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‘I don’t think so, no. Why? Is this to do with the next weird thing?’
‘No, not at all. It’s just interesting.’ She notes down something else, looks up. That smile/indigestion again. Which is it, Blue Eyes – are you pleased with the progress we’re making, or is it nothing a good belch won’t sort?
She doesn’t answer. I guess I didn’t say that last bit out loud.
‘I mean, Dave got on my nerves, but I wouldn’t say I wasangryat him. I mean, I was angry all the time, but not with him specifically.’
She chews her cheek, presses her lips together to stop herself. After a moment she says, ‘Why don’t you talk us through the next weird thing?’
Oh, she’s good. She’s like that Kirsty Wark onNewsnight, leading me gently with that rope of hers until I’ve tied myself in knots. She doesn’t need to. I’m busy tying my own hangman’s hitch. As I said, it’s me that turned myself in, me that gave my statement to the ones in uniform… yesterday, was it? Day before? Last week? Whatever, I tell Blue Eyes about the next weird thing.
It will have been the Monday. Katie was still in her pit as per and Mark had said his usual two words as we went about our morning routines, dodging each other like bumper cars, scared that one jolt would wake both of us up to reality. You wouldn’t think we used to wake up and cuddle listening to the news on the radio alarm before we got out of bed. There was a time we couldn’t bear to leave the warmth of ourselves. Getting up used to feel like breaking myself in two, half of me going wherever he went. And when the kids were babies – we had Kieron and Katie so close together they were nearly twins – when he went to work I used to miss him so much I’d often walk all the way to ICI just to meet him for half an hour in his lunch break. Used to take him the Scotch eggs that he liked, and cheese and onion crisps, and we’d eat them, delighted as teenagers having a midnight feast, Kieron and Katie asleep in the double buggy, Kieron, a year older, looking like the twin that had drunk all the milk. Lately, we’d been more like grumpy old geezers than teenagers. I called goodbye to him from the front door, not loud enough that he could hear but just so that I’d be able to say I’d said it if he asked me why I hadn’t, which he would have done once upon a time, though he never would now.
I was on the early shift that day. I parked the car next to the arts centre by the canal. Mist rose from the brown water; there were a couple of brightly painted barges that hadn’t been there the week before, an arrow of ducks gliding up towards the bridge. I walked down the path that runs past the GPs’ surgery. It was a grey day, the air heavy. As I walked, I held my hands out in front of me and turned them this way and that. I touched my cheek, sort of patted it.
‘I am here, I am here,’ I muttered. ‘Definitely here. In the sagging flesh.’
There was a chap coming up the path towards me. Mid-forties, thereabouts, grey suit and white shirt with no tie, grey hair pushed back from his forehead. Clean-looking, if you know what I mean. Silver fox type. Past me he came, head down.
‘Good morning,’ I said.
He jumped, blinked; his hand flew to his chest. ‘Ah. Oh. Yes, good morning,’ he blurted and carried on up towards the canal, but in those few seconds, I knew two things: one, he hadn’t seen me until I’d spoken; and two, I knew him like I’d known that chap in the park the day before. I don’t mean knew him as in knew him inside out and back to front sort of thing – I’m not psychic. I mean by instinct. That he was a GP, for a start. Well educated. And that he was lonely. I thought he might be divorced, although thinking about it, I could have noticed the pale band where his wedding ring used to be. There was something in the weary set of his shoulders, his face beaten and harassed at the same time.
He walked to his car and grabbed a file of documents from the passenger seat. I was still rooted to the spot, watching. I see now that maybe that was a strange thing to do, but I wasn’t one hundred per cent aware of myself in that moment. It was only the fact of him coming back down the path that shook me out of one of what Katie calls my ‘earth to Mother, come in, Mother’ moments. When I blink out of them, she always says, ‘Three, two, one… you’re back in the room,’ like the funny hypnotist off that comedy show.
I came back to myself. My breathing was ragged and I felt faint. A cloud of heat was expanding inside me but I wasn’t sure exactly where it was, whether it was in my brain or my body or what. A rivulet of sweat trickled down between my breasts. Knowing I should move but for some reason unable to, I watched the GP stride past. Off he went, rounding the corner clutching what I suspected were a patient’s files. He was diligent. He’d taken some case notes home to read through.
I think about how that must sound, howImust sound. I don’t want Blue Eyes to think I’m bonkers, even though it’s a bit late for that now, and besides, what anyone thinks of me is irrelevant.
‘I didn’t know any of this for certain, obviously,’ I qualify. ‘But it’s like Lisa said: when you get to a certain age, you get the hang of people. University of Life, as I said. But it was still weird. What I mean is, it felt weird.’
Blue Eyes frowns in a way that suggests she thinks everything I’ve said is reasonable. The fact that she’s treating me with respect and warmth and kindness makes me think she might have kids, though younger than mine – she looks about thirty-five. Not that you need to have kids to show compassion to someone who has done terrible things, but just… something. It could be tactics, obviously. She’s the good cop, not pinning me against a wall to force the cuffs on, more holding them out for me to willingly place my guilty wrists inside.
‘So what are you saying?’ Her mouth purses and she chews the inside of her cheek again, then presses her lips together, inflates them to stop herself. Ah. The cheek chewing is a nervous habit; she’s trying to quit.
‘I suppose I’m saying that I was noticing other people more than I had before. Or that I was noticing how much I noticed them, if you know what I mean. And I was starting to wonder if noticing people was connected to being invisible in some way.’
How it all connects to the bleeding bodies left for dead, I don’t know. But she’s told me to take my time, and time is what I’ll take and maybe we’ll find out together. For the moment, her guess is as good as mine, but it does feel good to lay it all down in this silent room in front of the woman with the neutral smile and the crystal-blue eyes that seem to see me in a way I can’t remember being seen for a long, long while.
I admit that my imagination took over as I made my way through the bus station onto Church Street. I had this GP chap’s marriage failing because his wife had left him for another man; now he was involved in a new relationship with a woman he really liked but who he worried would cheat on him in the end. His kids were both at university, and he feared he would lose touch with them one day because they visited his ex-wife more often than him. He was trying to get a bigger flat so that they would have a room each whenever they came. He’d even thought about getting a dog as an extra draw, but he couldn’t look after it, what with the hours he did. His life was a mess, he was thinking. How had it all come to this?
‘And how did imagining all that make you feel?’ Blue Eyes says.
I think for a minute.
‘Like I was connected to someone,’ I say, ‘even if he was a total stranger. My husband and my daughter took no notice of me. Lisa and I were still close at that point but it wasn’t enough. I wish it had been enough.’ My voice falters. ‘But it wasn’t. It wasn’t enough.’
The interview room falls silent. Outside, I hear the traffic go by. We’re next to the expressway, near the shopping centre and the big Asda and the library. Touchstones of my life before. I wonder how long it will be before I go shopping again, borrow a book; if I ever will. I wonder if there’s a library in prison or if they’ll let me take my Kindle in or what. How will I get oninside, as they call it? I’ve no airs and graces; that should count for something.
I realise I haven’t said anything for several minutes, possibly more.
‘Were you troubled by your imagination at that point?’ Blue Eyes says. ‘By how developed it was?’
I shake my head, even though I was; I was nothing but troubled.
‘I love people,’ I say instead. ‘Always have. I love their complications and their faults as much as their qualities. I love what makes themthem, if you know what I mean. And I suppose I’ve developed a way of flowing around people, keeping everyone afloat sort of thing.’
‘Like water?’
