Tell Me Your Secret

by Dorothy Koomson

  Methodically, she flicks through, pausing every now and again to stare at particular photos. I continue to study her as if she is under a microscope. I want to know how she’s coping, how she’s carrying on. I couldn’t have done this. Not at ten months. I was scared, jumpy, afraid to look anyone in the eye.

  And even now, it only takes a sound, a smell, a sensation to snap me back to that place. It can be a voice, a phrase, a snippet of something I hear in the crowd and I am returned to those hours and the agony of being unnaturally restrained.

  It can be the scent of someone’s aftershave, a couple of woodsy notes wafting through to me as we pass on the street, and I am back there in that room, fighting the unrelenting urge to scream.

  It can be the touch of silk, smooth and cool and luxurious, against my skin and I am transported to that place where I am agreeing to something I know I won’t be able to do.

  ‘Do you want to hear a basic outline of my story?’ she asks.

  I nod. Force myself to say yes. Ned does the same.

  She visibly braces herself as she begins to talk. I brace myself as I prepare to listen . . .

  ‘I’m not likeable,’ she says suddenly. I hadn’t realised I had slipped away, climbed so far into somewhere else while she was talking that I needed lassoing and bringing back to the present.

  Her dark-green eyes are focused on me. ‘If you were to write my story, you’d have to understand that I’m not likeable. I’m not a proper victim, you see. I’m not dressed like one.’ She puts her hands over her neat breasts, unintentionally displaying her unmanicured, severely bitten nails. ‘My chest is on show, you can see my skin.’ She drops her hands. ‘I’ve had sex. A lot of sex. And I drink and I smoke. Well, I used to. I can’t smoke now. I used to swear, too. In fact, I still do. Bollocks. Fuck. Shit. See?’ She slumps back in her chair. ‘Half the people who were here earlier were salivating at the thought of my story in their newspapers or magazines. Do you want to know why?’

  I can’t speak. For some reason, this has stalled me, stopped me from being able to engage.

  ‘Why?’ Ned asks in my place.

  ‘Because I’m pretty, because I’m thin. I could see the relief on their faces that I’m not eighteen stone with bad skin, a pram face and an address from the wrong side of town. Cos they’d never get their readers to care then, would they?’

  I can’t say anything to that because I know Lillian will be relieved that she is attractive, there’s no point pretending otherwise. And Ned, well, I learnt first-hand how he feels about fat girls and ugly girls a long time ago.

  ‘I’m not a proper victim, am I?’ she says to me. ‘That’s why you’re sitting there, looking at me like that.’

  ‘I’m not looking at you like anything,’ I reply.

  Her face creases into a bitter smile; the edge of it could slice through metal. ‘You . . . you’re like all those other people out there. You look at me and judge me because I’m not being how you think victims should be.’

  Her eyes dart to Ned and then return to me. Her smile develops another edge so sharp it could slice air. ‘Do you have any idea who I was before all this? I was someone who was in control of my life. I could do what I wanted.’ Her hands tremble as they go to her throat, as if trying to hold air in her body. ‘I got a double-first at Oxford, I did a little modelling, I had a brilliant job, I had an amazing social life . . . and all of that was ripped away by that . . . by that animal.’

  Her hands tremble, her leg jiggles. She looks exactly how I feel. ‘So, yes, I don’t dress all in black, I don’t shy away from eye contact, I don’t care if you can see my cleavage. None of what happened was my fault. Nothing I wore or said or did could stop what happened. And I refuse . . . refuse . . . to be a quiet little victim because that’s what people expect, that’s what makes them comfortable. Women like me are being killed.’

  ‘What?’ Ned and I say at the same time.

  ‘That’s why I’ve come forward. That’s why I want to tell the world my story – other women, women who went through what I did with The Blindfolder, are getting killed. He said he’d come back for me if I told anyone, and all this time later he’s following up on his promise.’

  I look over her shoulder at the policewoman sitting in the corner. She has been watching us all this time, now she seems very focused on the ground, on the blue carpet in front of her. Her face is furious, though. I don’t think Callie was meant to tell us that. Which means it’s true.

  Deep breath. Deep breath. I remember, when Kobi temporarily needed an inhaler, I would put the spacer over his nose and mouth, and say, ‘Deep breath.’ After a few days, the second I picked up the yellow-tipped plastic tube, he’d say, ‘Deep breath. Deep breath.’ I can hear his three-year-old voice in my head now: Deep breath. Deep breath. My head is swimming. Deep breath. Deep breath. I can’t get air in.

  ‘I don’t want publicity and fame,’ she snarls. ‘I’m trying to save myself, and all the other victims out there. He’s coming after us. The police have proved they can’t save us, so I want to warn the others out there.’

  ‘How do you know there are others out there?’ I ask. I may need to deep breathe, I may need to force myself to stop shaking but I can still be a journalist. I can still do my job and ask questions.

  ‘You still don’t believe me, do you? I can see he does, but you don’t,’ she says. ‘Still.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if I believe you or—’

  She is suddenly on her feet, she rips her suit jacket off and doesn’t seem to care where it falls. Then she is untucking her crisp white shirt, tugging it out of the waistband of her grey skirt. Her eyes are fixed on me as her slender fingers with their chewed nails reach for the top button of her shirt.

  The policewoman is on her feet, too, and stepping forward. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ the policewoman says. ‘I warned you about this, I warned you not to do this—’

  Callie’s fingers close around the last button.

  ‘Callie, please do not do this,’ the policewoman says.

  Callie doesn’t seem to care that Ned is sitting right next to me. That he is seeing her body, her demure white bra. She slips the shirt over her shoulders and stands there in front of us, glaring at me.

  ‘How do I know there are others?’ she snarls.

  She turns, faces the police officer and shows us her back.

  There it is. Proof that it is the same person – the same method, the same name. The same mark.

  It sits there on the lower left side of her back. The skin is a vicious, mottled red; seared and scarred; burnt and scorched. The edges of it are sharply defined, perfectly branded into her skin. It is large – almost the size of my hand – and it is prominent.

  No matter what she does, what she wears, where she goes, she will always carry this with her. She will always be this number. His number.

  ‘I know there are others,’ she says, ‘because I’m number 26.’

  I knew there were others. I’ve always known, because, I’m . . .

  I’m number 25.

  Jody

  Wednesday, 12 June

  Once the journalist and the photographer leave the room, shutting the door behind them, I take my time to move out of my seat.

  Slowly, carefully, I get up and walk across the room to stand in front of the door. I take my time in looking over Callie Beckman. I want to shout at her. The number scar branded into his victims’ skin is the one thing we were going to keep back from everyone – especially the media. It’s the one thing we’ve managed to suppress and hold back so far in the news stories about the other women – and Callie Beckman has just blown that because she thought the woman was baiting her.

  That journalist, Pieta Rawlings, wasn’t doing anything of the sort. She was, if anything, displaying all the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder – a rape victim reliving her experience through Callie’s story. I see it all the time: women who haven’t dealt with what they’ve been through falli
ng apart when confronted by someone who reminds them of what happened.

  ‘That wasn’t brilliant, was it?’ I say diplomatically. I’m a police officer but sometimes I feel I have to act like a counsellor – to give the impression of being understanding and empathetic.

  Callie is keeping her head lowered and taking an age to tuck her shirt back into her skirt.

  ‘I mean, we weren’t going to disclose the nature of your scarring so it could help us distinguish between those who had been held by him and those not. We can’t do that now.’

  ‘You saw how she was with me,’ Callie protests. ‘How they’ve all been with me. I couldn’t take it any more. She was the final straw. Her face, the way she kept looking at me, questioning everything I said with her eyes, and this sneer.’

  ‘She wasn’t doing that,’ I say gently. Can you hear the calmness in my voice? The way I’m emptying it of all the anger I feel right now. Anger, frustration, fear. I don’t know who those people are. The perpetrator could very easily put himself into this investigation. He could very easily muddy the waters, push us in the wrong direction, plant evidence, disappear clues. It was always a risk doing this, but she was so determined and the potential gains of finding another live victim were too great to not let her do it. But the clock is ticking, the days are counting down to the next sixth Monday, and the very strong possibility of another body. ‘She honestly wasn’t doing that, Callie. I think she has a lot of unresolved stuff to deal with. I think your story brought up a lot of pain for her and, if anything, she felt a lot for you.’ You can’t tell I’m pissed off, can you? I sound like I understand her and the journalist. Not that I want to scream at her: ‘You fucking idiot!’

  ‘You think?’ she says.

  I nod. ‘I really do.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She runs her fingers through her hair. ‘I didn’t realise.’ She drops heavily into the padded bucket seat she was sitting in. ‘About any of it, I mean. I didn’t realise they’d be like that. They just asked me anything, they implied that I might have enjoyed it, that I shouldn’t be able to function.’ She wipes at the corners of her eyes.

  I go to her, lower myself into the chair where the male photographer had sat. ‘That’s the thing about the press, Callie. You can’t control them, you can’t play them.’ I rub my eyes. ‘Look, it’s out there now, your story. All you can really do is have a list of things you want to talk about and be as honest as you can.’

  ‘I really shouldn’t have done this, should I?’ she says, her voice sounding small and scared. She has mostly been running on anger and bravado, it’s been obvious. The hurt and fear have been submerged so she can avoid dealing with what happened to her. She’s been desperately trying to claw back control since her ordeal. She hasn’t been doing that the way people expect ‘victims’ to, and that’s what has made everyone react badly to her. Except possibly that Pieta woman, she understood her. Victim seeing victim.

  ‘Look, I know I wasn’t a fan of you doing this, but it’s done now. We need to focus on getting this story out there and see if it brings other women to us.’

  ‘What if it gets them killed, though?’ she says.

  ‘It won’t. That’s what my team and I are here for. We’re going to protect you and everyone else who he did this to.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Were there any of the journalists that you felt comfortable with?’ She started this merry-go-round, she dragged us all on, and we can’t get off so we’re going to have to ride it as best we can.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Detective Foster,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry for all of this.’

  ‘Call me Jody,’ I say to her. ‘And you were just doing what you thought was best for you. And that’s fine. That’s all any of us can do at any given moment.’ I stand up. ‘Come on, let’s go and collect PC Perry outside and head back to Brighton. When we get there you can tell me if there was anyone you might want to talk to. If there isn’t that would be fine, too. We can just put out a general appeal.’

  She moves like a weight is resting on her shoulders, something that was there is now so heavy she can barely keep herself upright.

  Callie has just seen what she’s let herself in for. Before, all she could think of was getting her story out there, letting the world know what happened so it wouldn’t happen again. Now the weight of what being involved with the media actually entails is dawning on her and it is crushing down on her.

  ‘This is your fault,’ the devil on my shoulder whispers in case I decide to let anyone else shoulder the blame. ‘This is all your fault.’

  Pieta

  Wednesday, 12 June

  My back is throbbing.

  At that point where number 25 lives.

  It took more than a year for the skin on my back to completely heal. Even then, even then, it was agony. I can feel it now, the skin tugging and pulling as my body physically reacts to seeing Callie’s number 26. And with that physical tug, comes the memory . . . the sizzle and sting as the red hot metal touched my body . . . the atrocious, acrid smell of my skin melting . . . the harrowing, relentless sound of my own screams.

  She’s number 26, I’m number 25.

  So why did he wait nearly ten years?

  What has he been doing all this time? Did he go back to a normal life and forget about all of that? Was he hurt and couldn’t continue? Had he been in prison?

  ‘That was intense,’ Ned says.

  We are driving back the way we came, the greenery rushing past the window in a bright, patchy whirl.

  It’s loud in here. The engine, the buzz of the electrics, his voice, my breathing, the air rushing around. It is so loud in here. I remember, afterwards, everything – everything – was heightened. All of my senses were turned all the way up to 100, and everything was loud, smelly, prickly . . . overpowering. It comes back sometimes, like now, when I’ve been reminded.

  ‘Intense,’ escapes my lips. I hadn’t meant to speak, but I am fascinated by his use of that word.

  He turns briefly to me, nods his head. ‘Yeah, really intense.’ He makes a small ‘puh’ sound with his lips. ‘Can’t even imagine . . .’ His voice trails away as his mind takes up what his words started and wanders down that path, trying to put himself in that place.

  ‘She was so strong, though.’

  Slowly, I turn my head to face the man propelling us through the countryside back to the city. ‘What?’

  He glances my way again. ‘Callie, she was so incredibly strong. I mean, she’d been through so much and I couldn’t imagine how I’d cope with that. But her . . . she was just so strong.’

  ‘OK,’ I breathe. I can’t really speak to him right now. I return my gaze to the windscreen. When I find I can’t do that without him being in my periphery, I have to shift to stare out of the passenger-side window. There, better. No shape of my past to torment me with frippery words and throwaway sentiments. ‘Strong.’ What does that even mean? Strong? Because she can sit in front of strangers and tell us off for our reactions, does that make her strong? Does me not leaving the house for a week afterwards make me weak? Does my avoiding eye contact and keeping people at arm’s length make me pathetic? Does keeping what was done to me locked up inside make me feeble?

  Strong. Does any of the way I deal with what happened make me strong or weak? Because I think people would see it as weak. And sometimes weakness is just about finding the best way to cope. And being strong is just another way to avoid the reality of your existence.

  ‘Pieta,’ Ned says when the silence has got too much for him. ‘I don’t remember completely what I did to you. I remember you, now, I remember I was an utter bastard. But I don’t know the real mechanics of how I made you feel.

  ‘Sadly, you weren’t the only person I treated like that. I was a nasty, entitled bastard and I kept getting away with it so I kept doing it. And I can only apologise. Because even though I can’t remember it properly, I’m pretty sure that you can’t forget it.’

  I continue to watch t
he greenery, wondering what he wants from this. He can’t go back in time and undo what he did, I can’t tell him it’s OK because it isn’t.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘For all of it. For not being a better person back then. For not having the guts to apologise to you in college. I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry.’

  When I don’t say anything else, he continues: ‘I’ll completely understand if you ask Lillian to work with someone else. I do have other projects in hand, so I’m not trying to guilt you when I say that. I’m just saying, if you’d rather work with someone else, I won’t fight it, and I won’t hold it against you. I’d think it totally fair, actually, seeing as I hurt you so badly.’

  That makes me smile. ‘You don’t know Lillian very well, do you?’ I say, my face still close to the glass of his left-hand door. ‘I can just imagine her face when I say, “Lillian, this photographer you spent ages choosing, well, he was a bully in school and I’d rather not work with him.” ’ I burst out laughing at the idea of it. ‘Oh my God, I can just imagine her face! She’d think there was a hidden camera on her or something.’ I laugh again; the sound and the act of doing it is a sweet relief.

  ‘You reckon she wouldn’t go for it?’

  The silent giggles quake my body.

  ‘What if I talk to her? Explain how—’

  The giggles explode out of my mouth. ‘You’re hilarious, you know that?’ I can’t stop laughing now. ‘You should have your own show.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny,’ he says.

  ‘I know and, like I said before, that’s the best part of it.’

  ‘So, are we good?’ he asks once my laughter subsides.

  ‘No! How would we be good? You really think one conversation is going to make us “good”. No, it’s not. But we’re in a place where we can work together if necessary.’

  ‘I suppose that’s as good as it’s going to get.’