t have been her, like I thought.
I shake my head, as if to dislodge the thought. Everyone else is still having a good time. Ahead of us, Josh has gone back down the lawn again, stomping something into the ground; next to me, Sabrina is chatting idly with Lucy about that weekend they have planned, as we wait for the next explosion.