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 away for 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 about her sadness, her “ache of betrayal”, she called it – how awful it had been for her?
And I was 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 “My Oliver”. ’
‘The police told me at the time,’ he says.
‘Oh, my God. You know what she meant, don’t you? Or who she meant. I can see it on your face. Don’t you?’ I yell at him.
‘I … I think so, yes.’ His eyes dart around the room. Scanning for possible escape routes, maybe.
I want to run at him, grab him, shake the truth out of his mouth. ‘Olly, did Marianne have a different bit on the side, also called Oliver?’
‘No. She’d never have been unfaithful to your dad.’
I laugh. ‘And you know this how?’
‘She cares about family more than anything else. You must know that. That’s why she hated the words “stepmother” and “stepdaughter”. She wanted it all to be … you know.’
‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’
‘Proper,’ says Olly. ‘Perfect. She loves you, Jemma, believe it or not.’ He holds up a hand, seeing my mouth open in protest. ‘And she’s wrong to think that accurately describing the relationship – step-parent and stepchild – would make anything less proper or perfect, and she was breathtakingly stupid to have tried to grab the “mother” label from the second she met you, when your mum had just died.
And her love for you in no way excuses her appalling treatment of people. ’
‘Did she treat you appallingly too?’ I ask him. That was how it had sounded, as if that’s what he meant.
‘There are things I’m never going to be able to talk about,’ he says in a tight voice. ‘I have to be upfront about that. I’m very sorry I can’t tell you everything, Jemma, but I can’t.’
Impossible. He’s seriously sitting there saying that he plans to leave me in the dark.
‘Could the other Oliver tell me?’ I’m desperate enough to throw out a wild guess. ‘The one with the curly grey hair and the beard that’s sort of half-blond and half-ginger? Sturdy build, late fifties? Well, he’d be older now. That was how he looked more than a decade ago.’
The flinch is unmistakable. ‘Wh-what?’ Olly manages to say.
‘You know who I mean, then. Good.’ Please let this work. Let it lead somewhere. ‘Thanks for making it so obvious. Why don’t you tell me who he is, the man I’ve just described?’