You Can Trust Me: A Novel Page 3

  “A glamour drink,” she will say with a smile and a wink. “To get you ready for the big time, Hans.”

  She’s always had a special relationship with Hannah. In many ways, they’re alike—brittle and egocentric but capable of genuine warmth too. I know the fact that Hannah looks like Kara has always haunted Julia as well as me. After all, it was my sister’s death—and our impotent fury against her killer—that brought Julia and me together.

  Hannah is dressed and ready to leave by ten thirty—she’s in skinny jeans and a silk vest of mine that is both too old and too big for her. I am too busy bribing Zack to get dressed to say anything either about that or the eyeliner she’s applied rather heavily. She adores Julia as much as Julia adores her. I understand why she wants to look good. Julia brings out that side of me as well.

  Once Zack is ready, I hurry into my own tea dress and sandals. Julia is never late herself and hates unpunctuality in her guests. It seems odd that she hasn’t replied either to my call or my text, but I don’t give it much thought as we pull up in the sunshine outside her apartment.

  And then she doesn’t answer the door.

  I frown. I’ve never known Julia—a self-confessed control freak—to miss one of our Sunday lunch dates or, indeed, be late for any arrangement. For all the force and flamboyance of her personality, Julia is one of the most considerate people I’ve ever met: well-mannered to a fault and as openly grateful for the stability my friendship offers as she is needful of constant change and stimulation in other areas of her life.

  The two of us grew close after Kara’s death. Before then, Julia was really my sister’s friend. Unmarried and childless herself, Julia couldn’t be more different from me. But she is godmother to my eldest child, and the first person I turned to when I found out about Will’s affair.

  “Oh, honeypie,” I remember her saying with a weary sigh, “Didn’t Momma tell you never to put all your eggs in one bastard?”

  She’s always quoting Dorothy Parker—I gave Julia a collection of the author’s sayings for her most recent, thirty-sixth birthday. Once we’ve settled the kids in front of a DVD, I know she’ll be full of questions and opinions about Catrina and how the dinner party went.

  I ring the doorbell again. Still no reply.

  “But she’s always here when we come,” Hannah says.

  She’s right: Julia would never let my kids down by forgetting the date. I check my phone again. No message. For the first time, Julia’s text about needing to talk sends a shiver down my spine.

  “What are we going to do, Mum?” Hannah asks anxiously.

  Zack, sensing the atmosphere has changed, shuffles closer to me.

  “Maybe the intercom’s not working.” I take out my keys. The spares to Julia’s building and apartment hang on my old leather key ring, just as my keys dangle from her silver Tiffany fob. I open the building’s front door.

  Once inside, the kids race up the stairs to Julia’s second-floor apartment. They hammer on Julia’s front door, but there’s still no reply. I join them, starting to wish I’d turned around and left when we were downstairs, but I can’t stop now. Worry pricks the hairs at the nape of my neck. Where is she?

  I open the door and we walk inside. I feel like I’m intruding, despite the key. The kids, suddenly quiet, hang back. Maybe they sense something in the air. It’s all too fast for me to be sure. And then we’re in the living room and Julia’s lying there on the sofa. And she could be asleep but I know that she’s not.

  A long second passes before I let out my breath and the knowledge slams into my brain.

  Julia. My best friend. Is dead.

  HARRY

  I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker.

  —Einstein

  There’s only one thing that counts: honesty. And I promise faithfully that I will never lie to you. So, no lies. And no false modesty either. I’m going to be straight about who I am and what I do.

  Let’s start with myth number one: that I am a psychopath. That word comes with so much baggage but really it just means “suffering soul.” Isn’t that beautiful? How could anyone fail to be moved by the idea of a mind in torment? But slap a pseudoscientific label on the bitch, and suddenly it sounds ponderous and medical, certainly in need of medication.

  Whatever, it’s a false diagnosis, based on fear and misunderstanding. Because, and here’s my thesis, we are all psychopaths under the skin. For whose soul doesn’t suffer? Life is suffering. That’s not me, that’s the Buddha. And who could argue? Still, I much prefer the old term “psychopath” to the more modern “sociopath.” Sociopath is one of those bits of nonsense jargon—like “cadence” and “granularity”—that I hear at work all the time.

  Apologies, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me begin at the beginning and explain how my so-called psychopathy started. No names, no pack drill, obviously. But you should know that I had a relatively comfortable early childhood. Sorry to disappoint expectations, but there it is. My parents were perfectly normal. I wasn’t beaten or sexually abused or neglected. I had food to eat, a bed to sleep in, and clean clothes every day. A middle-class psychopath. Ha! In your face, analytical psychologists.

  Then Harry came to live with us.

  I can see what you’re thinking: Harry. Probably an uncle or a lodger. Harry: Abuser. Groomer. Pederast.

  No. Harry was our cat. Black and very, very furry. A rescue cat. An interesting cat. Quite possibly a psychopath himself. Certainly sly and narcissistic and without a conscience. I don’t think Harry cared about the mice he killed. He lived to find them, catch them, and watch them suffer. Harry was cruel and I had no interest in cruelty. But I was curious about Harry. He had a long bushy tail—on the surface, all fluffy fur that shed on every piece of furniture we owned—but underneath the fur, his tail was like thick wire. Harry’s tail obsessed me. It was not what it seemed, much like Harry himself. Soft yet hard. Strong yet weak. There one minute, whipped out of the way the next.

  I’m sure Freud would have loved my preadolescent obsession with this phallus substitute. But, as so often with Freud, his analysis would have been off by the limits of his own understanding. You see, my interest in Harry’s tail wasn’t pseudosexual. No. It grew out of the startling discovery I’d made that one thing could in fact be two things. Once this occurred to me, of course, I saw the reality repeated everywhere. For instance, there was nice Mummy, who gave me chocolate cookies, and nasty Mummy, who got cross when I made crumbs. And so on …

  I kept looking at Harry and thinking about his tail, and one day I knew that I wanted to see how he would react if I took a bit of the tail away. I found a notepad and wrote scientiffik experiment on the front. Well, I was young. Then inside the notepad, I wrote down the day and made two columns: one to say what I did, the other to say how Harry reacted.

  There you have it—my first experiment. The first, but not the last.

  Not by any means.

  Of course, Harry was my last animal and my last male. Soon after Harry, I reached puberty, and my thoughts turned to girls. A development that Freud himself would acknowledge was normal.

  I say “girls” but really there was only one girl who mattered.

  And her legacy has been my life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Somehow my legs carry me over to the sofa. There’s a smell of stale urine in the air. I stare down at Julia. Her eyes are closed, and one arm is folded over her chest. She looks peaceful. She’s dressed in sweatpants and a ribbed cotton top. Classic Julia-wear for a girls-only night in. Her dark red hair, starting to fade from the fiery glory of her twenties, falls over her face in messy strands. There’s a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the coffee table. An empty glass. I notice each item in turn. I’m aware of Hannah and Zack beside me. They’re peering down at Julia too. For a second, I hope against hope that this is a game, that any moment, she’s going to open her eyes and say, “Boo!”

 
; “Is she asleep, Mummy?” Zack asks.

  “I’m not sure,” I say.

  But I am. I don’t know what gives it away—maybe the paleness of her face or the stiffness of that arm across the chest. I look down. There’s a stain on the front of her sweats where her muscles have relaxed and she has wet herself.

  “Why does it smell of pee?” Zack clutches my leg.

  “Mum?” Hannah’s voice quavers. Now she’s drawing closer as well.

  I have to act. I have to do something. I must protect my children. These thoughts run through my head as I reach out and touch Julia’s cheek. It’s cold. I run my fingers up her temple, brushing the hair off her forehead. Her skin—her whole being—is rigid. Unnatural.

  I start shaking. How can this have happened? How can Julia be dead? She’s thirty-six, only two years younger than I am.

  “Mummy?” Hannah suddenly sounds as young as Zack.

  I draw my hand away from Julia’s face. Time seems to have slowed down. I’m still trembling. I can’t think. Inside I’m screaming, but I don’t make a sound.

  “Mum?” Hannah’s voice, sharp and terrified, forces me into action.

  I draw my phone from my bag. I dial 999. Surreal, this is surreal.

  “Emergency services. Which service do you require?”

  “Ambulance.”

  Hannah gasps beside me. Zack leans more heavily against my leg.

  The woman on the other end of the phone asks me what has happened. It’s like she’s speaking to me through a long tunnel.

  “We came to see my friend.” I give Julia’s name and address, feeling numb. “I think she’s … she’s … She’s not conscious.” I can’t bring myself to say it. “My children are here, with me.” I pray the 999 woman will understand.

  She does. Her voice is soothing but firm. “Is Julia breathing?” she asks.

  “I don’t think so.” My voice is a hoarse whisper. I feel lost. I’ve never been this close to a body before—neither Dad nor Mum had wanted me to see Kara’s. Yet it is obvious Julia is dead. There is no doubt in my mind, but I can’t say the words. It feels like too huge a truth to own.

  A few more questions. The 999 woman says an ambulance is on its way and asks if there is any evidence of a struggle, if the front door lock was broken.

  “No,” I say. This hasn’t occurred to me. “There’s just a drink.”

  As I speak, Hannah reaches for the glass.

  “Don’t touch that,” I snap.

  Hannah snatches her hand back. She starts crying. The 999 woman tells me to take my children into another room. She tells me again that an ambulance is on its way. She tells me to stay on the line. But I need both hands to deal with Zack, whose arms are clamped around my waist as if he’ll fall over if he lets go.

  I lead the children out of the room. We go into Julia’s bedroom. This is Hannah’s favorite place in the whole world. Normally, she would wander around, trailing her fingers over the huge vanity table overflowing with Julia’s jewelry and cosmetics, but today we huddle together on the bed.

  I put my arms round their shoulders. “Julia has had an accident,” I say. I still can’t form the words.

  “Is she dead?” Zack peers up at me, his huge blue eyes round with shock.

  How dare my children be put through this. Fury fills me for the second time in twelve hours. And yet here, there is no Catrina. Here, there is no one to blame.

  I nod. “I’m sorry, baby.” I pull him closer. Hannah too. She is still weeping, the tears falling unchecked down her cheeks, splashing onto Julia’s blue silk comforter. The bed is made. Unslept in. I register this with the same sense of detachment that I’d abstractly noticed the Jack Daniel’s.

  A few minutes later, the intercom buzzes. I get up. Zack stays with me as I walk into the living room to let the paramedics in. All at once, the atmosphere changes. The paramedics—an older man and a younger woman—are unfazed by what they see. It takes them just a few seconds to process what I am only just beginning to absorb, that Julia has been dead for hours.

  Now they are more concerned with the three of us. The woman ushers Zack and me back into the bedroom, where Hannah is huddled at the far edge of Julia’s bed. The paramedic sits us down and talks quietly to the children. She offers sympathy for the shock we have experienced.

  Zack is more fascinated than upset now. “Is she really gone, not waking up? Why did she pee herself?”

  Hannah sits in silence, chewing on a strand of hair. Normally, I would tell her to take the hair out of her mouth. Right now, I can barely formulate the thought. At this point, the male paramedic beckons me back to the living room. We stand in the doorway. I can see Julia’s legs from the knees down. Her sweatpants are rolled halfway up her calves. Her toenails are painted silver. The same shade she put on Hannah’s nails on our last visit.

  “The police are on their way.” He speaks with a strong Northern accent. His voice is soothing. “They’ll want to take a statement.”

  “Police?” I stare at him.

  The man nods. “It’s procedure in a … when there’s a suspicious death.”

  My mouth is dry.

  “How old was your friend?”

  “Thirty-six. She was my sister’s best friend. I’ve known her since my sister…” I trail off.

  “Well, thirty-six is very young to die so suddenly if, as you say, she was in good health?”

  “As far as I know…” Could there be something Julia hasn’t told me? My mind lurches back to the text she sent last night just as Will and I arrived at the Harburys’ house.

  PLS CALL. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU.

  “There are no signs of a struggle or a break-in, but the police will want to know if you or the children have touched or moved anything.”

  I shake my head. Was Julia’s text a cry for help?

  A few minutes later, and the police arrive. Suddenly Julia’s small, chic apartment is full of people. Men and women in white coats and hairnets examine the living room. A policewoman in uniform speaks to me and I repeat what I told the paramedic.

  “Is there anyone you’d like us to call for you?” She gives me a kindly smile.

  “Will.” I want my husband. Here. Now. I don’t care that he’s in Geneva.

  The policewoman takes my phone as a plainclothes officer arrives. He is obviously someone senior. Everyone busies themselves as he walks in. He strides over, all purposeful. Despite his graying hair, he doesn’t look much older than me.

  “Mrs. Jackson, I’m Detective Inspector Norris.” He asks me more questions. He’s mostly looking for information about Julia’s life. Did she have a partner? Any known allergies or medical conditions? Did she drink heavily? Take drugs? Any recent life events like losing a job or a relationship breakup? What about family?

  I answer as best I can, but it feels like I’m wading through mud as I speak. I tell him about Julia’s family and her job as a freelance journalist … that she’s never been married … that she had mentioned seeing someone new recently but I didn’t know his name … that she has lived here for over ten years … that nothing out of the ordinary had happened in her life recently … that she liked to drink Jack Daniel’s, but I rarely saw her drunk—and definitely no drugs.

  As I speak, Julia’s acerbic voice rings in my ear. Drugs? You have to be kidding, honeypie. Have you seen Keith Richards’s skin?

  I stop. Tears well up. I can’t believe that she’s gone. I can’t believe I won’t ever hear that voice again.

  “Why are you asking all this?”

  Detective Inspector Norris clears his throat. “We need to work out what happened.” He pauses. “Were you aware if your friend had any suicidal thoughts?”

  I stare at him. “No.” I’m emphatic. “No way. Not Julia.”

  I follow Norris’s gaze to the Jack Daniel’s and the empty glass.

  “She wasn’t … she didn’t…”

  Julia’s text flashes into my mind again: PLS CALL. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU.

 
; I tell DI Norris. He nods. “The postmortem will give us more information.”

  I glance over at the bed, where Zack is snuggled up against a young, pretty uniformed officer. Hannah is still hunched in the corner, twisting her hair around her finger. Her eyeliner is streaked across her cheeks. I hate to see her so distraught. It’s ironic. When Hannah was little, I was crucifyingly overprotective, unwilling even to let her out of my sight, yet I never imagined I would have to protect her from anything like what she has seen today.

  I look back at DI Norris. “My children—”

  He pats my arm. “I’ll find an officer to take you home.”

  As he walks away, the female officer returns with my phone in his hand. “Your husband.”

  I take the phone. “Will?”

  “What the hell has happened? They’re saying Julia’s dead?”

  Will’s outraged disbelief mirrors my own feelings so precisely that I can’t speak. Background noise fills the silence. People are chatting and laughing behind him.

  “Liv?”

  “I don’t know,” I gasp. “Yes, I mean. She’s … gone. I just don’t know why … how … When will you be back?”

  “Um…” Will hesitates. “Not sure. Leo’s here. I’ll explain the situation. It’s a nightmare here, the client’s being completely unreasonable.”

  The voices in the room behind him rise. There are two: Leo and a woman. The woman has a Yorkshire twang.

  I suck in my breath, shocked. “Is she there?”

  “What? Who?” Will knows whom I mean. I can hear it in his voice. He sighs. “Leo made her come. It was an order. He decided after we left the party. I didn’t know until we all met at the airport.” Will lowers his voice. “Liv, please. Catrina being here had nothing to do with me.”

  I look over at the sofa. Two women dressed head to toe in white forensic gear are examining Julia’s fingernails. I gulp, my thoughts suddenly clear.

  Julia is gone.