‘Tell him,’ said Nick. ‘Whatever it is, you have done nothing wrong.’
I gulped down air. ‘I thought…’ The humiliation set fire to my cheeks and held my tongue so that no matter how I tried I couldn’t make another sound.
‘Sergeant–’ began Nick.
‘I thought Nick was here,’ I blurted out. ‘I thought he was here. With her. With Lorelei.’
The policeman looked at Nick with his eyebrows raised. I could see his mind working. Mapping out a chain of events. Nick’s mouth fell open a little and he clamped it shut again. I could see his forehead furrow in anger.
‘And why did you think that?’
‘I don’t know!’ I cried out. ‘I don’t know,’ I repeated to Nick. ‘I’m sorry.’
How I wished I could somehow take back what I had done. If only we could do that in life, as children do when they play games, to save themselves.
‘I think you do know,’ the officer said.
Nick looked as if he wanted to shout at me but was forcing it down. ‘It was nothing,’ I insisted.
‘Tell me.’ The policeman moved between me and Nick, blocking him. I lifted my hand to Nick, but he made no motion to take it.
I turned over in my mind those little signs that had made me think Nick would be there: the perfume in his office and how it had once been in my home; Nick’s absence from the surgery that Charles wouldn’t explain. The magazine.
But now I knew my suspicions had been wrong they seemed so transparent and weightless that a breeze would blow them away.
‘It was… nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘There was a package at his office. Perfume. The one she wears.’ For a second, I actually looked to the officer for confirmation that that did, truly, look suspicious, just so I wouldn’t feel so idiotic and disloyal.
‘What?’ Nick burst out, amazement in his voice. ‘The… I bought a bottle for you. Not her brand, a different one. I thought you would like it.’
It was awful. I was a patient in a madhouse being watched by the sane.
The policeman tapped his pencil on his notepad. ‘Where were you today, Dr Cawson?’ he asked.
Nick looked like he was about to explode at the implication. ‘I went to my surgery and saw my patients. At lunchtime I went for a walk and then to a house call. Comrade Taggan, Deputy Secretary at the Department of Labour. I was there for an hour and a half. After that I returned to my surgery and your station called to say what had happened. I came straight here. Feel free to check.’
The policeman nodded. ‘Long house call. It was at his home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was anyone else there?’
‘Of course not. It was a medical consultation.’ Nick became exasperated. ‘For God’s sake, this was just an accident. They happen all the time.’
‘He’s not married? Housekeeper? No one else?’
Nick’s face darkened. ‘He is married. His wife was not there. He has no housekeeper as far as I’m aware. He is a senior government official and also Secretary of his Party branch. I should think his word would be sufficient.’
‘Thank you.’ The officer nodded. ‘Would you please wait downstairs?’ Nick glanced at me as he passed. I saw anger in his eyes. I couldn’t tell who had inspired it but some of it was probably directed at me. I think I would have felt better if he had torn into me. ‘Do you work, Mrs Cawson?’
‘I’m a teacher. English.’
‘Which school?’
I fluttered my hands. ‘I don’t have a job right now.’ I didn’t want to explain that for the half-year since I had married Nick I had been writing to education boards hoping for a position in one of the new schools opened by the Republic and hadn’t been offered one. But I realized that it wasn’t just my hands that were fluttering – my whole body was shaking. I stared at my limbs.
‘It’s the shock,’ he said. ‘It’s normal. You’ll be all right.’
The bedroom door opened and a well-built man in his thirties with an aquiline nose and a bald head entered, looking around the room in a methodical way. He didn’t wear a uniform and the old policeman seemed annoyed at the man’s presence, smacking his notepad against his hip in irritation. The newcomer leaned against the wall and waved his hand in a manner that said we should continue. ‘When did you get married?’ the white-haired policeman asked.
‘May the twelfth.’
‘This year?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Lambeth Records Office.’
He wrote it down. For another ten minutes we went through what I had seen and not seen, heard and not heard. There wasn’t much. I kept looking at the other man, bemused by whom he could be. He said nothing and yet somehow had an air of authority. I can’t properly explain it – it was just something about the way he held himself. ‘Was there anyone else here?’ the policeman asked. I was about to say no, but hesitated. He noticed. ‘Think very carefully.’
I put my hands to my temples. And, as I concentrated, I saw those flickers of memory from just before I fell. I closed my eyes.
I had climbed the stairs; thrown open the bathroom door. And then, in the light, there was Lorelei. I saw her again now, red hair, pale skin. Her beauty unmistakable. But was she alive or dead? Ready to cry out or past caring about this world? I couldn’t be certain. After seeing her, my feet had moved over the wet tiles; and as I looked up, there had been something reflected in the gilt mirror above the bath. Something dark – a figure. I tried to make it out now but it was too obscure, too shifting.
After that, I had fallen, cascading on to the solid metal of the bath, down into the black. And I had woken to find her drifting under the water. I ran then for the police.
I dropped my hands and looked at the officer. ‘What is it?’ he said.
‘There might have been someone behind me.’
‘Who?’ He spoke urgently.
‘I don’t know. There’s a mirror there. I think I saw someone in it.’
‘Man or woman?’
Desperately I tried to picture the rough form. I wanted to turn the fading edges into clean lines and the greys into colours, but I couldn’t. It remained a ragged silhouette. I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, it’s too blurred.’
‘You have to try.’
And so I tried again, seeing the shifting water reflected in the glass. Waves of light ran across its surface and I tried to focus on them, telling myself that if I remembered, it would mean an end to this terrible day and Nick and I could go home. He would loathe me for my unfounded suspicions about him, but we could get through it and pick up the pieces. Yet, no matter how hard I reached for the memory, feeling my head pulse with the effort, it stayed locked away from me as surely as if it had never formed. ‘I can’t,’ I whispered.
‘Try.’
‘I can’t, I just can’t!’ There was silence. I looked at the other man in the room. He said nothing.
The policeman rolled his pen in his fingers thoughtfully. Then he went back to asking me more questions and I answered them. Questions about my family and how long I had been in London, that sort of thing. From time to time he would softly return to the image in the mirror but what remained of the memory seemed to crumble and become less real every time.
He wrote everything down in his notebook and I had to sign each page to say it was a true statement of the facts. My fingers could barely hold the pen as I did so – the shock still, I supposed. I might be required to attend the station to make another statement soon, he told me. ‘What happened to her?’ I asked, with my eyes cast down. ‘To Lorelei.’
He cleared his throat. ‘That’s what we’re going to find out.’
And then, finally, the other man spoke. ‘I think that will be all,’ he said. His voice was calm and controlled.