JULY 9, 2023
Olly doesn’t reply immediately. He’s not turning away, though, or shifting awkwardly in his chair. Nothing about his body language signals surprise.
He’s prepared. He knew he would have to face this unwelcome question one day. ‘What makes you think Marianne and I are keeping something from you?’ he says eventually in a voice that signals kindness – pity, perhaps – as well as curiosity. I wonder if this is how he speaks to delusional clients:What makes you think you’re the reincarnation of Queen Victoria?
‘Two days ago, she showed me her study, at Dad’s,’ I tell him. ‘“Today’s your lucky day”, she said. “I’ll unlock the door and show you right now, give you a proper tour.” She led me up there, seeming all happy and relaxed, knowing I’d believe I was about to be let in on the secret.’
‘And?’
‘Empty. She’d stripped it bare, right down to stripping the walls and pulling up the carpet. As a psychotherapist, do you have any theories as to why she’d do that?’
Olly says nothing.
‘Lust for complete and total victory – that’s my best guess,’ I say. ‘She knew I was desperate to see anything and everything that was behind that locked door, so she had to removeevery single thingthat had once beenin there, every last square centimetre of wallpaper. That’s what she did – and then she took me up there to taunt me.’
It’ll be easier to say what I need to say next if I’m not looking at him, so I stand and walk over to the open window. On the street outside, two young Chinese women are jogging along the pavement in white vest tops, black Lycra leggings and white trainers. A cyclist nearly knocks one of them over, but manages to slip in between them instead. Once past them, he waves apologetically over his shoulder.
‘Do you know what I was thinking about when Marianne took me up to the top floor?’ I say. ‘When I believed I was about to get the answers I’d been craving for years, before I found out it was all a trick? I was remembering the tongue-lashing she gave you when she caught you trying to open the door to her study, about a month before Lotts was born. Don’t pretend you don’t remember.’
‘Of course I do,’ Olly says quietly.
I turn to face him. ‘Why the fuck were you at Devey House that day, Olly? Nothing was going on between us at that point. Marianne said afterwards she’d had no idea why you were there or how you got inside. She certainly didn’t let you in, oh, no. She just went up to her study and found you on the top landing, trying the door handle, trying to break into her private sanctuary. That’s where I come into the story – because I heard her scream at you, didn’t I? She made sure I heard – that’s why it had to be such an over-the-top bollocking, so there was no way I’d miss it. She shrieked at the top of her lungs that you had no business being there. “Howdare you? Get out of my house! You’re not Jemma’s boyfriend any more, you’ve no reason to be here.” It was all a show for my benefit, wasn’t it? Why don’t you tell me what really happened that day?’
Olly says nothing but keeps his eyes fixed on me, staring my rage in the face as if it’s a punishment he’s imposed on himself.
‘How about if I start?’ I say. ‘You couldn’t have got into the house unless someone had let you in, and Marianne and I were the only ones there. I didn’t let you in, so she must have. The whole big mystery she pretended we were both trying to solve had an obvious answer from the start. I was just too stupid and trusting to think of it formore than fifteen years. I believed Marianne’s theory: you were so obsessed with me, you’d climbed in through an open window. I’m such a gullible moron, I didn’t even think to question it, though God knows why you’d have tried to force open the door toherstudy if it was me you were obsessed with.’
‘I’ve been obsessed with you since we first met, Jemm,’ says Olly. ‘In a good way, I like to think.’ He almost smiles. ‘And … any truths I haven’t told you, I’ve hated keeping them from you.Hatedit.’
‘Then be honest with me now.’
‘I can’t.’
Unbelievable. Presented like it’s an unchangeable law of nature.
‘But I won’t lie to you again,’ Olly says. ‘That I can promise.’
‘Yay, lucky me.’ I can’t keep still. Nowhere I can stand or walk to in this room feels comfortable. ‘Do you know when it clicked for me, that Marianne must have let youin that day? It was a few months ago. Paddy and I were having supper with her and Dad, and Dad mentioned a new director of music at church who’d invited him to join the choir. I don’t know why it took that for me to make the connection, but it hit me suddenly: Dad had been out at a musical thing the day Marianne screamed at you and chucked you out of the house. They’d both known for ages he’d be out all day. Paddy was out at work. And I wasn’t supposed to be there either.’
Olly nods. ‘You were supposed to be at Suzanne’s.’
‘Right. I’d been on my way there when she’d phoned to cancel – her mum had broken her arm and Suzanne had to drive her to hospital, so I told my cab driver to turn round, and headed back home. Marianne didn’t hear me come in because she was up at the top of the house in her study. With you, right? You were in there with her, at her invitation. She’d arranged for you to go round that day, thinking the two of you would have the house to yourselves.’
‘Yes,’ Olly says. It’s almost a whisper. ‘That’s what happened. Except … she did hear you come in. You slammed the front door quite hard. We both heard it.’
He meant it, then. He’s not going to lie any more. Or is this another clever trick?
‘Right,’ I say. ‘So she had to improvise, quickly. Sneaking you out secretly would have been too risky – I could easily have appeared in the hall and seen you – so she pushed you out of the study, locked the door, and started screaming at you for being an intruder who’d climbed in through a window.’
Olly nods.
‘Here’s another thing that didn’t occur to me for ages,’I say. ‘Her study never used to be locked. There were a few years, after we moved to Devey House, when I could walk in there whenever I wanted. It was full of normal stuff in those days – all the things you’d expect to see in a study. Her sudden need for secrecy started very soon after you and I met. After you andshemet. I tried to work out exactly when that lock got put on the door – it was early 2006, I think. I went back over it all and worked it out. And … you saying you’re not going to lie to me any more just isn’t enough, Olly. It’s nowhere near enough!’ The words spill out of me. ‘You need to tell me everything and it needs to happen now.’
‘Jemma, it changed, it wasn’t—’ He lifts his hands as if to cover his face, then lowers them again. ‘I never wanted to lie to you. I was there, remember, when Marianne told us all? We were having dinner, and she explained that from now on her study would be a no-go area for everyone but her, with a lock on the door. She said it was so she could keep the room tidy and I thought …’ Olly looks lost for a second, as if he’s forgotten what he was trying to say. ‘Well, I knew that couldn’t be the real reason. You won’t remember but you said to me that night: you never went in there anyway, and neither did your dad. No one had ever been in and left it untidy. I was as clueless as you were, until … well, until that day. The one we’re talking about, when Marianne screamed and threw me out. Before that, I had no idea what was going on. Please believe me about that.’
When I don’t respond, he says, ‘You believe me, right?’
‘I do, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is the part I still don’t know. What did you find out that day? What’s going on between you and Marianne, Olly?’
