The Rabbit Girls

by Anna Ellory

  ‘Thank heavens,’ says the younger, Officer Snelling. ‘We were about to break your door down.’

  ‘I . . .’ Miriam squeaks, then whispers instead, ‘I was asleep.’ Her words come out muffled and swollen. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s early, we are sorry to call on you,’ says the elder, ‘but I needed to check you were okay and to collate some evidence to investigate the incident that went on here last night.’

  Miriam opens the door fully and they follow the same tread, sit in the same seats as before and collect their black notebooks together. Synchronised policing.

  ‘Do you need to see a doctor?’ says Officer Snelling. ‘I hear you sustained some injury yourself.’

  ‘The paramedics said I would be okay at home,’ she stammers. ‘I am sorry, my throat is so sore.’ She looks around for Eva, but doesn’t see her.

  ‘My friend, have you seen her? Was she downstairs maybe?’ Miriam tries to look around the officers. The house is tidy, the kitchen light off.

  They both look at each other. ‘No, haven’t seen anyone.’

  ‘We will be quick, if we can. We are here because your husband made a complaint at the hospital. He says you hit him on the head, he doesn’t know what with, he lost consciousness, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘You called the ambulance, and he was taken to hospital.’

  ‘Yes, is he okay?’

  ‘He has some stitches, a broken nose, but aside from a concussion he’ll be fine.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Miriam says, although not sure what she means when she says it.

  ‘What did you use to hit your husband?’

  ‘I didn’t hit him.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘My friend, she arrived and she hit him and she saved me. Axel was trying to kill me.’

  They write judiciously in their books. ‘Can you show me where you were?’

  Miriam stands and sways, then shakes.

  ‘Are you okay, Miriam? Have you taken anything? Drink, drugs maybe?’

  Miriam shakes her head. ‘No, I’m cold. I’m not sure I’ll ever be warm again.’ She walks them to the hallway, points to where she was and explains that Axel was on top of her. ‘He was bleeding all over me.’ She looks at the carpet. The beige carpet.

  ‘Why was he bleeding?’

  Miriam turns and gestures to the door. ‘He tried to strangle me by the door, he bent down, so he could see me. I think he wanted me to die, he wanted to watch me die.’ She shivers, not from the cold this time. ‘I made his nose bleed, and I ran away.’

  The officer, Nikolls, points to where Snelling has crouched at the end of the hall.

  ‘Yes. Then what?’

  ‘I thought about locking myself in the bathroom, but I tripped on the step and he grabbed me, he sat on my chest and . . . and . . . I was about to pass out. His blood was all over me.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘My friend arrived and hit him on the head, he slumped off me and we ran downstairs and called the ambulance.’

  ‘What did she hit him with?’

  ‘The intercom phone.’ She turns to look down the hall again, she sees the place where the phone was, but the space is empty. The four screws that held it poke out of the wall, but the phone itself has gone. Miriam looks around her, goes into the kitchen, switches on the long fluorescent lights that flicker and blink. She turns to walk out and away from the kitchen and bumps into the younger officer.

  ‘Where is the phone now?’ he asks.

  She doesn’t answer, she walks into the lounge searching for one thing. Then his room, Mum’s and her own. She opens the study door and it crashes into the bookshelves.

  ‘Where is the phone?’ The older asks her. Miriam opens the front door and checks down the hall. Nothing.

  ‘Wait a second, Miriam, please come back inside.’

  ‘It’s gone,’ she croaks.

  ‘It’s okay. Come back inside and we can talk further.’

  She turns and sways down the hall in a daze, she looks at the floor where Axel had been on top of her.

  ‘Where’s the blood?’ she asks. ‘He was dripping blood, it was all over the carpet, here.’ She points.

  The younger officer bends down again and touches the carpet, ‘It’s damp,’ he says and lifts his fingers. He looks to the senior officer and then back to Miriam.

  ‘When did you clean up?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ She pulls her glove off and scratches at her hand, palm to wrist, deep scratches that pull the skin and tear at the air.

  The officer places his hand over her own. ‘Come back inside and let’s start from the beginning.’

  ‘I didn’t, I changed and washed him off me. I didn’t clean the house. It must have been Eva.’

  ‘This is your friend?’

  ‘Yes, Eva.’

  ‘Eva what?’

  Miriam can’t remember.

  After some time and a lot of questions later, Officer Nikolls, who had kept quiet thus far, says, ‘You don’t know a contact number, her next of kin is a Jeffrey at the library. You don’t know her name. You don’t know anything about her apart from the fact she is at the library, and lives around the corner somewhere, has just come over the Wall from the East? She has translated letters to your father?’

  Miriam nods.

  ‘Where are the letters?’

  ‘On the table.’ Miriam points.

  The table shines like a chestnut. A brilliant brown. Completely empty aside from the shards of paper that Miriam recognises with a start are the pictures of Michael, and the bag of her father’s medications.

  Miriam stands and touches the table, runs her fingers across its smooth surface.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she says.

  ‘Let’s go back to what happened tonight, shall we? Your husband arrived . . .’

  They ask her questions for what feels like hours. Miriam doesn’t know what to say anymore.

  ‘Your friend hit Axel on the back of the head?’

  ‘With the phone,’ Miriam adds.

  ‘Once?’

  Miriam nods quickly. Then remembers that no, she hit him twice. She doesn’t correct herself. She thinks of Eva, who saved her. Where is she? Miriam feels jittery and jumpy and cannot sit still.

  She shows the officers the markings on her neck and finds it soothing that her voice is so deep and broken and every time she hears herself she knows it happened, she is speaking the truth.

  ‘We will need you to come to the station later,’ Officer Snelling says. ‘To take photos of your neck, and perhaps with a bit of rest things may make more sense to you, as I am aware it is early and you have had a shock.’

  ‘I am the evidence, right? I am not making this up. I am not ill. I have been hurt, physically hurt and I have a broken voice and a bruised neck,’ she says more to herself, a list of comforts: it did happen and it wasn’t all in her head. ‘They cannot put me away now, can they?’

  ‘Put you where?’

  ‘The hospital. Axel came over and offered to sign the divorce papers if I would sign myself into a mental facility. I said no, I’m not crazy.’ She stands and picks up the bag of medicines from the table. ‘He said he would drug me, make it look like, I don’t know what, then I would be admitted. I’m not crazy,’ she says, aware she has said this too much and the officers are looking at each other, again.

  ‘These are the drugs he said he would force on you?’ The officer collects the bag from Miriam’s hand and looks at the bottles.

  ‘Henryk Winter.’ Officer Snelling looks up.

  ‘That’s my father.’

  ‘How did Axel get these?’

  ‘He said from the hospice.’

  ‘Your father had medications here too? When you were caring for him?’ Officer Nikolls asks.

  ‘Can I take these?’ Officer Snelling interjects.

  Miriam nods. ‘You believe me, right?’

  ‘What we need to do is discuss th
is with our sergeant, and talk further with Axel tomorrow. We’ll need you to come to the station to go over the events of this evening, but I think we should leave you alone now. Will you be okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says to their retreating backs.

  On closing the door, she sees the dust on the skirting board, the light-pink stains on the beige carpet. Eva may have tidied up, but Miriam will clean until the carpet is beige again.

  She opens every window and cleans every surface. She sets about making the house look right. The windows open, she hears calls of merriment from New Year parties that have yet to stop. The air is cold and black.

  It isn’t until she looks at the dining-room table she remembers the letters are gone. But in a tiny mound, the only picture she has remains.

  The shiny surface looks foreign now from the sea of white letters it had become.

  ‘That’s it then,’ she says aloud to the space around her.

  She tries to place the little mound of paper back together. But she cannot. She pours the shards into an envelope in her father’s office and writes Michael’s name on the front. She places it on his desk with his paperweight on top. Returning to the living room she sits, finally allowing the tears to fall.

  35

  MIRIAM

  She sips on herbal tea, checks her voice is audible and picks up the phone. The apartment is pristine, the windows ajar and the frosty breeze clean and cold.

  ‘Hi Sue, it’s Miriam Voight.’

  ‘Happy New Year to you,’ she says.

  ‘And to you.’

  ‘Is everything okay, you don’t sound good?’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ she croaks. ‘How’s Dad?’

  ‘He’s okay, no real change, although he has asked for Frieda again today. Is that your mum’s name?’

  ‘No, Frieda is an old friend.’

  ‘He’s settled and has sat up a few times. He’s still very disorientated, but we’ve changed his feeding tube today, the tube looks horrible on his face, so you’ll see that when you next come in. But it’ll give us some more scope for better sustenance, think that will do the trick. Poor man has been starved to death. What they do in those hospitals, I’ll never know.’ And with that Miriam hears a crunching on the other end. ‘Sorry, Miriam.’ Sue’s voice is muffled. ‘Just about to have a break and thought I’d have a quick bite, but it’s a bit crumbly.’ She laughs.

  Miriam can’t help but smile. ‘Thanks, Sue.’

  ‘See you tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’ But as she places the phone down she cannot think of a single reason keeping her in the apartment: Eva has not come by, she has no letters, she doesn’t know what happened. She has nothing keeping her here.

  In the outer hallway, she stumbles across a police officer, tall and thin, not one she has met before.

  ‘Miriam Voight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you mind coming down to the station to answer a few questions about the events that took place last night?’

  Miriam shakes her head. ‘I don’t want to,’ she starts.

  Lionel appears at her side. ‘Is everything all right, Miriam?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, Lionel.’ She takes a deep breath, the eyes of the officer are hard. ‘Will I be back tonight?’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell anyone where you are?’ Lionel asks.

  ‘Only if she comes by.’ Miriam doesn’t want to mention Eva, it doesn’t feel right that she should get into trouble when she was the one to save her life. She hopes Lionel understands.

  Miriam is directed to a police car outside with an officer behind the wheel. She has her handbag on her knees and her coat neatly folded over the top. The car is clean and the seats deep. The journey is short, but Miriam feels unsettled and more nervous than she thought possible.

  In the station, she sits on a plastic chair. Pictures are taken of her neck, and of her hands, the bruises and cuts, scabs and broken fingernails shine up against the white, so that once the pictures are taken Miriam wants nothing more than to cover them up and hide them away.

  She is shown into an interview room and invited to sit on another cold and hard plastic chair, this one grey. The desk in front of her is pockmarked: black cigarette burns, scratches, blotches. The officer’s skin resembles the table, and seems to have been around as long as it has. He sits opposite her with a sigh.

  Nothing is said for a long time, then the door opens and another officer joins them, a pressed white blouse and blue pleated skirt with sharp, small heels. Miriam recognises her at once. Officer Müller; the officer who saw her at the hospital. She smiles at her in relief when she sits down and places a file on the table.

  The officer with the pockmarked skin speaks into a recording device and places it on the table.

  ‘Frau Voight, please can you tell me where you were on the night of December thirty-first between six and nine p.m.?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘No, Axel, my husband, he arrived. I don’t know what time, around eight, I think. He barged through the door.’

  ‘Barged?’

  ‘Yes, I opened the door thinking it was someone else, but he pushed his way through it, he broke the chain. He locked me in with him.’

  ‘In your father’s home?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  She can’t find the words to pave the way forward. Her mind circles.

  ‘Did you talk, argue, eat?’ Officer Müller offers her a lifeline and her voice is soft and gentle as Miriam tries to find words to accurately recall the evening’s events.

  Miriam speaks directly to her, and although she remains aloof, Miriam hopes she understands.

  ‘He brought the divorce papers – I filed for divorce after what happened in the hospital.’

  Offer Müller nods and Miriam takes this as consent to continue and an acknowledgement that she remembers her.

  ‘He said he’d sign the papers if I consented to attending a psychiatric evaluation. He wants me to be sectioned. I asked him to leave.’

  ‘You asked him to leave?’

  ‘Yes, after all that happened in the hospital I realised that to be taken seriously I needed to tell Axel, no.’

  ‘So, you told him you didn’t want him in the house, because an officer recommended you did that if he should be difficult?’

  ‘Yes, well, the officer didn’t say I had to, but he suggested that I wasn’t being hurt because I didn’t call out. I’ve never said “no” to Axel because right from the start it didn’t really matter what I thought or wanted anyway.’

  Miriam waits for what she is sure will be the past rising, shrouding her, suffocating her. She takes a deep breath, waiting to be plunged back.

  Nothing happens.

  She continues to speak to Officer Müller, who sits almost completely still. She is young with blonde hair tucked up into a bun and clear skin, her hands are folded in her lap.

  Miriam, aware that she is talking a lot and not coherently, continues. The rasping of her voice not only hurts, but each sentence lowers it further. And still she is present. Sitting on a plastic chair, the smell of cleaning agents, stale coffee and smoke. Nothing else.

  She feels a little intoxicated by the fact that she said ‘no’. She did say ‘no’ to Axel, and not only that, she also told the police she said ‘no’ and they recorded that she said ‘no’ on their device. So that people will hear that Miriam did say ‘no’ and she meant it. This tiny thing, a speck of sunlight, makes Miriam sit up taller.

  ‘Did he leave?’

  ‘He refused. He said I could leave, but where would I go? So again, I told him to go. I tried to stand my ground. This is my father’s and my house after all.’

  The older officer in low tones says, ‘So you chose to stay?’

  ‘It wasn’t a choice. Where would I have gone? Who would I have gone to? My mother died. My father is dying. I have no one. I have no on
e,’ she repeats.

  Officer Müller passes her a small box of tissues. She tries to compose herself, but she howls instead, her entire chest feels like it is collapsing and her throat feels swollen and worn away to nothing.

  An arm appears on her shoulders and Officer Müller bends so she is in Miriam’s eyeline; she smells fresh, like linen.

  ‘I’m sorry you have had to go through all of this, Miriam. We only have a few more questions for you. Let me get you a drink. Tea? Coffee? Water?’

  Miriam lets out a small hiccup. ‘Tea, please, with a dash of milk,’ she says, and like a drop in the ocean she realises. She didn’t pause to wait for Axel to order for her, or to check with him first. She answered with exactly what she wanted. ‘Tea,’ she repeats, and smiles.

  She isn’t alone. She can’t be because, finally, she is beginning to know herself. When the officer returns with a tray of hot drinks, Miriam sips hers and warms her hands on the cracked cup.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, finding her voice again, her throat soothed from the tea.

  ‘It’s not a problem, you have been through a lot.’

  Miriam smiles, knowing she has been through nothing in comparison to others.

  The older officer starts talking again. ‘Back to Axel offering you a chance to leave. Can we go back to that? I’m wondering why you didn’t call the police?’

  She sees Officer Müller look over at him and roll her eyes, which gives Miriam some confidence to speak frankly.

  ‘Why? He was in my house, doing nothing but talking to me, and you don’t know Axel, he’s a very patient person. If I call the police when Axel is doing nothing I look crazier than ever.’

  ‘So you stayed.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and she notices her shoulders roll and her hands wind themselves in the inner silk of her coat. ‘Otherwise I’m giving him what he wants. He hurt me in the hospital, assaulted me. He used that, he said it showed my neurosis, how sick I am, he used the truth and turned it into a lie.’

  The male officer opens his mouth to speak but Miriam continues, ‘Do you know I have been married for over twenty years? All this time with a man who has been set on destroying me. I have lost my job, I have been given medication that made me sleep, some made me swim through the day. Some of the pills made me dribble and drool like a dog, others made my mouth so dry my tongue felt it had been made from sandpaper. This was all him. He made me take those pills and he manipulated the doctors to keep prescribing them. He called himself my carer, took me away from my family, and I was too drugged to notice what I’d lost. So I want a divorce and now I’m sitting here. Will you arrest me?’ Her voice breaks and she sips the last of her tea.