You Can Trust Me (19 page)

“I demand to see the person my wife spoke to. Alexa Carling. Where is she? Get her out here now?” Damian shouts.

“I'm afraid Mrs. Carling is in a meeting, sir. Perhaps if you gave me your name, I—?”

“I'm not giving you
anything
!” Damian yells. “Get her out of the meeting!”

Alexa meets my eyes, her expression at once concerned and apologetic. “I'm sorry, Olivia,” she says. “This has
never
happened before.”

“It's fine,” I say, my heart racing. “Go. I'll wait here.”

Alexa scurries away and I dart over to the shelf with the case files. I pick out
A–D
. If Julia did hire Shannon, I can't imagine she'd have used her real name, Dryden, but I don't know where else to start. The cases are divided by colored plastic sheets with the clients' names at the top, followed by a copy of the form they are asked to fill out on arrival, plus the sheets clearly compiled by Alexa during the face-to-face meeting. There are pictures of and notes from the Honeys themselves and then, at the end, detail on the men under surveillance alongside written reports of the encounters between them and, in some cases, numbered references to recordings that are, presumably, stored elsewhere.

I flick from back to front, through the
D
s. A selection of Honeys flash before my eyes: pretty girls with sparkling eyes. I turn from
DURSLEY
to
DENHAM
. I turn the page back. No Dryden. My heart sinks—so Julia didn't use her real name. It's not surprising, but it leaves me feeling hopeless. Outside in reception, I can hear Damian still shouting, then Alexa's cool, quiet voice as she tries in vain to calm him down. He's very convincing.

I look back at the file in my hand. I don't know what else to do, so I keep turning the pages. Past
DERBY
to
DAWSON
to
DAVIS
. Some, but not all, pages are stamped with the letter
P
. What does that mean?

Suddenly I spot Shannon, her photo tacked on to the front of a case file. I look to the top of the page. The client's name is Julia D'Arc. I can't help but smile at this. Was Julia using part of her made-up name for her mother as her own cover name? I scan hurriedly down the page, noticing as I do that it hasn't been stamped with a
P,
like some of the others.

Outside, Damian is still yelling. Alexa is threatening to call the police if he doesn't leave. I don't have much time. My finger sticks to the page as I read, my brain tripping over the notes in my haste. Julia is reporting concerns in a long-term relationship, a man she is involved with whom she suspects of having an affair. This
has
to be a cover. Which means it must
surely
be related in some way to Kara's killer.

My finger traces to the bottom of the page, where the name of the man under investigation hits me like a punch. I suck in my breath, shocked beyond words.

Because the man Julia hired Shannon to entrap is my husband.

 

CHAPTER TEN

I reel back, away from the page. For a few seconds, the room seems to spin around me. Outside, Damian is still kicking up a terrible racket. Alexa Carling's voice is raised too as she tries to calm him down.

I peer back at the file. Will's name is there in black-and-white at the bottom of the page:

SUBJECT FOR INVESTIGATION
:
WILL JACKSON
.

It's him. It's undeniably him. I run my finger to the top of the next page, trying to take in what Julia has said about him, but I get only as far as the first line:

SUBJECT IS DESCRIBED AS OUTGOING AND CONFIDENT
,
A PROFESSIONAL MAN WITH A REPUTATION FOR
—

A door slams outside. I suddenly realize the shouting coming from reception has stopped. Footsteps
clip-clop
along the corridor toward me. Alexa Carling must be coming back. I close the file and shove it back on its shelf. Then I scurry back to the sofa, sitting down just as Alexa walks into the room.

“I'm so sorry about that,” she says smoothly. “Now, are we going with Brooke?”

I shake my head. “I'm sorry,” I stammer. “I really need more time to think about this.”

“Of course, but—”

“It's a big decision.” I get up. Somehow my shaking legs carry me to the door. I just about remember to turn around and thank Alexa for her time. I register she looks perplexed, and a little frustrated. And then I'm out of there. Along the corridor, past reception and down, out onto the street. I glance along the road. Damian will be waiting for me in the café down the street, but I can't face him just yet. I turn and walk in the opposite direction, thoughts swirling about my head.

As I pace along the sidewalk, it starts to rain. Soft drops patter onto my head and down my neck. People around me scuttle for shelter in shop doorways. I keep walking, trying to make sense of what I've just seen. Julia hired a woman to attempt to seduce my husband. Why would she have done such a thing? The notes made no mention of his being married, but did say she had been with him for a long time.

That can't be true, can it? Julia was with Damian. She couldn't have been seeing Will. She would never have done that to me.
Will
wouldn't have done it. Would he? My husband and my best friend. Images flash into my head. I feel sick. Panic rises inside me. If Julia and Will betrayed me with each other, then nothing is safe. Nothing is certain. I turn a corner and stop walking. I force myself to take a deep breath. I need to think it through calmly, rationally. I huddle in a doorway, wipe the rain from my face, and turn the possibilities over in my mind.

The first and most obvious reason for Julia hiring a girl to entrap Will is that she
was
having an affair with him—and suspected him of cheating on both of us. I can't believe this is true. Julia would
never
have betrayed our friendship like that, and despite the sudden waves of doubt that sometimes wash over me, when I stop and think it through, I'm certain Will has been faithful since his affair with Catrina all those years ago. Plus, I saw Will and Julia together a million times, and not
once
did I ever sense any kind of frisson between them.

It is far more likely, knowing Julia's fierce sense of loyalty, that she thought Will was seeing someone else and wanted to find out more before she confronted him about it, or told me directly. I sigh. This may be more likely, yet it still seems improbable. Even if Julia had believed Will was having an affair and wanted to find out more, why not simply follow him herself? Even hiring a private investigator would surely make more sense than the elaborate contrivance of a Honey from Honey Hearts?

Which brings me to the third and, ultimately, most horrifying possibility: Could Julia have suspected Will of some involvement in Kara's death? She was clearly convinced that Shannon held the key to the truth, and adamant that she had to speak to me before going to the police. I thought before that this was because I was Kara's sister, but now I'm wondering if it was so she could warn me. I think of Hannah and Zack, and my blood chills in my veins. They are Will's children as well as mine.

No, there is absolutely no way that Will was involved in my sister's murder. And surely no way that Julia could have believed he was.

My mind slides back, over the years, to the day we met, but it's impossible to disentangle my meeting with Will with the way Julia and I had become friends. It seems so long ago now, a jumble of events all merged together, punctuated by a few single, searing memories.

Kara died during February, and I stumbled through the last few weeks of that spring term of my final year in a daze. Looking back, I have no idea what I did with my time, but it certainly didn't involve writing essays or preparing for exams. I remember lying curled up on the sofa of my rented house, staring into space for hours, my housemates tiptoeing around me. Back then, there was a wall between me and the rest of the world of people who didn't have to live with the reality of a murdered sister. I barely ate, though people whose names I can no longer remember placed food in front of me. I scarcely registered when the TV was switched on and turned off again. I crept from the sofa to bed and then back again, letting life drift around me. I stayed like that for over a month, rousing myself only to visit my parents. It was on one such trip home that I discovered they had invited Julia to spend the Easter holiday with us. I remember feeling a flicker of annoyance at the intrusion, then resigning myself to her arrival. What did it really matter? What did anything matter anymore? Kara was gone, her life, beauty, and innocence destroyed, and I had not protected her.

Julia breathed life into me, into all of us. She came into our home and tended to my parents with tiny, sensitive touches, placing my dad's paper by his armchair, helping my mother chop vegetables in the kitchen. Her hard edges softened by grief, I think she was simply trying to offer practical help, but it ended up being so much more than that. As if Julia were holding a rope to a new life without Kara to which we knew we had to make our way. She knocked on my bedroom door on the morning of the second day of her visit and told me gently but firmly that I needed to do more to help my parents. I was silent at first, turning my head to the wall, but Julia persisted and eventually I turned on her, shouting at her to “fuck off” and mind her own business. Julia stood her ground, bearing my rage for as long as she could, then started shouting too. I don't remember what we said, but I was hoarse by the time I yelled that I missed Kara, that I hated the world for taking her away, that I was so angry she was gone. The terrible pain of it consumed me; my legs buckled and I collapsed on the floor in tears. There was silence, and I thought Julia had gone. Then I looked up and she was sitting on the floor herself, leaning against the wall watching me, and I saw my own agony reflected in her eyes.

I always thought that Julia saved me after Kara's death, but maybe we saved each other. We certainly spent the rest of my final year almost exclusively in each other's company. After that Easter break, I managed to get back to my studies and somehow made it through my final exams. Thanks to my hard work on earlier units and with the help of a note from my tutor, I ended up with a respectable 2:1 in History.

Julia and I went on holiday together that August. A tiny apartment with kitchenette in Ibiza. That week away was the first time I realized the magnetic effect Julia had on men. She slept with several guys on the holiday—men she met while we were at clubs, with whom she had sex immediately. Shockingly fast, it seemed to me, on beaches, in parking lots, under trees. I got used to her sudden disappearances from the dance floor but learned to trust that she would always be back by dawn, ready to walk home with me. It was never spoken out loud, but I knew she wouldn't leave me to return to our apartment alone. Not after Kara.

I came home, clear about my future for the first time. I battled my way onto a conversion law course back in Exeter, and though I was similar in age to most of the other students, I felt much older than everyone around me. Julia returned for her second year at university, and though we were based in completely different parts of the city now, we still talked all the time and made the effort to get together as often as we could.

I met Will a couple of months later, through Paul. He and I hadn't seen much of each other since our uni course ended, but we'd arranged to meet for a pre-Christmas drink that December. Paul had just taken up a junior position at Harbury Media, working for his dad. Naturally enough, several of his colleagues were in the pub too, including Will, who had already been working at Harbury for just over a year.

Will was twenty-four at the time, two and a half years older than me and radiating a smooth, easy confidence. I remember being impressed by his sharp suit and piercing blue eyes as he offered to buy me a drink. I tried to brush him off, but he persisted. He chatted away with the other Harbury staff, but whenever I looked up, he caught my eye. I remember—and it makes me laugh to think of it so many comfortable, married years later—that he seemed dangerous and sexy to me then, oozing charisma, with his hair slicked back and something brooding about his expression.

I said no when he asked me out that first evening. Other men might have slunk off, chastened, but Will just asked me what I was hiding from.

“Nothing,” I said.

He shook his head and told me that he could see the sadness behind my eyes and that he wasn't going to let my fears put him off. Maybe it was a line, but I was lonely and it felt good to have someone see beyond my brittle social smile for once. I agreed to a date the following weekend, and as we ate seafood and drank white wine, he asked about my family and I slowly, agonizingly, told him about Kara.

I think back, searching my memory for any signs Will already knew my story. He remembered the murder from earlier in the year, but not Kara's name. He expressed horror and offered sympathy, so that tears pricked at my eyes. I tried to hold them back, but Will took my hand.

“Cry,” he said. “I don't think you've grieved in all the ways yet.”

I knew what he meant. I'd cried with Mum and with Julia and on my own. But even after all these months, I hadn't spoken of Kara to anyone who didn't already know what had happened to her. I hadn't told her story, my story, to a stranger; I hadn't grieved in
that
way yet.

“I should have looked after her,” I sobbed. “She was still a child.”

“Hey.” Will squeezed my hand. “It wasn't your fault.” And then he smiled gently. “So who looks after you?”

I cried some more, then went to the ladies' where I realized how blotchy-cheeked and red-eyed I looked. My heart gave a weird skip. After all, if this cool, sharp-suited marketing guy was interested in me, despite my tears and messy face, then maybe I had more going for myself than I'd thought.