Tell Me Your Secret

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘Pieta,’ he eventually said. ‘Pieta.’

  A sob almost escaped, nearly gave me away. It worked. It worked.

  ‘What’s . . . what’s your name?’

  He said nothing, but I could hear him breathing.

  ‘What should I call you?’

  His mouth was right near my ear, making me flinch as he said: ‘Peter.’

  He laughed, the sound a chainsaw hacking at my flesh. ‘Call me Peter.’ More laughter. More and more laughter.

  Wednesday, 12 June

  Descending the white-painted stairs at Mirin’s Pottery Palace is like lowering yourself into a pale cocoon. The floor is the colour and texture of dried, unfired clay. The walls are a pale, pale pink terracotta, and the shelves, of which there are many, are stripped wood. There are six small, individual potter wheel stations. They have multi-coloured stands, with pedals each side of the long, low base, and a large bowl on top that holds the wheel and water, sponge and tools, including the sharp potter’s scalpel and wire garrotte. Around the corner, the room stretches back to hold six tables for other types of pottery-making, two sinks to wash up, with the loos beyond that, and the kiln right at the back of the space, hidden behind locked doors.

  It’s empty down here at the moment, which is ideal for me. I grab an apron from the shelf under the stairs, replace it with my jacket and bag, then fold up my sleeves before I take my seat in front of the red wheel.

  Saturday, 25 April, 2009

  ‘Peter?’ My throat was so dry I could barely form words.

  I’d been trying to count the ticks, trying to keep time so I could work out how much longer. How much more time. But I got lost, I couldn’t keep up, the numbers got jumbled in my head and if I didn’t concentrate, I knew I’d open my eyes. The ticks – constant, unchanging, relentless – started to remind me of a bomb. Of a metronome that would never know music. Of the countdown to when I opened my eyes and the end came.

  ‘Peter?’ I whispered again. My lips were cracked, sore and split, the tang of blood skittered across my tongue whenever I tried to lick them.

  ‘Peter?’ I knew he was there. I could always tell when he was there. He liked to pretend he was gone sometimes, would be still and quiet, would hold his breath for minutes at a time, just to see if I would defy him, if I would open my eyes because I thought I was alone.

  I always knew, though. His scent had been around me enough for me to know when he was there, watching, waiting. His shape had been near enough for me to tell when it was close. ‘Please? Peter?’

  I had to try again. It was my only hope. I had to try again.

  He stepped forward, and I could feel him properly, standing over me. He didn’t speak, he simply waited.

  ‘My shoulder . . . I had surgery on it last year. It hurts so much like this. Can . . . can you lower it . . . please?’ I swallowed, the words were like ash in my already parched, scorched throat. But I had to sound normal. I had to speak like he was a normal person, this was a normal situation. ‘It just hurts so much. The left one is fine. The right one. You can leave the left one as it is, just the right one, please? Please?’

  His footsteps as he left and the shutting of the door were his reply.

  My body sagged, the wrench in my right shoulder, firing agony through me. He didn’t go for it; he didn’t help me. But he didn’t hurt me this time, either.

  Wednesday, 12 June

  The clay is a small, grey heap on the low, red wheel. I slide into the seat behind it, my foot on the pedal, ready to press down, press forward and start the process. The mound, wet and slick, begins to move, spinning round and round as I ‘fire up’ the wheel with my right foot. I gently press my finger into the top of it, causing the smallest of depressions. I push down a little harder, harder, and the crater begins to appear, the speed and my finger forcing the clay outwards and upwards into walls. I keep going, watching the clay shape itself with only the slightest amount of pressure from me.

  My fingers move downwards until it’s a centimetre from the bottom, then I take my finger away and add a tiny amount of water from the container sitting beside the wheel to wet it down. Then I bridge the sides of the bowl with my forefinger and thumb, precisely moving each section up and up, pulling, elongating the bowl, strengthening the walls, bringing it to its correct height. Each piece I make has its own height, its own width, its own smoothness or roughness of walls. I remember years ago reading someone saying that they didn’t make a sculpture from rock, the art was already there, they just took away the extra pieces. I remember thinking how pretentious they sounded, how ridiculous. I had to eat my own snarkiness when I started making pottery because I finally, finally understood what they meant.

  When I start a piece I think I know what it’s going to be, how it’s going to turn out, until my hands are on the clay and they are shaping, working, adjusting the grey stodge to become something approximating the bowl/cup/vase that I started out to make.

  This bowl wants to be high-sided with a small bulge around the middle, it wants me to place my forefinger and thumb here, smoothing out the upper edge so it can flute outwards. It wants me to use a sponge to even out the inside so you can’t see my nail marks, it wants me to stop pushing the pedal now. It needs me to take the scalpel with its white, paint-splattered handle and small, neat, triangular, razor-sharp blade, and to peel away the top edge of the bowl. It’s begging me to use both hands to drench it in water, then to take the garrotte with two corks on either end to slice it away from the stand. Once, twice. And then it’s done. My bowl is done.

  I move it carefully to the small wooden board and then carry it across the studio to the drying shelves. It’s an odd little thing: misshapen around the middle, the top edge uneven, its outside saddled with rings of different textures. This is despite me using the techniques I’ve used a hundred times before. This is how something can turn out wrong, no matter how hard you try.

  Saturday, 25 April, 2009

  The left first, then the right. A tug, a tightening, then loosening. My arms flopped down onto the silk pillows, heavy and numb, aching and deadened. I couldn’t move them if I tried. This is a test, a trick to make me open my eyes, a way to end me sooner, I realised.

  First the left, then the right, tied again, clamped again, but this time with my arms down by my sides. Tied on each side, restrained, not enough to move or untie the other, but not like before. Not as painful as before.

  ‘Thank you, Peter. Thank you so much.’

  Wednesday, 12 June

  My pot is mush.

  My hands accidentally crushed it while I was trying to fix it; trying to make it even and much closer to perfect than it had been. I lower the small wooden tray and stare at the caved-in pot, its sides being swallowed up by its centre, its walls cracked like gaping sores.

  I have to stop this.

  None of this is helping. None of this is going to make going home to Kobi any easier. There is a centre that I can often find. When I am sitting at the pottery wheel, when I am rolling coils of clay, when I am standing at the beach with the sea behind me, when I am watching my son sleep, there is a centre where everything makes sense. Where nothing matters, nothing has happened and everything is at peace. I need to find that centre, that place.

  I dump my tray onto the table, this bowl will not make it onto the drying shelf. I can’t find that centre right now. I can’t seem to do anything but remember. Urgh. Maybe that’s it. Maybe sometimes I have to give in to the other stuff. I can’t be positive, I can’t rise above it, I can’t find a way to make it all better.

  And sometimes, I just have to throw this grey mess that I call life back onto the potter’s wheel and start again from scratch.

  Jody

  Saturday, 11 March, 2006

  ‘PC Foster, you’re up,’ one of the officers who worked on the front desk said as he stuck his head around the canteen door.

  I hated him. He was a PC like me, but was much, much older than me and had been in the job for man
y years. With it, he was rude and condescending, even though technically we were the same rank. ‘Sorry?’ I called.

  He stepped into the canteen and cocked his head towards the door. ‘One of your lot is out there asking to talk to someone.’

  ‘My lot? You mean, a human being?’

  ‘A coloured girl, blathering on about talking to a girl officer.’

  ‘Oh, you mean, a black woman has come in to report a crime and it’s probably of a sexual nature and she wants to talk to a woman officer instead of someone who reminds her of the person who abused her? Is that right?’ I said. ‘Wow, turns out I can speak all sorts of languages, including old-fashioned PC.’

  Vanessa, Jacquie and Graham, who I’d been having a coffee with on refs, smirked and the desk PC’s lip stiffened.

  ‘Just get on with it PC Politically Correct,’ he replied. ‘She’s in one of the interview rooms. You can go bond together.’

  He’d put her in the interview room nearest the main entrance and she was pacing the floor when I arrived, even though each step looked like it was agony. ‘Do you want to come with me?’ I asked her.

  I took her to the soft interview room, where there were comfy sofas and chairs, cushions and rugs. It was more pleasant, and it helped people who were traumatised or scared to relax.

  ‘I’m PC Jody Foster, what’s your name?’

  Gingerly, she lowered herself onto the grey sofa, picked up the cream cushion beside her and cuddled it on her lap. Comfort and protection at the same time. She looked traumatised; a woman who had been through a lot and was almost ready to talk about it. Almost ready. How I responded would probably help her decide what she wanted to do.

  ‘Harlow.’

  I didn’t get my notebook out yet, that would scare her, and I didn’t switch on the video camera because this was just an initial chat. There might not be anything to write down. She might not want to take it forward.

  ‘How can I help you, Harlow?’

  ‘Something happened. Someone . . . I was kidnapped. It sounds ludicrous when I say it out loud, like something that happens to rich kids on American TV shows. But . . . that’s what happened to me. I was kidnapped from outside a nightclub . . . He knocked me out with some kind of drug. He said he was called The Blindfolder and he would let me go if I didn’t open my eyes for forty-eight hours. He said he would kill me if I did open my eyes in that time. He . . . he hurt me. Really badly. Really . . .’ She covered her mouth with her hands, as if to stop the words and therefore stem the memory of the pain of what he did. ‘And he, he burnt me. On my back.’ She winced as though talking about it mined another level of pain. ‘He burnt the number 15. It looks so awful. And it hurts so much.’

  I didn’t breathe for a moment. Didn’t speak, didn’t breathe. I felt sick – so queasy I thought for a moment I was going to empty my stomach contents right there on the room’s ugly blue and yellow rug.

  ‘That’s a horrific story,’ I said to her. ‘I’m so sorry that happened to you. I’ll go and find one of my CID colleagues to take a proper statement.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to talk to anyone else right now, I like talking to you. Do you believe me?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said, even though my voice was quivering, and I was shaking. ‘I believe you.’

  ‘I thought no one would believe me,’ she whispered, staring at her hands. ‘I told my cousin and she didn’t believe me. She said things like that don’t happen in real life. Even when I showed her my back.’

  ‘They do, I know they do,’ I told her.

  She closed her eyes and her face contorted with agony as she shifted in her seat.

  ‘Are you in pain?’ I asked.

  She smiled and she nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s my back . . . I’m in pain all the time.’ She exhaled, as though now she could admit that, she could relax a little, unclench a fraction. ‘It hurts, so much.’

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want me to get the FME to examine you?’

  She looked blankly at me, as though I’d spoken a different language.

  ‘Sorry, I mean the Forensic Medical Examiner, the police surgeon. He or she will look at you. Or I can take you to the hospital?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I can’t have anyone touch me again. I spent so much time being touched and controlled. I can’t do that.’

  ‘OK, OK, I won’t ask you to do anything you’re not ready for.’

  ‘I want to go home,’ she said.

  ‘That should be no problem,’ I told her. ‘I’ll just get my colleagues in CID to talk to you. And then someone should be able to take you home. Or I’ll take you.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, no. I can’t talk about it again. I just want to go home. I just want to forget any of this happened.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s going to be possible,’ I said gently.

  ‘I have to try,’ she replied. ‘I feel better now I’ve told someone and they’ve believed me. I can hold on to that. I can hold on to that.’

  My sister. My poor, poor sister.

  I locked myself in one of the toilet stalls, and pressed myself against the wall, shaking, trying not to cry. Trying not to howl.

  I didn’t believe her. I said I did, I told myself I did, but I didn’t, not really, because she wasn’t the perfect victim. She was flawed, she’d messed up in the past, she’d been angry, she’d been railing against the system. She wasn’t the perfect victim and I hadn’t supported her because of it.

  I had a picture of the right type of victim in my head and Jovie wasn’t it. I screamed at myself in my head. My poor, poor sister. She might still be here if I’d taken her in my arms, if I’d done all I could to make sure they focused on the crime not the survivor. This was on me. This was my fault.

  I’d comforted myself, appeased my prejudices, by telling myself it was a result of her previous life. I absolved myself of responsibility to just be her sister and allow her to be like everyone else. When we were children, when we were teenagers, when we were adults, she kept trying to make me see, she kept trying to get me to open my eyes and acknowledge that we were created equal, but we were not treated equally by the outside world. And the only people who benefited from trying to make us believe we were treated equally and fairly were the ones who benefited from that continued inequality.

  I thought I understood, I thought I was so clued up. But look at what I did. Look at what I did to my own sister because she wasn’t perfect in every way.

  Jovie, Jovie, Jovie. I wanted to wail her name. I wanted to bang my head against the wall, rip the skin off my face. Jovie, Jovie. This was all my fault.

  I’d been brainwashed, convinced that only certain people deserved compassion, only certain struggles were worthy of support.

  I should have hugged her. I should have told her . . .

  I should have, I should have, I should have.

  ‘I take it your “friend” was wasting your time, PC Political Correctness?’ the desk PC said as we passed in the corridor. He obviously thought he was being so amusing and witty calling me PC Political Correctness. Probably thought it’d needle me while forcing me to laugh along with his ‘banter’.

  ‘Pardon?’ I replied.

  I was tempted to rip his throat out with my bare hands, and that probably showed on my face because his face stiffened and his body drew back a little. ‘That girl who was in here earlier. What did she want? Wasting police time, was she?’

  ‘That woman was actually very helpful,’ I said. ‘She helped me to see a lot of things really clearly.’

  He wasn’t sure if I was being serious or not, didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Worst of all, he didn’t get the rise out of me that he wanted. Without saying another word, he walked away.

  I wasn’t lying. Harlow had been very helpful. I’d realised what I had to do: I had to find The Blindfolder and then, I had to kill him.

  Pieta

&nb
sp; Wednesday, 12 June

  I’ve made my peace with buying a takeaway coffee in a takeaway cup. I know this cup is recyclable, but my son is an eco-nut and he will give me a stern talking to if he finds out. And I’ve made my peace with that.

  Ashley, the barista who usually fills my cup, raised an eyebrow as I ordered a black Americano without handing over ‘Mama Needs Coffee’ first. ‘At least it’s organic,’ I said as I handed her a fiver.

  ‘Good luck explaining that to your son,’ she’d replied with a laugh.

  Deep breath, Pieta, I think as I press my pass against the security square and the door unlocks itself. Deep breath, shoulders back, head high. Lillian can’t possibly know what you did. The police aren’t like the publicity people I’ve dealt with in the past who would have been straight on the phone complaining about my behaviour. She can’t know yet how I upset the interviewee, the surprisingly unmysterious Miss X, and how I’ve lost this opportunity for BN Sussex.

  When I enter the office, it falls quiet. Reggie is out of his chair and down the office in seconds. ‘Get out of here,’ he says, hustling me towards the door. ‘She’s been ranting and raving in her office ever since she got a phone call and the only thing we’ve been able to make out is your name. Run for it while you can.’

  Before I can take in what he’s saying and turn and run for it, Lillian spots me. She throws down the phone in her hand and jumps to her feet.

  I turn around and look back the way I came in. I could still make a run for it. Pretend I didn’t see her spot me.

  But before I can do anything, she is thundering down the office towards me. ‘Tell me your secret,’ Lillian says as she arrives in front of me.

  Startled, I blink at her a couple of times, then look around at the others who are all on the edge of their seats waiting. ‘Pardon?’ How could she know? How could anyone know?

  ‘Tell me your secret, Pieta. I’ve just had the police on the phone. Miss X has chosen BN Sussex as the publication to tell her story to.’