‘Well, I’m happy to tell you the whole sorry tale if you’rewilling to reciprocate,’ said Simon. ‘The full truth. Everything you know.’
Mayo glared at him, his eyes still full of questions, but now there were accusations there too. How unreasonable, for a detective to come and mess with the head of the good, kind therapist when all he was doing was obstructing the solving of two unsolved murder cases.
‘Farida Suleyman,’ said Mayo. ‘She’s the client I was with last night from five o’clock until nearly six. And the night Marianne was attacked in 2012, I was with Belynda Simmonds. That’s Simmonds with a D, Belynda with a Y. She’s not my client any more – lives in Pembrokeshire now. I was with Belynda here, in this room, when Marianne was nearly killed eleven years ago. Nowhere near Sleatham St Andrew. I’d been Belynda’s therapist for fourteen months by then, too.’
‘How’s that relevant?’ Simon asked him.
‘It meant the police couldn’t suspect me of conveniently producing a new client who’d act as my alibi.’
‘How about Farida Suleyman? How long has she been a client?’
‘Six weeks, give or take.’
‘I see,’ Simon said as portentously as he could, but Mayo didn’t look fazed. Was he keener to prove he couldn’t have done it in 2012 than yesterday? ‘What about the story swap idea, then?’ he asked Mayo. ‘Are you ready to tell me the truth?’
He wasn’t expecting an answer and was surprised when one came back instantly. ‘No,’ Mayo said. ‘I’m sorry. Everything I can tell you, I’ve told you already – though I’m willing to admit, only because you’re saying it’s off the record, and for some reason I believe you …’
That wasn’t quite what Simon had said. Still, it looked as if the misunderstanding was about to work in his favour.
‘There’s more that I haven’t told you.’ Mayo sighed. ‘A lot more – and it in no way incriminates Jemma. In spite of that, I’m afraid you’re never going to hear it from me. I’m sorry.’
JULY 9, 2023
‘How could you believe even for a second that I was sleeping with Marianne?’ Olly is crying now, and it feels so wrong. Surely other people should cry in his therapy room, not him. ‘How could you think of that possibility and not know straight away that it couldn’t be true?’
He seems genuine, but then talented liars always do. I want to believe him more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
‘Jemma, I swear on your life and mine, on the lives of everyone I care about: there has never been anything of that kind between Marianne and me. She was in her fifties when I first met her. I was twenty-two.’
As if that means anything, or rules anything out. ‘She’s Marianne Upton. She always gets what she wants,’ I say.
‘Maybe she does and maybe she doesn’t,’ Olly says pointedly.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Tired of standing up, I walk back to the chair opposite his desk and sit down. ‘Are you saying she tried to get you into bed, and you rejected her advances?’
‘God, no.’ He winces. ‘Jemm, you don’t know her at all if you think she’d do that.’
‘Oh, don’t I? I don’t know the woman who sent me to bed without any dinner one night when Dad was awayfor work because she’d found me crying on Mother’s Day because my mother was dead? And then the next day, when Dad got back, she told him all abouthersadness,her“ache of betrayal”, she called it – how awful it had been forher? AndIwas the one encouraged by Dad to be more sensitive and considerate in future?’
‘God, she treated you appallingly.’ Olly looks aghast.
If you know that, and you love me, then why all the secret meetings with her?‘Treats,’ I mutter. ‘Present tense.’
‘I just meant … Marianne has never shown any romantic or physical interest in me and nor would she.’
‘Then what?’ I snap at him. ‘What was it, if not an affair?’
He looks away.
‘Okay, let’s try a new one: you say you haven’t seen her since late 2012. That was when someone tried to kill her. November 2012. Was that someone you? Was that why the two of you didn’t keep in touch? Fair enough: seems like the kind of thing that’d put an abrupt end to a relationship, but—’
‘Jemma, there are things I can’t—’
‘But wait, you had an alibi, didn’t you? The police were satisfied, so you were in the clear. Who, though, if not you? Paddy and I were together, so I know he didn’t do it. Dad was away in London for work. Marianne doesn’t have any friends, doesn’t really deign to speak to anyone in the village. So … I wondered if maybe there was another Oliver, one Marianne might describe as “hers”? Oh – you probably don’t know about that, the way she tried to say “MyOliver”.’
‘The police told me at the time,’ he says.
‘Oh, my God. You know what she meant, don’t you? Orwhoshe meant. I can see it onyour face. Don’t you?’ I yell at him.
