You Can Trust Me

by Emma Rowley

  She is sitting at the end of the bench nearest me, more people in suits clustered behind her—fellow lawyers waiting for their clients’ cases to come up after mine. I am just one of many to pass through the courtroom this Friday afternoon.

  On a bench farther away from me is the prosecution, a tall woman with brown curly hair, who now stands to address the judge.

  “Sir,” she says, her voice carrying and clear. “This is an allegation of murder. The district judge will know that the procedure should be to send the defendant for trial at Chester Crown Court. There needs to be a bail review, so we would suggest that the next hearing be on Monday at the crown court.”

  I feel panic mounting. I look around, trying to focus on details to calm myself. On the bench behind the prosecution lawyer, I see Barnett and Moran whispering to each other; sitting next to them is a big red-faced man in a suit. I would guess, by the way he surveys the courtroom, that he is the detectives’ boss.

  The press bench is full of pale-faced skinny reporters in suits and dresses with notebooks and pens and one woman in a blocky purple suit and immaculate bob that tells me she’s ready for her TV close-up.

  I am glad I didn’t have to brave the pack outside. There are no cameras allowed in court, but I glimpsed the photographers through the window of the police van as it rounded the front of the court: a dozen men with big black lenses swinging round to zoom in. I was taken in through the back.

  And there is Josh, sitting in the public gallery, wearing a white shirt without a tie, staring straight ahead.

  I wonder if he had to run the gauntlet of the photographers outside. He will have loved that: head down, jaw square, the careworn yet dashing husband. For now.

  I can’t imagine any divorce court would favor someone serving a life sentence. He could move Sabrina in. Who could even object, thinking of that poor man and his poor motherless daughter?

  And maybe even that would be for the best, too. Perhaps it is only right.

  But then I see Sabrina, and anger flashes through me. She is in the row behind him, eyes downcast, wearing a demure collared dress I’ve never seen her in before. Give me strength.

  My lawyer stands up now, and I turn my head to look at her: “Sir, this court has no power to take a plea. But I would like to record that the defendant is indicating that she will plead”—the tiniest pause—“not guilty.”

  There is rustling from the press bench, as they digest it: I deny the crime.

  “Silence!” The district judge raises his voice over the murmurs, then addresses me rapidly: “I have no power to make a decision on bail in your case. You will be remanded in custody and sent for trial at Chester Crown Court, your next appearance will be at the crown court on Monday at 9:30 a.m., or such other time as the crown court directs.”

  He looks down at his list, his mind on the next case already. “All right, take her down.”

  And now the custody officer is guiding me through the door at the back of the dock, down the steep stairs to the cells below.

  Grief hits me from nowhere, surprising me, as my eyes fill with tears.

  Bea . . . don’t think about Bea. This is nearly over . . .

  “Silence!” says the district judge again, but the noise only seems to get louder. I look back, but my view is partly blocked by the doorframe.

  “Quiet in the courtroom!” says the judge again, over the hubbub, and this din can’t just be about my not-guilty plea, can it? Because the hum at the back of the room is getting louder. On the press bench heads are turning to see something to their left.

  I am craning to see, too, and the officer doesn’t try to force me down the stairs, sensing something is happening.

  And now everyone in the courtroom is turning round to see what it is, the whispers swelling louder into chatter, and I hear the wooden benches creaking as people start to stand. “What is it?”—a woman’s voice rises above the noise of the crowd—and I glance across at my lawyer and see Nadia mouth something very unprofessional.

  “Silence!” says the district judge, red-faced at the challenge to his authority. “I say, I will have quiet in my courtroom!”

  “But look!” says the woman—it is Purple Suit, pointing at something. Then someone takes a few steps forward into the courtroom, and at last I see, too.

  Hands clasped, chin up, she is there, living and breathing, and I can’t quite believe it, what is happening in front of us all.

  “It’s her!” says Purple Suit, her voice carrying. “It’s Nicky Wilson. She’s alive!”

  Chapter 63

  The courtroom is in an uproar. Someone has their phone out to capture it all, and the court usher is striding over to argue: “No photos, sir—sir!”

  And there she is amid the chaos, standing in the center of the courtroom so everyone can see her, a small, worried-looking figure.

  Then the court quietens, as if everyone is taking a collective breath, and she speaks.

  “There has been the most terrible mistake.”

  * * *

  No one knows what to do, I think. But courtrooms are places where the unexpected happens: there is procedure for everything.

  The judge looks down behind the prosecution lawyer, directly at Barnett and a white-faced Moran. “You over there, are you the officers in the case?”

  Barnett glances at her colleague, sees his pallor, and stands. “We are, sir.”

  “Is this true? Is this Miss Wilson—the murder victim?”

  “I believe it is, sir.” She looks straight ahead.

  “You believe?” the judge asks, his voice dripping with incredulity.

  “It is, sir.”

  Another bubble of chatter rises from the press bench. The detectives’ boss, sitting next to Moran, looks furious.

  The judge turns to the prosecutor: “Well, Miss Fincham?”

  “Would you rise for half an hour, sir?” She wants a break to collect herself, and I don’t blame her.

  “Well, the victim of this murder is standing in my court very much alive.” He sounds as if it is a personal affront. “What do you need to think about, Miss Fincham?”

  With so many journalists watching, the judge is not about to make himself a ready target for tomorrow’s headlines: Murder victim walks into court. The bunglers in blue!

  The prosecutor looks down at the papers in front of her, as if they hold the answer, while everyone waits.

  “Surely, Miss Fincham,” the judge continues, “you are now about to offer no evidence against this woman—who, as far as I can see, is being held in custody for a murder that, as is patently clear, did not take place?”

  I hold my breath: Nadia told me what that phrase means. To offer no evidence signals they are about to drop their prosecution . . .

  Miss Fincham lifts her head. “Yes, sir. I offer no evidence against Mrs. Hayes.”

  But I can’t think anymore, because the judge is turning to address me.

  “No evidence is to be offered against you on the allegations that you face here, Mrs. Hayes.” He nods at me, almost friendly, as the courtroom waits. “Mrs. Hayes,” he pronounces every next word, deliberately, “You. Are. Free. To. Go.”

  There is another explosion of noise, everyone talking and shouting. I hold on to the wooden dock, to steady myself.

  “Silence! I will have silence in my court!” The judge is roaring to be heard. “Siiii-lence!”

  Then the doors bang as the first person breaks from the press bench, running to relay it to the team outside, if they didn’t catch her on the way in; racing to be the first to put the news out on the airwaves.

  The judge stands, giving up on trying to keep control. “Clear the courtroom!”

  * * *

  Mrs. Hayes, you are free to go.

  I don’t wait to be told twice. The dock is not closed off from the rest of the court. I simply walk out from behind the wooden barrier down a couple of steps, all my focus on the person in front of me.

  She looks so different. She is in ju
st jeans and a sweater, her hair pulled back. But her shoulders are back, spine straight. She looks me in the eye as I touch her navy sleeve, just to make sure. I wonder if I am in shock, I feel so calm.

  “Hi Livvy.” She says it softly.

  “So you do remember.”

  Because that’s who my final post was for, of course. It was the only way I could think of reaching her, if she was out there. To tell her what I would have told her if I could. I’d signed it with the name she’d used to call me. Lexy and Livvy, we once were.

  She nods. “When I found out the truth about the fire—your role in . . . what happened that night—I wanted to punish you . . .”

  I give something that’s a cross between a sob and a laugh. “Well, you managed that. Part of me wondered if you might be dead, after all. If you’d done something stupid, when you’d found out what really happened.” I feel my mouth move involuntarily, and think that I might be going to cry.

  Her eyes open a little wider, alarmed. “Not here . . .”

  And then the spell I am in breaks, and I am suddenly aware again of the confusion of the courtroom; people still trying to make sense of what’s just happened; the prosecuting lawyer unleashing her frustration on Barnett and Moran, their backs to us; the avid expressions of the reporters already sidling up to us; then I hear a voice over the hubbub.

  “But what are you going to do about this, Josh?” Sabrina. “No, I won’t calm down—”

  Nicky touches my arm. “We need to go now. Before they want to talk to us.”

  * * *

  And we do, we just walk out of the courtroom, through the lobby and more double doors and into the press of bodies outside, cameras flashing in our eyes.

  Someone thrusts a furry mic toward us. “Nicky, what happened?” It is Purple Coat.

  She bends toward the mic: “I had a personal crisis, and went away to deal with it. I had no idea all this was happening. It’s just horrendous.” She grabs my arm tightly, keeping me moving.

  Purple Coat keeps pace with us. “Olivia, will you be taking action against the police?”

  I hear Nicky say: “We’ll make a full statement later, but the police officers will be out soon—I’m sure you’ll have very many questions for them. Thanks.”

  And she keeps pulling me forward, down the steps of the court to a small dark car in a no-parking zone, clicking open the doors. She slides around to the other side, photographers shooting through the windows as we get in, and pulls out swiftly, a cameraman still filming from the middle of the street as we drive away.

  Suddenly it is quiet, the people on the other side of the glass; the edges of the town flashing by. I am starting to feel very strange, as my worldview reshapes itself, caught in the emotions washing through me.

  “So where should we go now?” asks Nicky. Alexandra. Lexy. I don’t know how to think of her. But this, at least, I do know.

  “Home.”

  PART 3

  Chapter 64

  NICKY

  Of course there was no book.

  I didn’t lie exactly: only left a few things out. I was—am—a ghostwriter. It has suited me, taking on other people’s lives. And it offered me a way into Olivia’s, in the end.

  Like I said, I had been thinking about something a bit different: telling a story of my own. I even had an idea . . .

  Because I knew something bad happened in this house. Our house.

  I just couldn’t remember what.

  * * *

  And now I am sitting in the morning room, the rich pale furnishings glowing softly in the rosy evening light. In the hall, Olivia is on the phone to her lawyer.

  We were silent on the way back home, by unspoken consent. Then Annie opened the front door to us, twisting her hands. The house phone had been ringing nonstop, reporters knocking at the door, the gates had stuck again, and Mr. Hayes was really no help . . .

  She has been told to put her feet up: the two of us have a few things to discuss. From the hall, I can hear Olivia’s murmured conversation wrapping up.

  “OK,” she says, her face thoughtful, when she comes back into the room. “My lawyer has spoken to one of the police officers. And now that the present-day case against me has collapsed for obvious reasons, given the murder victim is alive”—she gives me a look—“their investigation into past events is not going to go any further.”

  I take that in. “So they don’t believe what I wrote?”

  “Officially, you are a clearly vulnerable woman who got carried away.” She sits down on the sofa next to me. “Unofficially . . . I think those detectives, at least, won’t buy that. But they can’t prove anything that happened so long ago. All they’re left with is a theory. Plus, it’s coming from the top now: leave this mess alone. The chief inspector was in court and was furious to be so embarrassed.”

  “So we’re not in trouble?”

  “Nadia doesn’t think so. They might want to speak to you, but she’s heard what you said outside court: that you were having some personal issues, and went away. That’s not a crime. It was the police’s choice to go so hard on the strength of what you wrote. And, of course, what Josh said about me. They’ve realized that was all colored by his affair with Sabrina. They’re talking about a charge of wasting police time.”

  “He’s their scapegoat,” I say, slowly.

  She nods. “But Nadia thinks they will let him sweat, then drop that, too.”

  “So it’s over.”

  “It’s over.”

  * * *

  I wonder if I should feel relieved, instead of this mess of emotion I am experiencing—anger and grief, mixed with a leaping excitement. How am I supposed to navigate all this?

  It was my decision to come back, and I don’t regret my mad headlong rush to the court. But that doesn’t mean I have forgiven her for what she’s done, only that I started to think—hope—that she could be more than that . . .

  The door opens and Annie comes in with a tray, sandwiches cut into neat little triangles, as if we were children. “I thought you might want something to eat.”

  As Olivia busies herself with the food, I try to compose myself. I don’t know what I thought it would be like, our reunion. In the courtroom, I saw my sister shocked out of her habitual cool for a moment. But she is retreating behind the ice again.

  I shiver, despite the mild evening. Away from the house, I forgot the intensity of my fear before; the cold white panic of the night of the dinner party, before I settled on the course I chose: to punish her. Before I read her message, and changed my mind.

  And the more calculating part of me knows that I am safe; she has nothing to fear now I have come back to help her—so neither do I. Yet I put down the sandwich I’ve just picked up, and swallow.

  “Thanks, Annie,” says Olivia. “Take the rest of the evening off.”

  The housekeeper nods in acknowledgment as she takes away the empty tray, leaving the door ajar, and already I can feel Olivia waiting—waiting for me to explain myself. I feel suddenly resentful; it is my turn to be magnanimous, again. I take a breath, trying to get my emotions in check. “I don’t know where to start.”

  Olivia nods. “Start at the beginning.”

  So I do.

  * * *

  I was nine when I realized other people’s memories went back further than my own.

  Bored on one rainy Sunday afternoon, I had pulled out a photo album from the bookcase in the front room. I must have sat there an hour, leafing in wonder through wedding photos of my mother and a tall, handsome, vaguely familiar man who had to be my daddy.

  When Gran came in, she didn’t react, but the next time I looked for the album, it was gone. I knew, even then, there was no point asking for it. But why didn’t I remember anything about him?

  It wasn’t that there was nothing when I thought about it, not exactly. I knew our house had burned down two years before, and we had lost him. Afterward, Mummy and I came to stay at Gran and Granddad’s. My sister Livvy didn’t come. T
hese were things I knew, but they weren’t memories exactly—there were no pictures or feelings attached.

  So much was new and strange when we came here, I reasoned, that perhaps it had shuffled the rest out. Before, I was Alexandra, named for my daddy. Now I was Nicola, once my middle name. We had started afresh, Mummy had told me, that was OK, wasn’t it? I remembered that I wasn’t so sure, at first. But if I asked Mummy questions, she would cry or get angry. Eventually I stopped.

  * * *

  She wasn’t around much to ask anyway, after she met Steve. He was kind, sweeping us up into his big apartment in town, and when they married I became Nicky Wilson. But they went abroad a lot, for his business, so I mostly stayed at my grandparents’, my mother passing through to dispense kisses and clothes I had already grown out of.

  I was ten when she and Steve went off the road on a sharp bend in the French countryside. My grandparents said I was too young to go to the funeral. The truth was, my life didn’t change that much—but as I grew older, I grew more curious about why I never saw my sister. She and my mother had never really got along, and they were both so upset after the fire. That was all my grandparents told me.

  So I searched online, “Vane” and “fire” bringing up photos of the wreck of our old house—miles from my grandparents’ in the Midlands—and details of the blaze. And I started to learn why I remembered so little from before. Memory loss could be related to trauma, I read. Which made sense: I was only seven when I lost my home, father, sister . . .

  At this point they were just vague shifting outlines when I thought of them, like trying to remember a dream on waking. And I didn’t like to think of what had happened to him. But I wondered about Livvy. She was six years older than me, Gran said. Now she would be doing exams. Now she would be leaving school. Now she would be . . . what?

  * * *

  I found out in my final year of college, when I walked past my roommate’s open door and recognized the house on her screen, gleaming white against a blue sky.