Hurting Distance aka The Truth-Teller's Lie

by Sophie Hannah

  She turned to Gibbs. ‘When am I going to get my computer back?’

  ‘It’s back,’ he said. ‘At Naomi Jenkins’ house.’

  ‘But . . . I’m staying here now. I need it to work.’

  ‘I’m not a removals man. You’ll have to fetch it yourself.’

  Charlie decided it was time to air her theory. ‘Yvon, is there any chance that it was you who was raped three years ago? Was that why you were in a state, and why your marriage started to fall apart? Did Naomi write to the Speak Out and Survive website on your behalf, and sign it with her initials to preserve your anonymity?’

  It took a while for the suggestion to sink in. Yvon looked as if she was trying to assemble something inside her head, a machine with many complicated parts. Once she’d succeeded in doing so, she looked horrified. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not. What a terrible thing to say! How can you wish that on me?’

  Charlie had little patience for emotional blackmail. ‘All right,’ she said, standing up. ‘That’ll do for now, but we’ll probably want to talk to you again. You’re not planning on going anywhere, are you?’

  ‘I might be, yes,’ said Yvon, like a child who’d been caught out.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘A place in Scotland. Ben said I need a break, and he’s right.’

  ‘He going too?’

  ‘Yes. As a friend. I don’t know why you’re so interested in me and Ben.’

  ‘I’m an all-rounder,’ Charlie told her.

  ‘We’ve nothing to do with this.’

  ‘We’ll need an address.’

  Yvon reached for her small black handbag, which was beside the sofa, among the mugs and the newspapers. A few moments later she handed Charlie a card she recognised.

  ‘Silver Brae Chalets?’ Charlie kept her voice steady. ‘You’re going here? Why here?’

  ‘I get a big discount, if you must know. I designed their website.’

  ‘How did you come to do that?’

  Yvon looked baffled by Charlie’s interest. ‘Graham, the owner, he’s a friend of my dad’s. Dad was his tutor at uni.’

  ‘Which university?’

  ‘Oxford. Graham got the highest first in classics in his year. My dad was disappointed that he didn’t become a don. Why do you want to know all this?’

  There was a question to avoid. Graham, a classics don. He’d teased Charlie for mentioning a book she’d read: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Very posh, guv. He was probably embarrassed by his cleverness. Modest. Stop it, Charlie told herself. You’re not fond of him. You just fancied him in a fleeting, temporary sort of way. That’s all.

  ‘Has Naomi ever been to Silver Brae Chalets?’ she asked. ‘She had one of their cards.’

  Yvon shook her head. ‘I tried to persuade her, but . . . after she met Robert, she didn’t ever want to go away. I think she thought that if she couldn’t go with him, she’d rather not bother.’

  Charlie was thinking fast. So that was why Naomi had the card. Graham knew Yvon Cotchin; now Charlie had no choice but to ring him. Naomi and Robert might have been to Silver Brae Chalets, whatever Yvon said.

  ‘What do you care about Miss Minty Fags and her hippie husband? ’ Gibbs snapped, once they were back in the car. ‘Arrogant cock-shite! There we were, staring at his bong collection on the windowsill, and he didn’t give a toss!’

  ‘I’m interested in other people’s relationships,’ Charlie told him.

  ‘Apart from mine. Boring old Chris Gibbs and his boring girlfriend.’

  Charlie massaged her temples with the balls of her hands. ‘Gibbs, if you don’t want to get married, for God’s sake, don’t. Tell Debbie you’ve changed your mind.’

  Gibbs studied the road ahead. ‘I bet you’d all like that, wouldn’t you?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Prue Kelvey. She was sitting on her hands, looking at an enlarged photograph of Robert Haworth. Sam Kombothekra thought he was doing an excellent job of concealing his disappointment. ‘When you first showed it to me, I was surprised—it’s not the face I’ve been seeing in my mind since . . . since it happened. But memory and . . . feelings distort things, don’t they? And this man is similar to the one in my head. It could be him. I just didn’t . . . I can’t say that I recognise him.’ There was a long pause. Then she asked, ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. I’m sorry.’

  Kelvey accepted this without an argument. Sam decided not to tell her that the DNA profile taken from her rape kit was in the process of being compared with that of a man from the Culver Valley who’d been accused of a very similar crime. He sensed that Prue Kelvey didn’t really want him to tell her anything; she was still reeling from the shock of finding Sam on her doorstep. He predicted it would be a few days before she got in touch to ask for more information.

  She’d always been unsure of herself, tentative about everything she said apart from what was absolutely unequivocal. Sam hoped he’d have more luck with Sandy Freeguard. When he got up to leave, Prue Kelvey sagged with relief, and Sam felt awful when it occurred to him that, apart from her rapist’s face, his own must be the one she associated most closely with her horrific ordeal.

  It was an hour’s drive, give or take, from Kelvey’s house to Freeguard’s. This wasn’t the first time Sam had driven from one woman’s house to the other’s. He didn’t mind the M62, unless it was nose to tail. The part he hated was the slog through Shipley and Bradford, past grimy, crumbling council flats and the shiny but equally depressing sprawl of the retail park and the new cinema with its multi-storey car park and chain restaurants. Big, grey, greedy blocks. Could architecture get any less imaginative?

  The roads were mercifully empty, and Sam pulled up outside Sandy Freeguard’s house forty-five minutes after leaving Otley. Freeguard was, in many ways, Prue Kelvey’s polar opposite. She had made Sam feel at ease from the start, and he quickly stopped worrying about what he said to her. She always smiled when he turned up unannounced, always kept up a constant stream of comforting banter, barely allowing him to get a word in edgeways. If he lost concentration even for a moment, there was no hope of catching up. Sandy covered several dozen topics per minute. Sam liked her, and suspected her garrulousness was a deliberate strategy, to take the pressure off him. Did she guess how hard it was for him, dealing with women like herself, who had been through hell at the hands of men? It made him feel guilty and apprehensive. None of the men he knew were like that; the thought of knowing anyone who’d do what had been done to Prue Kelvey and to Sandy Freeguard made Sam want to be sick.

  ‘. . . but, of course, it could have been that Peter and Sue were the ones who’d got the wrong end of the stick, and that’s why Kavitha thought I’d mind.’

  Sam hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. Peter, Sue and Kavitha were his colleagues. Sandy Freeguard was on first-name terms with the whole team. She had given them all hope, even when it had started to look as if they might not catch the man who’d attacked her. She refused to be downcast. Instead, she set up a local victim-support group, trained as a counsellor, did voluntary work for Rape Crisis and the Samaritans. Last time Sam had seen her, she’d been talking about writing a book. ‘Might as well,’ she’d said, smiling ruefully. ‘I’m a writer, after all, and this is a subject that isn’t going to leave me alone. At first I thought it’d be exploitative to write about my experience, but . . . sod it, the only person I’d be exploiting is me, so if I don’t mind, why should anyone else?’

  Sam interrupted her chatter. ‘I’ve got a photograph to show you, Sandy,’ he said. ‘We think it might be him.’

  She stopped, mouth open. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘You mean, you might have him?’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘Go on, then, show me,’ she said. Her eyes were already searching his clothing, looking at his hands to see if he was carrying anything. If he wasn’t quick about producing the picture, she might frisk him.

  He pulled the photograph out of his trouser pocket and passe
d it to her. She took a quick look, then inspected Sam curiously. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ she said.

  ‘Of course not. It’s not him?’

  ‘No. Definitely not.’

  ‘I’m sorry . . .’ Guilt swarmed in, clogging Sam’s mind. He should have told her not to get her hopes up. He shouldn’t have brought out the picture so quickly, whatever Sandy thought she wanted. Maybe she wasn’t as tough as she seemed, maybe this would—

  ‘Sam, I know this man.’

  ‘What?’ He looked up, shocked. ‘But you said—’

  ‘I said he wasn’t the man who raped me.’ Sandy Freeguard laughed at his astonished expression. ‘This is Robert Haworth. What on earth made you think it was him?’

  17

  Friday, April 7

  I AM HOLDING your hand. It’s hard to convey the power of this feeling to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. My body glows and crackles as you burn away the darkness inside me with a furious warmth. Something in me has been switched on by your touch and I feel the way I felt on that first day at the service station: alight, safe. I have scrambled back up on to the ledge. I was fading, and now, just in time, I have been plugged back into my source of life. Do you feel this too? I won’t bother to ask the nurses. They would talk about probabilities and statistics. They would say, ‘Studies have shown . . .’

  I know you know I’m here. You don’t have to move, or say anything; I can feel the energy of recognition flowing from your hand into mine.

  Sergeant Zailer stands in the corner of your room, watching us. On the way here, she warned me that I might find the sight of you distressing, but she saw how wrong she was when we arrived and I ran to your bed, as eager to touch you as I always have been. I see you, Robert, not the bandages, not the tubes. Only you, and the screen that shows that your heart is pumping, alive. I don’t need any doctors to tell me about your firm, steady heart.

  Your bed has been adjusted so that the top part is at an angle, to support your back. You look comfortable, as if you’ve fallen asleep on a sunlounger, with a book on your lap. Peaceful.

  ‘This is the first time,’ I tell Sergeant Zailer. ‘The first and only time he’s managed to escape, in his whole life. That’s why he isn’t ready to wake up yet.’

  She looks sceptical. ‘Remember, we haven’t got all day,’ she says.

  I grip your hand. ‘Robert?’ I begin tentatively. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. I love you.’ I am determined to talk to you in exactly the way I would if we were alone; I don’t want you to notice a difference in my manner and feel disorientated and scared. I am still me, and you’re still you; the strange situation we’re in hasn’t changed us one bit, has it, Robert? We must think of Sergeant Zailer as part of the furniture, no different from the small black television on the high shelf opposite your bed, the green chair with wooden arms that I’m sitting on, or the small plastic round-edged table with the glass and jug of water on it.

  They like round edges in this hospital. There are no right angles between the floor and the walls. Instead, the two are joined by a curved seal of grey rubber that runs all the way round the room. Seeing it makes me think of all the harmful things that must be kept outside, kept away from you.

  Behind your bed, on the wall, there’s a big red emergency button. My having to leave soon makes this an emergency.

  ‘That’s a bit daft,’ I say, stroking your arm. ‘They’ve put out water and a glass on the table, but how are you supposed to drink it? Someone in this hospital’s got a strange sense of humour.’ My tone is light, frivolous. I have always been the one who jollies us both along. I’m not going to sit beside you and wring my hands and weep. You’ve been through enough already and I don’t want to make it worse.

  ‘Actually, maybe it’s a kind of bribe,’ I say. ‘Same with the telly on the wall. Do the doctors come in and tell you that if you wake up quickly, you can watch Cash In the Attic and have a drink of tap water? It’s not great, is it, as incentives go? They should fill that jug with champagne instead.’

  If you could smile, you would. You once told me that you love champagne, but only drink it in restaurants. I felt wounded, and thought it was tactless of you to mention it, since we have never been to a restaurant together and at the time I feared we never would. I pictured you and Juliet at the Bay Tree—where you went to get my Magret de Canard aux Poires—happy to chat endlessly to the chef when he emerged from the kitchen because you knew you’d have plenty of time to talk to one another later—the rest of your lives. I can still see that picture in my mind, and it stings my heart.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d have your own room,’ I say. ‘It’s nice. Everything’s so clean. Does a cleaner come in every day?’

  I leave a pause before speaking again. I want you to know how much I hope you’ll answer me.

  ‘You’ve got a great view, too. A little square courtyard, covered with crazy paving. With benches around three sides and a knot garden in the middle.’ I look at Sergeant Zailer. ‘Is it called a knot garden?’

  She shrugs. ‘I’m the wrong person to ask about gardens. I hate the things. Haven’t got one and don’t want one.’

  ‘It is called a knot garden. And on one side of the courtyard, there’s a row of round bushes. If you turn your head to the right and open your eyes, you’ll be able to see it.’

  Sergeant Zailer’s mobile begins to ring. The noise startles me and I drop your hand. I expect her to apologise and switch her phone off, but she takes the call. She says, ‘Yep’, several times, and then, ‘Really?’ I wonder if the call has anything to do with you or Juliet.

  ‘Do you know what happened to you?’ I whisper, leaning in closer. ‘I don’t, not exactly, but the police think Juliet attacked you. I think that’s what happened. You very nearly died, but you didn’t. Thanks to me, you were found in time. You had an operation—’

  There is a knock at the door. I turn and see the nurse who showed us in, a plump young woman with blond hair scraped back into a short, high ponytail. I’m scared she’s going to say I have to leave, but it is Sergeant Zailer she’s glaring at. ‘I’ve told you before, no mobile phones on the ward. It interferes with our machines. Switch it off.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Sergeant Zailer puts her phone back in her bag. Once the nurse has gone, she tells me, ‘It’s bollocks, that stuff about the machines. The doctors use their mobiles in here all the time. Stupid woman.’

  ‘She’s just doing her job,’ I say. ‘Like most people’s, it involves the random application of nonsensical rules. You should understand, given what you do for a living.’

  ‘Two more minutes and we’re going,’ she warns me. ‘I’ve got work to do.’

  I turn away from her, back to you. ‘I don’t think you mind being here, do you?’ I say. ‘A lot of people hate hospitals, but I don’t think you do. We’ve never talked about it, but I bet if we did, you’d say you quite like them, for the same reason that you like service stations.’

  ‘He likes service stations?’ Sergeant Zailer’s voice intrudes. ‘Sorry, but . . . I’ve never heard of that before. Everyone hates service stations.’

  I’ve never hated them, and since you and I met I have loved them. Not just Rawndesley East—all motorway service stations. You’re right: they are totally self-contained, places that could be nowhere or anywhere, free of what you once called the tyranny of geography. ‘Each one’s like a world that exists outside real space and real time,’ you said. ‘I like them because I’ve got an overactive imagination.’

  ‘Do all lorry drivers feel that way about them?’ I teased you. ‘Is it a sort of vocation thing?’

  You replied as if my question had been deadly serious: ‘I don’t know. Could be.’

  Now, every time I drive past a sign that says ‘Moto’ or ‘Welcome Break’ and see a small picture of a bed, white lines against a blue background, I think of us and of room eleven.

  ‘I went there last night,’ I tell you. ‘To our room. I thought . . . I couldn’t be
ar to miss a week.’

  ‘You were at the Traveltel last night?’ Sergeant Zailer interrupts again.

  I nod.

  ‘But I collected you from home this morning.’

  ‘I left the Traveltel at five-thirty and was home for six,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not sleeping much at the moment. I’m allowed to do that, aren’t I?’

  ‘If you really want to.’

  Her phone rings again. This time I don’t let go of your hand. ‘Yep,’ she says. ‘What?’ She looks at me in an odd way. ‘Yeah. I’ll ring you back.’

  ‘What?’ I ask, not caring if I’m overstepping the mark.

  ‘Wait here,’ she tells me. ‘I’ll be ten seconds.’

  Once she’s gone, I walk over to the table and pour myself a glass of water. ‘She’s not allowed to leave us alone,’ I say. ‘She told me on the way here. But she has. Which is good. It means she trusts me more than she did at first. Maybe seeing us together’s made her realise . . .’ I take a deep breath. ‘Juliet tried to kill you, Robert. You can divorce her. And then we can get married. Will we still go to the Traveltel every Thursday once we’re married? It wouldn’t surprise me if you—’ I stop. My heart springs up into my throat. I blink, to check I’m not hallucinating.

  Your eyelids and lips are twitching. Your eyes are open.

  I drop the water, run over to you, grab your hand. ‘Robert?’

  ‘Naomi.’ It’s more of an exhalation than a word spoken aloud.