Don’t Trust Me

by Joss Stirling

  ‘I have known for a long while that you ran away because I failed to stand between you and your father.’

  ‘You had a breakdown.’

  ‘I know that too, but I still feel responsible. Was it so very bad, those months on your own?’

  I could lie, I suppose, but Mum is trying to be honest with me. Blame it on the drink, or the drugs, but I find it all tumbles out. ‘Yes, it was bad. It was mostly my fault, though. I could’ve gone to Miriam, couldn’t I? Instead I ended up sleeping rough – not far from here. I spent half of the time out of my head on whatever I could get my hands on – alcohol mainly.’

  ‘Oh, darling…’

  ‘Don’t say anything, Mum. You might as well hear it all, as I hope this is the last time we have to talk about it. I had sex quite a few times while drunk. I can see now that it was a kind of rape as I didn’t give consent, but somehow on the streets it’s easy to think you don’t have rights, that you have to do what someone tells you.’ The waiter returns to clear plates, fortunately halting my confession. Mum doesn’t need to hear that they sometimes paid me, those men. See, I was a kind of sex worker even though I had no idea what it was all about, just fell from one crisis to the next. I don’t even remember much about the sex, except that I didn’t like it. It left me feeling second-best – used – and that’s something I’ve struggled with all my life. I’ve never told any of my partners about this.

  Mum is looking ashen. ‘Oh, I didn’t know, though I suppose I feared the worst.’

  I’m beginning to feel tired as well as drunk. I’m coming down from the high I’ve been cruising. Part of me wants to lay my head on the table and sleep right there among the crumbs. ‘But you understand how it happens, don’t you, Mum? Your own marriage was a bit like that – abusive. I thought that was normal. I thought I had to do what I was told.’

  She starts to sob. Alarmed, I reach out and cradle her hand in mine. ‘Ssh, I didn’t tell you to upset you. I’m fine now.’ Mostly. ‘When you think back to that time, you have to remember you got out of that bad place and made a home for me to come back to. I’ve got stuff I need to sort out but you know something? If I can get my act together, I could be with someone who sees the good in me. That’s if he’ll forgive me.’

  She takes out a little pack of tissues and wipes her face. ‘He will. He won’t be able to resist you.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I go back to eating, making some silly comments about Greek food to give her time to recover. In the back of my mind, though, I’m working through what I just admitted about Drew. I’ve had relationships before and messed them up. Now I’ve reached a crossroad: I’ve got to do something to win him back.

  ‘You look like you’ve made up your mind about something,’ says Mum, taking some of the bread.

  ‘Yes, I have. I’m going to make a new start. Drew’s been telling me that Michael isn’t guilty and though I think I agree with him, in my heart of hearts I’ve left Michael in the lurch. I’ve even thought about talking to the press for the money.’

  Mum doesn’t say anything. Her disapproval is conveyed by her expression, like I’d just handed her a lemon to suck.

  ‘But I know if I did, Drew would think badly of me – I would think badly of me, and maybe that’s more important?’

  She nods. ‘So horrid, all those people telling the press things that should be private. It’s good you’re no longer with that man but you don’t need to crow about it in public.’

  ‘And I might even be able to help Michael. There are things I know about the allegations that no one else does; there are ways in which I can help.’

  ‘Does he deserve that?’

  ‘Probably not.’ I smile and she smiles back at me.

  ‘I’m proud of you, darling.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start, isn’t it?’

  Chapter 29

  Waving my mother off to join her party at the theatre, I answer Michael’s text at long last. I spend about half an hour deciding on what turns out to be just six words.

  Do you still want to talk?

  The answer pings back immediately. Yes, but not here. Press outside. Can you meet me at the cafe at the Royal Institution? This is one of Michael’s favourite little haunts just off Piccadilly, missed out by most tourists, who are drawn instead to the flashier pleasures of the Ritz and the Royal Academy.

  I decide to walk as he has to travel in from Battersea. Another resolution of the new Jessica is to get fit so that I’m not so embarrassed by my body and the extra pounds sitting on my hips. The problem about living with a man as lean and toned as Drew is that I feel like a hippo by contrast – a small one admittedly, but I’m built more for comfort than speed.

  I can’t be thinking of Drew while meeting Michael. That’s just awkward. Is there some etiquette for this situation? Should I tell Drew what I’m doing?

  I stop by Nelson’s lions, speculating how the tourists managed to get up on their huge black backs without breaking a neck.

  Focus, Jessica. Drew. I picture him at work. Would he want to be bothered by a message in the middle of some solemn service? Why not? Solemn is an everyday occurrence for him. He’s likely to be standing outside. I owe it to Drew to tell him what’s going on in my muddled head or he might take it the wrong way.

  I tap out a quick message. Decided to clear the air with Michael and possibly help him establish his innocence re girls. Meeting him in a cafe. See you back at home. I send it with a slightly wobbly feeling in my stomach.

  His answer comes back. OK.

  Men! What does that mean? I look down and see that he’s still typing. You’re doing the right thing.

  Is that a little crack in his Arctic displeasure? I can only hope so.

  Michael has arrived before me. He’s chosen a table in one of the side rooms where he’s least likely to be spotted. The Institute has the air of an eighteenth-century gentleman’s club, neo-classical decor and a sense of exclusivity. It’s actually open to the public and involved in science education, but that’s all down in the basement with fun push-button displays and Faraday’s laboratory with its early electrical experiments. Up here you could pretend you might bump into Beau Brummell or Sheridan while gambling the country estate on the turn of a card. Michael gets up as I arrive. It’s funny – the last time he was red-faced with anger, now he is all politeness. It reminds me how many different sides we all have – or are they a series of masks? If we kept on taking them off until we reached the real us, would there be anything left?

  ‘What can I get you? Latte? Hot chocolate?’ he asks.

  ‘No, green tea please.’

  ‘Green tea?’

  I might as well have said the blood of virgins, for all his amazement. ‘Yes.’

  He looks like he is going to say something, resists and heads off to place my order. He comes back with a little silver teapot and glass rattling on the tray.

  ‘I assume you don’t want milk?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  We busy ourselves with our respective drinks.

  ‘So?’ I say.

  ‘So.’ He pushes his black coffee aside. ‘Thanks for coming to meet me.’

  I almost apologise for taking so long to respond to his message but force myself to say nothing. Instead I smile quizzically.

  ‘I… I was told by the police not to contact you.’

  ‘Uh-oh, are they going to jump out from behind the potted palm and arrest us both?’

  ‘Possibly – probably.’ He smiles and I suddenly remember what it was I saw in him at the beginning, a certain wry humour that clicked with my more ridiculous flights of fancy. ‘I decided that it was more important that I told you in person that I’m sorry my past got you caught up with Jacob West.’

  ‘Not your fault. He was obsessed.’

  ‘He managed to dig up just enough links between me and those girls he had you investigating to make the police suspicious. It’s been hell, trying to disprove timelines and possibilities from months, years ago. I can’t
remember any of them. You believe me, don’t you?’

  I nod. I think I do, but what if I’m just falling for another man’s fantasy? In this one he is innocent. No point saying that out loud though. ‘I was there at the Margate event myself. I’ve no idea who was handing round the drinks.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. They’ve dug up CCTV footage showing me on the same platform as the girl from Harrogate, Lillian something.’

  ‘Lillian Bailey.’

  ‘Apparently we got into the same carriage, but I don’t go round picking up stray young women on intercity trains. I get my head down and do some work, if I’ve got a seat.’

  He does talk to them at spas though, according to Emma. ‘Look, Michael, I wouldn’t be surprised if you did strike up conversations with good-looking women – that’s not a crime. But I don’t believe there’s anything in Jacob’s allegations against you and I think I can help. If we clear away that fog, then the police will be able to look more fairly at the evidence linking you to the crime scene.’

  Michael tops up my tea for me. ‘Thanks. It’s the prints on the whisky bottle that are the problem, but you know that he could’ve got that from our drinks cabinet and planted it.’

  I nod again. I hadn’t known about this but it makes sense now why they were so focused on Michael. ‘I thought it had to be something like that when the police were interested in what I had touched in the house.’ I’m relieved Michael doesn’t appear to know that I was the one who cracked the laptop password and got him into all this. I doubt he’d be sitting so politely opposite me if that were the case.

  Michael toys with a sugar packet. ‘Someone like Jacob was bound to have other enemies. He was a campaigner when I heard about him six, seven years ago. He tried to live an impossibly pure carbon-neutral life, chained himself to power stations, raided animal laboratories to let minks out into the wild and so on. But so far the police seem fixated on me as their number one suspect. What about his equally lunatic mates? What if one of them decided to kill him over who had the last mung bean? Or the dark forces of globalisation – that’s what West would’ve expected, though I’m not convinced they’d be the least threatened by a small player like him. Whoever it was – if it was anyone – all I know is that it wasn’t me.’

  I make soothing uh-huh sounds.

  ‘I’m going crazy stuck at home. You get to learn who your friends really are when something like this happens. I have to say most of them have behaved like rats leaving a sinking ship.’

  ‘But I saw Lizzy speak out about you to the press. And Mrs Jessop. That was nice of them.’

  Michael looks grim for a moment. ‘Yes, Lizzy has been a good friend over all this. I’ve been coming in and out over the back gardens and through her house when I don’t want to face the press.’

  I resist the impulse to laugh. It shouldn’t be funny to think of Michael reduced to such moves, but it is.

  ‘The past few days have made me appreciate you, Jessica,’ he says, striking an unexpectedly intimate note. ‘I’m sorry about how I treated you the last few months. I think West was messing with our relationship too, and wanted me to distrust you.’

  It was more than that, but if he wanted to explain away our couple’s meltdown then I’d let him. ‘Yes, he didn’t want you to find happiness, did he, not after Emma?’

  ‘I’m glad you agree.’

  His smugness annoys me. It no longer works as it once had for me. ‘I always did agree too quickly with you.’

  Michael frowns and checks his watch. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Come on, Michael, when we met you were my tutor, I your adoring grad student. We had sex rather than tutorials, which you told me suited us both.’ We’d been a cliché, now I think about it. I’d been playing out some kind of Fifty Shades fantasy of the powerful man and the submissive acolyte, not part of my sexual psyche that I like to look at in the light of day. The first time I’d seen Michael in his study to discuss my dissertation, I felt like I’d been punched in the midriff, so strong was the pull between us. He lounged on the sofa, arms on the back, legs spread, a glorious lion of a man, oozing power and sexual appeal. I took one sniff and I was preening, hormones going haywire, crossing and uncrossing my legs, pleased I’d worn nude tights and a short skirt. Any observer would have read our mating routine. It’s a scene set to a David Attenborough voiceover in my memory. But I can recall the rush even now, feel a little sorry for myself: it was primal – mad. Soon Michael took off his jacket, turned the key in the lock and we were putting the sofa to other uses. After a few years, though, the glow faded. The problem about relationships where you make yourself so vulnerable is that your partner has to be strong in the right way. Michael, it transpires, is as fucked up as Christian Grey.

  ‘We both enjoyed it,’ he says stiffly.

  Why am I the only one ever to be in the wrong in our partnership? ‘You know it was unprofessional, right? You could’ve lost your job if I’d told anyone.’

  ‘But you didn’t and I made it OK when I asked you to move in with me.’

  ‘Only just before too many brows were raised about our afternoon love-fests. There’re no secrets in a university department and you always say academics are the worst gossips.’

  ‘But we became an official couple.’ He makes it sound as if that wipes clean any previous stain on his honour.

  What was the point of arguing about this? ‘We did. I even got my Masters, which was a small miracle considering I did all the research on my own with next to no guidance.’

  ‘I helped you.’

  ‘No, actually, Michael, you didn’t, but let’s not go there now. We’ve got far more serious things to sort out than that. Can you explain some of it to me? Why did Jacob know her as Ali and where is Kaitlin? I read a few pages of her diary. Is Kaitlin the same as Katy?’

  The effect of my questions is immediate. Michael closes up, like a sea anemone prodded by a stick. ‘Sorry, there are some things that I promised Emma I would never talk about. I can tell you what I told the police: that Ali was her middle name. She reverted to Emma when she left him. She was trying to shake him off.’

  Such loyalty to a dead woman. It reminds me that the main problem in our relationship had been the ghost of her perfection drawing attention to my inadequacies.

  ‘I guess that’s an admirable attitude, Michael, but if telling the truth would clear you with the police, don’t you think she would prefer you to do so?’

  He shrugs. ‘But these things really have nothing to do with West’s death. And Kaitlin isn’t a part of this at all and shouldn’t be dragged into it. I didn’t kill him, though one idea is that he tried to make it look that way. I’m thinking he was suicidal – or at least self-destructive in his behaviour – and this was his last unanswerable attempt to ruin my life. I have to say he’s made a good job of it.’

  ‘Do you know any more about how he died?’

  ‘He took the overdose and hit his head while staggering about the place – or someone staged it that way. Though I prefer to believe it’s the first – that he was suicidal. If he read Emma’s diary, he would’ve realised she never loved him like he imagined. That could’ve made him flip.’

  That sounds possible. My phone pings.

  Finished with the ex yet?

  I am pleased that Drew is a little jealous, enough to send me a text when he knows I must be sitting opposite the last guy. Heading home soon.

  Michael tries to look like he wasn’t just attempting to read my screen upside down. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Yes. I’d better travel back before the worst of the rush hour.’

  ‘Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.’

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot to say: I can help.’

  ‘You can? How?’

  ‘By finding the missing girls. I know you thought my job wasn’t real but I truly did research them and their patterns. I think I can find at least one of them. If I do that, and she’s alive and well, then Jacob’s accusations can be disc
ounted.’

  He swallows, his expression showing that he is genuinely moved by me for once. ‘I’d be really grateful if you could.’

  ‘But it would help if you were entirely honest with me.’

  He holds my gaze for a moment. ‘Can any of us survive complete honesty, Jessica?’

  Chapter 30

  Jessica, 18th August

  ‘Am I sure I want to do this?’ I’m reduced to talking to myself as, with no handy sidekick, I have to take both parts: intrepid detective and sceptical follower, Sherlock and Watson. I am standing outside a launderette across the road from the Nine Elms supermarket in Vauxhall, at the address I dug up for Lillian Bailey. It’s a depressing place as half the shops in this little terrace are boarded up and the rest look like they are holding on by the barest fingernail to the ledge of breaking even. With the river not far away, a main road into London, the railway into Waterloo on a viaduct, and low-flying aircraft lining up to land at Heathrow, this area could be an illustration for a child’s book on planes, boats and trains. Lillian had a friend from Harrogate who lives here – or did a couple of years ago – but the odds are that they’ve probably moved on and I will be knocking on the door of a complete stranger.

  ‘Now I’m here, it’s worth a try.’ I press the bell for the first-floor flat.

  The door release buzzes. Almost missing the opportunity, I push it open. ‘Trusting sort.’

  I head up the stairs. The stairway is cluttered with various items of child-related equipment – a pram, a couple of dinky three-wheeled scooters, and a collapsible pushchair. I knock on the door at the top. A young woman throws it open, little blond child on her hip, another one hanging on her leg.

  ‘Oh. Who are you?’

  I take a step back, deciding I’ll look less threatening if I don’t crowd her. I trip over a scooter and almost take a head-first plunge down the steps, but save myself just in time.

  Heart racing, I clutch my chest. ‘Shit. Sorry. Didn’t mean to swear in front of the kids.’