The Night Visitor

by Lucy Atkins

  Perhaps the policeman was right that the boys did this. They could have found scissors somewhere, and Jess had been winding them up at bedtime, teasing them about the grave man, keeping them awake. It was possible that they wanted to teach her a lesson. Miles, particularly, had a thuggish streak. But would they go this far? Surely Paul wouldn’t have violated his sister in this way. His shocked reaction had seemed authentic. No. It couldn’t have been her boy. She was sure of it.

  Perhaps it really was a bizarre act of theft by a stranger. She dimly remembered reading about a spate of hair stealing in nineteenth century Paris: women and children violated as they knelt in church. They might feel a tickle on the neck, or nothing at all, and then later they’d find that their long plaits had been sliced clean off. But it seemed so unlikely that this could happen to Jess.

  Her limbs felt shaky as she stepped into the cool hallway. David and Jess had vanished down the corridor into the kitchen. She paused and leaned against the armoire, trying to find something to hold on to, trying to think straight. But all she could think was that they could not possibly stay another night in this house. They had to get out. The holiday was ruined.

  Olivia

  South of France, Day Six, evening

  ‘Listen guys … Em’s packing.’ Khalil came out onto the shady terrace just as Olivia sat down at the table with all the other adults. ‘We just don’t really feel we can stay here any more after what’s happened.’

  They had two open bottles of wine in front of them and someone had opened a big bag of greasy, plain crisps. The children were sprawled in the living room, on sofas or floors, staring at screens, eating bread and Nutella.

  ‘We’re going to go,’ Khalil finished.

  Olivia opened her mouth to say they were leaving too, but David struggled to his feet. He bumped the edge of the table and the wine glasses shook. ‘What? No! Don’t go!’

  Olivia stared at him.

  ‘Em just doesn’t feel safe here any more,’ Khalil said. ‘And, I mean, I’m with her, it’s not exactly relaxing knowing that someone might’ve come in and done this.’

  ‘It is horribly unsettling.’ Chloe nodded. ‘The thought that there’s someone out there who could do this …’

  Olivia looked back at David, but his eyes were fixed on Chloe. Again, she thought of the two of them in the car at the viewing point. With all the trauma of the police and the hair she hadn’t even asked him about it. But if she asked him, she’d have to explain that it came from Vivian, and that just felt too difficult. The only way to explain that would be to explain Bertie and the well, and all the mess and complications of Vivian, and she could not begin to go there right now. She just couldn’t.

  Chloe was the only one who had been for a swim and the kaftan she’d pulled over her bathing suit was patchy and damp and clung to the outline of her breasts as she ran her hands through her wet hair, pulling it back from her face, which looked gaunt and tired.

  ‘I think we’re going to go too.’ Chloe blinked at Al. ‘Aren’t we?’

  Al nodded and shrugged, then stared glumly at his wine glass, his chin tucked in and resting on the solid folds of his neck.

  David began to argue, then, that if it was a one-off act of opportunism then the culprit would be long gone. The online market for human hair was lucrative: beautiful long hair like Jess’s could be sold for as much as a thousand euros. Whoever did this would not be coming back.

  Olivia watched him as he talked. He was so vehement, so panicky. Perspiration dotted his hairline, his unshaven jaw was tense, his eyes darted from face to face. She could not fathom what was going through his mind right now. How could he possibly consider staying in this place, after what had happened? His denial felt pathological. He flopped back into the chair, spent.

  She felt her stomach churn. She was responsible for this. She had failed to book a house with enough bedrooms for all the children, she had persuaded everyone that the tower was safe and she had left the gate unlocked. She had also exposed her family to Vivian – if this had anything to do with Vivian.

  She still couldn’t work out whether Vivian was capable of this. It could be an insane act of revenge or spite or outrage, or an expression of pain. Or it might just have been a stranger, as the police suggested, an opportunist who saw Jess’s beautiful golden hair and knew they could make a lot of money by selling it.

  Neither explanation seemed remotely reasonable. Both felt terrifying.

  The bottom line was that she had no idea what Vivian was or wasn’t capable of. All she knew was that Vivian was odd, obsessive and secretive and had just taken a big blow. The extent of their entanglement was now beginning to sink in. Over the past eighteen months, she had allowed Vivian to cross an invisible boundary; she’d revealed things about her personal life that she would not, had she stopped to think about it for a nanosecond, have wanted Vivian to know.

  Vivian already knew more about her struggles with Dominic than Chloe did. She also knew about her career insecurities and her fears that her colleagues did not take her seriously because of her TV work. She knew about the tensions with David, too. She’d shared with Vivian her fears about the stalker, and her anxiety that he might come back. She’d even talked to Vivian about her father, about the olivia fossil and the crisis over his reputation, and she almost never talked to anyone about that. Somehow, little by little, Vivian had unearthed things that she would much rather have kept to herself. In return, she knew next to nothing about Vivian.

  Khalil was saying something about staying in an Ibis hotel near the airport. Then Chloe and Al were bickering about whether to leave that night or the next day.

  ‘Everyone’s knackered; I’ve just had two glasses of wine. Let’s at least go tomorrow, the kids can sleep in our room tonight,’ Al said. ‘They’ll be perfectly safe, I mean, there’s still the possibility that they were involved. Got carried away, you know.’

  ‘Carried away? Oh my God! Our boys did not do this to Jess!’

  Al shrugged. ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’ll drive. I’ve only had one glass of wine,’ Chloe said. ‘I don’t feel safe here. We need to just go, Al.’

  Olivia suddenly remembered that she’d left Paul and Jess with Vivian overnight once, on their own. It was about a year ago. David had been travelling and she had brought Jess and Paul down to Sussex for the night. She’d had a row with Dom, who wanted to stay in London; he’d thumped his fist into the wall, making a dent in the plaster and eventually, furious and exhausted by him, she had just left him there. She knew it was stupid. He was fifteen and untrustworthy and Marta had gone away for the weekend.

  Her phone had started ringing around 11 p.m., first the neighbours, an intimidating architect couple in their late fifties with impeccable, minimalist taste and no children, and then Dom himself. He sounded more like a little boy than he had in years as he told her that the police were with him and wanted to talk to her.

  Paul and Jess had been sleeping upstairs. She knew she would be back first thing in the morning and she didn’t want to drag them into the car to face whatever chaos Dom had created back in London. The only person she knew well enough to ask, nearby, at short notice, was Vivian.

  Vivian drove over and slept in the spare room. She’d brought Bertie and he clearly slept on the bed as Olivia had later found wiry black dog hairs everywhere and the eiderdown had needed cleaning. When Olivia got back, with Dom, at nine thirty the next morning after about three hours of sleep, everything seemed to be under control. Vivian had made Jess and Paul boiled eggs and they were watching TV while she tidied the kitchen with Bertie at her heels.

  It was only after Vivian and Bertie left that Olivia began to get the feeling that everything in the house, every single object, drawer, ornament or book, had been picked up, inspected and put back. In her own bedroom the air felt disturbed, though she could pinpoint nothing except that the succulent she kept on her desk, in a geometric pot Marta had brought them from Copenhagen, was now on the windowsill
. She couldn’t say for certain that she hadn’t moved it there herself.

  Her laptop was on, but she’d probably left it that way, and anyway, it was password-protected. The teetering pile of books to be read was in the same place. Her notepads, in which she jotted down thoughts and references, sat as always, behind a pile of papers waiting to be dealt with; student essays needing to be marked, an agenda from an academic meeting, her lecture notes, a public talk on index cards, a manuscript waiting for her endorsement, a folder of archival references. She really couldn’t pinpoint anything different; even the pot of pens and her calculator were where they always sat. But instinct told her that her desk had been disturbed.

  ‘So what do you think, Liv?’ Chloe said, loudly. ‘You’ve gone very quiet.’

  ‘What? Sorry. I was just … What?’

  ‘Are you guys leaving tonight or tomorrow?’

  ‘Tonight.’ She straightened. ‘We’re going to have to find a hotel, I don’t know. Or just drive up to Dieppe overnight.’

  She suddenly realized how Vivian had known about this place. She’d got into the laptop that night. She must have watched her type her password during their sessions in the bakery many times. It had never occurred to her to hide the password. She felt a chill creep across her hot skin. That was the only way Vivian could have known the location of this holiday house. And if Vivian had got into her laptop then she’d have had access to all of Olivia’s private emails, work files, money files.

  Among the many administrative university emails, she’d have found caches of personal life: exchanges with Chloe or Emma or other friends, social arrangements – dates, times, places – and confidences. She would have been able to read emails with Carol, about TV offers or next steps in her media career, or with the production company about new programme ideas and script developments. Vivian could have traced every stage of the book deal too. All the details of the publishers’ bidding war for Annabel were in her inbox: the particulars of the advance, notifications of payments for signing, then for delivery of the first draft, the final draft.

  There would also be all her personal communication with David too: fraught exchanges about his travel schedule or the need for him to talk to Dom; her occasional outbursts over something Dom had done or said. There were also the tender messages – the idea of Vivian reading those felt almost worse than the arguments – times when she’d felt vulnerable and reached out to him for reassurance or love. Times when she was missing him, longing for him to come home from whatever work trip he was on.

  There would be references to Vivian buried in those emails too. She hadn’t said anything too unkind, she was sure, but she definitely would not have wanted Vivian to see them. There would have been times when she’d complained about how demanding, or odd, Vivian was. And David had called her ‘your faithful helper’, she remembered that. She’d emailed him after the first meeting in the bakery, commenting that Vivian might be difficult – she’d described how Vivian had shouted across the cafe about James Barry and how embarrassed she’d felt. After that, he had also sometimes referred to Vivian as ‘Old Baz’.

  Vivian had always been non-committal and tight-lipped about David, and Olivia had had the strong sense that she disapproved of him. In reality, Vivian must despise David.

  It was disturbing to think of Vivian sitting in her chair, in her bedroom at the Farmhouse, filleting her life, message by message.

  And what did she know about Vivian? Almost nothing. Just that she had lost her mother as a young child and had grown up in rural Sussex with an alcoholic father; that she was very protective of Lady Burley; that she worried a lot about her employer’s health and about Ileford’s structural issues; that she was extremely intelligent and organized, if socially clueless. That she mourned her dog, profoundly.

  Did this mean she would attack Jess? Olivia had no idea. But the fact that she was even asking herself this question meant that nothing about Vivian was safe. This, she realized, included the work Vivian had done on Annabel.

  Publication was in October, less than two months away. The publicity machine was in full motion. She had been photographed on the Ileford steps; features were scheduled for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Red, Woman & Home and The Lady. She could not possibly go back to Joy, admit the extent of Vivian’s involvement and demand that they delay publication because she needed another year – maybe more – to double-check every single fact that Vivian had produced for her.

  She had to calm down. She took a gulp of wine. She felt sick and sweaty. Chloe and Al were still bickering about the logistics of where and when to go. David was silent, arms folded, legs crossed, staring out at the hills, his profile very still, his dark eyes fixed on a distant point. Khalil had gone, presumably to help Emma pack.

  She had to stay rational. Everything felt unstable right now because of Jess’s hair, but there was no reason to believe that Vivian did it – or that she had sabotaged Annabel.

  Olivia had talked her through the research strategy in enormous detail. Vivian had been obsessed with the work and with accuracy. She constantly asked for clarification and guidance, had kept her informed of every find. Olivia might not have been through each archive herself, but she had kept a very close eye on Vivian’s work. She’d frequently checked facts just to be sure they were accurate. Without fail, they were.

  Vivian was just distraught about Bertie. It was understandable, but that did not mean she would come up here in the middle of the night and hack Jess’s hair off.

  But Vivian could be dismayingly odd. She knew that she should try to share her fears with the others, but she did not know where to start. She imagined David blaming her for the death of the dog, for antagonizing Vivian by lying about it, for allowing Vivian into their lives. He might even fly into a rage and rush down to the village to confront her. That would only make things worse. If Vivian had done this, she would certainly never admit it, and if she had not done this then she would be doubly wounded. It would be very distressing for her to face angry accusations from David.

  Al and Chloe were staring at their empty wine glasses. David cleared his throat, rubbed a hand over his face and said, in a flat voice, ‘Well, I suppose that’s that then.’

  ‘Yup.’ Al nodded. ‘Holiday’s buggered, I’m afraid, mate.’

  ‘The kids are going to be really upset.’ David turned to Olivia, as if she could do something about this.

  ‘I know. But we can’t stay.’

  ‘Fucking hell!’ He slammed his hands onto the chair arms, making them all jump, pushed the chair back and got to his feet.

  Olivia turned to Chloe. ‘I’ll try and get a refund.’

  Chloe dismissed this with a wave of a hand. ‘None of us care about the money, Liv.’ Olivia realized then that Chloe was crying.

  ‘Chlo …’ She reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘I’m so sorry. This is all my fault, I’ve totally messed up. I should have checked that there were enough bedrooms, I didn’t lock the gate … I feel really terrible about this, I’m so sorry. I feel completely responsible for this.’

  ‘No.’ Chloe shook her head and wiped her eyes. ‘Don’t be silly, none of this is your fault, it really isn’t.’ She covered her face with both hands and began to weep, properly. ‘It’s not your fault at all – it’s just really upsetting and horrible, poor, poor Jess.’

  ‘Come on, Chlo.’ Al put his arm around her. ‘It doesn’t matter that much. It’s only a holiday – it’s only hair.’

  ‘It’s not only hair!’ Chloe’s shoulders shook. ‘Jesus Christ! How could you say that?’

  ‘Well, no, OK, it’s not just hair, but it’s not the end of the world either.’

  ‘I’m going to go and tell the kids we’re leaving,’ David said. ‘Then I’m going to load the car up.’

  ‘I’ll come and tell our boys.’ Chloe gulped some water, swiped at her wet face with both hands, wiped her nose on her kaftan sleeve and got up. Her face was blotchy. She looked exhausted.

  David lo
oked away as he passed Olivia and she understood that he held her fully responsible for the implosion of their holiday. The guilt had shifted and she was now the culprit, the mess-maker.

  Everything was in disarray. Emma was obviously bitter that she had been forced to let Nura sleep in the tower, and whatever they said, Chloe and Al must blame her for leaving the front gate unlocked. David clearly resented her for this and for many other less reasonable things: his failure to finish his book, his waning literary star, her own swelling success.

  If Annabel were a hit, if it paid off some or all of this debt, he would only resent her even more. At a recent party in the ridiculously trendy home of a BBC producer, she had overheard their host introduce David as ‘David Linder, who’s married to brilliant Olivia Sweetman, the historian and TV presenter.’

  She suddenly felt very alone. Their marriage really was in a fragile state. It was not just the money and her fury with him, or the shock of what had happened to Jess. There was a rift between them now, and whilst on the surface it might look manageable, it went deep. Another jolt and they might just break in two.

  She watched David and Chloe go through the French windows side by side. He reached out a hand and laid it, lightly, on Chloe’s shoulder. Chloe brushed it away with a violent, pent-up gesture.

  Everything inside Olivia grew very still. She thought about David confiding in Chloe about the debt, and she remembered Chloe’s face, as they talked about this on the sun loungers. There had been a brief look of desperation as she opened her mouth to say something, before they were interrupted by Miles. Chloe, she realized, had looked guilty, as if she was about to make a confession. She remembered Vivian’s comment about them parked in the viewing point for two hours.

  Since they arrived in France she had felt as if David and Chloe were engaged in a silent debate or unresolved argument. The ferocity with which Chloe shrugged off his hand felt too intimate. As Olivia reached for her wineglass she felt as if a giant’s hand was squeezing her torso.