Before You Knew My Name (74)

I can feel the adrenaline coursing through her now, the way it propels her toward the river, and I want to yell Stop! Find a way to turn her around. I would open up the sky, pour torrents of rain if I could. Crack the earth open, bring down the trees. But she keeps running, she can’t see me or hear me, and she cannot see what is waiting for her, down on those rocks. I speed between the river and the track she makes through the park, desperate to keep her away. There are other runners, cyclists, dotted around the park this early morning, and I try to rearrange them, move them into her path, but nothing works. Gusts of wind, branches bending; my panic is the lightest touch, and Ruby is moving too fast to feel it.

And then, mercifully, she stops. The sky is still dark, the river darker, and she stands, suspended high above the place where it happened. Knowing there are steps just ahead of her that will take her down to the water. She wonders: is this what Alice felt? Heading down to the river that morning? An inexplicable pull toward the water, a wilful ignorance of her own safety, because she had something she wanted, needed, to do.

What on earth were you doing in the park that morning?

Ruby takes the steps carefully, quietly. When she reaches the middle level of the park, she finally sees what I have been trying so desperately to keep her from: Tom Martin below her, standing on the rocks, shifting something from hand to trembling hand. He has come here every morning this week, always before the sun comes up. Planting his feet on either side of where he found me, closing his eyes. I’ve come here every morning, too. Observing his growing desire for Ruby, the mud brown of it, and wanting to scream. I whispered the words in his ear, that very first meeting. Willed him to speak them out loud.

A girl was murdered here.

I set that gull squawking, soured the wine. Put my hand over his lips when he kissed her, so she felt the brittle of my bones instead of his warm flesh. But it wasn’t enough to stop this.

It wasn’t enough to keep her away from him.

And now I can feel Ruby shaking. Instinctively, she has backed up the steps, creating enough distance to allow her to run if Tom suddenly turns away from the river, sees her standing there watching him. He would have to scramble up over the rocks, climb over that metal rail, there might be enough time for her to escape if he sees her. Ruby makes these calculations in a split second. But her safety is far from assured, she knows this.

Fight. Flight. Freeze. What do we choose in these moments? Ruby is both rooted to the spot and ready to run. And something else, too, the thing that scares me most. A white-hot rage is boiling within her, flames replacing blood. She imagines barrelling down the stairs, engulfing this man. How dare you! she wants to scream. How dare you! There is no question now. She knows. The man who kissed her two days ago is the man who raped and murdered Alice Lee.

What was the last thing she said to him?

Thank you, Tom. I appreciate your concern.

What neither of us said, what none of us say: You took up all the space. I didn’t know how to say no and you never waited for my yes. I need you to leave me alone now. We swallow the words and the warning bells, so that we take on the doubt, dismiss what we know to be true. We demur, placate. Say just enough and smile just enough and let them touch us just enough, hoping the moment will pass.

When he climbed down onto the rocks, when he came up beside me in the splattering rain and said, ‘Nice spot, isn’t it,’ I wasn’t so much afraid as alert. Attuned to his interest in me and aware, immediately, that I would now be responsible for managing that interest. Knowing I would have to be careful with how I responded to his advances, that my reaction would determine whether he made to lodge himself next to me—or encourage him to turn and leave me alone, the only thing I wanted him to do. Here’s what I was thinking, just before he materialised out of the haze of rain. I was thinking about how freedom and safety are the same thing, really. It was just after five thirty in the morning and the air was vibrating and whistling around me. I had removed my parka, was using it as a kind of umbrella for the Leica, and my arms were bare, exposed. The smack of raindrops and the icy air on my skin was exhilarating. I was wide awake, watching the buildings on the other side of the Hudson wake up too, light after light coming on, flashes against the dark sky. Thinking about freedom and safety, how unfettered I had become. The thread pulling me back to Mr Jackson finally loose, if not quite severed entirely.

When my ex-lover had answered the phone earlier that morning, clearly foggy from sleep, I remained silent at first, listening to him say ‘Hello?’ over and over, until finally, I heard him exhale against my name.

‘Alice?’ He sounded weary. ‘Is that you?’

‘I’m sorry for taking your mom’s camera,’ I said in response, and I heard another sigh, before Mr Jackson asked me where I was calling from.

Glancing about my bedroom in Noah’s apartment, I observed my new life. Brochures for the photography school on the dresser, a blank set of post-it notes waiting for my pen. A book on common dog behaviours. Purple runners at the base of my bed, toes pointing toward the door. Outside, I heard a train-rumble of thunder, and through a peek of curtain I could see the hazy orange and blues of the stormy, pre-dawn sky.

‘Home,’ I answered, knowing this to be as true as anything I had ever said.

I waited seconds, minutes for Mr Jackson to ask me if I was okay. I waited for him to press into my absence this past month, probe it, but instead he stayed silent. And I knew right there and then that he did not want to know where I was.