by Deborah Bee
‘So there are two parts to this. Firstly, we want you to get better and be safe.’
I’ll find you anywhere.
You know I will.
You will never be safe.
You know that.
‘Secondly, we want to follow up with an investigation so that we can prevent any more of what’s been going on. We’ll have to ask you some more questions that you might find uncomfortable. Do you understand that, Clare?’
I nod.
The bandages on my neck pull.
‘A police doctor would need to examine you. Properly. You know. But only if you give your permission.’
I nod again.
‘They need to record the evidence. They will need to take pictures.’
Pictures?
What for?
What do they need pictures for?
‘And a detective will be appointed to your case and will come and take a statement from you. That might mean you have to answer the same questions again, Clare, but it’s necessary. We need to get enough evidence so we can prosecute, so she’ll need your full cooperation. She’s waiting outside.’
Evidence.
Prosecute.
‘Evidence?’
I mouth the word.
No sound comes out.
She’s smiling, nodding, smiling, nodding.
‘Prosecute?’
‘Your partner. Whoever did this to you,’ she says.
YOU ASKED FOR THIS, BITCH!
Silence.
Dark.
‘Clare, can you hear me?’
The caseworker in the homemade cardigan has gone.
There’s another woman. A different one. Grey hair. Pink blouse. Broken veins on her cheeks. Wild hair.
‘Do you know where you are?’
I half nod.
‘I’d like you to sit up now. Just slowly. That’s it.’
She presses a remote control, staring out of the window, as though she’s thinking about something else.
There’s a click, and the top half of the bed starts to hum and rattle me into an upright position. The remote’s joined to the side of the bed by a springy spiral cord.
The pillows behind my head slip a little and there’s a wet patch under my neck; the bandages across my chin are dragging on the corner of my mouth.
The oxygen mask has gone.
She clips the remote back on the bed frame.
It’s a private room with views of the sky down one wall, a windowsill in front.
Some water in a plastic jug, a plastic glass and an orange.
Just one orange.
On its own.
Black plastic cushions for somewhere to sit.
The sky is a rectangle of flat grey.
No discernible clouds.
No blue.
The occasional bird, nothing else.
There’s a window to my left as well, with blinds. Through the slats I can see into the corridor. There’s a row of chairs with a policewoman sitting at one end, speaking into her phone. She has a black-and-white checked scarf fanning out from under her white collar.
Her lipstick makes her mouth look mean.
She’s watching me out of the corner of her eye.
Pretending not to.
Eyes down.
I’m covered with a sheet but there’s some kind of box under the sheet where my feet should be.
The woman with the broken veins on her face seems more interested in the sky.
‘It’s for your leg,’ she says, flicking her eyes my way. ‘You have severe bruising on your right calf.’
See this piece of wood.
How hard do you think this piece of wood is?
Go on, Coco.
Have a guess.
It’s a game.
Have a guess.
I said HAVE A GUESS.
Oh no.
Sorry.
I bet it’s harder than you thought, right?
Is it harder than you thought?
Is it?
‘Probably done in the last week or so,’ she says, without asking.
I shrug.
‘I’m a police doctor, Clare. Do you know what that is?’
I nod.
‘I’m making a report regarding your injuries. I have already examined you, I expect Celia your caseworker already explained to you but just in case I’ll explain it again.’
She washes her hands in the sink and examines her teeth in the mirror.
‘I’m a doctor, but I also work for the police.’ She switches focus and looks at me in the mirror and shakes her hands dry. ‘Part of my job is to record injuries so that there is evidence that might be useful in a prosecution.
‘Part of the examination involves me taking photographs. I will also have to ask you some questions. From there, I will write a report that can be used in court.’
I nod again. She’s leafing through the pages stuck to the clipboard, reading at the same time as talking.
It’s like she’s on automatic pilot.
‘So now, we’d like you to try to have something to eat.’ She looks up and smiles. ‘And a drink.’ She nods. ‘Be good to get some food inside you. Right? Will you have some ice cream? I know that sounds like an odd thing to have but I think you might find it soothing.’
I nod.
A nurse is standing with her head through the door. She’s so new her uniform looks like it’s wearing her. It’s stiff and the shoulder seams sit beyond where her arms start. She looks so worried she might cry. She wipes her nose on the back of her thumb, nods and closes the door.
‘Do you remember the last time you ate anything, Clare,’ she says, looking at the metal clipboard she’s picked up from the end of the bed. ‘Your glucose levels are remarkably low.’
‘Yesterday,’ I whisper. ‘I had something yesterday.’
I’m sure I did.
‘Sixty-four milligrams. Hypoglycaemia,’ she says to herself. ‘You’re not diabetic, Clare, are you?’
I frown.
‘Any history of diabetes in your family?’
I shrug.
‘How much do you usually drink? Alcohol, I mean.’
I shake my head. The bandage snags on my lip.
‘What, not ever?’
‘No,’ I whisper.
‘If only there were more people like you in the world the NHS would go out of business.’
She laughs at her own joke.
Celia comes in.
My caseworker.
Same cardigan.
‘Hi, Clare, remember me?’ she says, smiling, nodding. ‘You fainted, nothing to worry about, really.’
She sits by the bed on the grey plastic armchair again. There’s a yellow blanket folded over the arm and she busies herself, folds the handles of her handbag carefully inside it and pushes it into the corner of the windowsill. Then she folds her cardigan over the top of the bag and makes the whole parcel as small as humanly possible.
A bit OCD.
She pours some water into the cup, raises her eyebrows at me and offers me the cup, which I take. She switches on a lamp behind the headboard.
The sky has got darker.
She folds her arms and stares, with her back to me, at the grey terraced rooftops and flickering orange street lights.
I wonder what she’s thinking.
‘Do you remember exactly what you ate yesterday?’ asks the doctor. ‘Clare? That might help us understand why your glucose level is so low. It’s not uncommon in situations like this . . .’
Your tits are saggy.
You need surgery.
You look old.
Ignorant bitch.
SLAP.
‘I had some Diet Coke and some rice cakes.’
Drink this.
It will clean your insides out.
‘What, that’s it?’ says the doctor, looking at me like I’m stupid. ‘You girls are all addicted to Diet Coke and rice cakes. What about some potatoes? Green vegetables? Some bread? Or rice?
Brown rice is much nicer than everyone says it is.’
Celia puts her hand up to her neck and catches the doctor’s eye.
The doctor raises her eyebrows.
The nurse comes back with a tray.
There’s a polystyrene bowl with a scoop of yellow ice cream in and a glass of milk.
‘I’ll come back in an hour,’ says the doctor. ‘Enjoy!’ she says as she shuts the door behind her.
‘I’m Dr Ridley, by the way,’ she says, as she pokes her head back through the door again. ‘Nice ice cream?’
‘Delicious,’ I whisper, as I quietly spit it into a paper towel.
Celia is watching my reflection in the window.
‘That policewoman sitting outside is DC Walker. She’s been assigned to your case. Would you like to speak to her yet?’
I shake my head.
‘She’s going to stay right there until she’s had a chance to have a chat with you, if that’s OK. We need a signed statement before we can go ahead any further.’
There’s an awkward silence.
‘How many more police are here?’
She looks blankly at me.
‘For my protection?’ I whisper.
She shakes her head.
‘I need police protection. That’s what I went to the police station for.’
My throat is burning.
‘They’re sending someone to your house,’ she says. ‘To see if he’s there.’
‘My house!’ I whisper, tears spilling down my face. ‘What if they tell him where I am? He said he will kill me, and kill my friends. He said he will kill them first and make me watch.’
‘You don’t have to worry. No one’s going to tell anyone anything, Clare. I promise you that.
‘Now, have some more ice cream. It’ll help,’ smiling and nodding.
‘But he’ll know where I am . . . He’ll know that I’m sick . . .’
There’s a sound from the corridor. A phone ringing. DC Walker presses a mobile to her ear. At the same time, there’s a sharp clang as metal hits metal. Through the blinds I can see the policewoman stand up, suddenly.
A bed is wheeled past.
Just a bed.
Calm.
That’s all.
Just a bed.
Breathe.
The policewoman sits back down, still talking on the phone, she laughing now.
Breathe.
Next to a man.
Babe.
It’s him!
Coco.
He’s here.
Sharp gulp of air.
Hurting my throat.
He’s here.
I’ll be watching you, even when you think I won’t.
Looking at me through the window.
Quick. Turn my face away.
He’s here.
Staring right at me in the reflection in the window.
Smiling.
Scramble off the bed.
Staring.
Laughing.
Laughing at me.
Behind the bed.
The catheter bag is tangled up in the spiral cord.
‘Clare! What are you doing?’
Hide.
Hide.
Hide.
Hide.
‘Clare, get back into bed. You can’t do . . .’
‘Get away, get away, get away . . .’
Can’t breathe.
Rocking.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
He’s singing.
Every move you make
Every vow you break
Every smile you fake
Every claim you stake
I’ll be watching you.
Fourteen
Sally
Last time I looked, they were supposed to be welcoming in women’s refuges, kind, empathetic, that sort of thing, that’s what I thought anyway.
‘I don’t know what you are getting upset about, Sally,’ says Mrs Henry. Mrs Henry is the woman who runs the place. ‘Most women don’t bring anything with them. They are quite happy to simply select some clothes from the garment wardrobe. Everything is clean, you know.’
And I don’t know why this woman is getting so arsey with me, honest I don’t. Back in the day, they didn’t used to be bossy.
‘Look, no offence, Mrs Henry,’ I say back, ‘but what’s the sodding point of borrowing clothes when my bags are packed and sitting right by my front door like Sue said “in case you have to move fast”, like, not ten minutes from here? We just need to go and get ’em!’
Sue had got a call from some bloke at that Liverpool nick, who said that the Governor was an arse and it looked like Terry was out after all. Sue had gone green, Livvy’d said. She’d been more worried than I was.
PC Chapman, nice lass, blonde hair up in a high ponytail, was to take me up York Gate.
‘York Gate?’ I’d said.
‘The refuge they’re just doing up,’ she’d said. ‘I know it’s not ideal, but we’re desperate – we’ve checked and they’ve got space.’
‘Oh, that place in Regent’s Park. State-of-the-art. What ’bout my bags?’ I’d said.
‘Later,’ she’d said. ‘Can’t waste any time. Let’s just get there.’
So that’s why I’m here, and no bags.
She’s huffing and puffing like a steam train, Mrs Henry, up this corridor, down that corridor, up these stairs, and round that corner. Is it just me, or are women like her a pain in the backside?
‘If DS Clarke had thought it was a good idea for you to go back to your flat, then someone would have taken you back to your flat. Fact is, she didn’t. Fact is, she said you were an emergency admission. So, hello. You’re here now,’ she says. ‘Make the best of it.’ She marches off down yet another magnolia-painted corridor ahead of me.
Hell, she’s one of those army wives, you know the type, tweed and twinset, has had to find things to busy herself with while her husband’s away driving tanks in Afghanistan or something.
‘Mrs Henry, I’ve got the clothes I stand in,’ I say, trying to appeal to her on a human level, ‘to be very specific, I am wearing the one pair of pants I have with me. I do not want charity pants, thank you very much.’
‘Everyone else manages with the garment wardrobe, Mrs Parton,’ she says, coming to a halt outside the front door of flat 9, and twisting the Yale key in the lock.
‘Miss; it’s Miss Parton,’ I go.
I bet she doesn’t have charity pants on; she’ll have a 24-hour girdle. Do they still make 24-hour girdles? I bet you could find one in the back of a Saga catalogue.
‘Someone can easily go down to Marks tomorrow and buy you some new pants.’
Or I can just go and get my godforsaken bags, I think to myself. I mean, Terry’s not exactly the four horsemen of the apocalypse, is he! Is it four or is it seven? I don’t know. And he won’t have access to a private jet either, now will he? Sue is being cautious, that’s all, and maybe she feels a bit responsible for not knowing that Terry was due for release already, like gone already, wires crossed somewhere between here and Liverpool.
‘Do you want to tell me a little bit about yourself, Sally?’ says Mrs Henry, drawing some tired-out looking curtains in the tiny little sitting room. ‘Your room is just through there,’ she says, pointing. This is probably around the time I would put my bags on my bed, I think to myself, if I had any bags.
‘Well, as you know, I’m here on the advice of the police,’ I start. Mrs Henry has her back to me, checking the insides of the cupboards in the sitting room.
‘There’s rodent activity in here,’ she says. ‘You afraid of rats?’
‘Not the four-legged kind,’ I say.
‘God knows how they get in. Must have wings,’ she says. ‘Slippery little fellows, rats. Sorry you were saying . . .?’
‘My ex-husband was put inside twenty years ago. I was a witness for the prosecution. My evidence rubber-stamped his conviction; well, he thought that at
any rate, and if you ask me, he’s not wrong.’
She nods.
‘He always was a bit of an angry man, born that way.’ I grin a grin I don’t really intend, it’s what I always do, to make people feel less awkward, if you know what I mean.
‘Well, you’ll be very safe here,’ she says. The ‘very’ makes me suspicious. ‘Very’ safe, she says, you’re either safe or you’re not, right?
‘We have state–’
‘–of-the-art-security,’ I finish for her. ‘So I hear.’
‘The police have a silent intruder alarm connected to the station, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.’
‘What about a noisy intruder alarm?’ I say.
‘We haven’t had any of those yet either, Sally,’ she says, choosing to ignore the joke. She winks and clatters down the stairs. ‘Why they don’t put lifts into these buildings, I just don’t know,’ she’s saying.
From my third-floor sitting-room (and I use the term loosely) window you can see way up the railway line, halfway to Euston station, I reckon, eight tracks that snake across the mud and stones, between weed bushes and walls of meaningless graffiti. Well, I think it’s meaningless, I don’t know about you; maybe you understand this stuff: ‘Adore & Endure’ sprayed in pink with a swirling raspberry ripple ice-cream cone; ‘FML’ in red and yellow lightning strikes; ‘Vapour’ in electric blue, all turned ugly shades of orange by the street lights.
He got twenty years in prison, Terry, for killing Hayley; twenty years, that’s all, for stealing a life, and she was a good girl. White-wine Hayley, we used to call her. We’d be knocking back pints of lager top, or rum and black, or Bacardi and Coke, but white-wine Hayley only ever had white wine.
‘Another white wine, Hayl?’ we’d yell and she’d nod till she was half falling over. On her way home she’d regularly fall asleep in people’s front gardens. She regularly fell asleep in her own front garden too; she did that more than twice and her mam nearly killed her.
I’ve spent the last twenty years looking over my shoulder, on my own – no family, no friends, not really. Apart from a few colleagues from work, oh, and Sue, but she was only every month or so. You ask me, it’s the exact same as prison, right? You’re not actually locked up, but you don’t have contact with the people you want have contact with. You ask me, I’d rather have spent it with my mam, with Jake, with Dawn and Beth and Jan and Charmian – the crew. And Hayley.