Before You Knew My Name (73)

Ruby suddenly sees Josh holding out his phone like a bunch of flowers, my smiling face filling the screen.

Taking a deep breath, she carries on, finally able to admit just how uncomfortable Tom made her feel, the way he kept pushing himself on her, and onto me, too.

‘There’s something this guy seems to know that he shouldn’t,’ she adds, arriving now at the place she started, coming up the stairs to Sue’s apartment tonight, her confusion held out in front of her, and her fear, too, that her friends might shut the door in her face. She feels exhausted to have come this far, and from the looks on Lennie and Sue’s faces as she finishes her story, they are right there with her.

‘Oh my God, Ruby. Do you really think …’

But for once, Lennie is lost for words and she trails off, looking to Sue for help. The older woman is silent, thoughtful, as she refills each of their wine glasses almost to the rim. If Ruby didn’t know better, she’d swear Sue’s hand is shaking.

‘That man, whoever he was, had no right to make you feel that way, Ruby.’

Sue is indeed trembling, though not from fear. From rage.

‘And Alice, that poor, poor girl. She was basically the same age as my Lisa. What happened to her makes me so mad. The entitlement of these fucking men who destroy lives, just because they can.’

‘I’ve never, ever heard you swear—’ Lennie starts, then stops. ‘You’re right. It makes me fucking mad, too. And scared.’

Wine slops over Lennie’s glass, she watches it spill onto the table, before she turns back to Ruby, her dark eyes wide.

‘Do you really think he could have done it? This Tom guy.’

Still, Ruby doesn’t know for sure. How could she. Reading true crime threads and wandering around the internet with her imaginary magnifying glass could never prepare her for this. Not even seeing the machinery of a murder investigation up close, those forensic investigators, Jennings, her clumsy interview with O’Byrne, could give her the tools she needs to determine Tom’s motives down at the river yesterday, or any of the days before. How do you crawl into the mind of a murderer, and would it look any different from that of any other man, when you got down to it?

‘For all I know,’ Ruby answers slowly, ‘Tom is a great guy. Just a little forward. And a bit weird about Alice. That’s not enough to make him a murderer.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Sue responds. ‘And so what I’d like to ask you is this. Something we don’t ask ourselves enough. Do you trust your instinct, Ruby?’

The question feels as large as the room, and all three women pause to consider it. Thinking about the nights they’ve crossed the road to avoid a parked car with its lights still on or pretended to make a phone call when someone walks too close behind them. Remembering the times they have shifted seats on public transport, or said no, thank you, to that offer of a drink. Self-preservation as a replacement for instinct, because being right would be the real danger here.

Ruby feels her body arch toward this sudden realisation, a shudder that almost lifts her from the floor.

‘I’m afraid to be right,’ she says, holding out her arms to examine the tiny hairs standing up from her skin. ‘Because—can you imagine what that would mean?’

Something Josh had said to her that night at the secret bar comes back to her now. When they finally knew my name.

‘They’re not always monsters, Ruby. Sometimes they’re normal guys, who turn out to be capable of terrible things.’

It is a truth so small she almost missed it. So did I. But there it is. Half-hidden by the rocks and the dirt.

Just waiting to be found.



You mustn’t blame me for what happens next. Though I suppose some of you saw it coming. And maybe it is my fault. The way it all plays out. But I would never purposefully put Ruby in danger, please know that. I would have shown her this last, important detail in a different way if I could.



She can’t sleep. Lennie and Sue thought she should go to the police straight away.

‘In the morning, maybe,’ she’d said before she went home, thinking, hoping, the midnight hours might help her find the words she would need to make that call. Knowing Detective O’Byrne would need something more concrete than her instinct, her discomfort. But the words don’t come. Instead, her head is filled with half-finished conversations. Weeks, months, years of them, and Tom’s voice is the loudest now. Something—everything—is wrong with their interactions, this seems obvious now. Why did he … and why would he … and what was he … Ruby kicks off the bed covers in frustration. What is it that she’s missing here?

Tom knows something about Alice.

That’s what she returns to, time and again. The impossibility of it, and yet.

She was out here, taking her pictures.

It doesn’t make sense that he knows this. She is the one who found the body, she is the one who has spent night after night following breadcrumbs all over the city, piecing it all together. How can Tom be in possession of such an important detail that she herself did not know?

Fuck it.

This feels just like that other morning. The room too small, her thoughts too big. To Ruby, it almost feels like a dream as she gets up in the dark, puts on her running shoes. When she exits her apartment, makes her way toward Riverside Park, the streets are just as empty as that other morning. It’s not raining today, that is something different. But the stillness, the silence, her frustration, feel exactly the same. Checking her watch, Ruby calculates the sun will be up in half an hour. The sky is already changing colour, lifting up off her nose, and this emboldens her, lengthens her strides as she enters the park.