A Room Swept White

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘You leave a message for me saying you’re trying to set up an interview with Judith Duffy and you need to ask why I’m angry?’

  ‘I’ve set up interviews with lots of people,’ I tell him. ‘Judith Duffy’s the one person so far who’s refused to—’

  ‘Judith Duffy ruins lives! Turn off that drivel, for fuck’s sake.’

  Is he talking about his television, that he switched on when I wasn’t even here?

  ‘I’m not your servant, Laurie.’ With feeling, I add, ‘And I don’t love black and white films – I only said it because it’s . . . well, it’s so hard to talk to you, and I have to say something. Come to think of it, people who bang on about how they love black and white movies really annoy me. It’s blatant film racism. A film can be good or bad whatever its . . . colour scheme.’

  Laurie examines me through narrowed eyes. ‘Ring your GP. Tell him the anti-psychotics aren’t working.’

  ‘Who’s Wendy Whitehead?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Wendy Whitehead.’

  ‘Never heard of her. Who is she?’

  ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t need to ask you, would I?’ I make a show of looking at my watch. ‘I’ve got things to do. Was there something you wanted to say to me?’

  Laurie hauls himself off the bed, looks me up and down, then turns to pick up his tie. He drapes it round his neck and, holding it at both ends, pulls it back and forth so that it scratches against his shirt. ‘Judith Duffy’d cut off her own legs sooner than talk to anyone from Binary Star,’ he says.

  ‘I thought of that. I didn’t tell her where I worked, just my name.’

  ‘Are you waiting for me to pat you on the head and tell you how clever you are?’ he sneers. I’m glad he’s being so rude and offensive; it’s the best thing that could have happened. As of this moment, I officially don’t love him any more. That deluded phase of my life is so over. ‘You want me to make this film, don’t you?’ I say icily. ‘How am I supposed to do that without—’

  Laurie grabs my shoulders, pulls me towards him. His mouth collides with my lips. His teeth bang against mine. A tooth for a tooth, I think automatically. I taste blood and try to push him away, but he’s stronger than I am, and makes a cage out of his arms to trap me. It takes me a few seconds to realise that what he thinks he’s doing is kissing me.

  I have just had sex with Laurie Nattrass. Laurie Nattrass just had sex with me. Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. Proper, complete sex, not the silly Bill Clinton kind. Or rather, not only the silly Bill Clinton kind. Which, of course, isn’t at all silly as long as no one suggests it’s an end in itself. Bad choice of words. What I mean is, it’s no substitute for the real thing, the thing that Laurie and I just . . . oh, my God.

  It can’t be true. It is true. It only doesn’t seem true because he’s now acting as if it didn’t happen. He’s staring at the TV screen and doing that thing with his tie round his neck again, as if his hands are having a tug of war. Would he notice if I discreetly reached for my bag, pulled out my phone and rang Tamsin? I could do with talking to someone impartial. Not about the sex itself – that would be crude, and I’d be too embarrassed to use any anatomical words – but about the weirdness that started when the sex finished. That’s the part I’d really like to put under the microscope of gossipy analysis: the way Laurie managed to have all his clothes back on within three seconds, and what he said as he sat back down on the bed beside me, seeming not to notice that I was still naked: ‘Stupid mistake. My fault.’ At first I thought he was talking about us, but then he said, ‘Her phone number was in the files I gave you. I should have taken it out. Thought you’d have more sense than to ring her, though.’

  Can it have happened the way I remember it? Surely there was an organic, transitional phase I failed to notice, some word or gesture on his part that bridged the gap between intimacy and discussion of the film. I wish I could check with Laurie that until a few minutes ago he was lying on top of me, but I’m getting the strong sense that he’s moved on and wouldn’t welcome a recap. Besides, how would I put it: ‘Could you be so good as to confirm the following details?’ Ridiculous. Obviously.

  I don’t need to check anything with anyone, for God’s sake. I was here, wasn’t I? The trouble is, it’s too recent – maybe four minutes, maximum – since we . . . er, brought things to a conclusion. I’ve been mulling it over and I’ve decided that the temporal proximity of the event doesn’t mean my memory’s any more likely to be accurate than if it had happened five years ago. In five years’ time, I hope to be able to be clinically objective about this afternoon, so that knowing what actually happened between me and Laurie won’t be a problem then as it is now.

  I wish I could talk to Tamsin.

  If I lie still and don’t put my clothes back on, will Laurie have sex with me again?

  ‘Duffy won’t ring you back,’ he says. ‘She’ll assume you’re an enemy. By now she thinks everyone’s an enemy.’ He seems pleased about this, as if it’s what she deserves. I’m not convinced it does the world any good for any person to have only enemies, not to mention the individual involved, no matter what they’ve done, but I say nothing. ‘Every detail of her personal and professional life has been judged by the tabloids and been found wanting,’ says Laurie with relish. ‘From her neglect of her own children when they were small in favour of her career, to the beefed-up qualifications on her first ever CV, to the two marriages she sabotaged by being a workaholic. By now the whole world knows what a bitch she is, and she knows it.’

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ I say brightly, this being the best I can do in the circumstances. As subtly as possible, I shuffle to the edge of the bed and pull on my knickers, bra, shirt and trousers. I can see my bag. It’s not fully zipped up; I can see the edge of my phone poking out. Oh, what the hell. If Laurie can stare at the TV, mess about with his tie and talk about work . . .

  I reach for my phone and switch it on. The message icon flashes on the screen, but I’m not interested in what anyone might have to say to me, only in the earth-shattering news I have to impart. I send Tamsin a text saying, ‘Laurie pounced on me. We had sex. Immediately after, he dressed, acted like nothing had happened and started talking about Judith Duffy. Good sign that he can be himself around me instead of putting on false romantic act?’ I sign off with an F and two kisses, and send it. Then I turn my phone off again. Just because I was desperate to tell Tamsin doesn’t mean I’m ready to deal with her reaction. I smile to myself. By deliberately including in the text a question that only a self-deceiving lovestruck fool would ask, I have inoculated myself against becoming that self-deceiving lovestruck fool. Tamsin will realise I was sending up the sort of girly women we hate, who never swear or burp in public and are much less canny than we are.

  ‘I read the article you wrote,’ I tell Laurie. ‘ “The Doctor Who Lied”.’

  There, see? Sex, love – they’re just bodily functions as far as I’m concerned. I’ve forgotten all about both, in fact. They’re trivialities, to be squeezed into the gaps between making brilliant, award-winning documentaries.

  ‘Best thing I’ve ever written,’ Laurie says.

  ‘What? Oh, right: the article.’ It’s hard to concentrate when every inch of your skin is fizzing, and you feel as if you’re lurching through space, high above the real world and the ordinary mortals who inhabit it. Concentrate, Fliss. Be a grown-up. ‘I’m not sure you should publish it in its present form,’ I say.

  Laurie laughs. ‘Thank you, Leo Tolstoy.’

  ‘Seriously. At the moment it comes across as . . . well, biased. And nasty. As if you enjoy sticking the knife in. Doesn’t that kind of . . . I don’t know, weaken you? Undermine your argument? You present Judith Duffy as a hundred per cent evil and everyone who takes a stand against her as flawless: brilliant, trustworthy, heroic. I lost count of the enthusiastic adjectives you used to describe the people who agree with you. You talk about Dr Russell Meredew as if he’s the second coming. It makes the whole thing s
ound too much like a fairy story, with handsome princes and boo-hiss villains. Wouldn’t it be better to present the facts and let them speak for themselves?’

  ‘Tell me you’re not going to interview Judith Duffy,’ Laurie barks at me.

  I can’t, so I carry on with my lecture. ‘You say the friends and family of Helen Yardley and Sarah Jaggard are the “real experts”, the people who actually knew them. You imply Judith Duffy ought to have taken notice when they said the women were innocent . . .’

  ‘I more than imply it.’

  ‘But that’s crazy,’ I say. ‘No one wants to think that someone they love might be a killer. It reflects badly on them, doesn’t it? Their choice of best friend, or partner, or childminder. Surely their opinions are the least objective and reliable? And you can’t have it both ways. If the nearest and dearest are the real experts, what about Angus Hines? He thought Ray was guilty, but you didn’t let that sway you any more than Judith Duffy let Paul Yardley or Glen Jaggard’s views sway her.’

  Laurie stands up. ‘Anything else, before you leave?’

  He’s kicking me out for having the wrong opinion. Or maybe he would have kicked me out anyway.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, determined to show I’m not intimidated by him. For an insane second, I consider telling him I’m speaking from personal experience, the worst experience of my life. No one can be objective about the culpability of a loved one. It’s simply not possible. I have days when I think my dad must have been corrupt through and through – evil, almost – and days when I think he deserves no blame at all, and miss him so much I feel I might as well be dead too.

  ‘I didn’t like the bit in the article about Benjamin Evans’ mum being a single mother and a prostitute,’ I say eventually. ‘You seemed to be suggesting that those two things made her more likely than Dorne Llewellyn to have shaken—’

  ‘You read an out of date version,’ Laurie cuts me off. ‘Editor of the British Journalism Review agreed with you, so I took that bit out. I’ll email you a copy of the sanitised version, in which I don’t mention that Rhiannon Evans is a hooker who sings Judith Duffy’s praises at every available opportunity and is keen for Dorne Llewellyn to stay in prison for the rest of her life.’

  ‘Don’t be angry with me, Laurie.’

  He snorts dismissively. ‘Do you know how easily your job could disappear? Carry on pursuing Judith Duffy and that’s what’ll happen. If you think I’m going to stand by and let you and her use my film as a vehicle for airing her distorted—’

  ‘I’m not going to do anything like that,’ I yell at him. ‘I want to talk to her, that’s all. I’m not saying you’re wrong about her. She’s the bad guy – fair enough. But I need to know what sort of bad guy she is if I’m making a documentary about the damage she’s done. Is she well intentioned but prejudiced? Stupid? Is she an out-and-out liar?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, she’s an out-and-out fucking liar who destroys people. Will you stay away from her? This is the last time I’m going to ask you.’

  Is he really so intolerant that he wants no point of view heard but his own? Is he worried about me? If so, might that mean he loves me?

  Felicity Benson, how can you not despise yourself?

  I didn’t mean it. I’ve got a whole self-mockery thing going on here that’s way more sophisticated than unrequited love.

  I’d give anything to be able to tell Laurie what he wants to hear so that we could both be happy, but I can’t bring myself to be a compliant idiot simply because it would please him. If I’m making this film, and it seems I am, I want to do it in the way I think it should be done.

  ‘I’ve just worked it out,’ I say. ‘Why I love you. It’s because we’ve got so much in common. We both treat me as if I don’t matter, as if I’m nothing.’ Not any more, I vow. From now on, I’m not nothing.

  ‘Love?’ says Laurie, in the way a normal, civilised person might say ‘Genocide?’ or ‘Necrophilia?’: shocked and appalled.

  I pick up my bag and leave without another word.

  Outside, I hail a taxi and take a while to remember my own address. Once I’m moving, and breathing again, I switch on my phone and see that I have two new messages. The first is a text from Tamsin. ‘You big, big, big, BIG eejit!’ it says. The second is a voicemail message from a Detective Constable Simon Waterhouse.

  8

  8/10/09

  Sam Kombothekra didn’t like the way Grace and Sebastian Brownlee were holding hands. It wasn’t suggestive of tenderness, but rather of taking a defiant stand against the enemy. They looked like two people about to charge into battle together.

  ‘Gunpowder residue,’ said Grace, her voice full of disbelief. Sam would have bet good money on this being the first time the phrase had been uttered beneath these high corniced ceilings. The Brownlees evidently believed that a period house ought to be filled with period furniture, and the sort of tastefully patterned wallpaper a bona fide Georgian might have chosen, as if the present era could be banished if one tried hard enough.

  Paige Yardley’s adoptive mother was a small slender woman with mid-brown hair cut in a neat bob. Her husband was tall and balding on top, with wild gingery-blond tufts above his ears that suggested he was unwilling to lose any more hair than he absolutely had to. He and his wife worked for the same law firm in Rawndesley, which was how they’d met, they’d told Sam. Sebastian Brownlee had mentioned twice so far that he’d had to finish work three hours earlier than he normally would in order to get home for this meeting. Both he and Grace were still wearing their work suits.

  ‘You’re not suspected of anything,’ Sam reassured Grace. ‘It’s routine. We’re asking everyone who knew Helen Yardley.’

  ‘We didn’t know her,’ said Sebastian. ‘We never met the woman.’

  ‘I realise that, sir. Nevertheless, you and your wife are in a unique position in relation to her.’

  ‘We consent,’ said Grace in a clipped voice. ‘Take your swabs, do whatever you need to, and get it over with. I’d rather not see you here again.’ An odd way to put it, Sam thought. As if she might come down to breakfast one morning and find him sitting at her kitchen table. Come to think of it, the Brownlees seemed the type who might insist on taking all their meals in a formal dining room.

  Sam had no reason to suspect them of anything. They had given him a full account of their movements on Monday. Together with their thirteen-year-old daughter, Hannah – the girl Sam couldn’t help thinking of as Paige Yardley – they had left the house at 7 a.m. At 7.10, they had dropped Hannah off at the home of her best friend, whose mother gave the two girls breakfast and drove them to school on weekday mornings. Sebastian and Grace had then driven straight to their firm’s office in Rawndesley, arriving there as always at about 7.50. After that, Sebastian had either been in the office or out at meetings with clients for the rest of the day. ‘You’re in luck,’ he’d told Sam. ‘Fee-earning solicitors like us have to make a note of how we spend every minute of our time, so that the right people can be billed.’ He’d promised Sam copies of his and Grace’s time-sheets for Monday, and contact numbers for all the people in whose company they had spent any of those individually itemised minutes.

  Grace, who worked part time, had left the office at 2.30 p.m. and gone to pick up Hannah and her best friend from school, as she did every weekday. She and the two girls had then gone swimming at the private health club, Waterfront, to which both the Brownlees and the friend’s family belonged. Grace had been able to give Sam the names and numbers of several acquaintances of hers who had seen her either in the swimming area or having a drink and a snack in Chompers café-bar with the girls afterwards. After leaving Waterfront, Grace drove Hannah’s friend home, and she and Hannah got back to their house at 6.15 p.m. Sebastian Brownlee arrived home at 10, having eaten dinner with clients in Rawndesley.

  Sam was certain everything the couple had told him would hold up. What was bothering him, then, if it wasn’t that he thought they were lying? ‘What time will Hanna
h be back?’ he asked. There were framed photographs of her all over the living room wall. In Sam’s experience, this many pictures of the same person in one room and no pictures of anyone or anything else could mean one of two things: a stalker with a dangerous obsession, or an adoring parent. Or two adoring parents.

  Hannah Brownlee had glossy centre-parted brown hair, wide grey eyes and a small nose. She had Helen Yardley’s face, only a younger version.

  ‘You’re not swabbing my daughter for gunpowder residue,’ said Grace Brownlee angrily.

  ‘That wasn’t what I—’ Sam began.

  ‘I took her to my mother’s house because I knew you were coming. I didn’t want her involved. Tell him, Sebastian,’ she snapped. ‘Let’s not prolong the agony.’

  ‘Hannah knows a local woman was murdered. People have been talking about it at school and it’s been on the news, we could hardly keep it from her, but . . .’ Sebastian glanced at his wife. She responded with a look that made it clear she wasn’t going to help him out, so he turned back to Sam. ‘Hannah has no idea Helen Yardley was her birth mother.’

  ‘I’ve always been in favour of telling her,’ Grace blurted out. ‘I was overruled.’

  ‘I wanted my daughter to have a regular, carefree childhood,’ Sebastian explained. ‘Not to grow up knowing she was the child of a murderer, someone who’d smothered two of her babies and would almost certainly have done the same to Hannah if Social Services hadn’t stepped in. What father would place a burden like that on his daughter’s shoulders, to be carried for life?’ He aimed this last word at Grace.

  ‘I take it you think Helen Yardley was guilty, then.’ Nothing depressed Sam more than bigotry. What made Sebastian Brownlee so sure he knew better than three court of appeal judges?

  ‘We know she was guilty,’ said Grace. ‘And I agree with everything Seb’s just said, except there’s something he always fails to take into consideration.’

  Sam wondered if it was therapeutic for the Brownlees to conduct this argument in front of him, a stranger. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.