‘I didn’t know.’
‘No.’ I wondered how many conversations like this had taken place there. Deals done. He examined me for a long time. I started to feel nervous again. ‘Some of my colleagues,’ he said. ‘They hate people like you. Doctors, their wives.’ We waited like that for a while before he gestured to the exit.
As soon as I got outside, a wave of relief broke over me, stronger than anything I had experienced in my life, and I cried out, laughing and clasping my hands together like a child. I didn’t care about the strange looks I was gaining, I had never felt such elation. There was a busker playing old folk songs in the corner – badly. I gave him the entire contents of my purse. ‘Good luck, lady,’ he said, scooping up the cash. ‘Good luck to you!’
‘Thanks,’ I replied. But before I could go home and wait excitedly for Nick’s return, there was something else I needed to do.
Nick’s safety had been everything for me. But now that I could almost feel him back with us, my mind turned to a different task, one that touched on my own safety rather than his. I was determined to recover the final memories of how Lorelei had died. Because someone had been there that day – I had seen them in the mirror – and whoever they were, they had let the suspicion of her death fall on us. What if they came back, preferring to see us all buried or imprisoned rather than able to expose them?
There was something I had once seen on a newsreel. A doctor had explained different methods of treating soldiers who had been badly affected during the War. One technique forced them to confront fears and situations that they had been shying away from in civvy street. It seemed to work for them, so I hoped it would work for me.
And so I stood again on the threshold of Lorelei’s black-and-white-tiled bathroom, with my hand on the cold copper bath. The taps were stiff and it took much of my strength to turn them, until the freezing water burst out, rising rapidly while I turned my attention to the radio set in the corner. The face glowed for a moment when I flicked the switch, before light music played, and a woman’s voice was heard, talking about her day. It wasn’t Lorelei but, somehow, the more I listened, the more it seemed to become her voice, glistening like ice.
The level in the tub was lifting, and I felt my pulse speed as I forced myself to drift back. It began slowly, but, little by little, I felt the past seeping in, until I was behind the house again, opening the back gate into the dank garden, weeds pulling at my feet; stalking like a ghost through the kitchen that she never used; climbing the stairs, sure that Nick was with her; hearing a man’s voice and her sharp laughter in reply. I felt every creak of the stairs, every step bringing me closer to her. Now my head was pounding, and the tide of the water was brushing the top of the bath. I gazed at it and heard a cold waterfall spill out and hit the floor, spreading across the tiles.
I fixed Lorelei’s image in my mind then: the beauty, the arrogance. My eye fell on the gilt-edged mirror and I could just make out a form reflected in it, dark and indistinct. It was coming closer to me. But, as I stared at the blurred movement, something changed, something was very different. And in a moment I realized: I knew that this was no memory of the day she died. The cold air that I felt clutching my skin and the dark reflected image filling my sight were both there in the present moment.
I spun around to see a face I knew well, choking at the sight of it. Then something slammed into my cheek and I was in the air, tumbling across the room, feeling only fear and an arc of movement.
A noise rang out as the back of my head hit something hard and metallic – the bath – and everything was confused and there was water. The whole world seemed to be spinning. The tunnel of my sight told me that I was on the floor, looking down at a seeping flood.
Grest bent down to me. I could smell his sweat, just as I had when he had pressed his chest against mine in the thin blue light of the NatSec van, just as I had in that locked interview room at 60 Great Queen Street. His flesh was so close I could see the wrinkles in his skin. His lips parted. ‘Give me the book or you end up like her,’ he said quietly.
24
Grest was all that I could see. He stood up, flexed his fingers and shook his hand – the knuckles were red where he had punched me. ‘It hurts me when I hurt you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to do it again. There’s no need for it if you just give me the book.’
I lay there, unable to move. We imagine that at times of great fear our limbs will tear us away, but too often they lock us where we are. I could no more move than if I had been chained down.
He was looking straight down at me. His fingers balled into a fist once more. ‘Mrs Cawson, you just need to give me the book and you’ll be safe. Your husband and stepdaughter will be safe.’ He began to crouch down to me again. ‘Mrs Cawson, do you want them to be safe?’
‘Yes,’ I croaked. ‘Please.’
‘Then you know what to do.’
Yes, I knew. ‘The book.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I haven’t got it here,’ I said.
‘Then where is it?’
‘I can get it. I can get it for you.’ I was shattered into pieces. I would have said or done anything to make him leave me alone.
‘Then we’ll–’
And then the world shook again, and his arms stretched out like wings, falling down, towards me, towards the tiles. I twisted to the side as his waist fell on to mine, thudding the air from me, and his cheek cracked against the floor just centimetres from my own, to make the tiles judder. His eyelids dropped.
‘Jane?’
I turned my head and saw someone else standing where Grest had been. ‘Are you all right?’ Tibbot was breathing heavily and gripping his truncheon, one of the heavy wooden ones that the older policemen had kept from the days before the Soviets came. He dropped to his knees and pulled Grest’s body from mine. ‘Jane, are you all right?’ he asked.
‘I… think so.’ The impact of Grest’s body had left me winded, but no worse than that, I thought.
He pulled Grest’s head up before throwing it back down with a thump. Blood dripped from the Sec’s nose, swirling into the flowing water. Tibbot took a pair of handcuffs from his jacket, quickly locking Grest’s wrists behind him, before helping me to my feet. Spots of light seemed to fly around the room, but my mind began to focus better.
‘What happened?’ he said, as he turned off the taps and put his hands underneath Grest’s shoulders, dragging him out to the landing. But I couldn’t immediately answer him. ‘Jane, what’s going on?’ he asked again, frustrated by my lack of reply. He pushed Grest against the solid bannister, where he used the Sec’s belt to bind his ankles tightly together.
I took a moment, trying to order my thoughts. ‘It must have been him,’ I said. ‘No one else knew about the book. He killed her.’
Tibbot looked Grest up and down. I saw a hardness in Tibbot’s eyes that I hadn’t caught before. It seemed to come from what he had lived through, what he had lost. I had seen a quiet sadness, but this cold determination was new to me. Perhaps it had always been there and I just hadn’t perceived it. Something else we were all hiding.
‘Go into the bedroom,’ he said quietly.
‘Why?’ He shook his head. I could guess why he didn’t want me here. ‘No, I’ll stay.’