You Can Trust Me

by Emma Rowley

  And I know her words are meant to come out brave, but I can feel Livvy shaking, and that’s the worst thing of all.

  Now she moves the gun up against her shoulder and does something to it—a movement I feel—and I know she’s ready.

  We breathe in and out, and we listen to the banging noises, and it feels like we are there a very long time, just me and my big sister together.

  Then there’s a crash louder than anything before.

  That’s the cellar door down, Livvy says.

  I know Daddy wouldn’t hurt us. But it’s not my nice daddy here now, and I am very scared.

  The footsteps come heavy and fast through the corridor to the hall. Then they stop.

  He must be deciding where to go. It’s darker in here, and we’re hidden by the half-closed door. Maybe he will just go out the front . . .

  The door swings open.

  We see that big shadow in the doorway, and I know he sees us.

  Livvy, I whisper.

  She’s breathing even quicker now, like she does when she is scared but won’t say so.

  Livvy, do something!

  The bad man takes a step toward us, and I know he’ll hurt her—

  Livvy!

  When the bang comes I feel the kick through her whole body. It throws her back against me, but I keep holding on.

  And we stay like that, until everything is quiet again.

  Chapter 70

  OLIVIA

  I thought, when she returned, that she finally understood the truth about that night.

  But as we talked in the sitting room, that evening after court, it hit me. She still didn’t remember. Not what had happened. Not what our family was really like.

  She thought I was the one in denial. But it was her. I just couldn’t face telling her right then. Not when I’d just got my sister back. It took all I could not to break apart again.

  Because of course, I still feel guilty.

  * * *

  I know it was not my fault. Sometimes—more and more often, these days—I can feel the truth of that, too.

  I know also that moment can be the most dangerous time for victims of domestic abuse: the moment they decide to leave. Maybe I sensed that even then, at thirteen.

  He was getting worse: drinking more, angrier, unpredictable. I knew we would have to leave this way, clandestinely. My mother and I had talked it over, and an end-of-the-summer vacation offered our opportunity.

  He thought the Cornish vacation cottage was too suburban for words. He might join us there later, he said, and my mother agreed that would be lovely. She didn’t tell him we wouldn’t be there when he turned up. That we didn’t plan to go there at all.

  Instead, as soon as we set off, the three of us, my mother, Lexy and me, would head straight to her parents’ Midlands home hundreds of miles away. From there, she could safely let him know it was over between them.

  Of course, the plan went wrong. We had been slipping money away, to amass a little fund, but he noticed cash was going missing.

  I said it was me. I couldn’t let Nanny get the sack.

  We didn’t know Lexy had told Alex the truth about who took the money, stoking his suspicions about my mother’s plans. So when Elsa insisted that we go back to get her valuables, the things she hadn’t been able to pack with him there watching her, he was waiting. It was a setup—forcing her return and a confrontation.

  He was worse than I’d ever seen him before.

  * * *

  In a way, my naivety helped cover our tracks.

  I didn’t think of cans of petrol, leaving the gas on. The ashtray was full: he must have been waiting there hours, drinking, as the night drew in. I just picked up the box of matches propped by it, lit one, and dropped it in the wastepaper basket in the corner.

  I took bits of an old newspaper, once they had caught, and scattered them around the room. The flames flickered in the darkness, reflected in the shining wood, as I went out again, past the body under the blanket. I’d put that over him.

  We had already got Elsa in the back seat. She was groaning by then, but not really awake.

  I’d only ever been allowed to drive down to the gate before; but I went very slowly along the empty roads. I didn’t think anyone saw us: Annersley was dark, except a light still on in one of the pub’s windows.

  When Elsa woke up, not far from the village, I stopped the car. It’s hard even now to think of her sheer naked terror and distress.

  It just went off in my hands, I said, I didn’t mean it, I was so scared. Yet in a way, she understood: I always protected Lexy in that house.

  I told her she had to drive us to the cottage now, just as everyone expected, for an ordinary family vacation. Eventually, she did.

  * * *

  There, we had a few days’ reprieve: time to think, so that when the police did arrive, we knew what we had to say. We didn’t consider telling the truth. It was a different time, even twenty-some years ago.

  And Alex—I don’t think of him as my father, not anymore—was so careful. Everyone thought that he could do no wrong, even Nanny. They thought my mother was wild, spoiled, with him for his money.

  He had made sure of that, isolating her, spreading rumors. Nanny was always bringing little pieces of gossip back from the village, even in those blurry muddled days after the fire.

  Then one time, she came back and told us that my friend Paul Bryant had seen our car leave, on the day of the fire. I knew that to be a lie, of course. He could only have seen it go by after midnight.

  I walked over to his parents’ pub. Paul said that when he’d told his Uncle Pete that he had seen our car leaving in the dead of night, the policeman had guessed at what happened: a fatal accident, or worse; then a cover-up.

  They thought—must still think—my mother did it. And so they helped us hide it.

  But not for money, like Nicky thought. They owed us.

  Because I had confided in Paul, told him how my family wasn’t like everyone else’s, that sometimes my father would hit my mother, and worse. So he went to his Uncle Pete in the police, thinking he would fix it. Pete Gregory spoke to my father and . . . nothing happened. He carried on.

  * * *

  At least people believed this story from the start. The body was too damaged to show the true cause of death—the lead shot must have melted away in the heat. If they found traces, I was ready to blame the house’s old lead piping. But no one did.

  And no one thought to look for the vintage shotgun that once hung in the sitting room, or the cartridges kept in a drawer of the desk. Pete Gregory, after all, had never bothered Alex about a license for that antique. He wasn’t going to mention it now.

  * * *

  After a few weeks, we left. Elsa just wanted to get away, whisking Lexy off to her parents’. I went to my new school, just a bit later than my father had planned—only, now I wanted to go. The friends we had been staying with kept the dog.

  Afterward, I didn’t want to talk to Elsa. Grandma Vane, never a fan of her daughter-in-law, didn’t help. But my mother didn’t try that hard to keep in touch. I suppose she blamed me, for picking up the gun, and I blamed her, for not being able to keep us safe; both of us were trapped in our guilt.

  When, years later, the letter arrived from my grandparents to tell me she had died, I didn’t feel much. But I wondered about Lexy. Maybe I realized, if not then, when? So I wrote back, telling them I could not make the funeral, but I would like to see my sister.

  They replied quickly: they were very sorry but they didn’t want me stirring up the past. She had forgotten what had happened. It wasn’t a good idea to open old wounds.

  Over time, I decided they were right. Focus on what I could fix.

  * * *

  I suppose there’s one more thing I should mention. The other morning, we were in the park, near the hotel in Mansford where we are staying since the second fire. Nicky—we agreed she’s not Lexy anymore—was asking me what Bea was like as a baby, her first
words, when she started to walk, all the things she’s missed.

  And what’s her middle name? she asked.

  She’s Beatrice Alexandra, I said, without really thinking. For you, of course.

  It was just the truth, but she got all happy and teary. She said it meant something important—that we were always thinking about each other, in some way, even if we weren’t being sisters like we could have been.

  I suggested we go and feed the ducks, it was such a nice day. I don’t think I’ll ever be quite as, well, mushy as she is.

  Although, when you think about it—and I did, afterward—she’s right.

  That’s all I want to say. That’s my story.

  Chapter 71

  NICKY

  They traced the latest fire to a room up on the attic floor. In the end they decided it must have been the bright afternoon sun, reflecting on a mirror, that had set an old wooden dresser alight. It must have been smoking all evening, before the fire caught.

  Neither Olivia nor I have spoken publicly about our ordeal, other than releasing a blandly worded statement via her lawyer requesting privacy and time to heal. It drew a veil over the circumstances around my sudden departure from her house, citing long-standing personal issues that predated my visit. Not quite a lie.

  Although there have been lots of MANSION CURSE headlines, the reports have held nothing to alarm us. My ghostwritten document was never made public. The police knew better than to leak it and give the whole embarrassment more publicity.

  Of course Joey has been in touch with me, desperate to know what happened. I met up with him and said I’d had a kind of breakdown, sticking to the official line.

  I am sure he did not believe me, but he was surprisingly good-tempered about it: if there is one thing more delicious to him than a cover-up, it is the idea that the mainstream media has missed the real story. He has been distracted, though, by his burgeoning photography career: Olivia had the bright idea of getting him to take photos for her. She is used to finding a way through things. It is strangely reassuring—familiar, even.

  * * *

  The other day we went to look at the house, for the last time. The building was wrapped up in tarpaulins, but Olivia wanted to walk around the garden.

  Josh won’t contest the sale, it seems, as the divorce is settled. Local reaction to him abandoning his wife in her time of need came as a serious shock; he is even going to anger-management classes to work on his tendency to break things when he’s in a temper. Sabrina is back at the farm with Leo, keeping a very low profile.

  The damage to the house is much less than it was the first time—thanks to the state-of-the-art alarm system Olivia had linked up to the station. But she wants a fresh start.

  Annie won’t go with her. She is moving abroad, to be closer to her brother and his family. Which is maybe just as well.

  The grass at the bottom of the lawn was scorched in a few places but was already growing back when we visited. It was growing back, too, over the earth path worn to Alexander Vane’s stone marker.

  I had already asked Olivia about it: Alex’s mother had insisted on it, while she tried to forget it was even there. So it wasn’t Olivia’s frequent footsteps that had worn away that path. But someone’s had.

  “You know,” I said then, “I thought it was Cav, who had been with you since before the fire.” I explained how I’d heard her and Josh arguing about it, or so I thought.

  “Cav?” she said, smiling but puzzled. “No . . . he didn’t work for us before. Don’t you remember Annie?”

  I did. Details are still coming back, even now.

  * * *

  Nanny, we had called her then—Olivia’s mispronunciation, from when she was little, that had stuck. Annie wasn’t a proper nanny, really. She just came in from the village to help out.

  When Olivia came back to Annersley years later, she sought Annie out. Annie had been working as a housekeeper in Devon, and was thrilled to come back.

  Annie, I also realized, was the link between the house and village. The rumors about Elsa that Marie Crompton repeated to me—Marie would have heard them straight from the source: her friend Annie. And, more recently, their chats would cover all the village gossip; how the writer who’d come to stay at the big house had been asking some questions of Marie’s grandson Joey . . .

  And Annie didn’t drive. Which means when I thought I was alone in the house, no cars parked outside, Annie could have been in there with me: watching me.

  I think she just wanted to scare me off: she must have guessed that there was something to hide—and that Elsa had done it. Until . . .

  I remember what I saw over Olivia’s shoulder as we talked after court: the door left ajar by Annie. I think Annie was waiting, listening, and heard our secret. That Alex Vane had been shot by his own daughter.

  It must have been a tremendous shock. Everybody loved Alex, after all. Perhaps she just wanted to punish us a little, with another scare. She had her own key to let herself back in that night. And there are all sorts of ways you could start a fire, then slip away. Maybe she didn’t think the house would burn so fast.

  I cannot be sure. I hope that Olivia is right, that it was just an accident. But sometimes, at night, I wonder if a house might be haunted by its past, after all.

  I think of that fire returning, that we almost didn’t escape . . .

  * * *

  But what’s most surprising is how much we have to look forward to. We have been talking, Olivia and I, about the future. She is looking for a different kind of influence: she has it all worked out.

  “Design school, then no more licensing my name out—I’m going to do it all myself. I want Olivia Vane to be a household brand. Everything you need for the perfect home. But with rather less of me in the photos.”

  I smiled at her determined expression. I know she will do it.

  “And what about you?” she said then.

  “I don’t know. I might go traveling . . .” I didn’t really fancy another ghostwriting job. Unsurprisingly. And I will get a slice of the house proceeds, she told me the other day—although I wasn’t sure, she says it’s only right—so for once I have no financial pressures, right now.

  “Aren’t you going to finish our book?” she said.

  I pulled a face. “Are you joking?” I still can’t always tell with her. “You know we couldn’t put that out there.”

  “Why?” she said. “Change names, tweak a few details. Don’t they say truth is stranger than fiction?”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “I’d help,” she offered. “Think about it.”

  So I did think about it.

  * * *

  Of course, it would be difficult. We would have to spend a lot of time together, Olivia and I, examining old wounds. We would have to build a whole new relationship, as the women we are today, not the children we once were. And we would have to find a way to tell our story, without repercussions for us, or Bea.

  Who knows if it wouldn’t all be too much? If the past would not be better left alone?

  After all, we are very different people, and very different, too, from those two little girls who ran across the lawn hand in hand, and felt like they were flying . . .

  But as I say, who really knows?

  Maybe we could make it work, somehow. Maybe we could be sisters again. Maybe one day you will see our story on a shelf, pull it down, check the cover, hold it in your hands. Turn the page, then another, to see what happens next.

  Like I said: details are still coming back, even now . . .

  Epilogue

  And now it is time to go.

  Livvy is concentrating, driving slowly. But I keep watching through the back window of the car.

  I see something moving in a window near the front door and wonder if he has got up again, after all. But then the curtain flickers once more, and this time the window must break, because fire comes out.

  Next to me, Livvy makes a sound, like she can’t catc
h her breath.

  Shh, Livvy. I slide back down in my seat so I can reach to pat her arm. Shh.

  After a second she says: Seat belt on, Lexy.

  It is her loud voice again. But I know it makes Livvy feel better when she can tell me what to do, so I do what she says.

  She did it inside, too. Come here, Lexy, she said.

  But I know Livvy, even when she acts grown-up. I knew she was scared. That was the worst thing of all, knowing how scared she was underneath.

  And no one was trying to stop it, and no one was coming to help.

  They never did.

  So when he came toward us I knew what to do. I got all shaky and hot, like fire was inside me, and I did it. I put my fingers over hers and I stopped him. I stopped him from hurting us.

  And I can’t feel sad, even now, because Livvy always looks after me. It was my turn to look after her.

  But one day, maybe, I will forget what it was like to be so little and scared, and forget what I had to do.

  I hope I do.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to John Scognamiglio and to everyone at Kensington for your creativity and hard work. In the UK, thank you to Lucy Frederick, Ben Willis and the Orion team, and to Clare Hulton for all your support. Thank you to first readers Helena Curran, Liz Rowley, Zoe Rowley, Rowena Mason, and Jennifer Twite. Thank you to Sarah Przybylska and Graham Bartlett for your expertise. A very big thank-you to all the family, friends, and colleagues who have cheered this book on—and to all the readers who have supported it now that it is out in the world. (And lastly, ER. For helping to get our story out there.)