Tell Me Your Secret

by Dorothy Koomson

  Winston and I will be together in bed, we’ll start to make love, and someone’s story will start to flash through my mind. I hear what happened in the broadest terms, and then I learn the detail, the minutiae of the ordeal so that we can build a case, find the unique elements that speak to a wider pattern, that narrow down suspects and possible perpetrators. The interviews are necessary, they’re what is needed to help the woman who has come to us; it’s an essential part of my job. And these words run like a ticker tape at the bottom of my mind when Winston and I are making love.

  My mind, as saturated as it is with other people’s traumas, other people’s words depicting their pain, will conjure up the terror of having her body being controlled, see the way the pain ripples through her nerves, hear the phrases she says he used. It doesn’t happen every time we make love, it doesn’t even happen most of the time, but it happens enough to make me pause, think, wonder if having sex is worth taking the chance of having those images play out.

  Winston is very good about it. He always stops when I freeze, and he rarely initiates when I’m in the middle of a case because he knows I could stop cold right in the middle of sex and it makes him feel bad.

  But right now, I want to have sex with him. I want to do something normal and loving. I want to remind myself that there are good men out there, that sex isn’t about power and pain, control and supremacy. Sex is about connection and communication and consideration, and respect and fun and pleasure.

  I want to have sex with my fiancé.

  ‘When was the last time you kissed me?’ I ask Winston.

  He frowns, and then theatrically purses his lips while he thinks about it.

  ‘All right, let me put it this way – why aren’t you over here kissing me right now?’

  Winston tosses aside the remote control, then comes across the large sofa towards me. ‘No, the question is, why didn’t I think of kissing you before now?’

  He takes me in his arms and we take a moment to look at each other, to see each other. An excited thrill bolts through me and I grin at him. I see it happen to him, too. His smile deepens and his body relaxes against mine.

  I slip my hand under his white T-shirt as he lowers his head and kisses me. I place my hand over his heart, feel it beating. Reminding me how connected we are, how alive we are and how much we have together.

  When he starts to move his hand under my T-shirt, I press my hand on top of his to stop him. I can’t do it. Not like this, not right now. He takes his hand away and carries on kissing me instead.

  I want to make love to my fiancé, but I can’t.

  ‘Did you know that my sister was actually my twin?’ I ask Winston as we’re climbing into bed.

  I know the answer, but I want to talk about her, my Jovie, after today’s remembering. Missing her is a constant ache. And I have space to do it, room to let the memory of who she was expand and fill all the empty spaces in my heart.

  Winston is mid-stretch, mid-yawn but stops to turn around and look at me. ‘Your twin? I mean, you said you had a sister and she died, but in ten years you never mentioned that she was your twin.’

  ‘I know. It’s just that she died a long time ago but it feels like yesterday all the time. It never gets old, or easier, so I don’t talk about her much at all. We were identical, but nothing alike. And she killed herself. I haven’t told you that, either. She was the victim of a crime and that was too much for her to bear.’

  My fiancé scoots across the bed and takes me in his arms.

  ‘I wasn’t very nice to her.’ This is why I’m talking to him. I need to externalise this stuff inside. I need to tell someone this secret. Well, as much of this secret as I can get away with telling anyone. ‘She told me what happened to her and I wasn’t very nice to her. I didn’t completely believe she didn’t bring it on herself.’

  ‘But, you’re not like that, Jodes. Everyone always comments how good you are with victims, survivors, whatever you call it.’

  ‘I know.’ I blink a few times, try to clear my blurry, teary vision. ‘I’ve always found it easy to put myself in someone else’s shoes, say what they need to hear, except with Jovie. When she needed me to just understand her, to be, you know, a sister, just a fucking human being, I let her down.’ I rub my hands over my face. ‘It haunts me. It constantly haunts me.’

  He cuddles me towards his body. Holding me close, protecting me from myself. What if I had held Jovie like this? What if I’d made her feel loved and protected and safe? Would she still be here? Would I be taking her through an interview now, getting her to help me to find this man?

  ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry about your sister, Jodes, that must be rough.’

  ‘What if I do it again? What if I mess up and I end up damaging one of the people in this investigation?’

  ‘You won’t, you won’t,’ he reassures. ‘You know as well as I do that we treat those closest to us worse than we treat other people. It’s a shit thing to do, and I have to work really hard not to lose patience with my parents or get frustrated with my brothers, but for some reason, that’s what we do.’

  ‘Biology has a lot to answer for, eh?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, yeah it does.’ He lets me go. ‘Turn out your light, babe, and tell me about your sister.’

  In the dark, everything feels better. I can hide in the dark, I can control my breathing, there are no shiny surfaces for me to see Jovie’s face. In the dark, everything feels much more manageable. She was always telling me to open my eyes, but sometimes, I preferred to keep my eyes closed so I could stay safe and secure in the dark.

  I talk to him about my lost twin. I tell him as much as I can without making her sound awful, without making me sound judgemental.

  ‘It’s hard, you know, Jodes,’ Winston says when I pause to reassess what feelings all the talking about Jovie have loosened. ‘I was the bad one in my family. I was the one always in trouble. I got arrested a few times, stopped loads more. Most of it was bull, the police getting an easy mark. But you know, there was stuff that wasn’t bull, things that I did that were wrong and illegal. I smoked a bit. Got a bit rowdy. Bit of shoplifting. This was all before I became focused on my football, but you know, Jodes, it was still wrong. I remember a lot of it was about not feeling heard. Wanting, I don’t know, to be noticed. My parents didn’t do anything wrong, my other siblings weren’t anywhere near as much trouble as me. I can’t explain it to you, it was just something I did.

  ‘But I turned myself around. Some people don’t do that. It wouldn’t have been fair to expect everyone to be understanding until I got myself together. Some of them weren’t. A couple of my brothers are still . . . I don’t know, pissed off with me, I suppose, even now. I don’t blame them. I was a nightmare. Doesn’t mean I didn’t deserve to be loved, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t allowed to be angry with me, either. And to wash their hands of me if I was causing them too much pain.’

  I understand what he’s getting at, what he’s trying to say about me and how I treated Jovie. He’s trying to say it was understandable. Not right, or good, but understandable. I appreciate it. I appreciate him. He really is the perfect man.

  ‘You won’t mess it up, Jodes,’ Winston says. ‘You’re going to do whatever you need to do to solve this. I know you and I know you’ll do it. And you’ll be doing it with Jovie in mind. That will be good for all those you help, won’t it?’

  ‘I suppose,’ I reply.

  Obviously Winston has no clue that doing whatever I need to do to solve this means I’ve also been planning a murder for the last thirteen years.

  ‘Tea?’ Harlow asks.

  She’s sitting at the table in my South London flat.

  She has odd-shaped crockery in front of her. Very rustic and very obviously hand-made. The teapot is large and misshapen, its rotund belly and spout are ringed with rainbow stripes. The bobbly, wobbly cups have blue and white spots, the blue piercing and sharp, and the wave-like saucers are an eye-watering navy g
reen.

  ‘Please excuse the tea set, my sister made them,’ Harlow explains as she pours champagne from the teapot.

  ‘Sister?’ I reply. ‘Who’s your sister?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘I know? I know?’

  ‘Oh, come on, of course you know. Of—’

  My eyes jump open in the dark. I have to swallow a few times to moisten my mouth and throat, to calm my racing heart, but I don’t need to look at the clock to know where I am – ensconced in the deepest part of the night, as far away from each side as I will get.

  The dream with Harlow and tea again. At least this time she didn’t bring the others, at least this time they didn’t get the chance to tell me what I already knew – I am culpable. But this time, we had the crazy crockery.

  Not hard to work out what that was about.

  As well as everything else, I have to decide what to do about Pieta Rawlings. I can’t storm into her life and accuse her of being The Blindfolder’s victim, but can I just leave it? I’ve been hunting this man for thirteen years. I have a live, recent victim who is willing to talk, and I have many others out there I do not know what has happened to. If Pieta is a victim, then she might hold the vital clue. But if she is a victim, then she clearly will not admit to it easily. At any point since she was assigned this story, she could have come forward. She knows why Callie is doing it, she knows now her life is in danger, but she still hasn’t said a word.

  It all comes down to that question she asked about whether Callie had told her family. Pieta most likely hasn’t told anyone. Why would she? She has a sorted life, a nice home, her son, her job. Why would she drag that into the present?

  I don’t have children, but I know what mothers are like. How protective they are. Someone like Pieta Rawlings would do anything to protect her son’s life – literally and metaphorically.

  That picture of them together comes to mind. They looked so happy, like they are each other’s world. If I’d got pregnant when Winston and I had first started trying, our child would be about his age. Well, maybe younger. We started trying seven years ago and her son looked a bit older. Maybe around nine, ten?

  The air starts to buzz, fizzing with that thought.

  Her son is about nine or ten.

  I slip out of bed, go to the living room where my computer is still sheathed in my black laptop bag. It takes an age to boot it up. Her son is about nine or ten, I keep thinking as I watch the screen light up and the icons pop up one by one.

  Her son is about nine or ten.

  I open her file and read the missing person’s report again.

  April 2009.

  That means . . .

  I know who she said her son’s father was. But the way she stood in front of his pictures, hiding him from me; protecting him from scrutiny . . . And actually, she didn’t say who her son’s father was. She implied it was Jason Breechner but never actually named him as responsible. I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before. Maybe I am too close to this. Maybe this is the wrong side of personal. I am missing things, I am missing huge things.

  Gigantic things like this. If Pieta Rawlings is a victim of the man I am hunting, then it is also quite possible that her child is The Blindfolder’s son.

  And that means I could get access to the DNA evidence that we desperately need.

  Pieta

  Wednesday, 14 October, 2009

  ‘When’s your baby due?’ The woman who asked this had a smiley face, happy eyes and a bonny disposition. We sat in the upstairs part of the doctor’s surgery, outside the midwife’s room.

  ‘February,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, snap!’ she said excitedly. ‘Your first?’

  I nodded. I didn’t want to talk, I didn’t want to think let alone talk. ‘How about you?’ I replied when it was obvious she expected me to ask her.

  ‘Yes, my first, too. Can you tell how excited I am? All my friends are sick of me. I can’t help it though. We’ve been trying for so long.’ She ran her hands over the swell of her stomach, prominent even under her thick, cream jumper. It was about the same size as my bump. ‘This is my miracle baby.’

  I smiled at her. I was pleased for her. She was so full of joy, so blissful, it was nice to be around. It was lovely to be reminded that this was what being pregnant was about.

  I hadn’t known. Not for nearly four months. I thought it was what had happened. I thought it was my on-going problems with endometriosis and other fertility-limiting issues. I thought it was my body playing tricks on me while I recalibrated myself.

  But four months. It’d never been four months before. I’d had a period after the last time I had sex with Jason, but nothing since for the following four months.

  I knew before I even paid for the test. I was certain before I weed on the stick. I had the answer before the timer sounded.

  I had been categorically told that I would have trouble having a baby. That gynaecological issues would always leave me struggling to conceive, and could cause problems with carrying a baby to full term. I looked at the results of the pregnancy test and knew that it shouldn’t technically be possible. It shouldn’t technically be something I had to worry about or deal with. But neither was what was done to me by that man four months earlier. It was rare, it was not the sort of thing that happened all the time.

  ‘Pieta Rawlings?’ the midwife called.

  I gathered up my notes, my coat, my bag and stood up. ‘Good luck with your baby,’ I told the other expectant mother.

  ‘You too!’ she trilled. ‘I might see you at the hospital!’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’

  ‘How are you, Pieta?’ the midwife asked. She hadn’t been that friendly the first time I met her. She’d been busy, and was clearly having a bad day. I’d been in shock, still. I hadn’t made any real decisions, but thought I should see someone just in case I decided to go ahead with it. I almost didn’t go back after the way she was so dismissive of me that first time. Her bad day plus my ‘situation’ almost added up to me going home and pretending it wasn’t happening. I couldn’t stand to possibly go through with having a child and have people be dismissive and rude along the way.

  I’d braved her offices again, and since then she’d been better, sometimes over-the-top nice as if to make up for it.

  Today, she was typing something into her computer, not looking at me, which gave me the opportunity I needed to speak, to say what I needed to before the courage deserted me. ‘I was sexually assaulted. A while ago. I’m worried about the birth. I can’t have people’s hands on me. I’m worried about what will happen.’ I didn’t sound like me. This was the first time I’d said it out loud and my voice didn’t sound like mine. I sounded scared, vulnerable, but also detached and defeated.

  I daren’t look at her but I could tell she was staring at me.

  ‘Is your baby the result of the assault?’

  She’d have to write that down. She’d have to write down everything I said. And I didn’t want that to follow me around, follow the baby around, be there for everyone to see and make judgements on. I shook my head. Once, twice, three times. ‘I just . . . it’s the birth. I don’t want people touching me.’

  ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ she said kindly. ‘We’ll make sure you’re comfortable, that no one touches you unless they have to. And even then, they will tell you clearly who they are and why they’re touching you. Please don’t worry, Pieta, we’ll do everything we can to make this all right for you so you can focus on your baby.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’

  She reached out to touch me, but changed her mind halfway through. ‘I’m sorry this happened to you,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘Thank you.’

  Thursday, 4 February, 2010

  He was perfect. Everything about him was perfect. His crinkled fingers that he kept trying to stuff in his mouth, his eyes that were barely open, his slick body that immediately found its place in the crook of my a
rm. He was so perfect. I stared down at him and saw every incredible thing about him.

  I was ignoring how pale my son’s skin was, which told me that he had been white. I was pretending my child’s nose wasn’t small and nothing like mine, and therefore probably came from him. I was make-believing this baby had come from love, not from hours and hours and hours of terror.

  My son was perfect. Absolutely perfect and that was all I was focusing on.

  Pieta

  Wednesday, 19 June

  ‘Courier package for you, Pieta,’ Reggie says.

  He places the package on my desk and walks away. It’d been even more awkward since he tried to ask me out again, and we’d been forced to work together quite closely on this article. I pull the headphones out of my ears. I’d been transcribing my interview with Callie. Transcribing is fine, because they are just words and I can transfer the words from my ears to my fingers to the computer without anything sinking in in between. It’s a process I’ve done hundreds of times before.

  I pick up the package and watch Reggie return to his desk. Inside the package there are photographs, I can feel their shiny surface as I pull them free. Pinned to the top is a handwritten note:

  For you, of you. This is how the world sees you –

  Beautiful. Ned x

  Me. A pile of photos of me. I hadn’t realised he was shooting me as well. I would have asked him to stop, I would have told him to focus on Callie.

  It’s a shock to see myself. They are black and white, so you can’t see the vivid stripes of my rainbow armwarmers, you can’t see the fluorescent colours of my tights, you can’t experience the vivid red of my top. What I do note are the twist-out curls in my hair that are full and framing my face. What I can clearly appreciate is my face, frozen in a thought-filled pose while I’m concentrating on Callie.

  ‘Wow, is that you?’ Tiffany asks.

  ‘Erm,’ I reply and start to shuffle the photos back together. ‘Yeah.’