Chapter 52
Fifty-Two
Wednesday
EMILY
DS Blair’s text arrives mid-morning.
Good news. You can return to your property, Mrs Sharpe. A local officer will let you know when it’s ready.
Good news is a phrase I no longer trust.
I read it out to Lara.
‘Well, that’s something, at least,’ she says gently. ‘Do you want me to come over with you, stay a while?’
‘Thanks, but I need to do this alone,’ I say. ‘I don’t want anyone else’s reaction to affect mine.’
Lara nods, understanding right away. ‘’Course. Take your time. You know where I am if you need me.’
The text message sits on my screen, and I stare at it until the words start to blur.
I send another couple of text messages to DI Blair about something that’s been bothering me.
That’s kind of you. I’ll arrange for one of our officers to sort that out, Mrs Sharpe.
Feeling easier, I push it from my mind until later.
I wait by the window, arms folded tight, until the knock finally comes. A young officer in uniform with a polite smile and friendly tone. ‘The house is clear, Mrs Sharpe. You’re free to go home.’
Home. The word sounds strange. We’ve barely been in long enough to claim it and already it’s been prised open, searched and judged.
I thank Lara again, step out and pull the gate closed behind me.
Crossing the road feels like walking into a storm that only I can see.
Outside, the sky is bright, the air fresh, and Orchard Lane is washed clean after yesterday’s short downpour. But the calm feels temporary, as if it’s only a matter of time before something terrible is unleashed.
The Stables sits next door, hollow and empty. Its wide windows seem blank and cold behind the strips of blue-and-white tape still fluttering in the light breeze. The sight of it makes my stomach lurch. I picture what happened in there—Oliver with Vanessa—and a growing dread crawls through me.
Vanessa, so bright and vibrant . . . now reduced to evidence markers and police tape.
Whatever happened in that house—I don’t believe it was anything like the police’s theory.
Despite what happened a year ago in London with Marcus Hart, I don’t believe Oliver is capable of murdering someone in cold blood.
Even if there was a lot of money involved .
. . and Vanessa was a very wealthy woman.
Having said all that, I do believe Oliver was up to something sinister .
. . something he’s kept completely silent about.
But I might lose my mind trying to fill in the blanks.
I turn my attention back to our house. It also seems too neat and too still. I can feel the weight of the neighbours’ eyes from behind their doors and windows, even if I can’t see them. I know they’re watching. Of course they are.
For a few moments at our barbecue, that WhatsApp message had belonged to everyone. There had been a shared flicker of unease, quickly laughed away amid the good-natured chatter and the beat of party music.
Now, though, it feels very different. Now, it feels as though everybody knows the message was meant for us all along.
They must all be wondering how it feels to be a woman whose husband has been arrested for murder. I straighten my shoulders as I walk. Let them look. I won’t give them anything else.
When I reach the front path, I fumble for the key.
Why do I feel so nervous coming back here? Nothing bad happened in our home. But what if all the warmth, the illusion of safety here, is gone for good?
I breathe in slowly, steel myself and push ahead.
At the front door, the key slides into the lock, and for a second I turn, scanning the street.
A delivery van crawls past, the driver glancing over briefly before looking away.
Somewhere, a dog barks. Nothing seems unusual, and yet the hairs rise on the back of my neck.
I can’t shake this feeling that someone is watching.
I step inside and close the door, and the silence presses in at once. The house is unfamiliar enough that it still smells strange to me. But as I walk further in, I realize there’s also a strong odour in here of cleaning fluid and something that smells like latex.
I’m glad I’m home. Lara and Tim have been amazing; so supportive. But I found it impossible to relax in the middle of someone else’s life, feeling watched and monitored all the time, even though it was from a place of concern.
The place looks tidy enough at first glance, but that unsettles me more than chaos would. Strangers have been here, other people’s hands touching our stuff, moving everything, and then trying to put it back the way it was.
In the kitchen, a mug stands on the draining board upside down, though I never leave them that way. A chair is slightly off centre. All the tiny tells that say someone has tried—and failed—to put my life back the way it was.
Upstairs, it’s worse.
The bedroom still smells faintly of Oliver’s strong aftershave, a little stale and distant now. The duvet has been folded back in an odd way and both bedside drawers are still open an inch, their contents clumsily replaced.
I kneel and pull mine open wider. My notebooks and journals are stacked the wrong way. I cringe, assuming they’ve scanned them—and wondering what conclusions they might have drawn if they have. The thought of careless fingers rummaging through my private things . . .
I move round to Oliver’s side. His drawer, too, has been emptied and roughly refilled—cufflinks tangled with receipts, a photo frame face down. I flip it over. Our wedding day. The glass has a smudge right across it, as though someone’s greasy thumb paused there too long.
I put it back and stand up.
Out on the landing, I notice the office door is half open. I pause, hand on the door frame, and then push it wider.
It’s a mess in here. Papers everywhere—bank statements, old bills, envelopes torn open. The neat piles have been scattered across the floor like confetti. The printer tray hangs open, one sheet half crumpled inside.
I crouch, gathering a few pages into a stack, trying to bring order to it. I look up and stare at the wall in front of me. The narrow, flush casing there.
I spot the cupboard with the ‘Fuse Box’ label Did Oliver stash anything in there? And if so, had the police thought to look there? I press the casing at the lower-right corner and it springs open. There’s a folder of paperwork there—and it looks untouched.
My fingers touch the top sheet of paper, blood rushing to my head. I lift it out.
It’s a bank statement bearing a recent date.
The name at the top stops me: Oliver Sharpe—sole account holder.
I blink, reading it again to be sure.
The balance line at the bottom stares back:—￡58,426.17.
I swallow. Overdrawn by nearly sixty thousand pounds.
The money from the last con is in a joint investment account. I open the investment company app on my phone and check the account. I breathe out. The very healthy six-figure sum is still there.
But this personal account he’s kept from me . . . how has he racked up this sort of debt? Judging by the dates, Oliver has been sitting on it for some time.
I think about the threatening texts. Was it connected to this . . . the debt? And is this why he went after Vanessa . . . for her money, so he could pay off what he owed before I found out about it?
I force myself not to panic. Panic is useless in situations like this.
I sit back on my heels and stare at the numbers, the paper trembling slightly in my hands. A sour taste rises in my mouth.
How many times in the past couple of years, especially after we moved here, has he said our days of scraping by are behind us? How many lectures about not worrying what we spend now, that we can afford a premium rent and a top-class gym?
And all the while this—a secret bank account massively overdrawn.
Possibilities whirl through my mind. Old debts from his supposedly failed business deals. Something worse. Something that links to everything that is happening now . . .
I think of the detectives’ faces yesterday—the way DI Adebayo’s eyes sharpened whenever I hesitated as though she suspected I might be hiding something from them.
Little did I know then that Oliver had been fooling me, too.
Stephanie’s voice telling me they had charged Oliver with murder echoes in my head. She had delivered the thunderbolt in that calm, clipped and unflinching manner she seems to favour.
I remember the way she looked at me. Not with sympathy, but assessing me. As if she was deciding how useful I might be.
Oliver is the reason we’re in this mess. He’s the one who wouldn’t give up the scams, the one I found it impossible to trust, and now, thanks to the bank statement, I have proof he’s not been straight with me about our finances.
I flick through the other papers in the folder, but there’s nothing else that rings alarm bells.
My fingers trembling, I fold the bank statement and slide it into my pocket.
It’s time to start putting myself first.
I put the folder away, snapping closed the ‘fuse box’. I stand at the window and start to close the curtains, just wanting to shut out the world. Then I change my mind. Things have escalated too far to shut anything out now.
I walk instead into the slightly bigger bedroom, the one Oliver suggested we turn into a nursery.
Now it smells of police chemicals and dust and the future we planned has been lifted out like evidence and bagged. Nothing we planned will ever happen now. Not here.
The unease builds, crawling up the back of my neck.
I step out of the bedroom and pause.
The house is mine again, but it turns out my relief to be back is short-lived. It doesn’t feel like it belongs to me at all. It feels like I shouldn’t be here.
I walk along the landing, my footsteps soft against the carpet. I can hardly breathe. One door is ajar, and I pause there, thinking about our plans for a nursery, before closing it gently.
I almost jump out of my skin when a knock splits the silence. Sharp and unexpected. I still myself.
The knock comes again, this time a little more insistent.
I rush to a front bedroom to peer down to the front of the house through the narrow gap in the blind. My stomach drops.
Of all the people who might call on me here today, this is the person I’d least expect.
I back away from the window, my mind racing.
There is movement, the shock of dark hair, the tall, lean shape, hands shoved awkwardly into pockets as he looks upstairs at the windows.