The Book of You: A Novel

by Claire Kendal

  He says that that doesn’t matter. They’re only closed to routine things, like people who want lost property. He speaks to me with the gentle sorrowfulness of a surgeon talking to a patient whose condition is inoperable. He says that it’s the job of the police to help those who are distressed or fearful, which isn’t something that can wait. He says that he’s going to get a detective constable to come and talk to me in a few minutes. Will I please follow him? He leads me through a door that is locked to the general public, a door that makes me think of the special gateway out of the jurors’ waiting room and into the world of Court 12. It is a passage that people do not pass through every day, but only at rare points in their lives.

  Without quite knowing how it has happened, I am sitting down and there is a glass of water in front of me and I’m being offered a cup of tea, but I shake my head and mouth the words “No, thank you” without any sound coming out. A box of tissues is sliding along the table, pushed by a hand. The hand belongs to DC Peter Hughes, a very tall, very thin, very stooping man in his late forties with a shock of soft hair the color of steel and the thickest glasses I have ever seen. He looks tired toward the end of what must have been a long night on duty. He is drinking black coffee. I take some tissues and wipe my eyes and blow my nose, and then I clear my throat, but it doesn’t work, so I try again to clear it. I take a sip of the water. DC Hughes says, “No rush. Just sit quietly for a few minutes until you’re ready. I can see it’s been a big step for you to come here.”

  The evidence of how wrong everything is must be etched on my face and rumbling beneath the words that are sticking in my throat. I must be visibly disintegrating; I’m about as solid as a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle. On the wall behind DC Hughes is a framed sign.

  All victims will be treated with sensitivity, compassion, and respect by professional and dedicated officers.

  Already, I can see that this is true. DC Hughes. The baby-faced policeman who brought me to this room and is now sitting almost invisibly, taking notes. Both of them seem to be all the good things the sign promises. But what of the word that describes my role in all of this? Victim. It’s a word I’ve resisted using about myself, a word that has unremittingly pricked at me from the leaflets and the trial. I do not want to start using it now. But that word is clearly what the young policeman and DC Hughes see when they look at me.

  The chairs that the three of us sit on are made of fake plasticky wood. The matching round table between us is the only other piece of furniture. The floors are linoleum, so even DC Hughes’s calm voice sounds tinny and echoey as he asks me if I want to wait for a few hours until a female police officer becomes available to interview me, and I gulp out that I think I need to do it now, if that’s okay, and he says yes, of course. There is a large mirror that must be an observation window, though I doubt it is being used for me. I hope it will soon be used for you.

  Despite my repeated derailments of his methodical processes and my impulse to blurt everything out in distraught chaos, DC Hughes is expert at taking me through it all in logical order. I tell him that I’ve tried to do everything right. I tell him what you know all too well: that I haven’t made it easy for you. Not at all. My urgent determination that DC Hughes should know this takes me by surprise.

  I tell him that I don’t belong to social networking sites; I don’t advertise every intimate detail of my life or announce every journey I’m about to take. I tell him how Rowena’s electronic trail led you to gate-crash my already strained friendship with her; it wasn’t my own Internet presence, which is otherwise nonexistent. Such public exposure is against my nature, I say. I tell him that you don’t have my private email address—few people do—and that so far you’ve never pestered me through the university’s.

  I tell him that I suppose you’ve had no option but to track me the old-fashioned way, doggedly hanging around the places you know I have to go, even though I’ve reduced them almost to the point of self-imprisonment. As I say all this, I see for the first time what should have been obvious all along. My computerized existence, small as it may be, doesn’t interest you at all. It is only physical contact that you want.

  I tell DC Hughes about that night in November, explaining that I can’t remember much. I tell him of my certainty that you will say it was consensual, and my worry that you slipped something into my wine. Despite his unflappable professional kindness, I am waiting for him to look at me in derision and tell me there is nothing he can do. That isn’t what happens, though.

  “The word consensual may well not apply here,” he says.

  I remember Lottie’s eyes welling with tears when Mr. Harker told her that he didn’t dispute any of her evidence. I understand her stunned gratitude now in a way that I didn’t then. My own eyes are prickling with tears, but I blink them away, not wanting to stop DC Hughes.

  “But even if we presume for the sake of argument that it does,” he says, “a night of consensual sex in the past, whatever its nature, doesn’t make this your fault, or give him the right to behave as he has since. We can’t prove anything about the drugs now, though. You would have needed a medical exam and urine tests at the time to establish that they were used and what they were. The tests aren’t conclusive, anyway. These substances aren’t all detectable, and many of them leave the body within hours.”

  I know that DC Hughes has probably been on too many training courses to count. He seems so natural, though, so restrainedly but not overbearingly nice. So truthful. So trustworthy. I think his decency is real. I do not think it is merely the result of all those staff-development days on how to deal with the victims of sex crimes.

  And now the moment has come that I can’t put off any longer. I take out the obscene photographs. I packaged them separately from the rest of your grisly things, uncertain even when I walked out my front door this morning about whether or not I’d be able to bring myself to hand them over. But I place them in front of DC Hughes, babbling that I have no recollection of your taking them, telling him of my fear that you will claim it was a consensual sex game, warning him of what that envelope contains. “It’s terrible enough”—my voice shakes—“being faced with you looking at them—with seeing you seeing them . . .” I trail off.

  “I understand,” he says. “And I think you’re very brave.”

  I remember Mr. Morden saying exactly the same thing to Lottie. The very last thing he said to her after all those days in the witness box.

  I voice my fear about how many people will need to look at them.

  “We’re very careful of such materials,” he says, but I note his avoidance of answering directly, and the vagueness of his reply.

  DC Hughes’s face is expressionless. I think of a doctor performing a gynecological procedure, masking all thoughts and response to reassure the patient that there is no trace of desire; he is just doing his job. He slides out the pile of photos and glances briefly at the top one, the first one you sent me and the least terrible of them; the one before you tied me up and arranged all your props. Without looking further at it, or at the others in the stack below it, he puts your souvenir images away.

  I am trying to keep myself as still as I can be, blushing fiercely from head to toe in front of this uniformed man, a stranger to me. Because of you, he has seen me unconscious in my lavender underwear. Because of you, he will see worse of me than that when he looks at the rest of the photos later. He does not want to mortify me further by doing so now, before my eyes.

  I take another sip of water, and then he says, “It would be very difficult at this point in time to prove that you were not a willing participant, though I believe you when you say that you were not. But even if you had consented to his taking those photographs, the images are clearly not welcome to you now and you’ve made that clear. That is what matters about them.”

  He excuses himself for ten minutes, taking the quiet young policeman with him. While they are away, I phone court to say I will be late. I tell them I have been detained by a
family emergency. I tell them I will get in as soon as I can. I half expect to be kicked off the jury then and there, but they are entirely kind and understanding.

  DC Hughes returns with cataloging and storage materials, again accompanied by the young policeman, who continues to operate his pencil so noiselessly I almost forget he is there. Only DC Hughes’s voice and mine are allowed to bounce off the bare white walls of this interview room. I know this must be a strategy worked out between the two of them so that I can feel as comfortable as possible in the most uncomfortable of circumstances, so that I don’t feel any more overwhelmed than I already do.

  Every item I’ve brought is carefully examined and labeled. Your letters. Your handmade book. The desiccated flowers and disused communication devices. The heart-shaped box of chocolates with its matching card. The photos of me and Robert. The ring. Your magazine and the envelope it was posted in, which I’m again grateful to DC Hughes for not looking long at. The black notebook. The photos of you on my street, snapped with my camera phone, and the one I took of my reddened wrist after the park.

  Already, under the Protection from Harassment Act, I have provided evidence of much more than the minimum two instances of harassment. I have convincingly documented your persistent obsessive behavior, and that the incidents have occurred relatively close together in terms of timescale.

  More than enough grounds, DC Hughes assures me, to justify the visit he will be making to you later today. That, he says, is quite often all it takes.

  I tell him about Laura’s vanishing, giving him the Bettertons’ contact details, mentioning that the police hadn’t been able to do anything to help them, asking if he can get someone to compare the magazine cover with one of her parents’ photographs of her. DC Hughes seems to sit up straighter at this, despite his stoop, and I think he actually looks worried. He plays with his heavy glasses, sliding them down his nose so I can see the red mark they’ve left, then up again—the first fidget I’ve seen from him in a very long morning. He seems to take a long time before speaking, considering his words with extra care. The police take stalking extremely seriously, he says. Though he cannot comment on another case, he says. But he will certainly retain the Bettertons’ details in my file for future reference, he says.

  You will be given verbal and written warnings. The clear import will be that if you persist in unsociable conduct that causes me to feel harassed, alarmed, or distressed, then you will face prosecution and a restraining order. And if you breach that, you will be looking at up to five years in prison.

  I tell him what you did to Robert’s car, and though DC Hughes makes a note of it, he explains that unless Robert makes a complaint himself, there is nothing the police can do about it. I say that I don’t think Robert will be going to the police, at least for now. I don’t say that this is because I am still hoping Robert will never need to know about you. For the first time, this seems possible.

  By 11:00 a.m. I am finished, clutching DC Hughes’s card. He has written his mobile number on it, and a crime reference code. I fumble in my bag for the new notebook that is identical to the old one, all the way down to its black cover; I bought it just in case, though I hope its pages will remain blank as I slip the card between them. Then I curl my fingers around the personal attack alarm DC Hughes has given me and shown me how to use. He’s also issued me a Victim Care Card with the basic information about my crime and all of the actions and paperwork that will happen next. Lottie must have had one of these, too. My crime. The crime that belongs to me. As if you belong to me. And that word again. On the wall. On the card. In the leaflets. In the courtroom. Victim.

  Five minutes after saying good-bye to DC Hughes I am on the station platform. I feel a pang when I realize that the young policeman vanished before I could thank him. The 11:08 train to Bristol pulls in almost immediately, and I step onto it. You are nowhere in sight. You must be puzzled that you haven’t found me today. All of your lookout points and routines, and nothing. I have evaded you.

  CLARISSA SPENT AN unexpected afternoon break studying a vintage dress pattern, pausing occasionally to make a note to herself in her funny spidery hand. She was sitting in a small puddle of sunlight that fell through the window, sleepy in the pleasure of its warmth. She wasn’t sure how long Robert had been standing there before she felt his eyes on her.

  He sat down when she smiled at him. “That’s an unusual-looking pattern,” he said.

  “It was my grandmother’s. From the fifties. Patterns weren’t multisized then. I have to grade it down.”

  Carefully, lightly, he touched the yellowing sleeve piece her grandmother had cut. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

  Their usher walked in with his usual steady stride. The other jurors, all playing poker on the other side of the room, immediately ceased their chattering and watched him. He needed only to nod, and they rose from their chairs at his command. Wordlessly, they followed him. But Robert remained near the table, waiting for her as she folded away the delicate pattern.

  “You have to be good, don’t you, to make something like that?” he said, just before they caught up with the others. He spoke in a voice too low for anyone else to hear, for her ears alone, a lover’s voice.

  SHE WALKED BY herself to the station that night. Robert had run for an earlier train so he could get back to Bath to deal with his vandalized car. She’d have slowed him down.

  She tried not to look in the shadows for Rafe. She tried to picture him getting his written and verbal warnings from DC Hughes; surely he’d have had them by now; surely he’d see that if he didn’t leave her alone, he’d end up with prosecutions and restraining orders and even prison. No normal person would want that.

  But Rafe wasn’t a normal person. She couldn’t quell her apprehension that he didn’t discriminate between the different types of obstacles that kept him away from her: whether he faced a police warning or a judicial command; whether he was locked out or locked in. It was all the same to him: mere impediments that needed to be cleared away with whatever methods were at his disposal, whatever the consequence; he’d say or do or promise anything.

  When she was back in Bath, she made herself put these thoughts out of her head. She needed to let herself trust that it would all be okay now that she’d involved the police.

  She had the taxi let her out in front of the local supermarket so she could buy milk and fruit and eggs. She wasn’t holding her breath when she turned down the cleaning goods aisle; she wasn’t expecting him to be waiting there.

  She walked those last few blocks to her house, alone in the dark. She knew he wouldn’t be standing on any of the roads she crossed. She knew he wouldn’t pop out at her. Not around the corner. Not on her street. Not on the path to her front door. Not by Miss Norton’s lavender bush. Not in any of the usual places.

  Wednesday

  Wednesday, March 4, 9:15 a.m.

  I can’t stop myself from writing in the new notebook. Even yesterday after I’d got home, I couldn’t break my habit of scribbling and then slapping the inky pages onto the shiny glass bed of my scanner. There are too many loose ends, still, before I can entirely exorcise you.

  In two days’ time my rubbish will be collected. Even with the police alerted and on my side, I’m still not confident enough to stop my new habit of censoring what I put into the black garbage bags that I leave in front of my house on Friday mornings. I fantasize about sticking in a note. Fuck off—I’m onto you. But I’m not about to start speaking to you now. I’m not about to warn you or give you any useful information. And I’m certainly not about to incur my mother’s wrath by letting you drive me into swearing.

  As soon as I arrive in the jurors’ waiting area and the keypadded door locks behind me, I go to the women’s cloakroom. You could never get in here. Even you never could. I take out the shopping bag I sealed before leaving this morning. Its contents are compacted into the bottom so that my plastic-wrapped waste products resemble a misshapen balloon. I knotted the opening—airti
ght—before I stuffed it firmly into a second bag and knotted that, too, to make the contents extra secure and keep any bad smell inside.

  As I dump the bag into the cloakroom bin, I’m furious that I still feel I have to do this. I’m furious that I ever needed to start doing this. But now it’s all out of your reach. The sanitary towels covered in my blood from the previous five days. The empty pack of sleeping pills that I’ve been taking too often. The wrappings from the new body cream I just bought and the foot scrub I just opened. The wax strips I used early this morning, speckled with the fine hairs I tore from my calves and underarms. The intimate details of what comes out of my body and what goes into it, what I rub onto my skin and what I use to strip and polish it smooth, are not for you. They will never be for you.

  WHEN SHE LEFT the cloakroom, she found Robert sitting at one of the shaky tables, drinking the horrible court coffee and reading the paper.

  He hooked out a chair for her, smiling as she sat down with the huge latte she’d bought at a café. She needed it; she hadn’t slept much. But it was overexcitement and relief more than fear. She’d made herself skip the sleeping tablets last night; she wanted to wean herself off, and to believe that the reason she’d needed them no longer applied.

  “Don’t think I didn’t notice the disdainful look you gave my coffee,” Robert said. “Everything okay with your family?”

  For a split second she was puzzled. Then she remembered the lie she’d told them all yesterday, to explain her lateness. “Yes. Thank you.” She took a sip of her latte, hoping he hadn’t noticed her delayed response. “And your car?”

  He shrugged, as if to say it was of no importance, not worth talking about. His hand was so huge around the court’s dinky white mug.