You Can Trust Me

by Emma Rowley

  I leaned over and picked the vase up in both hands, balancing it for a moment, feeling its weight, the water moving inside.

  Then I pictured what would happen next, just as I did with my tennis serve: how I would throw with all the force of my upper body, in a practiced overhead shot against the shut door, watch it smash dead center, water dripping down the cream paint, broken china and long-stemmed flowers scattered over the rug . . .

  I put the vase down, carefully, nudged it an inch so it was back in its place.

  I was in control. I had to stay in control. I was always in control.

  Or was I? Who was writing my story, even now?

  * * *

  I don’t know how long I would have stayed there, frozen.

  But then I heard it, breaking the silence of the night. I lifted my head and listened, as the noise came again.

  Downstairs, floors below me, somebody was beating down the door.

  Chapter 53

  As I ran down from the top to the bottom of the house, I had visions of Joe Crompton returned, angrier than before, shouting things at me. What have you done to her? What are you hiding? But then the noises resolved themselves, echoing up the narrow back stairs—not knocks on a door, but heavy thuds.

  As I opened the door onto the ground-floor corridor, I saw the overhead lights were on in the kitchen, the cellar door open, and knew what the sounds were. Someone was down below, crashing things around.

  I went into the family room and glanced out of the window at the driveway to confirm what I thought: Josh’s car was back.

  At least the police had been quiet, methodical. He was moving heavy items about, and roughly, from the sound of it. Already, I knew what he’d be looking for: what I had left down there. I thought he might have forgotten I’d even put it there, in all the chaos of moving in, years ago. I had told him I would deal with it later, when I had more time, but I never wanted to.

  I walked back into the kitchen, trying to compose myself for what lay ahead, and heard him breathing heavily with the effort as he carried it up the cellar stairs. There was another crash as he dumped it down on the floor, carelessly. All that dirt and pain.

  He looked up, unsurprised to see me. He has always needed an audience, Josh.

  “So,” he said, his tone challenging. “Aren’t you going to open it now?”

  The box was already open anyway: the masking tape had been torn off. Had the police already been through it? Or no, that would have been Nicky, when she found that old family photo.

  He directed a kick at it, enough to make it jump a little way along the floor.

  “Josh,” I said, a warning note in my voice.

  But he did it again, almost experimentally, like a child who has just been told not do something.

  “Why not, Olivia?” he demanded. “What’ve you been hiding in here all these years?”

  I kept my expression neutral. I will not react.

  And so I stood there as he kicked the box with more force, and then began to put his full strength into it, as he stamped down, again and again, with grim determination. He was silent and I was, too, listening to his small grunts of exertion and the stamp, stamp, stamp, of his foot on the cardboard, sweat starting to bead on his forehead.

  I waited, not saying anything, as he kicked right through the cardboard, one side collapsing open. He coughed a little at the dust that had come up and paused to wipe his eyes, so I could see what was inside before he did; what I’d left down there, unwilling to unpack. But instead my mind was showing me things I never let myself touch on: about my family; what happened here; what I covered up . . .

  “Olivia,” said Josh, and I looked up to meet his gaze, his face showing genuine shock.

  Because there was nothing in there. Nothing worth keeping, just those few smoke-worn objects.

  “Jesus . . . you kept all this crap. But why?”

  He was right: it was rubbish. It didn’t matter to me now. But what he’d done was another betrayal.

  He wiped his brow with his shirt sleeve, and I could feel his angry energy evaporating into confusion as I walked to the kitchen door.

  “I’ll get Annie to tidy that tomorrow,” I said. “Unless you’re going to.”

  I kept my tone the right side of scathing, wanting to tip him into self-consciousness. He was always quick to temper, I knew, but it would go quickly, too, if I didn’t react. And I never did.

  As I reached the door I thought: if I’ve handled this right we can leave this here, another thing we won’t talk about when he’s calmer . . .

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he spat out.

  I stopped. I’d played it wrong. He was embarrassed now. He had gone too far and needed a confrontation to match the drama of the moment he had staged.

  I turned round.

  “Our house is crawling with police, a woman’s missing, and you’ve nothing else to add,” he said. “Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?”

  I kept my face blank, a little disdainful. “Of course, Josh, I’m happy to talk about what’s going on. Fire away.”

  I could tell by the pause before he spoke that my reaction had left him a little unsure. “For starters, after our dinner party—did you really just sleep through the night? Because how can I know if you did . . .”

  “And I could say the same of you, if you really want to go there,” I said coolly. “But I was in bed, just where I was supposed to be. And let’s just remember, I didn’t ask you to lie to the police about that night.” Fight fire with fire. “That was your decision.”

  I could see him think about that for a moment.

  “All right,” he said. “So where is Nicky? Do you know where she’s gone?”

  I shook my head, my stomach clenching—but better this chilly civility than screaming, surely. “No, I don’t.”

  “OK.” He took a deep breath. “Do you know why the police are so interested? Because I don’t have to be a detective myself, to work out what they’re thinking: that she hasn’t just gone off somewhere of her own accord.”

  “I don’t know what they’re thinking,” I said, still calm. “But there is nothing to worry about.”

  “Oh? And you aren’t a bit worried by what she might have been finding out?” He was watching my face closely.

  “It’s all very sad, of course it is—for her friends and family; but why would I worry?”

  He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe me, or the situation. “You know, I think we should give this whole thing a rest now, Olivia.”

  “Fine by me.” I was careful not to show the relief I was feeling, how rattled I was. “I am more than happy to draw a line under this whole conversation . . .”

  But he shook his head again. “No, I mean us. Our marriage.”

  Chapter 54

  “It hasn’t been working for me for a while now,” said Josh, his expression determined.

  “Oh, it hasn’t been working for you?” I heard myself say, with heavy irony. I sat down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs behind me.

  “I need more, Olivia. I deserve more.”

  “You’re really going to do this now?”

  But he did. And as he kept talking, after that, it struck me that it was like he was repeating a script he’d pulled from somewhere, but I didn’t know my part.

  Soon I was barely listening. Because I had tried so hard, for so long, to keep us together, trying to make us feel like we looked from the outside, the perfect couple. Even after Bea, when I thought we might get closer, he disappeared further away, jealous again of my split attention, needing shoring up—I had been so calm, so reasonable, so controlled, careful never to touch the things that were wrong between us, never to voice them out loud, as if doing so would break the spell.

  Instead, he had.

  As I tried to absorb the shock, my attention closed in on what he was saying now: “. . . should never have let you bring me up here.”

  “Me? You couldn’t wait to get up here!”
I don’t know why that got me in particular; him rewriting our history. “You couldn’t wait to jack in your job, and be the big man up at the big house.”

  He looked briefly shocked by my unusual bluntness, and some part of me found it almost comical. But he recovered quickly.

  “Well, work isn’t everything,” he said, his neck flushing red. “Better that than be obsessed by it; you’ve made it your whole life, put our whole life all over the Internet. That’s what you wanted.”

  “Yes, it was,” I said, the emphasis heavy on the “was.” And maybe when I started all that I was making a point: look how perfect my life, my house, my family is—was. “But I’d have stepped away years ago if I could, and you know that.”

  “And if you hadn’t let that woman come here to write a book about you,” he said stiffly, ignoring what I’d said, “we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”

  “I let her? I didn’t even want to do a book!”

  And with that—after a day of dealing with the police, with Annie, with Bea; after a whole week of Nicky poking around the place—I felt my anger, long tamped down, start to slide out of my control.

  “But while you played property developer, someone had to pay for all this,” I stood up, gesturing around at the beautiful house. “Someone’s had to keep our family together.”

  “And a great job you’re doing of it,” he said, “police all over the place, people talking.”

  “I’ve held up my side of the bargain, Josh, you can’t say that I haven’t.”

  But he raised his voice over mine, throwing words to wound: “Are you even thinking of our daughter, what all this will do to her?”

  I took a furious intake of breath.

  And then both of us went for it in a way we never had before, in a way I’d never let happen—the stress and anger exploding between us—as the immediate disaster facing us was overtaken by all the long-buried hurts of our marriage:

  “You know I’ve been the perfect wife, perfect mother—”

  “I can’t do it anymore, it’s exhausting, you’re exhausting—”

  “One of us had to be the grown-up, one of us had to carry this house, our life—”

  “It’s not normal, for someone to be so cold—”

  “I’ve tried so hard, you know I’ve done the best I could—”

  “You’re messed up, you’ll mess Bea up, too—”

  “You knew who I was when you married me.”

  My words hung in the air between us; too late I realized my mistake.

  “Did I?” he said slowly. I met his eyes, expecting to see sadness, grief maybe, but his look was crafty. “Did I know who you were?”

  I was silent, panic rising in me; I’d pushed things too far.

  “You think I don’t know, Olivia,” he said, his tone controlled again, and that frightened me more than before, “but I do. I know a lot.”

  “Josh,” I said—my voice sounded hoarse, “I don’t . . .”

  Of course I hadn’t told him what really happened the night of the fire: I was not an idiot.

  “At first I thought it was your way of coping, that you wouldn’t talk about it,” he said. “Even when you wouldn’t go to your own mother’s funeral. You just said something bad happened that night.”

  But things were different at the beginning. I trusted him.

  “And now I know other things, too. I know that you were in trouble before the fire, that your parents wanted to send you away.”

  It’s hard to hide who you are from someone, however much you try.

  “You’ve been talking to Sabrina,” I said hollowly. I’d never worked out how much she knew, but it was enough to want to keep her on my side. “She’s never really liked me,” I said, my only defense, and it was true—but it was like a red rag to a bull.

  “Don’t blame her,” he said, raising his voice again. “Tell me, Olivia. What really happened the night of the fire? And what has it to do with Nicky going missing? Because I don’t think it’s a coincidence, any of it.”

  “Josh,” I said, desperately. “You can’t really believe. . .”

  “I know you. I know how you operate.”

  The silence stretched between us. I didn’t know what to say. Then, from behind me in the hall, I heard the slow tread down the back stairs that Annie insists on using.

  “Annie’s coming,” I said quietly, not daring to show my relief at the reprieve. We behaved in front of other people, it was one of the unbroken rules of our marriage.

  But as I turned on my heel and walked down the corridor to the main hall, I heard his voice, raised deliberately to follow me, my husband not caring who heard.

  “Tell me the truth, Olivia! What have you done?”

  Chapter 55

  The next morning, I got Bea ready and went out. Josh had slept in a guest room overnight . . . or, at least, I thought he had. Still, that was the best thing, I decided: give him time to cool off, like always.

  It was Tuesday, and I had work piling up. But instead I buckled a mildly protesting Bea into her car seat and drove to the supermarket, the big one in Mansford.

  I took my time in the aisles, picking up a few things. We looked around the shops for a bit. Then Bea and I sat in the window of our favorite café, where they gave her a babyccino—all froth—that she decided made her “a big girl.”

  I started to feel a bit better for the break, for the interlude of normality.

  But eventually I had to go home again. And, as I drove up the driveway to the house, I leaned forward over the wheel, craning to see in the brightness. My pulse started to quicken.

  Josh’s car was in front of the house, along with a police car and an unmarked one, dark and sleek. I hesitated, then parked awkwardly on the side of the driveway, so I didn’t have to drive past the house windows. My car was big and hard to maneuver around so many other vehicles. If anyone asked.

  Then I didn’t go straight inside—instead, I took Bea by the hand, skirting the far edge of the driveway, so you wouldn’t see us if you happened to glance out from within.

  “Let’s go round the back way shall we, Bea? We’ll check on the blackberries, see if there are any for you to pick.” This had been our routine for the last few weeks, although of course things were not exactly routine anymore.

  * * *

  We were rounding the side of the house when I stopped. They had driven a police van right across the lawn and down to the edge of the lake, leaving dusty brown tracks on the thirsty grass.

  And there were people at the bottom of the garden: half a dozen figures by the water’s edge, a couple of them in black diving kits. The water was deeper than it looked, and cold. So they were already searching the lake—for a body—oh God—

  “They been swimming, Mummy,” Bea piped up. It brought me back to myself.

  I started to walk on, her hand in mine. “Never mind that, let’s go and look at Cav’s garden.”

  In the walled garden by the kitchen door, Cav grew runner beans and berries and other good things. Josh had been on at me to tell him to stop taking them for himself, too. To my relief, Cav was there, kneeling among the beds.

  “Would you mind keeping an eye on Bea just for a second, I need to . . .” I trailed off.

  I need to see what is waiting for me in my house.

  He straightened up and nodded at me. “No bother. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  I smiled, reflexively. I should never have left Josh alone. What are they saying to him?

  No one was in the kitchen. But as I walked into the main hall I stopped. I could hear voices, low and urgent, coming from the front sitting room. I never used it.

  I listened for a second, before I placed who was speaking: the man, Moran?

  The door was almost closed, cracked open just an inch or two. I went to it carefully, soundless in my expensively scuffed sneakers.

  I could see the back of someone’s head: yes, there was Moran, sitting on a sofa, and there was Barnett’s brown ponytail next to
him. And opposite, standing by the mantelpiece, was Josh.

  * * *

  “But I’ve told you everything I know.” He sounded upset. “My wife will be back soon.”

  “As you’ve said”—that was Moran—“and we’re keen to speak to her also, when the moment is right. But you need to understand that this is a very serious situation.”

  I shifted a little closer and Josh’s face came into view. It was tense and pale. He looked angry, no— scared. This was getting too close for him; he wasn’t used to things going wrong.

  “I don’t know anything about where that bloody gun is. This is harassment, you know.”

  They didn’t seem very bothered about that.

  “Let me mention a few things to you,” said Moran, steel entering his voice. “Aiding and abetting. Assisting an offender. Concealing an offense. Preventing a lawful burial. Do you know what those charges mean, Josh?”

  “Charges!” Josh sounded horrified. “Good God, I . . .” He broke off, running a hand through his hair.

  Barnett spoke now, more sympathetic, conciliatory: “I know how hard it must be for you, Josh. But if you know something, you need to tell us now. You can’t protect anybody. However much you’d like to.”

  My husband looked down into the empty hearth, and I felt a sick heat in the pit of my stomach, sweat at the back of my neck. He just needed to stick to what he had already told them, stick to his story.

  “You’ve got to do the right thing,” I heard Barnett say soothingly. “For your own sake.”

  “I’m sorry,” His face was grave as he turned back to them, and for a moment I had hope—I can’t help you any further, I finished for him—“but I’m afraid I’ve not been entirely forthcoming.”

  He was going to do it, I knew then, he was going to tell them.

  Josh took a deep breath—my husband has always had a sense of theater—and said, “I can’t lie: I’ve got to be accountable. Got to face up to what I’ve done.”