You Can Trust Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

message. For the first time, Julia’s text about needing to talk sends a shiver down my spine.
    â€œWhat are we going to do, Mum?” Hannah asks anxiously.
    Zack, sensing the atmosphere has changed, shuffles closer to me.
    â€œMaybe the intercom’s not working.” I take out my keys. The spares to Julia’s building and apartment hang on my old leather key ring, just as my keys dangle from her silver Tiffany fob. I open the building’s front door.
    Once inside, the kids race up the stairs to Julia’s second-floor apartment. They hammer on Julia’s front door, but there’s still no reply. I join them, starting to wish I’d turned around and left when we were downstairs, but I can’t stop now. Worry pricks the hairs at the nape of my neck. Where is she?
    I open the door and we walk inside. I feel like I’m intruding, despite the key. The kids, suddenly quiet, hang back. Maybe they sense something in the air. It’s all too fast for me to be sure. And then we’re in the living room and Julia’s lying there on the sofa. And she could be asleep but I know that she’s not.
    A long second passes before I let out my breath and the knowledge slams into my brain.
    Julia. My best friend. Is dead.

 
    HARRY
    I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker.
    â€”Einstein
    There’s only one thing that counts: honesty. And I promise faithfully that I will never lie to you. So, no lies. And no false modesty either. I’m going to be straight about who I am and what I do.
    Let’s start with myth number one: that I am a psychopath. That word comes with so much baggage but really it just means “suffering soul.” Isn’t that beautiful? How could anyone fail to be moved by the idea of a mind in torment? But slap a pseudoscientific label on the bitch, and suddenly it sounds ponderous and medical, certainly in need of medication.
    Whatever, it’s a false diagnosis, based on fear and misunderstanding. Because, and here’s my thesis, we are all psychopaths under the skin. For whose soul doesn’t suffer? Life is suffering. That’s not me, that’s the Buddha. And who could argue? Still, I much prefer the old term “psychopath” to the more modern “sociopath.” Sociopath is one of those bits of nonsense jargon—like “cadence” and “granularity”—that I hear at work all the time.
    Apologies, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me begin at the beginning and explain how my so-called psychopathy started. No names, no pack drill, obviously. But you should know that I had a relatively comfortable early childhood. Sorry to disappoint expectations, but there it is. My parents were perfectly normal. I wasn’t beaten or sexually abused or neglected. I had food to eat, a bed to sleep in, and clean clothes every day. A middle-class psychopath. Ha! In your face, analytical psychologists.
    Then Harry came to live with us.
    I can see what you’re thinking: Harry. Probably an uncle or a lodger. Harry: Abuser. Groomer. Pederast.
    No. Harry was our cat. Black and very, very furry. A rescue cat. An interesting cat. Quite possibly a psychopath himself. Certainly sly and narcissistic and without a conscience. I don’t think Harry cared about the mice he killed. He lived to find them, catch them, and watch them suffer. Harry was cruel and I had no interest in cruelty. But I was curious about Harry. He had a long bushy tail—on the surface, all fluffy fur that shed on every piece of furniture we owned—but underneath the fur, his tail was like thick wire. Harry’s tail obsessed me. It was not what it seemed, much like Harry himself. Soft yet hard. Strong yet weak. There one minute, whipped out of the way the next.
    I’m sure Freud would have loved my preadolescent obsession with this phallus substitute. But, as