The Book of You

by Claire Kendal

  ‘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.

  She thought about that hand. It picked up body parts. It cut car-crash victims from mangled wrecks, dead or alive. It guided frightened old ladies out of high windows and down turntable ladders. It controlled jets of water with a fine balance of expert precision and instinct and power. It dragged human beings from burning buildings or dug them out of piles of rubble.

  She wondered what it would be like to be touched by a hand like that.

  Robert’s face had reverted to its default impassivity. But it was his job to control his face, with people dying and in pain and extremity in front of him all the time. Such physical and emotional discipline must be a skill he could transfer to everything, a skill he’d developed over many years because he had to use it every day. But could he turn off the detachment at will, too?

  She tried to imagine if anything could make him lose control. She thought of the knight in Waterhouse’s painting of La Belle Dame Sans Merci. The knight was off balance, bending his knees, leaning towards the fairy woman, disarmed, his sword lowered. He was still so strong, though, in his helmet and armour and tunic. Clarissa thought that that was how Robert must look when he wore the things he had to wear to go into fires.

  The door swung open. Annie headed towards them. The boy with the purple-tipped hair was with her, his matching earphones in place as usual. Annie seemed to be marching him by her side with his wrists in invisible handcuffs.

  ‘Don’t marry her,’ Annie was saying. ‘You’re too young to get married. When you’re forty you’ll just leave her for someone younger, leave her stuck on her own with three kids and a fat bum.’

  The boy looked scared. He looked to Robert for saving, but Robert picked up his backpack and stood. ‘Locker time,’ he said.

  As he walked away, Clarissa realised that she hadn’t let herself look at his startlingly blue eyes since the first time she ever spoke to him. She never dared to let her own eyes touch his beyond a moving glance. If those Romantic paintings and poems showed anything, it was how dangerous looking– really looking, directly and with intent, actually was.

  Mr Morden appeared nervous and Clarissa soon saw why. ‘The next phase of the Crown’s case concerns Mr Sparkle’s police interviews,’ he said. But before Mr Morden could begin another sentence Sparkle’s barrister was furiously declaring a need for legal argument and the jury was dismissed for the remainder of the day.

  Wednesday, 4 March, 6.20 p.m.

  I don’t see it when I walk in. I’m too preoccupied with the important job of taking off my hat and stuffing it in my bag. That’s why I don’t see it. That’s why I step on the brown envelope, leaving mud on its corner. It is only the sensation of paper sticking to my boot that makes me look down and peel it off. Miss Norton must have been napping when it went through the door slot.

  My full name is typed. I hate your using my full name, but I do not yet realise it is you, so I am not yet upset. There are a few seconds left before that happens. Nothing else is written on it. There is no address or stamp. But your hallmarks do not register because I’ve already made myself stop looking for all signs of you. I so wanted to do that. It was all too easy for me to do that.

  As I float dreamily towards the staircase, thinking of my walk with Robert, I absently tear the envelope open and take out the contents. In the instant that I see your handwriting I slap my hand onto my head and run it over the top of my skull several times. My hair fizzles and crackles and I actually see electric blue sparks. When I move my fingers away my hair follows them as if they are magnetised.

  Slouching against the wall, my bag still heavy over my shoulder, I read your letter.

  You’re so good on ‘Blue Beard’. Here’s another fairy tale I’d like your opinion on.

  You know what the king did to his shameless wife in ‘The Three Snake-Leaves’. She and her lover were placed in a ship ‘which had been pierced with holes, and sent out to sea, where they soon sank amid the waves’.

  Do you think he was foolish, that king, giving her those last moments alone with her lover? Do you think he should have spent them with her himself?

  I have fallen hard and far from the great hope DC Hughes raised only yesterday. It is akin to going to sleep trying to convince myself that tomorrow’s pregnancy test will be positive, only to be crushed by the clinic’s call on my mobile the next afternoon or the show of blood on my underwear before the lab has even faxed through the results.

  I reach into my bag for my phone and the card with DC Hughes’s number. I manage to get out only a few words but it’s enough and he tells me he is on his way; I needn’t go to the station myself as mine is a high-priority case.

  Slowly, trying to calm myself with deliberate and careful motions, I walk up the stairs to my flat and make myself a cup of tea to try to get warm and wash the horrible taste from my mouth. And the horrible phrase from my head.

  High-priority case. The worst kind of honour. As if I’ve been given access to a perverse executive lounge or fast-tracked to hell.

  I can’t stop replaying those words. High-priority case. It’s as if I’ve suddenly come down with some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder. High-priority case. High-priority case. High-priority case. The words won’t leave me alone, as if a broken record is endlessly repeating itself inside my head.

  Until DC Hughes said it, I hadn’t known that that was what I was. I hadn’t let myself think that that was what I could be. That that was what you’d made me. A high-priority case.

  Last moments.

  Spending them with her himself.

  I see it from the outside as if for the first time. Even to the police it must all look very, very bad. Even to the police, who see terrible people every single day, you must look very dangerous. A high-priority case.

  Thursday

  Thursday, 5 March, 9.30 a.m.

  I sit alone in the jurors’ assembly area, trying to be invisible, even to Robert. I am envisaging what is happening to you. DC Hughes explained it all.

  The police will knock on your door. They will arrest you. They will interview you under caution. If you don’t answer ‘no comment’ under questioning you’ll probably blame me. You’ll probably say we were in a relationship and I never told you your attentions were unwanted. You might even say that I was the one pestering you.

  Will they show you the photographs? Will you gloat? I try to convince myself that they won’t give you the satisfaction of looking at them there, of showing off your work. Or if they must, that you probably won’t say much or want to peer at them for long – not with others – part of your possessiveness. Whatever they do, however you react, it won’t diminish the huge weight of other evidence.

  They will refer the evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service for advice.

  Then, hopefully, they will charge you with the Offence of harassment and with Putting people in fear of violence, under the Protection from Harassment Act.

  They will take you to appear before a court and seek the immediate imposition of a restraining order, though you’ll be granted conditional bail.

  You will probably be out by the weekend. DC Hughes is likely to give me this news within the next few days. But by the time you’re free again it will be against the law for you to come anywhere near me or communicate with me in any way.

  It will make it impossible for you to go to work. Personnel will probably take legal advice. They’ll send letters, working out whether they can or should or must continue to employ you. You will be absolutely furious. If I didn’t
hate you so much I’d be sorry for you about this. But I can’t afford pity.

  More than that, I can’t afford the fear that work kept you in relative check, and that that has now been taken away. There’s another thing, too, that goes against me. Even if Robert’s presence offers some protection, it also incites you. With Laura, there hadn’t been another man to make you so obsessively jealous. At least not one her parents knew of, though you might have known more than they did, with your spying.

  I try to tell myself that if anything does happen to me, the police will immediately suspect you. That’s a comforting thought. You know this, too. There’d been no scrutiny of you, with Laura. They’d left you free to do as you pleased. That’s not the case with me. But a tiny part of me can’t help but suspect that the police are only going through all of these motions so that if you end up killing me they’ll have ticked every bureaucratic box; they’ll have protected themselves from blame. Tangled in all of this is the thing I’ve known all the time but not wanted to speak: your murdering me is a real possibility. That’s why I’m a high-priority case.

  She sat in Court 12 thinking about the mystery of what happened to Laura, and Mr and Mrs Betterton in their endless despair, and the woman on the cover of the terrible magazine.

  She tried to concentrate on Mr Morden as he rose. ‘Detective Constable Mallory will read the questions he put to Mr Sparkle, while I read Mr Sparkle’s responses. You will hear extracts.’

  DC: Okay, Isaac. Can you take me through what happened when you woke up on the Sunday morning?

  IS: I found Carlotta in the bedroom. She were kinda like, curled on the bed, pressing herself into the corner, to tell the truth. Like, they call it the foetal position, innit?

  I signalled her to come into the lounge with me. She were … a bit sceptical … a bit quiet like. Not like the night before when she were chattin’ to me and Godfrey and Azarola. So I asks her, did something happen, and she were like, yeah, I was manhandled, they manhandled me.

  DC: What did you understand 'manhandled' to mean, Isaac?

  IS: Dunno. I guess, like, you know, the rape charges and all that you lot have been talking about. So I was kinda like, who done this, and she goes, the two biggest, and I thought she meant Tomlinson and Doleman. So I says to Tomlinson later, Carlotta says you manhandled her, and he goes, it were nothing, it weren’t anything. But he weren’t looking at me. He didn’t wanna be talkin’ about it.

  Instead of walking straight to the station, they stopped at a nearby bistro that had caught Robert’s eye. Just a quick dinner, they both said, playing it down. Too charming and hidden-in-plain-sight a place to neglect, they both said, smiling as they slid into the red leather booth.

  His mouth fell open in mock astonishment when she ordered a steak sandwich. ‘You’re not vegetarian? For some reason I’d assumed you were.’

  ‘Definitely not. But I know how embarrassing I am, asking for it to be well done.’ Henry could never stop himself from cringing when she did that.

  ‘No you’re not. You should order your steak how you like it.’

  A zillion points for you, she thought, beaming at him. ‘I’m glad you see it that way.’

  She excused herself for a minute and headed for the cloakroom, fumbling in her bag for her phone as she walked. She wanted to check hurriedly, out of Robert’s sight, for a message from DC Hughes. But there was nothing.

  When she returned her breathing froze. In Robert’s hand was the black notebook.

  ‘It fell out as you walked away.’ His voice was calm, not guilty; not the voice of a man who’d been snooping. He held it towards her.

  She took it, slowly and gently, and murmured a thank you. She held it by the wire binding, letting it dangle. She made the pages swing back and forth a few times, creaking with suitably creepy sounds as they moved.

  Robert poured sparkling water into a glass for her. ‘Just in case you’re wondering, I didn’t look in it.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I made you think I thought that.’ She rolled her eyes at herself. ‘Was that a tongue-twister?’

  He laughed. ‘Possibly.’ But he hadn’t given up the subject. ‘Just so you know. I wouldn’t do something like that.’

  She thought of Henry, rooting around the pile of papers on her bedside table, coming across the information pack from the fertility clinic before she was ready to explain to him that she wanted to start trying; his fury that she was plotting behind his back; but then his quick willingness to go with her and keep his promise that he would let her have a baby. ‘I know you wouldn’t.’

  ‘So you trust me?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Good. It’s understandable if you wondered.’ He drank down an inch of his French beer. ‘Are you writing a novel?’

  She shook her head no.

  ‘You’re always scribbling in it. You look like you’re pretty addicted to whatever you’re writing. I think it must be a work of art.’

  ‘Definitely not a work of art.’

  ‘You don’t see anything else when you’re doing it. This morning you were at it and I waved at you but you didn’t notice. Annie did a jig to try to distract you and you still didn’t look up.’

  ‘I can’t believe I missed that. I’m going to have to make her perform it again.’

  ‘You didn’t even hear the two of us laughing.’

  She gave the notebook a little glare, as if it had misbehaved by commanding too much of her attention. It was hardly bigger than the hand she held it in. ‘It’s a bit tiny to fit a novel.’

  ‘Whatever you’re writing, I bet it’s good.’

  ‘It isn’t good.’ She slipped it back into her bag, which she fastened carefully, double-checking it was safely shut.

  The waitress was arranging plates in front of them.

  She examined her steak sandwich. Caramelised onions leaked from the baguette and soaked the inside of it into a deep golden brown. She took a careful bite and made an appreciative noise, knowing this would make Robert look pleased, though she was secretly cursing herself for ordering something that was so impossibly messy. She wiped her mouth with her napkin as soon as she’d put the sandwich down, in case there was any steak juice around her lips. ‘It’s truly delicious. Is my mother paying you to make sure I eat?’

  Smile, quick negative shake of the head, brief pause before an amused and definite ‘No.’

  It was too difficult to fit her mouth around the huge sandwich. She cut a small piece of steak and speared some onion onto her fork along with it. She dipped it into the little pot of red wine sauce they’d put on the side of her plate. She put the fork down, the bite of steak and onion and sauce uneaten. ‘I wanted to say … about the notebook, Robert …’

  He had a mouthful of sautéed potatoes. He swallowed before he was quite ready. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

  ‘Are you actually choking?’

  He exaggerated a croaking voice. ‘I can see how deeply concerned you are.’ He looked at her plate. ‘Your mother might not pay me if you don’t eat your potatoes.’

  ‘I like the crispy ones best. They’re the only ones worth eating.’

  He sorted through his own potatoes, weeded out all of the crispy ones, and piled them onto her plate.

  ‘My mother will love you.’ She popped one in her mouth immediately.

  His phone buzzed. ‘Jack’s in a bad place. Otherwise I’d leave it.’ He slid the mobile from his pocket and squinted at a text, frowning. ‘I don’t want to, but we’re going to have to make a move soon. I need to get to him. Drag him out of the dark tunnel before he’s in too far.’

  She nodded understanding. ‘Friends are important.’ She was thinking of Rowena, wondering whether it might still be possible to get her back, but wondering also whether she wanted to.

  Friday

  It was exactly how Robert would have done it, she thought, as Azarola walked sure-footedly to the witness box and gazed steadily out, straight and unflinching and looking more than ever like a Spanish p
op star. He wore a grey knitted V-neck vest over a dazzlingly white scoop-neck T-shirt.

  ‘You say you can’t remember what you were doing over the weekend that a young woman was allegedly kidnapped and falsely imprisoned and raped.’ Mr Williams was being tough with his boy.

  Azarola shook his head in helpless bewilderment. ‘Yeah. Because I don’t know her. I’ve never met her. I wasn’t there.’ He wasn’t quite as tall as Robert, but he had the same narrow hips and waist and long legs.

  ‘Then why would your own supposed friend, Mr Sparkle, tell the police you were?’

  ‘He’s lying. He’s a competitor.’ Maybe firemen had to spend part of each day in the gym. Prisoners probably chose to, if they were smart. ‘He wants me put away. Out of the way.’

  Robert and Clarissa were on their usual walk to the station. ‘I’ve never been caught by a speed camera,’ he said. ‘Never even had a parking ticket.’

  ‘Were you a Boy Scout?’ She pushed her hair over her ears to try to warm them. She’d left her hat in her bag. Though he’d seen her in it before, she was suddenly self-conscious, wondering if it was too little girlish a thing to wear in front of him.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I was teasing you again. I’m sorry.’

  He didn’t look as if he minded. ‘You’re shivering. Don’t you have your hat? You can wear mine.’

  His was shaped like a Russian Cossack’s hat; the dark navy fleece definitely covered his ears. She rummaged for her own, making herself look surprised and pleased to find it.

  ‘Nice,’ he said.

  ‘My mother knitted it. She likes me to be warm.’

  ‘She sounds very wise.’ Apparently satisfied that she would be safe from frostbite, he resumed their subject. ‘Boys need structured frameworks for their aggression. Need to learn to discipline it. The Fire Service is the thing. If our friends in the dock had joined at eighteen they wouldn’t be sitting there now.’