by Deborah Bee
Like I’d have a key!
No, I don’t have a key.
I haven’t had a key in months.
Years.
For your own safety, babe.
Don’t want you getting lost!
‘It’s cold today,’ says DS Clarke, looking out of the window. ‘Colder than yesterday.’
Shouldn’t she be thinking about how to catch Gareth, not commenting on the weather? Isn’t that her job?
‘Really,’ I say, looking at the ceiling.
Not trying to be rude.
‘Is there still a policewoman out there?’ I say.
‘Yes, Clare,’ she says, trying not to sigh but sighing anyway.
She sits down on the edge of the bed, checking with her eyes that I don’t mind.
‘What happened to your leg?’ she says, looking at the box thing.
‘Just a bruise,’ I say.
‘Quite a bad bruise it says on the medical report.’
‘All right, just quite a bad bruise,’ I say.
‘Look, Clare. I don’t know why we’re getting off on the wrong foot here, do you?’
I look out of the window.
‘Clare, we are trying to help you.’
‘You don’t believe me, do you? You don’t believe that Gareth was here, do you? He was right there. Laughing at me.’
None of them believe me.
‘I haven’t said I don’t believe you. However, I can tell you that the police officer assigned to your safety and welfare, who was outside your room the whole time, did not see a man matching the description of Mr Gareth James. The key is, I believe, that you believe that you saw him. But as I say, DC Walker says that she was alone there the entire time. I’m checking the CCTV. We’ve got your description. I will check it and double check it. I assure you.’
‘She must be blind. He was there, clear as day. I saw him with my own eyes. She was too busy on the phone.’
‘She was on the phone?’
‘Yeah, she was laughing. Wasn’t she supposed to be looking out for me?’
She frowns to herself, that way teachers do when they’re trying to show you what a pain you are instead of just telling you what a pain you are.
She puts her hands together, like she’s saying a prayer or something.
He was standing RIGHT NEXT TO THE POLICEWOMAN.
I’m screaming in my own head.
‘Let’s step back a bit,’ she says. ‘We still don’t have a signed statement from you, Clare. Have you decided that you don’t want to make a formal report about, er, Gareth?’
‘Please don’t say his name.’
‘Your partner, then.’
‘He’s not my partner.’
Coco.
Angel.
No one ever gets the better of me.
She huffs a bit, like she’s trying to keep a lid on it. ‘What would you like me to call him, Clare?’
‘Him is fine.’
‘OK.’ She sighs a long sigh, then breathes in. ‘OK. Have you decided you don’t want to press charges against him?’
‘I never want to see him again. Or hear anything about him. I just want him to be gone. Why haven’t you arrested him yet?’
‘You know why. But when we do, we will need something from you in writing to back all this up. We need proof.’
‘You’ve got proof. Wanna see my leg?’ I say, whipping the sheet off my calf. The purple bit is going green around the edges.
‘Just quite a bad bruise, Clare, as you say.’
I can’t believe she just said that.
‘Don’t turn that one on me,’ I say.
God, what a witch.
‘Listen! We can’t lock someone up for a bruise. You’re going to have to give us more than that. Work with us, please.’
I don’t know what to say.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know anything.
Shhhhhh.
Babe.
It’s all gonna be fine.
You know I’ll make it all better.
Babe.
Roll over this way.
‘Have some water, Clare,’ she says, stretching out her hand to give me a plastic cup.
‘I don’t want any water.’
I said, ROLL OVER THIS WAY.
I need to get my exercise.
I fling a cup across the floor where it skids under a chair.
DS Clarke slowly walks over to the sink and pulls out some paper towels from the dispenser.
‘You keep forgetting, Clare,’ she says, wiping up the water. ‘We’re trying to help you.’
‘You’ve got a medical report! Isn’t that enough?’
‘It’s not conclusive, Clare, unless you give us some evidence. A jury would say you could have done all this to yourself.’
‘Who purposely bashes their own leg in? Who purposely douses themselves in paraffin? Who purposely drinks paraffin?’
‘People do strange things.’
‘You’re saying I could’ve done this, are you?’ I say. ‘You should have been there.’
‘I wasn’t there, Clare. That’s the point. You need to tell me. The jury will need to hear it from you.’
Have you been a naughty girl again?
I can’t catch my breath.
YOU HAVE, HAVEN’T YOU?
‘Why don’t you go to my house, then? Go to my house. Look in the laundry room.’
I’m too hot.
‘Look in the laundry room and count the markers on the plaster behind the door.’
I feel like I’m going to be sick again.
‘That’s how many days I’ve spent in that room.’
I pick up the cardboard sick bowl from the top of the bedside cabinet and hold it under my chin.
‘Wanna know how many days?’ I say into the bottom of the bowl.
My voice sounds loud and low.
She looks at me.
Pity.
I hate pity.
‘One hundred and twenty-seven. That’s how many days.’
My stomach heaves and bubbly swirls of ice cream mixed with mucus and milk come back.
I cough.
‘He wouldn’t even let me out to go to the toilet,’ I whisper. ‘You’ll find proof of that too!’
My throat is burning.
Not until you say that I fuck you better than you ever got fucked in your life.
Say it.
SAY IT.
She hands me a paper towel so I can wipe my mouth.
Then she hands me the cup she’s picked up from the floor and refilled with water.
She doesn’t have any pity on her face now.
Not a flicker of anything.
‘If you don’t press charges, he’ll get away with that,’ she says.
‘I can just hide.’
‘Your whole life?’ she says more forcefully.
She puts the sick bowl into the bin by the sink. The lid slams shut.
‘Can you check outside?’ I say.
She walks over to the door and looks through the small pane of glass.
‘Just PC Mark Hall. Did you meet Mark. Did he say hello?’
‘We said hello. He sat in here. In that chair. Stayed half the night. So I could sleep,’ I say.
Whose number is this in your phone?
I bet I know whose number.
Filthy whore.
‘He’s a good lad, Mark.’
She sits down.
‘Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we. Tell me what happened in the beginning. Tell me about your dad.’
My dad.
‘My dad died in September 2014. The twenty-first.’
She takes out a pad.
‘Can I?’ she goes, holding up her pen.
I nod.
‘We weren’t even there.’
‘Who wasn’t?’
‘Me. And Louisa.’
She frowns at me.
‘Louisa is my best friend.
Was my best friend.’
I’m your best friend now.
You don’t need Louisa.
She’s only your friend because she wants your money.
And she wants me.
Have you seen the way she looks at me?
‘What do you mean, Clare? I don’t understand.’
‘We weren’t there when my dad died. We were raising money for Cancer Research. For all the help they were giving my dad.’
Getting pissed in China, more like.
‘We’d gone to China. To walk seven hundred miles along the wall. We got loads of sponsors. And then I got this phone call to say that Dad had got an infection from a drain they’d put in his stomach. And that because he had an infection, he couldn’t have his chemo. And he died.’
On his own. While I was having a good time.
‘I’m sure he was very proud of you for trying to raise money.’
He could see through me. He knew it was an excuse to get away for a bit.
‘We raised twenty-three grand. “BRAVE BAR GIRLS RAISE £23K FOR CHARITY BUT DAD DIES”. We were in the paper. In the Camden Gazette. It was a while after Dad died. After the funeral and everything.’
‘But it’s amazing to have raised so much.’
‘Not for him, it wasn’t. Too late for him. I didn’t have any other family. Once he died, that was it. My gran died when I was ten and my mum committed suicide when I was sixteen. So I was on my own.’
‘You had friends, though. You had Louisa. And a boyfriend maybe?’
‘I didn’t have a boyfriend. I’d never had a proper boyfriend. Louisa stayed over a bit to start with. It’s not a big house, three bedrooms but small, better for a family with little kids. It’s in a nice area. Expensive area. But it’s old and creaky. It was creepy by myself.’
‘So, then what happened?’
‘Then he happened.’
‘Him?’
‘He moved in. Almost straightaway. Like a month or so after Dad died. Just after we were in the paper. I met him in a bar one day. The one that Louisa and I used to work in at weekends. It’s where they photographed us for the paper. We’d gone there for a drink and he sat down at the next table. And he asked me out. Kind of asked me out. We met for a drink the next day. And the day after that, he told me that his place was being decorated so could he stay over at mine. And I was like, well, it’s not ideal, cos I hardly knew him, but I couldn’t say no, could I? I mean, you can’t say no when people know you’ve got a spare room. Two spare rooms really.
‘And to start with it was fine. It was great. He helped me clear out the house and we sold loads of stuff. Dad’s old stuff. And I still had my job. And it was still going well. I’d get home in the evenings and he’d have cooked a meal and tidied up.
‘He was really kind. At first he was. He was really smart with money. Used to help me sort out with all the bills. He even took over sorting the finances in the end. When I got a bit overwhelmed. That’s what he called it. “Overwhelmed”. That’s what he would tell people.’
‘So the relationship was good at the start?’ she says, scribbling something down on her pad.
‘It was amazing. Seemed like he was crazy about me. Couldn’t get enough of me. I mean, he’d been out with supermodels. Anyone could see I was lucky to get with him.’
‘Lucky?’
‘He’s a model you know.’
‘Is he?’ she says.
Well, he said he was a model.
I thought that.
I didn’t say that.
‘But then, little things would start to annoy him. There were flashes of anger. He’d blow up over something really trivial. And then be fine again. In a second. He got jealous of the weirdest things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Louisa. He used to cut her off when she phoned.’
She never liked him, from the start.
‘Or, if someone called me from work. He would tell them to fuck off. Like literally say “fuck off”. He went through my emails, found all the addresses of my male colleagues.
‘And told them they weren’t allowed to talk to me.’
‘And did they stop talking to you?’
‘What do you think? He threatened to kill them. He broke Simon Quinn’s arm.’
‘Who’s Simon Quinn?’
‘Just an Irish guy at work. He’s nice.’
‘And did Gareth know you thought he was nice?’
I don’t know why you fancy someone who looks like a fucking emu.
I shrug.
‘I guess . . .’
‘And did Simon Quinn report him to the police?’
‘I doubt it. I don’t know. I left my job shortly after that. They let me go, I’d become so flaky. Not turning up, always on the phone to him. He’d call me a million times a day.’
‘Where is your phone now, Clare? Your mobile. You didn’t have anything with you yesterday.’
‘I don’t have one.’
He took it away.
Said I didn’t need a phone.
Said I didn’t have any friends.
‘No phone?’
‘No. I don’t go out.’
‘Never?’
‘Not alone. Till yesterday.’
She tapped her pen on her pad.
‘Where do you think he would go, Clare, once he discovered you had gone?’
You can’t live without me now.
You can’t even wake up without me telling you to.
‘He’s here somewhere. Watching. Waiting to get me. I told you.’
I’ll set fire to you, you little whore.
I need to get rid of you.
You’re weighing me down.
‘The kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off. I ran into the laundry room before he could throw me in there. He locked me in later.’
Susan’s busy scribbling it all down.
‘So how did you get away?’
‘I fell asleep, against the tumbler dryer. I always put it on to keep me warm. There’s no heating in the outhouse. And when I woke up, the door was open. He’d taken the padlock off.’
‘Is that usual?’
‘His conscience gets the better of him when he’s pissed. Sometimes.’
‘So he’s done that before, opened the door but not woken you up?’
I nod.
‘And this time was different because . . .?’
‘Because he’d left the side gate open too.’
‘And had he done that before?’
I shook my head.
‘And why would he have done that this time?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Maybe he wanted you to run away?’
‘Want me to run away. Why?’
‘I don’t know. Why do you think?’
‘I didn’t say he did. You did.’
Tap, tap, tap goes the pen on the pad.
‘Clare, do you have a phone number for him?’
‘I don’t have a phone.’
‘But you used to,’ Susan says, gently.
‘Can you remember his number from before?’
She’s trying to be really nice.
‘He changes his number all the time.’
And his phone.
Smashes them, mostly.
‘He never pays his bill on time so they cut him off.’
‘I’m sorry to press you, Clare,’ she says, ‘but how do you get in contact with him if you don’t have his number?’
‘When he goes out, he locks me in the house.’
Susan nods slowly, like she’s finally starting to understand what I’m talking about.
‘What about family? Did he talk about his parents? Brothers, sisters? Did he phone or email them?’
‘No, nothing. Every time I asked him about his family, he said I didn’t want to know. He said he didn’t need family now cos he had me.’
‘So Gareth was happy with you?’
‘Sometimes he was happy. Next minute he would be furious. Then happy again. You couldn’t predi
ct his moods. Anything could set him off.
‘He’ll say I’m lying, ‘I say. ‘He’ll say I’m a drunk. He’ll say I get drunk and do all this to myself. He’ll say I’m depressed. He’ll say I’m bipolar. He always makes stuff up. And most of the time, everyone believes him, he’s so convincing.’
‘We went to the house yesterday,’ she says, ‘looking for him, you know.’ She taps the end of her pen on her pad again, like she’s thinking. ‘Clare, he’s not there. No one’s there.’
‘Is the car there?’ I say.
She looks at the pad, then at me.
She doesn’t know. And she knows she should.
Seventeen
Sally
There’s nothing like waking up at five o’clock in the morning in a strange place, in a shite bed, with horrible nylon sheets and a pillow that’s like a bit of foam pretending to be a pillow, but that’s all it is, let me tell you – it doesn’t do anything to cushion your head, cos it’s thinner than a bloomin’ crispbread, and then you remember you’re in the exact same clothes you were wearing the night before, and the day before as well, by the way.
And another thing while you’re at it. There’s nothing like waking up at five o’clock in the morning because the sodding curtains aren’t really sodding curtains either. Oh yeah, they look like curtains all right. But they don’t act like curtains when you need them to. They do nothing to shut out the light. Make no mistake about that. May as well have some kind of interrogation torch in your face. And then there’s the endless trains coming in and out, in and out, in and out of Euston. Who goes to work that early? I mean, is it really necessary? Not surprising no one wants to live in this block but squatters and down-and-outs. Probably the only way to get to sleep is if you’re off your bloomin’ head.
The sink and bath are tinned-salmon coloured, honest – not pink, not orange, tinned salmon. Very 1972, and already stained a beautiful mint green where the water drips down from the leaky taps. So much for state-of-the-art. When you turn on the hot tap – either of them, the sink or the bath – the boiler in the airing cupboard sounds like there’s a psycho on the inside with a very large spanner, trying to get out of it.
