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I’m not asking for sympathy, by the way; I’m asking you to understand what I did to that poor girl, that’s all. It was unnerving, all this intuition. I felt like a radio tuned to several different channels at once. But I was trying to take Lisa’s advice and see it as a gift. Human beings need to connect with each other. What else are we in this life for, if not? I was water. I’d always been water, flowing around those I loved and, quite often, those I didn’t. But now I was waiting for fresh drops to swell the depleted puddle I’d become.
For that week, all I did was go to work and come home again. That was enough. By the time I got in at night, I was too exhausted to do more than walk Archie round the close for his wee.
‘Did you see anyone at that time? Anyone you knew?’
I think for a minute. ‘I only saw a couple of neighbours. Mostly I was looking at the lights coming from the windows, the families sitting round the table or watching television together. Mrs Lang from number twenty-four was putting a bag of rubbish into her dustbin. I tell you what, she is a very unhappily married woman indeed. Oh, and I waved to Ingrid, who was closing her curtains.’
‘So you weren’t going any further than your own crescent?’
‘No. Well, I did go as far as the Spar, which is at the end of the estate before you get to the bus stop on the main road, and I suppose I should tell you that I tied Archie up outside, went in and… I nicked a packet of biscuits. Just to see if I could get away with it. Which I did. But the following Saturday was my first really long evening walk. And I swear to God, when I met that young girl, the one in the paper, all I wanted to do was talk to her. Jo. Well, you know her name. But that was the start of things stepping up – I can see that now. That was when I started to feel afraid.’
10
Mark
Transcript of recorded interview with Mark Edwards (excerpt)
Also present: DI Heather Scott, PC Marilyn Button
HS: Mr Edwards, can you tell us anything about your wife’s behaviour? Had she changed in any way recently, perhaps around the end of June? Was there anything specific you might have noticed or which might seem relevant in the light of what’s happened?
ME: I suppose she was a bit funny after our Katie’s nineteenth. She had a nosebleed that night and she seemed upset, I suppose. And the next morning she’d gone into herself, further than usual.
HS: Can you tell us anything about the folder containing the crime reports?
ME: (Pause)
HS: For the benefit of the tape, Mr Edwards is clearing his throat.
ME: She’d started with the file the year before. I asked her not to, but she was determined to get enough articles together to take to our MP. She wanted him to take it to Parliament and get something done about all the knife crime. She was very committed to it. I’d hear the printer going sometimes and I’d check the alarm clock and it’d be like five, six, half six in the morning. But it was only after Katie’s do that she started going out in the evenings. Only round our way at first. Took the dog, like. I didn’t think too much about it. But then… then she started going further.
HS: Did you ask her where she was going?
ME: She said she was walking the dog. But our Archie doesn’t need much walking. He’s eight. That’s middle-aged, in dog years. She just seemed to need to get out of the house. She’d be out for hours. And I couldn’t think of a reason to stop her. I mean, I had no idea. So… so I didn’t. Stop her, I mean.
11
Rachel
I met Jo about forty minutes’ walk from our house. It was further than I’d walked in years.
On the Wednesday, I think it was, and this is embarrassing, I’d nicked some chewing gum from the Spar to stop me stuffing my face of an evening. I can’t believe I did that, but I did, and I’ve nicked other stuff since, so maybe that should be added to the charges. But the chewing gum was because I’d put on weight over the last year or so and I suppose I was hoping the evening strolls would pay off eventually, especially as they meant that I was laying off the Hobnobs and the Cadbury’s in front of the telly, and whatever white wine was on offer in the Co-op that week.
‘And you took the dog?’ Blue Eyes uncrosses her legs, recrosses them the other way. She’s wearing a black tunic thing today with a big necklace of coloured glass beads, what Katie would call a statement piece. I’m wearing jogging pants and a T-shirt. I’m not in a prison, which makes sense because there’s no prison overlooking the Shopping City. I’m in a psychiatric unit.
They still lock us up at night, though, which is a relief.
‘Rachel?’ Oops. Earth to Rachel, come in, Rachel. ‘You took your dog with you when you walked?’
‘The dog was my alibi.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
Good question. I have a think before I tell her I was trying to pull myself out of the hole I was in, get fit, take my mind off things. But I can see that if I was thinking of the dog that way, I must have known deep down that what I was doing wasn’t strictly speaking a simple leg-stretch.
The girl, Jo, the one in the news, was wandering around in front of the station. I mean, I didn’t know her name then, obviously. She was wearing a too-big tweedy overcoat, skinny jeans and monkey boots and she looked to be about Katie’s age. She looked lost and a bit frazzled so I asked her if she was all right and, as was becoming depressingly familiar, she almost jumped out of her skin. Really, I thought, I should buy a sheet and some chains to rattle just to wring some drops of amusement out of the situation.
‘I’ve lost my satchel,’ she said, fingers bunched at her forehead ‘I thought it was in my rucksack but it’s not. It’s got my purse and my phone in it. I think someone must have taken it while I was asleep. Or I might have left it on the train, I don’t know.’
