You Can Trust Me (6 page)

I shake my head. It can't be true. I won't accept it. There must have been something else, some other factor. I become obsessive in my search for more information. I call all the numbers the police officer gave me. The police confirm the coroner's verdict of suicide. Julia died between 10
P.M.
and midnight. I can't stop thinking how hectic that evening had been, then how quiet the house seemed after Will left for the airport and how I'd gone to bed thinking it was too late to call Julia back. If only I had ignored convention, as I'm sure Julia herself would have done.

I call the editors of the interior decorating, beauty, and fashion magazines for which Julia freelanced. I call the bloggers and journalists I met through her. I call the two ex-boyfriends of hers with whom I'm still in touch. And I speak endlessly to Will, who listens patiently as I rant that Julia wasn't capable of killing herself, and then weep in his arms.

All these people agree that it is shocking—then they sigh and say that it's hard, but that we must accept it. They hint, to greater and lesser degrees, that I'm refusing to face the truth only because I feel guilty. Which, they say, I shouldn't. Some tell me directly that it isn't my fault. I want to shout at them that I know. That this isn't the point. Julia's death is not about me.

Mum and Will both tentatively suggest I'm letting Kara's death all those years ago influence me. “But there is no killer here, just a deeply unhappy woman who fooled us all, who put a brave face on things,” Will says, his sympathetic tone belying the fact that he, like everyone else, thinks I'm completely mistaken.

And so, another week passes, the body is released, the funeral draws near, and Julia's story is rewritten. She was not really happy and full of life, but secretive and depressed. I hear many mentions of the therapist she saw for several years in her twenties, after Kara died. Likewise, there are frequent references to Julia's numerous “evenings in with Jack.”

“But when she said that, it was meant lightly, ironically,” I tell people.

They purse their lips and talk about solitary drinking and quote stats on whisky and suicide.

I grow tired of the conversations. I withdraw, watching my children closely. Zack, in that amazing way young children do, is bouncing back—I can see his memories of Julia fading already. Hannah is withdrawn at home, but her teachers say she is behaving normally at school.

Life slips back into its old groove: I ferry the kids around, shop for groceries, and pay bills. And yet, even as everything remains the same, it is all different. I notice a woman in Jackie O sunglasses and a green jacket coming out of the Waitrose supermarket on Gladstone Road. She looks so much like Julia that I actually follow her for a few steps until she turns a corner and I see the hook nose of her profile and the youthful tilt of her chin and I realize that it isn't Julia after all. On instinct, I take out my phone to call and tell Julia my mistake. And then I remember. I stand in the street, my shopping heavy in my hands. I can almost hear her caustic cackle:
I'd lay off the happy pills, Liv,
she'd say. Or:
Earth to housewife: Get a grip.

Every day there is something new I want to tell her: the picture Zack draws of a car that—if squinted at from a particular angle—looks bizarrely like one she used to drive, or the actress I see in some drama who reminds me of an old mutual friend. I try to tell Will instead, but the memories aren't his, and anyway, he is preoccupied with work and exhausted when he gets home at night.

And so it is that the two of us talk less and less about Julia, even as I miss her more and more, while through it all, the options turn over in my mind.

Not sickness. Not suicide.

Gradually, silently, the only other alternative seeps like a poison into my mind, shifting everything known and unknown.

No one takes Nembutal by accident. It's not even legal without a prescription, and Julia's medical records confirm that she certainly wasn't prescribed it. Her death wasn't an accident, and it wasn't her choice.

Which leaves only one remaining explanation: Someone else took Julia's life and made it look like she'd killed herself.

 

CHAPTER THREE

Will takes the day off work so he can go with me to the funeral. He doesn't think the children should attend. I agree with this when it comes to Zack, who continues to take Julia's death in his stride and expresses all his feelings in the form of questions:
What happens when you die? Is it just your heart stops? When your heart stops, can your brain think? Where will the Julia bit that isn't her body go? Was it like lying down on the sofa and going to sleep? What would it have felt like? Could it happen to me? Could it happen to you and Daddy?

I answer his questions as best I can, trying to strike a balance between honesty and reassurance. Sometimes people do get suddenly ill, I explain, but usually only when they are very old and their own children are grown up. It hasn't occurred to Zack that Julia might have taken her own life—that such a possibility might even exist. I can't see how his understanding or his grieving will be helped by going to Julia's funeral.

That is not the case with Hannah. She asks point-blank what the police have told me about Julia's death. I hedge a little but cave in under Hannah's persistence. One look at the horror in her eyes and I regret my honesty. Hannah, unlike Zack, already knows that suicide is possible. But she has no greater resources for understanding how Julia might have killed herself than I do. I tell her that no matter what the police and the coroner and everyone else thinks, I don't believe the suicide verdict. However, Hannah is swayed by the weight of all the authority figures ranged against me, including that of her own father. She cries in her room, one minute pulling me to her, the next pushing me away. She refuses to talk. Will tries. So does my mum. But Hannah doesn't speak. I recognize the hurt that bleeds from her eyes. She knows she was special to Julia, and she is asking my own questions:
How could Julia take herself away from us? Why weren't we enough? How could she do this to us?

I ask those questions every day and I'm still coming up with the same, single, simple answer: Julia would
never
have killed herself. If nothing else, she would never have let herself be found by my children. She knew we were coming over. Our Sunday lunches were a regular arrangement on weekends when Julia was at home, and we'd confirmed this latest one only two days before. I remember the conversation:

I'd called to check what time she wanted us to arrive. She'd sounded distracted, her tone uncharacteristically tense and anxious. I'd asked if she was okay and she'd said she was fine, just preoccupied with work. Then she said something that had sounded strange, a vague reference to “looking into something.” She'd mentioned her new man too, Dirty Blond. Was he connected to the thing she was investigating? I'm struggling to remember the exact flow of the conversation.

Suppose she found out something about him … something she didn't like? She was far more secretive about Dirty Blond's real name than usual. Why was that? Is the man married? This thought circles my head. It seems unlikely Julia would have had an affair. In all the years I knew her, she never once slept with a married man. Not knowingly, at least. Perhaps she found out he was married just before she died? Was that what her text on Saturday night was about?

PLS CALL. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU.

It eats away at me.

Julia passed away on a Saturday night, so why wasn't she with Dirty Blond then? Why hasn't he come forward since her death? Was there a fight? There's no way Julia would have killed herself over a man—
best treated as pets, men, bless them—
but maybe she found out he was married, or something else equally abhorrent to her, and finished it. Dirty Blond might have turned nasty. But then why no signs of a struggle? My mind flashes to Julia lying peacefully on her sofa. It crucifies me to think how much she would have hated being discovered as she was—her sweatpants soiled, her hair a mess.

I suggest to Hannah that she might want to go to the funeral to say good-bye to Julia, but she shakes her head.

“It'll all be grown-ups there, Mum,” she says. “I want to say good-bye just me and her.”

I promise to take her to Julia's favorite spot, overlooking the sea along the coast at Bolt Head. She told the kids she liked it because of the kites that so often flew there. She confessed to me it was also where she had met several handsome, well-heeled men whom she'd taken home for fast, furious sex. Hannah agrees to the kite trip, but I can see that it's small consolation. I press on, telling her how we'll sit on the cliff looking out to sea and drink those mock G&Ts Julia used to make for her.

“But it won't be the same,” Hannah says in a small, lost voice. And of course, she is right.

Will is annoyed that Hannah knows about the suicide verdict—he would rather have kept the whole thing from her. We argue about it on Sunday, after which he remains tight-lipped for several hours. Hurt, I keep my distance. We thaw out by the time the kids are in bed, chatting about our holiday plans for later in the summer as we eat takeout together. This is typical of the way we make up, letting issues and tensions slide away rather than working them through. I've always liked the fact that we rarely argue, but today I'm aware that this is yet another occasion on which not talking means nothing under the surface has really been resolved.

The following morning we're dressing for the funeral when Mum phones from Bath full of flu. Despite her temperature and sore throat, she is still determined to drive to Exeter for the service. It takes me a while to talk her out of it. Mum was always fond of Julia, just as Julia always had a soft spot for her, for both my parents.

“They're my home away from home, Liv,” she once said. “You've no idea how lucky you are.”

So, in the end, it's just Will and me. We travel to the mortuary in a companionable silence. I'm lost in my own thoughts, running over the short eulogy that Joanie invited me to deliver at the funeral. After being left out of all the arrangements, at least I'll have a chance to talk about Julia, to remind people what she was really like, but as the moment approaches the responsibility is weighing heavily. Will and I arrive half an hour early. The service isn't until eleven, but Julia's mother and brother are already standing outside with Wendy. After several dry, sunny weeks, the weather today is humid, the sky leaden with dark clouds.

Robbie sees me and smiles. He looks nothing like his sister, his jowly face and balding head making him seem far older than thirty-six. Julia always enjoyed being mistaken for the younger sibling, teasing her twin for looking “ancient” before his time—taunts that never failed to get a rise out of Robbie.

Despite the fact that he lets his hair grow too long at the back, presumably to compensate for its loss on top—Robbie is actually better-looking now than he was at any point in his twenties. Certainly than when we went on that disastrous date all those years ago when his skin was covered with acne. Will maintains that Robbie still has a crush on me. He is beaming at me now, dropping his cigarette as Will and I walk over.

I glance at the glowing stub on the ground. Julia and I used to smoke too. I struggled to give up the year I married Will. Julia carried on cheerfully smoking until her thirty-third birthday when, for reasons she never really explained, she just decided to stop on the spot. As far as I know, she let go of her pack-a-day habit without any difficulty—becoming evangelically anti-smoking within the week. I never saw her with a cigarette again.

Joanie offers us a miserable grimace as we walk up, but Robbie leans over and kisses me warmly, then shakes Will's hand. Wendy, a gym instructor with a hard body and a face to match, just scowls. She looks as toned and severe as ever, in a long, fitted black skirt and boxy gray jacket. The masculine style of her dress is reinforced by her pinched face and sharp chin-length peroxide bob. Julia couldn't stand her.
Hitler in a blond wig,
she used to say with a scathing chuckle.

“How are you guys?” Robbie asks.

“Okay. How are you holding up, all of you?”

“We're hanging in there,” Robbie says.

I look at Joanie. She shakes her head, not meeting my eyes. Wendy pats her arm. I shuffle from side to side, feeling uncomfortable. Robbie opens his mouth, clearly keen to chat, but Will gets there first.

“We're so sorry,” he says. “We'll see you inside. Come on, Liv.”

He takes my hand and we head toward Paul, Becky, and Martha, who have just arrived and are standing on the other side of the parking lot. Over the next fifteen minutes or so, the area outside the funeral home fills slowly, mostly with people I don't recognize. A smattering of Julia's other friends and colleagues come over to talk in low voices. All of them have shocked, solemn faces.

Another five minutes pass; then everyone goes inside. For some reason, Wendy—who said nothing to either of us in the parking lot—heads straight over as we're standing in the aisle.

“Livy.” Her bony fingers clutch at my arm like claws. The people on either side of her melt away. “I should have said outside, thanks so much for coming.”

What?
I bristle. I can feel Will beside me stiffening too. Who is bloody Wendy to be welcoming me to Julia's funeral? After they fell out, she and Julia met only three or four times, mostly at the few family functions Julia was unable to extricate herself from.

“Hi, Wendy.” I hesitate, indicating the room. “It's great there are so many people here.”

“Family.” Wendy offers me a thin smile. “Julia had thirty-three cousins, you know.”

I did know. It was one of the many differences between us—Julia, estranged from her massive extended family; and me, an only child after Kara's death, tied tightly to my parents and, now, to my mother alone.