Keep You Close

by Lucie Whitehouse

  ‘It makes sense to me now,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Why you’re here.’ He turned around. ‘You needed to make sure no one had found out. You knew she jumped, and you wanted to make sure that wasn’t why.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To protect her, still – and her mother and brother. It’s why you’re so hostile to me.’

  ‘You wouldn’t leave it alone!’

  ‘And to protect yourself.’ He looked at her. ‘Let’s not pretend it’s entirely selfless. You have something to hide, too. If the police find out you’ve known all this time, you’ll be in serious shit – aiding and abetting, an accessory. Jail, surely.’

  She nodded. ‘Probably. Yes.’

  ‘What a God-awful mess. You were twenty-one, -two? Just kids.’

  ‘And after all of it, the irony is, Marianne still lost her father. Completely. What’s a divorce, really, once you’ve grown up? She could have seen him, talked to him – she hadn’t lived at home since she’d started at the Slade anyway. But doing what she did to Lorna and then his drink-driving – from what Peter Turk’s told me, I think she felt like she’d killed him.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘And the woman Seb killed in the crash, who was driving the other car. A chain of deaths, one after another. Mazz thought she’d set it all in motion.’

  She stopped talking. Cory looked back at the window and watched a sparrow in the raised bed pull at a worm. The rain must have brought it to the surface.

  ‘All this,’ Rowan said, ‘it doesn’t make it right, your breaking in. Obviously I’m not going to go to the police but you went through my room – my things. How dare you?’

  ‘I knew you weren’t telling me the whole story. When you tried to put me off talking to Turk, that’s when I was sure.’

  She took a sip of brandy then moved the glass away. She couldn’t afford anything other than a clear head. ‘Why did you need to know so badly?’ she asked. ‘What’s it all for?’

  He came back to the table and sat down. He looked at the bottle and Rowan pushed it towards him. ‘Marianne wanted me to know,’ he said. ‘She wanted to tell me.’

  ‘But she didn’t tell you.’

  ‘She was trying. Every time we talked, she told me another detail, a hint. Is it surprising that she had to do it gradually, something like this?’ He took the top off and poured himself another half-inch before pointing the bottle in her direction. She shook her head.

  ‘I think she was trying to tell you, too, wasn’t she?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That card in your box of sketches – I need to talk to you. Her handwriting.’

  ‘Oh.’ Shit, she’d forgotten about that but of course, Cory must have seen it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It arrived the day after Jacqueline called to tell me she’d died. I never got a chance to find out why she …’

  ‘How do you do it?’ he said. ‘Tell someone you’ve killed someone?’

  ‘Why do you do it? That’s a bigger question for me. Why, after ten years, would she feel a sudden urge to confess?’

  Cory looked at her over the rim of his glass. ‘I know you don’t trust me.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘That’s fair. My reputation – Greta, Hanna. But I promise you – I promise you with my hand on my heart,’ he laid it on his chest, palm down, ‘that it was never my intention to expose or hurt Marianne in any way.’

  ‘What made her different?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt the others, whatever it looked like – and I do see how that might be hard to believe – but Marianne … Never. We were friends, Rowan.’

  ‘Who needs enemies?’

  ‘We were.’

  ‘What does that mean, in your world?’

  He frowned, narrowing his eyes. ‘What are you asking?’

  ‘I’m asking what you’re going to do with all this now you know. I’m asking if she can trust you now.’ She hesitated. ‘If I can.’

  He took another sip and Rowan suppressed an urge to reach over and knock the glass out of his hand. ‘What good would it do?’ she said, and the look on Cory’s face told her he heard every bit of her fear and anger. Well, she thought, let him. ‘What would it achieve, bringing all this out into the open now? Marianne’s dead – she can’t be tried, brought to justice. Do you think it would help Lorna’s family to know that their daughter was killed?’ Murdered: still, after all these years, she couldn’t bring herself to say the word. ‘And the Glasses – Jacqueline and Adam – can you imagine how much it would hurt them?’

  ‘I’m not planning to tell anyone.’

  ‘Planning?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell anyone. Okay?’

  ‘And your portrait?’

  ‘Is just a portrait. Of a woman I liked very much.’ He looked down at his hands and it occurred to her that he was crying. When he looked up again, however, seconds later, his eyes were bright but dry. ‘I’m not your problem, Rowan.’

  This time the cold fingers took hold of her heart.

  ‘She knew she could trust me, whatever she told me. Whatever – I told her that. I’ve asked myself over and over – Did I make it happen? Did she misinterpret me in some way? Did she think she’d told me too much?’ He shook his head. ‘No. She jumped, I’m sure of it, but …’

  ‘How?’ Rowan demanded. ‘How are you sure?’

  ‘I knew her.’

  ‘For God’s sake.’

  ‘I did, Rowan. I knew her and I cared about her. She jumped but I wasn’t the reason.’

  Twenty-six

  Cory had torn a piece of paper from her pad of A4 and, with a pencil from his jacket pocket, he sketched the pile of books next to her computer while they talked. His moments of absorption were a relief, respite: she felt hollow, as if having kept the secret inside for so many years, her body had grown around it and now couldn’t spring back.

  For the most part, Cory told her, he’d focused on trying to work out what had happened in the past, so Rowan found herself telling him what little she’d managed to discover about Marianne’s final weeks. ‘I’ve been going round and round,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried everything I can think of, pretty much, but I know as little now as I did when I got here. Less, probably. But something did happen to her, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘How about the guy in the garden – the one you thought was me?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him again. Maybe I scared him off. Now there’s just the creepy guy in the flats. Though they might be the same person – I haven’t ruled that out.’

  ‘Who?’ Cory pulled back, frowning. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Rowan told him about the man at the window. ‘He’s there all the time, just standing, looking – I’ve seen him at three o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘So who is he?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I thought he might be you, too – I went round there to look for your car.’

  ‘You haven’t confronted him? Knocked on the door?’

  ‘No. In case it was you – I wanted to know what you were doing first. But then, if it wasn’t you … I’ll admit, I was frightened.’

  ‘We should go see him.’

  ‘I don’t know. What if he’s dangerous?’

  ‘There’s two of us now. You went there on your own.’

  ‘When I thought it was you. And I was only …’

  ‘Me, the voyeur?’ he said, looking up. ‘The man who drives women to suicide?’

  ‘I’m just saying, we don’t know what we’re walking into.’ She breathed all the way out, trying to ease the tightness in her chest. ‘What if it’s the police?’

  He shook his head, dismissive. ‘There to do what? Blow their budget on twenty-four-hour surveillance of the house of a woman who had an accident?’

  ‘I know but …’

  ‘He was sure about that, wasn’t he, your police friend? Marianne was alone – no other footprints.’

  Rowan quashed a
childish impulse to deny that Theo was her friend.

  Her phone was in her lap and while he sketched in the lettering on the guidebook from Harvington Hall, she tapped in her code and checked her messages. Nothing. She thought for a moment. ‘Michael.’ He looked up at her in surprise. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘That’s the first time you’ve ever used my name.’

  ‘Oh. Look, I wondered, have you spoken to Adam?’

  ‘No, but I want to, obviously. Why? Do you think he knows something?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then … ?’

  Rowan felt herself redden. ‘He’s a friend. I haven’t spoken to him for a few days and I just wondered if you had. He’s grieving, so …’

  But Cory was no longer listening. Above the wall at the end of the garden, the light in the flat had come on.

  He waited while Rowan locked the front door and they went down the steps in tandem. As they rounded the corner and came on to the section of Norham Road that edged the Dragon’s playing field, there was a stretch of a hundred yards or so without houses or streetlamps, and though it was still only early evening, not yet six o’clock, beneath the trees, the road was dark.

  Cory walked quickly, though not, thank God, as quickly as the day she’d had to chase after him to the meadow. Were they working together now, as far as he was concerned? Could he possibly trust her, after what she’d told him? And could she trust him? Going through her room like that – when she’d gone upstairs, she’d found chaos, her clothes in a great pile, books lying open, clearly shaken out by their spines. And the door. It looked as if the whole upright would have to be replaced. Before coming out, they’d improvised a barrier by putting a plank through the back of a chair and bracing it against the kitchen units, but until the jamb was mended, she’d have to sleep with it like that.

  Cory had backed her into a corner and she had very little option now but to go along with him and pray he meant what he said about keeping his mouth shut.

  But perhaps teaming up with him – properly – was what she needed to do now anyway. She couldn’t have risked going to the flats like this on her own, making herself so physically vulnerable. She tried to ignore the small voice warning her that perhaps, by going with Cory, she was making herself more vulnerable still.

  They turned on to Benson Place. Empty parking spaces at the kerb; most of the windows in the flats dark, the residents still at work. Streetlight lay in puddles on the carefully tended patches of lawn. She pointed at the second door along.

  Cory pressed the buzzer and they waited. Rowan felt the knot of tension in her stomach pull tight. He was in there, the light was on in the window that overlooked the road here, too, so why didn’t he answer? They were under cover of the porch, hidden from view, but had he seen them coming? She wondered suddenly if he’d seen Cory break in. If he had, she realised, he would know that the door was broken, no longer secure.

  Cory buzzed again. Seconds later, the intercom crackled, and a voice said ‘Hello?’ They looked at each other. It was a woman’s voice, cautious but not unfriendly. Had he hit the wrong buzzer? No, she’d seen him press number three.

  ‘You speak,’ Cory murmured. They changed places and she leaned towards the microphone. ‘Hi,’ she said, holding the button. ‘My name’s Rowan. I wonder if I could talk to you for a moment.’

  Another crackle. ‘Can I ask what it’s regarding?’

  She looked at Cory then pressed the button again. ‘I’m not selling anything,’ she said. ‘I promise.’ Trying to sound human. ‘I wanted to ask you about an old friend of mine.’

  ‘Who?’ Warier now, unsurprisingly.

  When she looked at Cory, he nodded. ‘Marianne Glass.’

  ‘Marianne? Oh.’ A pause. ‘Okay, yes, come up.’ With a buzz, the lock on the outside door clicked open.

  On the communal stairs, the building’s less well-to-do past was closer to the surface, evident in the grey lino with its raised tuppenny spots and the push-button timed lights that reminded Rowan of her hallway back in London. The doors of the flats were ugly, plain expanses of wood veneer whose only detail was the cheap brass number screwed on to each one above the suspicious glass bubble of a spy-hole.

  Cory stood to one side while Rowan knocked. The spy-hole darkened then cleared and a bolt was drawn. The sound of a second one caused her a fresh twinge of unease: who would need two bolts in this secluded middle-class enclave? She composed her face as the door began to open then was stopped by a chain. Through the gap, she saw large brown eyes in the anxious face of a woman of sixty or so.

  Seeing Rowan, the woman released the chain and it fell against the doorframe with a rattle. As she opened the door, however, Cory stepped into view and there was an audible intake of breath. Rowan realised what he might look like to someone who didn’t know about him, tall and broad as he was, shaven-headed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have told you I had a friend with me – I didn’t want to come alone. This is Michael. He’s an artist – a painter. He was a friend of Marianne’s, too.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Good to meet you,’ he said. ‘We appreciate you talking to us. We’ll try not to take too much of your time.’

  The woman registered his accent. ‘You’re not police then?’

  ‘No.’ Cory’s answer contained a question.

  ‘They came to all the flats, of course, when she died. To ask if any of us had seen anything suspicious. Not that they thought there was anything like that …’ she said quickly.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Rowan tried to sound reassuring.

  The hallway was narrow, the only furniture an arrangement of dried flowers in a vase on a pine chest of drawers and a small tasselled rug patterned with pink roses.

  ‘Who told you we knew her?’ asked the woman, with a glance over her shoulder at Cory.

  ‘No one.’ Rowan looked at him too – we? – but his expression was carefully neutral. ‘May we come in?’

  The woman hesitated a second then stood aside. The archway behind her led directly into the sitting room, which, as Rowan already knew, ran most of the width of the flat. On the right-hand side, a slice had been carved off for a skinny galley kitchen but the table, which sat four, was at the rear of the main space. At the front, arranged to make the most of the light through the large metal-framed windows, were the sofa and two matching armchairs. The room was immaculate – the tang of Windolene in the air, unmistakable, told Rowan that the glass coffee table and a small display cabinet had been recently polished – but despite the busy floral print of the upholstery and a handful of tapestry cushions, there was a sparseness to the furnishings that spoke of scant money carefully stretched. There were just two small pictures on the wall – a pair of autumn landscapes – and the television in the corner wasn’t much bigger than a computer monitor.

  ‘Please – sit down,’ the woman said.

  It was thoroughly dark outside now but the curtains – terrible shiny faux-taffeta with basic crenellations along the top – were still open and, as she sat, Rowan glanced across the gardens to the back of the house. They’d turned on the studio light before leaving and she could see in as far as the wall of the old bathroom, about a third of the total area.

  The woman perched on the edge of the sofa as if she might make a run for it at any moment.

  ‘I’m sorry, we don’t know your name,’ Rowan said.

  ‘Sarah – Johnson.’

  ‘Rowan Winter and Michael Cory.’ She smiled. If Cory’s name meant anything to this woman, it hadn’t registered on her face. ‘Apologies again for coming round like this. I’m staying at Marianne’s house at the moment, looking after it – house-sitting – while …’

  ‘Oh.’ The woman’s face suddenly brightened. ‘Then it’s you he’s been seeing.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘My son. Martin. He said he’d seen a woman there – young, brown hair. For a while I thought …’ She closed her eyes and bit h
er lower lip, giving her head a shake. ‘O ye, of little faith.’

  ‘Apologies,’ said Rowan. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Sarah Johnson’s manner had changed remarkably; the trepidation replaced by what looked like relief. ‘Martin told me he’d seen a woman in Marianne’s house. I thought he was trying to tell me he was seeing her ghost. Either that or he’d forgotten she’d died.’

  Rowan caught Cory’s eye.

  ‘I should explain.’ A little of the light faded from Sarah’s face. ‘He had an accident on his bike four years ago. Motorbike. No one else was involved but his helmet came off. He’s still making progress – the OTs and the speech therapist at the hospital are very good with him – but he’s … different from how he used to be.’ She stood up. ‘Let me call him – he’d like to meet you, I know, Marianne’s friends.’

  At the end of a short passageway at the back of the room, she tapped gently on a door. ‘Martin? Have you finished playing your computer game, sweetheart? Can you hear me? There are some people here – a lady and a man – who were friends with Marianne. Would you like to come and meet them?’

  Cory was jabbing his finger at the wall behind her. ‘Go?’ mouthed Rowan. ‘Now?’

  He shook his head. ‘Look.’

  Turning, she followed his direction. On a shelf of the display cabinet behind her, in a wooden frame that was larger than but otherwise very similar to the one that held Rowan’s favourite photo of Jacqueline and Marianne, there was one of Mazz’s drawings. It was pen and ink, a portrait of a young man, just his head and shoulders but detailed to an extent that told them Marianne had had time to study him. She hadn’t done it on the fly: he’d sat for her.

  ‘Here he is,’ Sarah said, as if introducing a child, and turning back, Rowan saw the face in the flesh. Marianne had caught him very well, was her first thought, the fine nose and wide eyes, the light brown hair so straight it didn’t shape itself even to the line of his temples. It was a delicate face, mild, made arresting by its contrast with his body. The heating in the flat was turned up high and he was wearing tracksuit trousers and a plain white T-shirt under which his muscles – bulky and individually developed – were clearly visible. He walked awkwardly, however, and as he came closer, she saw that one of his feet pointed inward.