You Can Trust Me: A Novel

by Sophie McKenzie

  After a while I calm down and seek Hannah out again, determined to try to explain my point of view with less emotion. I find her curled up on the sofa, watching some kind of pop channel. It’s like the underwear situation all over again. I hate the fact that the young women on the screen are so sexualized, gyrating about in bikinis, and try to explain why. Hannah looks at me with scorn in her eyes, as I attempt to impress upon her that a woman’s identity, and validation, should never come from her body alone.

  “Shut up, Mum!” she snaps, her voice oozing with contempt. “We already do all that stuff in health class.”

  Feeling myself on the verge of tears once again, I chew her out for telling me to shut up, then turn off the TV. She rounds on me, and another argument ensues. Apparently I am out of touch and fascistic in my parenting. All the other girls have cool mothers. And iPhones. She hates me. She can’t wait to leave home.

  Battered and bruised, and with no idea how to handle her, I retreat to the kitchen to make the brownies for Zack’s school fair this afternoon. I am angry and upset as I fling the butter and chocolate into a bowl. I hear the door slam upstairs. I want to go up and try to find the little girl, the sweet, loving daughter I know is inside her, but I’m scared. Scared of her hurtful rejection and scared of my own turbulent feelings. No one in my life has ever pushed my buttons like Hannah does.

  I talk to Will when he gets back, asking if he thinks I’m too lenient, or maybe that I’ve been overprotective, as I used to be when Hannah was little.

  He shakes his head wearily. “She’s just acting out,” he says. “I know she pushes it, but you mustn’t take it so personally.”

  I shake my head. Will doesn’t understand, not really. He and Hannah still get on well. Not that they spend much time together. He is so tired and preoccupied during the week that it’s only on weekends that he really has time for either child. Zack is happy, in his straightforward way, if they play football together and if Will watches his matches. Hannah routinely asks Will for help with her homework on the weekend, help that he always gives immediately and that I suspect she doesn’t always really need. Afterwards, the pair of them can often be found snuggled up on the sofa watching documentaries that I’m certain she isn’t in the slightest bit interested in.

  Later, the four of us go to Zack’s school fair—Hannah sulking the whole time at being forced to demean herself with a return to her primary school. She’s utterly delightful to her old teachers, then vile to me once we’re alone again. Will drives us to Shaldon afterwards, but the sun is out and there are too many people on the beach. Living within thirty minutes of the sea has its drawbacks: We’re so used to having the coast to ourselves half the year, it’s hard to share it during the summer months.

  In the end, I’m relieved to get home. I miss Julia terribly on weekends like this. She was always around for a coffee and a chat. I would tell her Hannah was being difficult, and she would laugh that sardonic chuckle of hers, and say something like: Oooh, mother of pubescent girl in taken-for-granted shock!

  I chat with both Mum and Martha while the kids are watching TV. Later that evening, Will and I go for a drink with Paul. He’s on his own, now that Becky has left for her parents’ in Spain. Paul says he misses her dreadfully, but he’s settled for the summer into the place of his mother’s, keeping busy at work and managing to Skype with his wife every night. I envy the way his eyes light up when he talks about Becky. It’s lovely how much he still craves her company, how lost he clearly feels without her. We order a bottle of wine, and Will and Paul hunker down to an in-depth conversation about Paul’s new Ducati motorbike and the pros and cons of some Harley-Davidson.

  My self-pitying mood deepens as it occurs to me that Will and I have talked about nothing other than mundane domestic arrangements for days. We used to have shared interests—music and movies and even browsing antique shops—when we were younger, before the kids. But somehow those have all faded away now.

  As Will chats with Paul, I’m reminded of how attractive he still is, especially at moments like this, his face animated and his voice full of enthusiasm. It strikes me that it’s Paul who’s bringing out this side of him—that I haven’t seen Will like this when it’s just the two of us, not for years.

  I’m heading to the bathroom a few minutes later when Damian texts to check that I’m still okay about visiting Honey Hearts—and with our plan for getting information. I reply, reassuring him that I’m prepared to do what’s needed, then fall to wondering about him again. I just know so little about his life. I pull up the browser on my phone and search his name.

  Nothing appears. That is, the name Damian Burton shows up on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, but I can’t find any profiles that seem remotely connected to the person I’ve met. I try again, refining my search to target Exeter and his graphic designer job. Still nothing. That’s odd, isn’t it? I try my own name. It takes four pages of results before I find a reference to myself on Facebook, but then I don’t have a job or any kind of professional identity. I search for Will, then Julia and Paul. Each of them, in turn, can be found online through their work within a few seconds.

  So why is there no trace of Damian Burton at all?

  HAYLEY

  Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.

  —Martin Luther

  And so time passed. I felt sure, now, after Kara, that I was capable of far more than I had ever supposed. A heady feeling, that, to glimpse my potential. I suppose I existed in a liminal state for a while, letting this new awareness seep through me.

  Kara stayed uppermost in my mind for a long time. Of course, I was linked to her personally—and witness to Livy’s and Julia’s grief on many occasions. But what concerned me more was that my life—both working and private—had hit something of a slump. I felt stuck … not that there was anything wrong, more that nothing, yet, seemed quite right. After the triumph of Kara, this was a comedown.

  And so life’s petty pace crept on. And on. Over the years, I developed a love of rich tea biscuits, strong black tea, and single malt scotch—the peaty variety. More important, I learned just how limited and blinkered the state authorities truly are. Can you believe that the case to find Kara’s murderer, so frenetic and impassioned in the first few months, was allowed to fade and quietly die, like an old dog in the corner of a cold kitchen? The police, it costs me something to acknowledge, were not worthy of me. How very disappointing.

  So … I lived, I worked, I played. I indulged in short, casual affairs. There were easy triumphs and small successes. It was simple to keep my real interests secret, even from my wife. Too simple. And very, very tedious; “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable” indeed. Anyway, before long, I felt the itch burn inside me again. Soon after, came Hayley. I met her on one of my business trips abroad. She approached me in a hotel bar because she heard my accent and thought, as a fellow Englander, I might offer temporary protection from the attentions of two men at a nearby table as she stood, waiting for her husband to finish checking in. He had sent her to buy a drink, but the bar, like the reception desk, was overrun and understaffed, and Hayley—not the sharpest knife in the drawer—was frightened by the boisterous drunks and assumed someone who shared her accent might actually care about what happened to her. At least that’s what I thought when I saw the look of panic on her face. Later, I understood her anxiety was more worry about displeasing hubby than fear of the drunks. As I said, the bar was crowded and it was virtually impossible to get served. I was finishing off my Laphroaig and intending to head back to my own hotel. Still, something drew me to Hayley. She had the defeated slump of a woman well past her prime. It was there in the sag of her skin and the curve of her back and the cluster of three tiny liver spots on the back of her right hand. She was dressed in a gray silk dress with matching shoes—stylish even for the hotel we were in, with its ornate chandeliers and mahogany furniture. The straps of the dress were thin and shiny against the tan of her shoulders. I felt my
self staring as one strap slipped down her arm, nestling against the pashmina she had drawn around herself.

  “Here,” I said with a smile. “Let me help.” I reached out and touched the skin under the strap. I kept my eyes on Hayley as I slid the strap up to her shoulder. Hayley responded with a tiny movement, somewhere between a flinch and a shiver. I took my finger away, clocking the bruise at the top of her arm and the desperation in her eyes. And I knew then that I had to have her.

  We talked a little more. I stood too close, knowing she was interested. In the two minutes that followed, I also learned that Hayley was eager for love, like a kicked puppy, and that her husband hit her. Not that she told me these things but it was there, in that hunch of her shoulders and the prayer of her eyes. And it was confirmed when her foul husband finally found her in the bar. He was short and ugly and balding with a large paunch. He threw me a dismissive glance as he strutted over, demanding to know where his drink was.

  I melted away as Hayley began to stammer her explanations. I kept eye contact from across the room for a while, then let the crowd swallow me up. The next morning found me outside their hotel, waiting. At 8:36 A.M., the husband left, besuited and with a briefcase swinging from his arm. Just over an hour later, Hayley appeared, peering tentatively out onto the street. She was neatly and smartly dressed in dark jeans and a red cotton shirt. I followed her cautious walk to the local designer shops, waiting for her to reappear from a boutique store, then contriving to bump into her. Her face radiated with a smile when she saw me. So easy. I took her for a coffee. Within half an hour, she was pouring her heart out. How her husband liked rough sex. She didn’t go into details, of course, but my imagination supplied what her blushing explanations avoided. She told me how angry he got when she tried to resist and how hurt she felt that he didn’t seem to care about her.

  I leaned forward and let my lips brush her cheek. “If you were mine,” I whispered, “I would make it my life’s ambition to satisfy you.” She wriggled in her seat, self-conscious, as she flushed with pleasure.

  Easy. Easy. Easy.

  We arranged to meet later to take the tram into the countryside. I wore a baseball cap pulled low over my face. I saw Hayley blink as she clocked it. I explained that I knew it wasn’t very stylish but that my daughter had bought it for me before she died of leukemia. That I wore the cap for sentimental reasons. Hayley was openmouthed as I gave her my sob story. I left no detail unmentioned: the compassion of the nurses, the agony of the chemotherapy, the unutterable pain of seeing your child die. Hayley hung on every word. I almost believed the story myself by the end. Ha!

  Off the tram and into the country. The conversation flowed. How my daughter’s death had led to the breakdown of my marriage. How since then, there had been no one … no company … no sex. I smiled shyly at this, then ventured: “Though what I really miss is being held in someone’s arms … that intimacy.…” Hayley was all over me before we reached the woodland I’d been heading for. But I held back until we were in the depths of the copse, where the earth was still damp. Hayley held up her face to be kissed, offering herself. So I took her and tasted her and slid the belt from her jeans and unbuttoned her shirt. As Hayley took a bottle of wine from her straw basket, I put on my gloves and my mask; then I took her belt and wound it around my fists.

  She turned and saw me, and her final sound was an irritating moan of defeat. Afterwards, I cleaned the serrated blade of my knife, then gathered all Hayley’s clothes and put everything of both hers and mine in my bag. Her stupid husband was ultimately convicted of the murder. The old bruises on her arms and back brought him down, along with the weakness of his own alibi.

  I followed the case from afar. The lack of crime scene evidence baffled the local police. As always, I left no traces of my DNA and I had disposed of everything Hayley and I had brought with us—all our clothes and the picnic things, everything—in the trash heap near the tram stop, buried deep under other debris. If the police had done their job properly, they would have found this, of course. I’ve learned over time that I can leave all manner of clues with little worry that I will be traced through them. I don’t expect you to understand, but risks like this make the whole enterprise more exciting.

  I kept just one thing, the buckle from Hayley’s belt. It intrigued me: a snake design woven through a circle, with the prong for a long, vicious fang. A perfect companion to Kara’s locket.

  I record Hayley, rather than others at the time because she showed me that although there was life after Kara, in my heart I still sought a bigger, deeper challenge for my “vessel grim and daring.”

  * * *

  And, soon, my chance came.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Honey Hearts office is on the second floor of an ugly, concrete office building in the center of Exmouth. Damian meets me in a café along the street to go over our plan one last time. I want to ask him why his name doesn’t show up online, but I’m too nervous about what I’m about to do to have the conversation right now. I could well need Damian’s help in the next half hour; I can’t risk him stalking off because I’ve been snooping. I resolve to confront him as soon as I’m done at Honey Hearts; then I head for my 10 A.M. appointment. My heart is thumping as the receptionist buzzes me through the door into an unprepossessing reception area. The Honey Hearts logo runs along the edge of the front desk and around the walls. A huge vase of orange and yellow gerbera sits on the table. Otherwise, the room is municipal and beige, with bland, abstract modern prints hanging on the walls. The receptionist would be pretty, if her face weren’t hidden under masses of makeup. She’s very sweet, though, offering me a cup of tea while I wait and patting me kindly on the shoulder when she takes my coat.

  I fill out a form, a written version of the basic questions I was asked on the phone, again using my full first name, Olivia, and my maiden name, Small. After a few minutes, a slim, groomed woman I’d guess is in her late fifties appears. She is dressed in a business suit, with high spiky heels. Her face is suspiciously wrinkle-free, but the skin on her neck is creased and a little saggy. She’s the sort of woman Julia used to declare, sotto voce, had the whiff of a Madonna video about her.

  “Olivia?” She holds out her hand and I shake it. “I’m Alexa Carling. Please come through.”

  She leads me into another bland beige office. The window overlooks a courtyard with plant pots. Pink roses adorn the desk. I could be in a bank, or a lawyer’s office.

  “Please call me Alexa,” the woman says with a polite smile.

  This wasn’t what I expected at all. I’d imagined something either much seedier or far more glamorous.

  Alexa offers me a glass of water from the jug on her desk, then indicates the sofa opposite. We sit down at either end, and Alexa examines the form I’ve just filled in. She looks up with another smile. “How are you feeling?”

  I’m taken aback by the question. “Er, I’m okay,” I stammer.

  “Good.” Alexa says, “A lot of people feel guilty once they’re actually here. They start worrying about what they’re doing, now that this incredibly brave step they’ve taken is a reality, rather than just a vague idea.”

  I nod.

  Alexa leans forward and fixes me with her steel blue eyes. “I’m here to tell you to stop worrying. You’re not alone and you’re not going mad. You’ve got suspicions and we’re here to find out whether they’re correct or not.”

  I fidget uncomfortably in my chair. Alexa’s words are too close to home. I remind myself this is the point. I should be able to pull off this visit precisely because I understand what fearing an infidelity feels like—and why someone might want to entrap their partner.

  “So, er, how exactly does this … the honey trap thing, actually work?”

  Alexa clears her throat. “Well, first step is you tell me about your relationship, a few details on you and your partner, your circumstances, jobs, home life. That’s so I can build up a profile of the pair of you. Then we discuss what, precisely, y
ou want to know. What you are suspicious of. After that, it’s simply a case of finding a girl we think he might be tempted to go for. I have some portfolios—” Alexa indicates a shelf of folders to her right. The row below is full of ring binders of files labeled CLIENTS, alphabetized in groups. My eyes rest for a second on the A–D set. D for Julia Dryden. Would that be where the details about her hiring Shannon are stored?

  I turn back to Alexa. “And then…?”

  “Then you tell us where to find the man and we send the chosen girl to see how he responds to a little flirting. Our girls wear a wire, so you’ll be able to hear the whole conversation afterwards. And she’ll take a friend for backup and security. We are very responsible, Olivia. All our Honeys are fully trained. Discretion is the priority. Their aim is, on first encounter, to find out if they can whether the man has been unfaithful before and to see if he asks for their number in order to set up a date. Before you get our full report, we wait to see if the date actually happens, if the man goes through with it. You meet with the designated Honey twice: once before her first meeting with your man and once after her second. Do you see?”

  I nod. If Julia was using Shannon as her designated Honey, that makes sense of the two meetings I’m aware of from the diary. The first to set up the entrapment, and the second, which Julia missed, when Shannon was due to report back. That’s if Julia was using Shannon in that way.

  I have to find out.

  “Good.” Alexa sits back, her manicured hands folded in her lap. “I think it’s time for you to tell me about your partner, then, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  I dive into my story about a husband who I suspect may be having a second affair. The irony pricks at me as I speak. I don’t give Will’s name as I talk, but I do tell our actual story … the one from six years ago, when he didn’t come home until morning, smelling of that different soap. I almost forget the real reason I’m here as the tears well into my eyes and I relive the confusion I felt; how what truly hurt was Will’s willingness to leave me in an agony of doubt.