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Olly told her what happened with Patrick this morning, the blackmail attempt. Olly was fuming. Spitting, almost. She told him to go out for a while, to get some air, and to think. She didn’t want Anna to come back and find him so overwrought. Everything needs to seem calm, and as normal as possible. It’s essential. Not that Anna has turned up, yet.
She tries to put the drama out of her mind. If she relaxes, then a solution might come to her, something she can present to Olly, but her brain has other ideas. She sifts through images of last night. The state of the remains wasn’t pleasant but nor was it unexpected. Olly’s reaction was disappointing. He retched and coughed so much that she did most of the dirty work herself.
She kept control of herself around the body. They had a job to do, and she wanted to do it well. If anything spooked her, it was the site. They buried Kitty deep in the woods, at the site of a medieval plague pit. They chose that location because Olly had a theory that if bones were discovered on such an old burial site, they’d be less likely to attract attention if found. It was nonsense, Sasha thought at the time and still thinks, because any human remains found would be tested and proved to be modern, but Olly loves to tell himself little fictions, and who is she to contradict him when those fictions often suit her.
She tries to focus, reminding herself that however traumatic it was, she’s pleased with the outcome. They moved Kitty’s remains to the Manor’s septic tank. It was only installed last year, a replacement for the old one, after they got the money for selling the barns and land to the Booths. Nobody would think to look there for a body that disappeared five years ago. Her idea, naturally. Olly was all for throwing Kitty’s remains in the river, but water has a habit of washing things up and Sasha doesn’t want to live in fear of that.
She inhales and exhales deeply, but her mind still won’t rest. It’s destabilising, thinking of Olly as fallible. She knows he’s not perfect, and there have been times when she’s been grateful for that because the weight of his confidence, his ego, would be too much for her otherwise. But she’s never thought of him with contempt before last night. It happened as she worked while he was doubled over, vomiting. It makes her feel as if a fissure has snaked through their relationship and she wants to close it because she wants to be with Olly; she wants this life. She tries to tell herself that what she felt wasn’t a true reflectionof their relationship, but simply her reaction to what was happening in the moment. The body was horrible. Even she can’t be unscathed by what they did, no matter how calmly she behaved at the time.
The grandfather clock in the hall strikes the hour. She listens to the chimes, counts them. Olly has popped out to the local village and will be back in about half an hour, probably. An idea creeps up on her, something forbidden, but it would remind her what she admires about him and why they’re doing this. She wants to look at his book. She knows he won’t let her if she asks, because she’s asked before and been refused, and if she so much as walks past when he’s writing, he pulls the lid of his laptop down in case she should read something over his shoulder. He doesn’t want her to see it until it’s finished, he insists.
But if she were to take a little peek at it now, she thinks, it might reassure her. She’s never once harboured any doubt that he’s writing something brilliant, so might this be the time to have a little taste of what’s wonderful about Olly? It could help to seal that fissure; it could give her some strength.
She goes into Olly’s study and shuts the door behind her. She opens his laptop. It’s password protected, but she doesn’t hesitate before typing in a word: Hemingway. His hero. Many of Olly’s abilities leave her in awe, but he’s hopeless and transparent on others. He uses the same password for everything.
She inhales sharply when the novel comes up on-screen. The moment feels huge, partly because she shouldn’t be looking and partly because she’s anticipated it for so long. She notes what page the document has been left on so she can return there and scrolls to the first page. The beginning. And reads.
It’s brilliant for a few pages. It sweeps her up and carries her along. But on page 4, it suddenly doesn’t make sense. She wonders if Olly has been clever, if this is one of those original novel structures that he likes to talk about, and if she just doesn’t get it. She rereads it, flicks through the novel. It gets more and more jumbled. She tries to detect a pattern to it, or any meaning or point to it at all, but it reads like nonsense and the more she tries to detect brilliance, the less it makes sense and the lower her heart sinks, because Sasha’s no connoisseur of literature but she can tell that this book is really, truly terrible. Nobody is going to publish this.
She scrolls hurriedly to return the document to the page she found it on and closes the laptop. Is this what she’s given up years for? She has tiptoed around this man, worked like a beast to earn their spending money, protected him from the day-to-day crap of life. And all for this mess of a novel?
She walks from the room slowly, closing the door behind her so he won’t know she was in there. She feels as if she’s in shock.
The sound of a car engine dying comes to her faintly. Olly is back already. She stands in the hallway, beneath the ranks of oil paintings, uncertain what to do. He’s a fraud, she thinks. But is he conning himself? Or me? Am I as much of a mark as Libby Franklin and Anna Creed and anyone else he’s suckered onto and bled dry over the years? What’s worse? A man who lies to others or to himself?
She opens the heavy front door as he’s walking towards it. He lifts a hand to acknowledge her. He looks calmer than he did earlier. She opens her mouth to say something to him but finds she doesn’t know where to start. Wait, she tells herself. Before you challenge him: wait and think.
60
FRIDAY
Jen
A young DC called Finn is talking. Jen and Hal are in the car outside the Maserati dealership, listening to him on speakerphone. ‘First things first, we can’t find anything to raise suspicion on Sasha Dempsey. We’ve done a deep dive on her background but it’s unremarkable. She’s worked as a yoga instructor for years and was never in trouble before meeting Olly Palmer.’
‘Tell us about Libby Franklin,’ Hal says.
‘Libby Franklin was a student at Bristol University when Olly Palmer was there. They met at a party in the English department when they were both second-year undergraduates and hit it off. Libby ran a group for wannabe writers. They would meet in cafés and various other venues across the city, including Libby’s nice one-bed flat in Clifton, purchased for her by her parents, and share their work. At first Olly impressedeveryone in the group. He had talent and they could see it. Libby told me that soon people became obviously jealous of him. The group would be generous with their praise towards everyone except Olly. They’d savage whatever it was he’d written. Libby thought it was unfair and she told him so in private.
‘Here’s where it gets interesting. A friendship developed. He told her that she was the only person ever to understand him. They got closer and became lovers. He involved her in his work, asking her advice, seeking her reassurance, appointing her to be the only other reader of what he’d written. She told me she felt privileged, so much so that she stopped working on her own writing and became obsessed with helping him improve his. She handed over the writing group to someone else to run and she and Olly got very tight, barely seeing anyone else.
‘What happens next starts to sound familiar in the context of Anna Creed’s journal. Olly tells Libby that he has a housing crisis. Apparently, he’d been renting a studio flat – she’d never been there for various reasons that she accepted at the time: it was a bit out of town, it had damp, her flat was much more convenient – and he was going to get kicked out of it at short notice. The landlord wasn’t playing nice, and Olly was about to be homeless. He tells Libby he’s very afraid, that this is his worst fear because stress stops him from writing, from doing anything. He confesses he’s got so obsessed with his novel that he’s stopped going to class, too.’
Hal sighs. ‘It sounds very familiar. And she buys this?’
‘She buys it hook, line and sinker. She’s very much in love with this man who she believes will be the next big thing inliterature. She’s still diligently going to her lectures and seminars so she can get her degree, because that’s a condition of Daddy buying her the flat, but every spare minute of her time is spent with Olly. She’s started to do things for him so he can write.’
‘Let me guess, she tells him he can move in with her,’ Jen says.
‘Yes. And he does. He brings one small suitcase containing books and clothing and a laptop. She sets him up a desk in her sitting room and they share a bed. The flat is converted from an old chapel. It’s beautiful. His desk has a view, the kitchen is well stocked with a weekly Waitrose delivery, and she even has a takeout allowance.’
‘She told you this?’
‘She wanted to spill. She’s had ten years to get some distance. She said herself that she was incredibly naïve at the time. She still lives in the same place, she works at the university and is raising a baby with her new partner. But she hasn’t forgiven Olly.’
‘What burst the bubble for her and Olly?’ Hal says. ‘I presume it did burst?’
‘It did. Spectacularly. He tried to steal money from her, and she caught him. She said it was an extraordinary moment. She realised that he’d been taking her for a ride. Her whole perception of her life changed in that instant. Up until then, she’d felt privileged to be doing what she did for him. Her exact words were, “He made a slave out of me, and I let him. I evenlikedit.” She’s mortified. She said she never thought of herself as the type to be so convinced by someone and she struck me as an intelligent woman. Her parents were incredibly relieved. They’dsensed something was wrong and tried to get her to talk to them about it, but Olly had persuaded her that he and she only needed one another.’
