Stop at Nothing

by Tammy Cohen

  ‘Isn’t that par for the course?’ I’d asked. ‘Criminals graduating from one crime to another?’ I’d watched enough TV.

  Now, I could hardly meet Detective Byrne’s eyes. I felt we’d let him down.

  The policewoman showed us out. There were various complicated buzzers that had to be pressed and cards to be swiped.

  She told Em not to worry, that she’d done her best. And that if she wasn’t a hundred per cent certain, she’d been right not to guess.

  As she held the door open, she stared at me just a moment too long.

  ‘You look familiar,’ she said.

  ‘I was here with my daughter a few weeks ago when she made her statement.’

  ‘Ah, okay. That must be it.’

  I turned aside sharpish, but I still felt her eyes on me.

  Outside, I threw my arms around Em.

  ‘You did really well,’ I told her.

  There was a knot tying itself inside me, ends pulling tighter.

  We started walking, and I couldn’t stop myself.

  ‘Was there anyone you thought it could be?’

  Could she hear it, that knot in my voice?

  Afterwards, this moment was something they asked me about again and again. Whether she’d said it unprompted or whether I was the first to mention him.

  And even after I told them, they kept coming back to it. How can you be so sure? Wouldn’t it have made sense for you to …? Trying to corral the truth into something different.

  But I know what happened. I was there when Em turned to me, hesitant. ‘There was that one guy,’ she began, uncertainty thinning her voice like paint stripper. ‘The one with the eyes. Number …’

  ‘… Eight,’ I said. ‘I know.’

  I grabbed her hand and squeezed.

  ‘So why didn’t you …?’

  ‘I just didn’t feel completely sure. They said I had to be certain. But now I feel bad for Detective Byrne, after he went to so much trouble.’

  Again that tearing of the soft, worn fabric of my heart.

  ‘Darling, you did your best, that’s all you could do.’

  I kept hold of her hand as we walked on, as if she were once more a child, half surprised that she let me. Her palm was warm in mine, but my mind was elsewhere, focused on a cleft chin, skin stretching like canvas over sharp bones, muscles knotted and obscene under a thin cotton T-shirt.

  Where was he now, this man who’d tried to take my daughter from me? Was he going about his life as if nothing had happened? Was he a son, a brother, a husband, an employee, to people who hadn’t the first idea what he was really like? Was he even now hiding in plain sight?

  Injustice burned a path across my brain until my head throbbed with it.

  2

  ‘Frances is coming round.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘Honestly, Mum, could you please try sounding a bit happier about it? She basically saved my life.’

  ‘Sorry. Obviously, it’s lovely that she’s coming. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I didn’t know you two had been in touch.’

  ‘She called me just now. She wanted to know how the identity thingy went earlier. You know she did one too. Oh my God, can you stop looking at that thing? Do you know how creepy it is?’

  Guiltily, I stopped the Granny-Cam, my parents frozen in place in their living room. Snapping the laptop shut, I glanced over to where Em was standing, feeding bread into the toaster. She was wearing an oversized hoodie printed with the names of everyone in her year that she got after GCSEs last summer and the baggy sweat pants she’d changed into the minute we got home from the police station. Her hair was scraped back into a ponytail and there was a fresh spray of spots on her chin.

  She looked heartbreakingly young.

  ‘You didn’t tell Frances about Number Eight, did you? Because I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for a victim and a witness to swap stories.’

  ‘God, Mum, I’m not dumb.’

  Sometimes, Em sounded so angry with me, not for any particular reason. Just for the fact of me. Perhaps all teenage girls were the same.

  The prospect of a visitor forced me to clean the house. The bathroom was disgusting, the grouting on the tiles in the corners stained an orange that no amount of scrubbing could get rid of. I even vacuumed the dog hairs off the sofa with the special attachment I’d never used before. Dotty’s fur was black and white so it showed up on everything.

  ‘She’s not the queen, you know,’ Em said, watching me from the doorway an hour or so later. ‘Anyway, she’s been here before, remember?’

  I hadn’t remembered.

  What I mean is, I tried not to remember.

  That night. The banging on the door jolting me out of a sleep I had no memory of falling into. Feeling like it was all in my dream. Dotty barking wildly, Em’s face milk-pale, her shoulders shuddering. A young woman I’d never seen before standing on my doorstep with her arm around my daughter.

  ‘Something’s happened.’

  Can there be two more terrifying words for a parent to hear?

  ‘Do you feel all right about seeing Frances?’ I asked Em now, vacuuming under her legs as she sank down on to the freshly dehaired sofa and picked up the remote. She folded them up underneath her, as she used to do as a child. ‘It’s not going to bring back bad memories, is it?’

  Em shrugged. ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘Because we can put her off, if you’re at all unsure. Tell her it’s not a good time.’

  ‘Yeah, because that’s nice, isn’t it? Thanks for saving my daughter from being raped and murdered but you can’t come round because it’s not convenient.’

  ‘That’s not what I—’

  The doorbell cut through my justifications.

  ‘How are you doing … Tessa, isn’t it? Oh my God, I can’t even imagine how hard all this must have been for you.’

  I hadn’t properly registered the last time how attractive Frances was, in a wholesome, head-girl kind of way. Thick chocolate-brown hair broken up by tawnier streaks falling to her shoulders. Hazel eyes set well apart in a wide, open face. A small neat nose above a large mouth whose top lip bowed and dipped extravagantly like a mountain range. Strong white teeth, with just the right degree of gap in the front when she smiled, as she was doing now.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine.’

  But then tears were blurring my eyes, and I thought, Really? Is that all it takes? Someone being nice to you?

  Of course, it was more than that. Seeing Frances brought it all back. The horror of that night.

  I’d been fast asleep. Em said afterwards that they’d banged on the door for ages before I finally woke up, but I’m sure that was an exaggeration. I’d left my phone downstairs. There were seventeen missed calls.

  My head still sluggish from sleep, I’d pulled on my dressing gown, but my feet were bare and cold as I padded down the stairs. Dotty was going frantic so I shut her in the living room before opening the front door. ‘Something’s happened,’ said the strange woman who turned out to be Frances. And for a moment I just stood and stared and felt the wind on my bare toes and it all felt wrong and I could not make sense of any of it.

  Then instinct took over and I opened my arms, and Em fell into them and buried her veal-white face in my neck. And she was crying. My girl who never cried.

  ‘Shall we go inside?’ the woman suggested.

  We went into the kitchen, me stumbling with my cargo of sixteen-year-old girl. The light seemed blindingly harsh as I sank on to a kitchen chair and pulled Em on to my lap. She buried her head in my neck, her shaking body setting my own blood quivering.

  ‘Sweetie?’ I asked, moving my head back so that I could see her more clearly. ‘Oh my God!’

  A bruise was breaking over her right cheek, livid and purple. White lumps pushed up under the skin of her forehead like knuckles. Her face was stained with mascara tears. My stomach contracted and I felt for a moment that I might be sick.

  ‘What happened, sweetheart?’


  Something’s happened.

  The police arrived then. Frances had called them on the way. There were two of them, one black, one white, both wearing big dark jackets and bringing with them a waft of cold from outside. I was conscious suddenly of my dressing gown and bare feet, my legs left unshaven through the winter months.

  I felt Em stiffen and take a deep breath. Pressed against me as she was, when she swallowed I felt it as if it were me gulping myself calm.

  ‘I got on the bus at the top of Muswell Hill Broadway,’ she said in answer to their questions.

  ‘On your own?’ asked the white policeman, who introduced himself as Detective O’Connell. It felt like a rebuke.

  ‘We moved recently,’ I said, defensive. ‘Her friends live in Muswell Hill.’

  ‘And you didn’t feel you should pick her up?’

  ‘I don’t have a car. I gave her a strict curfew, though. Home by twelve thirty at the latest.’

  See how I’m a good parent? See the boundaries I set?

  Em explained how, as she’d got on to the bus, she’d been half aware of someone getting on behind her but hadn’t paid it any mind. Her voice was small, but steady. Good girl.

  ‘You’d been at a party,’ said Detective O’Connell. ‘Had you been drinking?’

  I felt myself stiffen, anger rearing up inside, but my thickened thoughts and the solid weight of Em on my lap left me slow to react. Not so Frances, who glared over at the policeman.

  ‘I really don’t see how it’s relevant whether or not Emma had been drinking.’

  I felt myself dissolve with gratitude for this unknown young woman, and she shot me a brief look of support.

  ‘I’d had a bottle of beer,’ Em said. ‘Maybe two. I wasn’t drunk. I got off at the stop after the Tube.’

  Again, she’d been vaguely aware of someone getting off behind her.

  ‘He’d been sitting at the back, I think. But I hadn’t noticed him.’

  I imagined him then, this faceless man. Watching from the shadows.

  Then what? Detective O’Connell wanted to know. He was younger than his colleague and slighter and the gel in his fair hair glinted where it caught the light.

  ‘You’re doing great,’ added Detective Byrne. He looked tired, as if he’d been working a long shift, but his eyes were kind. Both policemen were standing, leaning against the kitchen worktops, as if they wouldn’t be stopping long enough to sit. There were a few drops of tea on the counter just inches from Detective O’Connell’s elbow, and I stared at them distractedly to see if he would put his sleeve in them.

  ‘I stepped off the bus and started walking away,’ Emma continued. ‘Then as the bus pulled away I heard something behind me and, before I could turn, an arm was locked around my neck and someone was dragging me backwards.

  ‘I started screaming, and he was hitting me, telling me to shut up.’

  Hitting her. I’d spent sixteen years keeping my daughter safe and a strange man had come from nowhere and hit her. Over and over. Oversized knuckles connecting with child-soft skin. I felt sick.

  ‘What exactly did he say?’ Detective O’Connell wanted to know.

  ‘Stop, bitch.’

  Em’s voice cracked, as if she was embarrassed to say the word, ashamed even. Rage burned an acid path down my throat, immediately followed by a rush of pity. My poor, poor girl.

  ‘My head was jerked back but I could see that he was trying to pull me towards a side road.’

  The policemen muttered to each other and Detective O’Connell got out his phone and called up Google Maps. ‘Maidstone Road?’ he asked, flashing the screen towards Em, as if she was in any state to see.

  She shrugged. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘We haven’t lived here long,’ I said, repeating myself.

  ‘He kept dragging me back and I was fighting him and he was hitting me and I could see the side road getting closer. It looked really dark down there. I was so scared.’

  Em twisted her face towards me as she said this last part, and then she burst into fresh tears and buried her wet cheeks in my neck, and I squeezed her as hard as I could because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. There was a pain in my chest. Tight and sharp. I stroked Em’s hair and felt more raised bumps on her scalp where he’d hit her.

  ‘Didn’t anyone go past?’ asked Detective Byrne.

  ‘I heard at least two cars go by.’ Em’s voice was muffled against my neck. ‘I thought they would stop. But they didn’t.’

  And now there were lumps of fury forming inside me to match the ones on my daughter’s head. Two people drove past where my daughter was being attacked and did nothing.

  ‘And then you came along?’ Detective O’Connell was looking at Frances now. She was sitting across the table from me. Her face was very pale against her dark hair and I remember wondering if it was always that colour or if she was in shock, just like Em.

  ‘Yes. I was on the opposite side of the road, driving home from a work thing in Cambridge, when I saw them. At first I thought it was two men fighting but then I realized it was a man trying to overpower a young woman.’

  ‘So you stopped.’

  Frances blinked at him. I noticed then that her hands were around a mug and I wondered who’d made her tea, or had she made it herself.

  ‘Of course I stopped. Anyone would.’

  ‘That isn’t true,’ said Emma hotly. ‘The other two didn’t.’

  ‘I leaned on my horn, and when that didn’t stop him I got out of the car with my phone in my hand and shouted that I was calling the police. And that’s when he ran off.’

  ‘Which direction?’ Detective O’Connell was writing it all down in a small notebook which had a loop in the top to slide the little pen into.

  ‘Down that same side street. What did you call it? Maidstone Road? I ran over to Emma to see if she was okay. She was upset, as anyone would be. So I brought her home and rang you on the way.’

  The younger policeman frowned.

  ‘See, if you’d called us straight away and waited where you were, we’d have been with you in minutes and we might have been in time to go after him.’

  ‘I thought Emma needed to be at home with her mum.’

  ‘I’m so grateful to you,’ I said, my arms tight around my girl. ‘If you hadn’t come along …’

  Now Detective O’Connell was looking at me. His eyes were that curious colour that is no colour at all, like the translucent dough of Chinese dumplings.

  ‘Had you been drinking, Mrs Hopwood?’

  ‘Me? No.’ Surprise neutralized the outrage I ought to have felt.

  ‘Only you seemed a bit out of it when we arrived. Sleeping pill?’

  I should have said no. It was in my mind to say no. But it’s one of those ingrained things, isn’t it, not lying to the police?

  ‘Just half,’ I said. My face was burning. ‘Not even half. I have trouble sleeping. I don’t suppose I’ve had more than five hours over the last two nights. Tomorrow’s the one day I can lie in, my chance to catch up.’

  ‘Even though your sixteen-year-old daughter wasn’t home yet?’

  Now the outrage came, front-loaded with guilt.

  ‘Emma is very sensible. She never misses a curfew. I trust her absolutely.’

  ‘The problem is, though, Mrs Hopwood, unfortunately, you can’t trust all the people Emma might come across while she’s out. There are some not very nice characters out there.’

  3

  Even four weeks later I carried the memory of that night on the surface of my skin, so the slightest reminder, like now, with Frances walking through the front door and along the hallway, as she had done that first time, caused the shame and fear to flare up again.

  If Frances hadn’t driven past …

  Frances sat down at the kitchen table, with Dotty excitedly circling her chair and bringing her discarded shoes from various bedrooms. Em, head down, shot furtive glances at her from under her hair. I wondered if she felt intimidated becaus
e Frances was so pretty and confident and I worried that I hadn’t told my daughter enough how lovely she was.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming over,’ Frances said. ‘I’ve been thinking about the two of you so much, and what you must be going through. Then being in the police station this morning watching that video brought it all back.’

  I noticed how big her eyes were and how they were flecked with amber.

  ‘Did you get him?’ Em wanted to know. Then she blushed at the way it sounded.

  Frances nodded and, though her lips were pressed together, a smile was pushing against the corners trying to escape.

  ‘You did? Oh, that’s brilliant.’

  In my excitement, I reached across and put a hand on Frances’s arm. Her jumper was cashmere, a soft coral colour that complemented her peach-toned skin.

  Em was beaming, her usual wariness momentarily forgotten in the relief of hearing that her attacker was on the way to being brought to justice.

  ‘Was it him?’ I asked. ‘Number Eight? Although he might not have been eighth in your line-up. Distinctive chin?’

  Frances hesitated.

  ‘Green eyes?’ I continued.

  ‘Yes. That’s right. Green.’

  We drank tea in celebration. Em had been to the shop for biscuits, which she offered, shyly.

  ‘Blimey, you get the plate treatment. You should be honoured,’ I said to Frances. ‘Normally, we eat them from the packet. Well, I eat them, Em inhales them.’

  I noticed Em’s cheeks flush pink and wondered if she minded being teased in front of Frances.

  Frances lived with her mother in Muswell Hill, she told us. I was surprised. I’d imagined her with a boyfriend in a flat with stripped floorboards and house plants and a sleek blue-grey cat. Or sharing with other professional twenty-somethings, all of them sitting around in their dressing gowns on a hungover Sunday watching box sets and drinking stupidly expensive coffee from the farmers’ market at Alexandra Palace.

  ‘Mum has MS,’ said Frances. ‘I help her out at home.’