by Ruth Ware
They’ve shaved a very small semicircle of hair at the edge of my scalp, where the cut snaked beneath the hairline, and it has started to grow. I touch it with my fingers. It feels spikily soft, like a baby’s hairbrush.
The relief. The relief of the cold air on my forehead and the itch and pull of the dressing gone. I throw the bloodied pad into the bin, and walk slowly back to the bed, still thinking of Nina. And Lamarr. And James.
What happened between me and James has nothing to do with any of this. But perhaps Nina is right. Perhaps I should come clean. Maybe it would even be a relief, after all these years of silence.
No one knew. No one knew the truth except me, and James.
And I spent so long nursing my anger at him. And now it’s gone. He’s gone.
Perhaps I will tell Lamarr when she comes in the morning. I’ll tell her the truth – not just the truth, for everything I’ve said so far has been the truth. But the whole truth.
And the truth is this.
James dumped me. And yes, he dumped me by text.
But what I’ve held onto all these years, is the reason why. He left because I was pregnant.
I don’t know when it happened, which out of all those dozens, maybe hundreds of times, made a baby. We were careful – at least we thought we were.
I only know that one day I realised I hadn’t had a period for a long time, too long. And I did a test.
We were in James’s attic bedroom when I told him, sitting on the bed, and he went quite white, staring at me with wide black eyes that had something of panic in them.
‘Can’t—’ he started. Then, ‘Don’t you think you could have …’
‘Made a mistake?’ I finished. I shook my head. I even managed a bitter little laugh. ‘Believe me, no. I took that test, like, eight times.’
‘What about the morning-after pill?’ he said. I tried to take his hand, but he stood up and began pacing back and forward in the small room.
‘It’s much too late for that. But yes, we need—’ There was a lump in my throat. I realised I was trying not to cry. ‘—we need to d-decide—’
‘We? This is your decision.’
‘I wanted to talk to you too. I know what I want to do, but this is your b—’
Baby, too, was what I’d been going to say. But I never got to finish. He let out a gasp like he’d been smacked, and turned his face away.
I stood up and moved towards the door.
‘Leo,’ he said, in a strangled voice. ‘Wait.’
‘Look.’ My foot was already on the stairs, my bag over my shoulder. ‘I know, I sprang this on you. When you’re ready to talk … Call me, OK?’
But he never did.
Clare rang me when I got home, and she was angry. ‘Where the hell were you? You stood me up! I waited half an hour in the Odeon foyer and you weren’t answering your calls!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I had … I had stuff—’ I couldn’t finish.
‘What? What’s happened?’ she asked, but I couldn’t answer. ‘I’m coming over.’
He never called. Instead he texted, later that night. I’d spent the afternoon with Clare, agonising over what to do, whether to tell my mum, whether James would be charged – we’d first done it when I was fifteen, although I was sixteen now and had been for a couple of months.
The text came through about 8 p.m. Lee. I’m sorry but this is your problem, not mine. Deal with it. And don’t call me again. J.
And so I dealt with it. I never did tell my mum. Clare … Actually Clare was kind of amazing. Yes, she could be snappy, and snide, and even manipulative, but in a crisis like this she was like a lion defending her young. Looking back at that time, I remember why we were friends all those years. And it makes me realise again just how selfish I was afterwards.
She took me to the clinic on the bus. It was early, early enough to just take the pills, and it was all over surprisingly soon.
It wasn’t the abortion. I don’t blame James for that – it was what I wanted myself, I didn’t want a child at sixteen, and whatever happened, it was my fault as much as his. And whatever people might think, it wasn’t that that fucked me up. I don’t feel a crucifying guilt over the loss of a cluster of cells. I refuse to feel guilty.
It wasn’t any of that.
It was … I don’t know. I don’t know how to put it. It was pride, I think. A kind of disbelief at my own stupidity. The thought that I’d loved him so much, and had been so mistaken. How could I? How could I have been so incredibly, unbelievably wrong?
And if I went back to that school, I would have to live with that knowledge – the memory of us both together in everyone’s eyes. The telling of a hundred people, No, we’re not together. Yes, he dumped me. No, I’m fine.
I wasn’t fine. I was a fool – a fucking stupid little fool. How could I have been so mistaken? I’d always thought myself a good judge of character, and I had thought James was brave, and loving, and that he loved me. None of that was true. He was weak, and cowardly, and he couldn’t even look me in the eye to end it between us.
I would never trust my own judgement again.
We were on study-leave when it happened, revising for our GCSEs. I went into school to take the exams, and then I never went back. Not to collect my results, not for the autumn social, not to see any of the teachers who’d coached and cheered me through my exams. Instead I changed to a sixth-form college two train rides away, one where I was sure no one could possibly know me. My day was insanely long – I left the house at 5.30 and got home at 6 every night.
And then my mother moved house anyway, to be with Phil. I should have been angry, because she sold my grandfather’s house where I grew up, where we’d all lived together for so many years, where all our memories were. And part of me was. But part of me was relieved – the last tie with Reading and with James was cut. I would never have to see him again.
No one knew what had happened apart from Clare, and even she didn’t know about the text. I told her the next day that I’d decided I couldn’t keep the baby, and that I was breaking up with James. She hugged me and cried and said, ‘You’re so brave.’
But I wasn’t. I was a coward too. I never faced James, I never asked him why. How could he do that? Was it fear? Cowardice?
I heard afterwards that he was sleeping his way systematically round Reading, girls and boys. It confirmed what I already knew. The James Cooper I thought I knew never existed. He was a figment of imagination. A false memory, implanted by my own hopes.
But now – now as I look back across ten years … I don’t know. It’s not that I absolve James for the thoughtless cruelty of that text, but I see myself: furious, righteous, and so hard on both of us. Perhaps I absolve myself, for the mistake I made in loving James. I realise how young we were – hardly more than children, with the careless cruelty of childhood and the rigid black and white morality too. There is no grey when you’re young. There’s only goodies and baddies, right and wrong. The rules are very clear – a playground morality of ethical lines drawn out like a netball pitch, with clear fouls and penalties.
James was wrong.
I had trusted him.
Therefore I was wrong too.
But now … now I see a frightened child, confronted with an immense moral decision he was not equipped to make. I see my words as he must have seen them – an attempt to shift this irrevocable choice onto his shoulders, a responsibility he was not prepared for, and did not want.
And I see myself – just as frightened, just as ill-prepared.
And I feel so very sorry for us both.
When Lamarr comes in the morning I will tell her. I’ll tell her the whole truth. Unpicked like this, in the dying light of the evening, it’s not as bad as I feared. It’s not a motive for murder, just an old, tired grief. Nina was right.
Then, at last, I sleep.
But when Lamarr comes in the morning, there’s a new kind of grimness in her face. There’s a colleague hovering behind her, a
big hulk of a man, with a fleshy face set in a permanent frown. Lamarr’s holding something in her hand.
‘Nora,’ she says without preamble, ‘can you identify this for me?’
‘Yes,’ I say in surprise, ‘it’s my phone. Where did you find it?’
But Lamarr doesn’t answer. Instead she sits, clicks on her tape recorder and says, in a grave, formal voice, the words I’ve been dreading.
‘Leonora Shaw, we would like to question you as a suspect in the death of James Cooper. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. You have a right to ask for a solicitor. Do you understand?’
27
IF YOU’RE INNOCENT, you have nothing to fear. Right?
Then why am I so frightened?
My previous statements weren’t taped and I hadn’t been cautioned. They wouldn’t stand up as evidence in court, so the first few minutes are spent going over stuff I already told Lamarr, re-establishing the facts for the purposes of the tape. I don’t want a solicitor. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t get over the feeling that Lamarr is on my side – that I trust her. If I can only convince her of my innocence, everything will be OK. What could a solicitor possibly do?
Lamarr finishes on the stuff we have already established and then starts on new ground.
‘Can you take a look at this phone, please—’ she holds it out in a sealed plastic bag, ‘—and let me know whether you recognise it?’
‘Yes, it’s my phone.’ I resist the urge to chew my nails. The last few days have ground them down to battered stubs.
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Yes, I recognise the scratch on the casing.’
‘And your phone number is …’ She flips through her pad and then reads it out. I nod.
‘Yes, that’s c-correct.’
‘I’m interested in the last few calls and texts you made. Can you run me through what you can remember?’
I wasn’t expecting this. I can’t see what relevance it can possibly have to James’s death. Maybe they’re trying to corroborate our movements or something. I know they can triangulate locations from mobile phone signals.
I’m struggling to remember. ‘Not many. There wasn’t really any reception at the house. I checked my voicemail at the shooting range … and Twitter. Oh, and I returned a call from a bike shop in London, they’re servicing my bike. I think that’s it.’
‘No texts?’
‘I … I don’t think so.’ I’m trying to remember. ‘No, I’m pretty sure not. I think the last one I sent was to Nina, telling her I was waiting on the train. That was Friday.’
She changes tack smoothly.
‘I’d like to ask you a bit more about your relationship with James Cooper.’
I nod, trying to keep my expression even, helpful. But I’ve been expecting this. Maybe Clare has woken up. My stomach does a little uneasy shift.
‘You met back at school, is that right?’
‘Yes. We were about fifteen, sixteen. We dated, briefly, and then we broke up.’
‘How briefly?’
‘Four or five months?’
That’s not quite true. We were together for six months. But I’ve already said ‘briefly’, and six months doesn’t sound that brief. I don’t want to look like I’m contradicting myself already. Luckily Lamarr doesn’t quiz me about the dates.
‘Did you keep in contact after that?’ she says.
‘No.’
She waits for me to elaborate. I wait. Lamarr folds her hands in her lap and looks at me. I don’t know what she’s getting at, but if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s keeping quiet. The pause hangs, heavy in the air. I can hear the tiny percussive tick of her expensive watch, and I wonder briefly where she gets her money from: that skirt wasn’t bought on a police officer’s salary, neither were the chunky gold earrings. They look real.
Still, it’s none of my business. Just something to speculate on as the time ticks past.
But Lamarr can wait too. She has a kind of feline patience, that quality of unblinking composure as she waits for the mouse to panic and make a bolt for it. In the end, it’s her companion who cracks, DC Roberts. ‘You’re telling us you’ve had no contact with him for ten years,’ he says brusquely, ‘and yet he invited you to his wedding?’
Fuck. But there’s no point in lying about this. It would take them two minutes to check with Clare’s mother or whoever handled the guest list.
‘No. Clare invited me to the hen, but not to the wedding.’
‘That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’ Lamarr comes back in. She’s smiling, as if this is girl-talk over a cappuccino. Her cheeks are round and rosy, with high cheekbones that make her look like Nefertiti, and her mouth as she smiles is wide and warm and generous.
‘Not really,’ I lie. ‘I’m James’s ex. I imagine Clare thought it would be awkward – for me as much as her.’
‘So why invite you to the hen – to celebrate her wedding? Wouldn’t that be awkward too?’
‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask Clare.’
‘So you’ve had no contact with James Cooper at all since you broke up?’
‘No. No contact.’
‘Texts? Emails?’
‘No. None.’
I’m suddenly not sure where this is going. Are they trying to establish that I hated James? That I couldn’t bear to have him near me? My stomach does another uneasy shift and a little voice in my head whispers, It’s not too late to ask for a lawyer…
‘Look,’ I find myself saying, stress making my voice rise half a tone, ‘it’s hardly unusual not to keep in touch with your exes.’
But Lamarr doesn’t answer. She switches track again, bewilderingly. ‘Can you run me through your movements at the house? Were there any times you left the property?’
‘Well, we went clay-pigeon shooting,’ I say uncertainly. ‘But you know about that.’
‘I mean by yourself. You went for a run, isn’t that right?’
A run? I feel completely out of my depth all of a sudden. I hate not knowing what they’re getting at.
‘Yes,’ I say. I pick up a pillow and hug it to my chest. And then, feeling that I should look co-operative, ‘Twice. Once when we arrived, on Friday, and once on Saturday.’
‘Can you give me the approximate times?’
I try to think back. ‘I think the Friday one was about four-thirty maybe? Perhaps a bit later. I remember it was fairly dark. I met Clare on the drive on the way back, about six o’clock. And the Saturday one … it was early. Before eight, I think. I can’t pin it down much better than that. Definitely not earlier than six a.m. – it was light. Melanie was up – she might remember.’
‘OK.’ Lamarr is writing down the times, not trusting to the tape. ‘And you didn’t use your phone on the runs?’
‘No.’ What the hell is this about? My fingers dig into the soft kapok of the pillow.
‘What about Saturday night, did you go out then?’
‘No.’ Then I remember something. ‘Did they tell you about the footprints?’
‘Footprints?’ She looks up from her pad, her face puzzled. ‘What footprints?’
‘There were footprints, in the snow. When I came back from my run that first morning. They were leading from the garage to the back door.’
‘Hm. I’ll look into it. Thanks.’ She makes a note. Then she changes tack again. ‘Have you remembered anything further about the period after you left the house on Saturday night? When you chased after the car?’
I shake my head. ‘I’m sorry. I remember tearing down through the wood … I get flashes of cars and broken glass and stuff … but no, nothing really concrete.’
‘I see.’ She shuts her notebook and stands up. ‘Thank you, Nora. Any further questions, Roberts?’
Her companion shakes his head, and then Lamarr gives the time and location for the tape, clicks
off the recording and leaves.
I am a suspect.
I sit there trying to process it after they’ve gone.
Is it because they’ve found my phone? But what could my phone possibly have to do with James’s murder?
And then I realise something, something I should have known before.
I was always a suspect.
The only reason they weren’t interviewing me under caution before was because any interview was worthless as evidence. With my memory problems, any lawyer could have shot a hole a mile wide in my statement. They wanted intelligence – the information I could provide – and they wanted it quick, enough to risk talking to me when I was in no state to be relied on.
But now the doctors have confirmed I’m lucid, and I’m well enough to be interviewed properly. Now they are starting to build a case.
I haven’t been arrested. That’s one thing to hold on to.
I haven’t been charged. Yet.
If only I could remember those missing few minutes in the wood. What happened? What did I do?
The desperation to remember rises inside me, sticking in my throat like a sob, and I clench my fingers on the soft pillow, and bury my face in its clean whiteness and I ache to remember. Without those missing few minutes, how can I hope to convince Lamarr that what I’m saying is true?
I close my eyes, and I try to think myself back there, to the quiet clearing in the forest, to the great glowing blocks of the house, shining out through the dark, close-clustered trees. I smell again the scent of fallen pine needles, I feel the cold bite of the snow on my fingers and inside my nose. I remember the sounds of the forest, the soft patter of snow sliding from overladen branches, the hoot of an owl, the sound of an engine disappearing into the darkness.
And I see myself tumbling down that long, straight track into the trees, feel the springy softness of the needles beneath my feet.
But I cannot remember what comes next. When I try, it’s like I’m trying to snatch at a scene reflected in a pond. Images come, but when I reach for them they break into a thousand ripples and I find that I’m holding only water.