Mine

by J. L. Butler

  ‘What we’re doing here today is a version of that,’ said Gil, crossing to the window and pulling the blinds. ‘It’s called EMDR: eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, which is just a fancy title for this.’ He clicked a hand-held controller and blue lights pulsed across the front of the box from left to right, accompanied by a low-level ‘zip’ noise with each pulse. Another click and it stopped.

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Looks daft, but it’s very effective, I assure you. What’s happening is that we’re mimicking the movements of the eye during REM sleep – the part of sleep where you’re dreaming, when the brain is shuffling things around and trying to make sense of what you saw and did during the day. Once we can access that state, we tend to find the memories just come tumbling out.’

  I looked at the box, then back to Gil, my stomach tightening.

  ‘You’re anxious,’ said Gil, sitting down. ‘Don’t be. The beauty of EMDR is that we’re asking the brain to look at these memories in a detached way. It’s as if you’re viewing it on a movie screen, without the attendant trauma. We use this for combat veterans and rape victims: it wouldn’t be very productive to make them go through all that again, you’d just be re-traumatizing them, compounding the terror. But EMDR can still be dramatic; I’ve had abuse victims turn back into children, even their speech patterns change to kiddy-speak.’

  He held up a finger. ‘Note I said dramatic, not traumatic. When it works, it’s usually quite liberating.’

  I nodded, telling myself I could do this.

  ‘All right, sit back,’ he said. ‘Get as comfortable as you can and tell me about Martin.’

  His voice was soft and deep, calming. And yet I was nervous, hands clammy, fighting the urge to wipe them on my skirt. I closed my eyes and tried to get used to the dark. I was disorientated – as if I had lost time and been plunged back into night.

  ‘Martin’s my boyfriend,’ I began slowly. ‘Well, sort of. He’s a client of mine. We shouldn’t really be seeing one another.’

  ‘Presumably that was a source of anxiety. A relationship that was out of bounds.’

  ‘Yes. I’m also applying for silk – that’s a big promotion for me. You have to be good, responsible. Affairs with clients, clients that are still officially married, don’t really go with the job description.’ I tried for a smile, but it didn’t quite fit.

  ‘Are you in love?’ asked Gil simply.

  I gave a nervous laugh, but suddenly wanted to admit the force of my feelings to someone.

  ‘Yes, I am. I love him so much that it scares me. I’ve never felt like this before, it’s as if I have woken up and just experienced all these emotions for the first time.’

  ‘Do your emotions feel out of control sometimes?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was almost a whisper, but in the dark, in that intimate room, it felt like a shout. My voice shook as I continued:

  ‘Most of the time I feel like a car with no brakes. When I’m with him, it’s like I’m freewheeling and I’ve got the wind in my hair and I’m so happy. But I’m never really calm.’

  ‘And that’s why you were feeling stressed that night?’

  ‘I was stressed because I thought he was still sleeping with his wife. That’s why I followed them.’

  ‘OK, describe what happened. As much as you can remember. What were you wearing?’

  I opened my eyes and looked at him.

  ‘What was I wearing?’ I frowned, surprised to discover that I couldn’t remember. I could recall Donna’s pink coat, but me? Nothing.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘OK,’ said Gil, and clicked his remote. The blue lights flashed across the screen. Zip . . . zip . . . zip.

  I laughed. It all seemed so stupid, like some Sixties spy movie where a camp megalomaniac was trying to brainwash the hero.

  ‘Just go with it,’ said Gil. I nodded, taking a deep breath. I had to do this. For Martin, if nothing else. I watched the blue lights bumping across the box. It was kind of restful, like fairy lights on a Christmas tree. Zip . . . zip . . . zip.

  ‘OK,’ said Gil, clicking his remote to shut off the lights. ‘Now tell me what you were wearing.’

  ‘A black coat.’

  Obviously I was wearing my black coat. I always wore my black coat.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Gil, clicking the lights back on. ‘No rush, just relax and watch the lights.’

  I sank back as they skidded past, zip . . . zip . . . zip. They weren’t bright, a soft azure blue, like the sea on a poster advertising Greece or Italy. Santorini, I thought suddenly. I’d been there in my twenties, the beaches were amazing . . .

  ‘Black coat, a green scarf . . .’ I said, unsure if these were details I had gleaned from the Evening Standard e-fit, or whether I was beginning to remember. As I concentrated harder, more came into focus. I could almost see myself walking down the street. ‘I was wearing what I usually wear for work. A white shirt, dark skirt.’

  Gil clicked off the lights.

  ‘Now describe the weather.’

  I frowned, straining. I could almost feel it, but it wasn’t quite there.

  ‘No, I . . . I can’t quite . . .’

  ‘Fine,’ said Gil, switching on the box. ‘Go with the lights again.’

  Zip . . . zip. It was soothing now, watching them move, like water over rocks.

  ‘It was horrible – the weather, I mean,’ I blurted, the words forming without thought. ‘It was raining, cold, so cold I put my hat on. I remember thinking the rain would wash my make-up away.’

  Gil clicked the lights off.

  ‘You’re doing really well. So what did you see first?’

  I narrowed my eyes, peering into the gloom.

  ‘I saw Donna. I followed her from work and I saw her meet him in a restaurant. They were laughing, drinking wine. They went back to her house. I went to the pub. I got a drink and sat by the window.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ I said feeling distressed.

  ‘It’s just pictures, Fran. Nothing can hurt you here,’ said Gil, his voice rich in the darkness.

  The lights came again. Zip . . . zip. Blue and soft, blue, blue, green, seeing new tints here and there.

  ‘I remember his hand touching the small of her back,’ I said haltingly. ‘I saw this, this easy familiarity between them, something I didn’t have.’

  Oh God, he was so relaxed with her. Zip . . . zip. Then Gil’s voice again, reassuring, strong.

  ‘And how did that make you feel?’

  ‘It made me realize that everything Martin had told me had been a lie.’

  ‘What else? What else, Fran?’

  ‘I didn’t blame him. Why not have sex with two women, if you could get away with it?’

  I opened my eyes, looked at my new confidant, defiant, challenging him to react, but his face was impassive.

  ‘What do you remember about the pub?’

  Gil seemed to be turning the lights on and off at random now, or perhaps I wasn’t following the sequence any more. Somehow I felt I was in both places at once; in the clinic, safe and relaxed, and back in the pub, staring across the street.

  ‘It was busy. Busier than a normal Monday night. I think there was a party or a quiz night in the room upstairs. When I went to the bar, someone asked me if I knew the answer to a question. I like quizzes. And I knew the answer, but I had to get back to my seat to watch the house.’

  The memories were coming, but I could feel myself getting more and more stressed. Or rather, I was feeling the distress from that night, feeling the tightness in my stomach as I watched Martin touch her, felt the fluttering pulse – zip, zip, zip – but at the same time it wasn’t me there, it was someone else.

  ‘Why do you think Martin lied to you?’ asked Gil.

  ‘He screwed his wife,’ I said bitterly, my words a little slurred. God, I needed a drink.

  ‘How do you know? Maybe they weren’t having sex.’

 
‘They were,’ I said flatly. ‘I remember the way she looked up at him when they got to the house. I remember the way he touched her shoulder, urging her inside. A light was on.’

  A blue light, flashing on and off. On and off.

  ‘What else, Fran? Just go with it.’

  ‘A light went on,’ I said. ‘In the upstairs window. Her bedroom.’

  ‘Why do you think that means they were having sex?’

  I knew the tactics he was using and it was working, but I still couldn’t give myself over to it completely. Gil had said people could relive the trauma, feel those same feelings and that was true. I could feel bile rising in my throat, feel the burn of the vodka, the pain in my chest as the implications sank in. I felt it all, as if I was sitting there in the pub, staring across the street, but at the same time it didn’t feel real. The upset was there, the anger and the betrayal, but it was more like I was noting it, observing it.

  ‘I know what they were doing,’ I said, my voice low but strong. My head was swimming and my T-shirt felt tight around my throat, but I still felt good, it was like the picture was coming into focus. I could see them in the house, just as I had seen them that night, seen every act of pleasure I had ever enjoyed with Martin, except instead of my face, my naked body in the slideshow, it was Donna’s body writhing beneath his. But Gil was right. I hadn’t seen it, hadn’t seen any of that. All I had seen was a light. A light.

  ‘That’s what I saw,’ I said, jumping up.

  ‘Fran, wait – please.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ I said, suddenly feeling strong, unburdened. ‘Gil, I know what happened.’

  Gil stood up and opened the blinds, flooding the room with daylight, his figure backlit – like Martin. And then I remembered it all. Not just fragments, but the whole thing, joined up, a memory I could grasp.

  ‘I remember.’

  I remembered it being dark and cold. I remembered Donna and Martin going into the house. I remembered the pub, the vodka tonic, the seat in the window. I remembered the quiz question: ‘Name Queen’s bass player.’ I remembered the upstairs light going on and all the assumptions I had made. And then I remembered the front door of Donna’s townhouse opening, that overhead porch light illuminating Martin from behind as he ran down the steps and disappeared into the darkness.

  ‘He left, Martin left,’ I said.

  And I remembered looking back up at the tall, white building, and seeing someone open the thin slats of the shutters. The cloud of hair and delicate features of Donna watching Martin go. Donna Joy was at the window. She was still alive when Martin left the house. Which meant, almost certainly, that he didn’t kill her.

  It meant he was innocent.

  Chapter 37

  I said goodbye to Gil and stood in the reception of the West London counselling centre, nursing a cup of water as I listened to a car door slam and Gil’s car drive away.

  As I started sipping the cool drink, I realized my earlier anxiety had been replaced by something more determined. A desire to get this situation fixed, because now I knew I had the key.

  Clare appeared on the stairs. She must have seen Gil leave from her office window.

  ‘How was it?’ she asked when we came face to face.

  ‘Extreme.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I feel drunk.’

  ‘Drunk?’ she said with alarm.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any mints in your bag?’

  ‘Maybe we should go for a walk. Get some fresh air,’ she said, bemused.

  I nodded, turned towards the exit.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked after another moment.

  ‘He blew the bloody doors off,’ I said throwing my cup into the bin.

  Clare shook her head, not able to understand why I was quoting The Italian Job.

  ‘Look, I need to speak to Martin,’ I said, my eyes scanning the room and settling on the reception desk. ‘Do you mind if I use the centre’s phone?’

  ‘Of course not. Fran, what’s going on? Did Gil help? Have you been drinking?’

  I was already sitting in the receptionist’s empty chair, using the main switchboard to dial the number of Martin’s disposal phone, which I had written on a piece of card.

  I grabbed a red biro from the pen pot and started doodling as my heart raced, anxious for him to pick up the phone.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Is everything OK?

  ‘Oh yes,’ I replied, starting to laugh. ‘Things are definitely beginning to look up.’

  ‘We should meet.’

  ‘Meet me now,’ I said, my voice an urgent whisper. ‘Don’t say anything to anyone, but let’s meet as soon as you can. Somewhere we can talk privately. Just you and me and no one else.’

  Part of me was beginning to feel like a spy. My instinct to use the centre’s phone rather than my own mobile, my suggestion to meet on Hampstead Heath, it all had a touch of the George Smiley about it. I considered, for a moment, that it might be worth an application to the secret services if my legal career went down the drain. Then again, I felt sure that MI5 would be just as discerning as the Bar.

  Clare dropped me off at the car park near Kenwood Park. I felt giddy as I walked across the meadows, excited to see Martin again, excited about the news I had to tell him about my session with Gil.

  I didn’t know the heath particularly well. I was sure you could come every day for years and not discover all its nooks and crannies.

  There was a short spell a couple of years ago when I had decided to leave behind the treadmill at the gym and escape into the great outdoors. I had a vague notion that I was going to enter a ten-kilometre race. My career seemed to have stalled and I was on the hunt for a new challenge. So every Sunday I would catch the bus through Holloway, Archway and up the hill towards the Heath, and then I’d run and run.

  It was during that time I got to know about Wood Pond. The clue was in its name – a stretch of water surrounded on the south by meadow and woodland. It was less famous than the celebrated swimming ponds, and although it got busy in the summer, I doubted there would be many people there on a grey and gloomy Saturday.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ said Clare as I got out of the car.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I said, buttoning up the coat that she had lent me the day before.

  ‘I can wait for you here,’ she pressed.

  For a moment I wondered why she was mollycoddling me, and then I realized that she didn’t want me alone with Martin in a remote and lonely place. Despite the memory that Gil had dislodged, the memory that I had told Clare about on the journey to Hampstead, I knew that my friend didn’t trust him.

  I pushed my hands in my pockets and walked down the hill away from Kenwood House, over the glades, towards the trees. I found a bench by the pond and sat and waited until I saw a figure coming towards me, no more than a dark silhouette at first, until I could make out his face.

  He was wearing jeans, a baseball hat and a navy overcoat I didn’t recognize. He looked ordinary somehow, like a local taking his dog out for a walk. I guessed that was the plan.

  Grinning, I resisted the urge to run towards him, arms open.

  ‘You beat me,’ he said, as he sat down next to me on the mossy bench. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Clare gave me a lift.’

  ‘I’m going to have to get you a car,’ he said casually. I supposed in Martin’s world, that was the sort of thing men did. They bought women cars.

  ‘The only thing a man ever got me from a garage is a bunch of half-dead flowers.’

  Martin looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Do men really do that?’

  ‘Someone buys those carnations.’ I shrugged. ‘And the Ferrero Rocher.’

  ‘That’s never been my style,’ he said, gazing out over the pond.

  Two women with Nordic walking poles in each hand stopped close by to admire the view, leaning on their sticks an
d blowing out their cheeks as if they had just ascended Everest.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ I said, taking his hand and leading him away from the pond. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation of our fingers entwining.

  ‘I remembered something,’ I said when we were in the trees. It was cooler here, the light dimmer, more intimate. ‘I remembered you leaving Donna’s house. And I saw Donna up at the window, watching you leave.’

  Martin stopped in his tracks and took me by the arms, his dark green eyes wide.

  ‘You’re kidding. I thought you said you couldn’t remember a thing?’

  ‘I went to see a therapist this morning.’ I could feel a smile filling my face. ‘He had some techniques that helped me remember.’

  He looked at me as if I was the only thing that existed in the world, then pulled me into a tight hug. Then he stepped back and looked at me again, the delight on his face plain.

  ‘You’re my alibi,’ he said, gripping my fingers.

  I wanted to join in with his excitement but knew I needed to inject some reality.

  ‘I’m not exactly a reliable witness, remember? I was drunk.’

  ‘That’s for the experts to decide.’

  We carried on walking, deeper and deeper into the woods. I just missed stepping on a used condom, a reminder how the heath was used by others for secret assignations. The wind brushed through the leaves and I could hear a raven caw in the branches above.

  ‘Thank you for not doubting me,’ he said.

  ‘I did,’ I said honestly. ‘I considered it anyway. Because you lied.’

  ‘I haven’t lied about anything,’ he said, frowning.

  ‘You said you fell off your bike. That’s how you got the cut on your hand. Doyle doesn’t believe you because the tyres looked clean.’

  ‘I didn’t fall off my bike,’ he said, fixing his gaze on a line through the trees.

  ‘Then why did you say you did?’

  He glanced towards me.

  ‘Because I can’t remember how I cut myself. But it sounded so lame, I just thought of something plausible to say. I thought that would be better than just admitting that I didn’t know.’

  ‘You didn’t have to lie to me about it.’