Greenwich Park(31)
‘It’s a lovely necklace,’ the girl had said, cutting a length of ribbon. She had a diamond piercing in her nose, jade rings on her fingers.
‘Yes,’ I’d agreed. ‘The dog is sweet.’
‘Oh, do you think it’s a dog?’ she’d said vaguely. Then she’d glanced at me and backtracked, worried she’d put me off. ‘You’re right,’ she’d gabbled, snatching my credit card before I could change my mind. ‘It does look like a dog.’
Daniel is watching me as I move around the kitchen. I switch off the gas, start piling the risotto into bowls. The match is breaking for half-time. I turn down the radio, tuck the necklace inside my jumper. I top the bowls with chopped parsley. As I set them down on the table, I feel the heat of Daniel’s gaze at the back of my neck.
While we eat, I try to talk about my day, ask Daniel about work. But we don’t seem to be able to get much of a conversation started. After a few mouthfuls, he finishes, abruptly, places his fork back in the bowl. He always eats in this manner, as if it is a chore, a waste of time. He gathers up the bowls, even though I’m not really finished, and leaves them stacked by the sink. I stare at the empty table. Is this it, now? Is this how it is going to be? Even after the baby is here?
I finish the washing up and walk into the living room. Daniel is down on his hands and knees, reaching under sofas, going through the drawers in the coffee table.
‘What are you doing?’
He glances up at me guiltily, as if I’ve caught him doing something wrong.
‘Just thought it might be under here. The laptop.’
‘I’ll have a proper look tomorrow. Can we not worry about it now?’
‘Hmm.’
‘I thought you said you wanted to watch Luther.’
‘Oh yeah. OK.’
So we sit down to watch TV, sheltering together in the one corner of living room that we’ve managed to preserve from the building work. The nicer chairs and tables are draped in white sheets like ghosts. I watch the blue light of the TV flicker on Daniel’s face, and wonder what it is that my husband is hiding from me.
GREENWICH PARK
On the high street, car headlights and street lamps flicker on. Shop shutters start to come down, like eyes closing. She watches, and waits.
The man is behind the glass, a window that stretches from the floor to the ceiling. All the other lights in the building are off. His is the only one remaining.
She shifts on her feet. The sky is darkening, the light draining out of it in streaks of pink and orange over the houses. He would normally be home by now. But something is keeping him here this evening. Something stopping him going home to his beautiful wife.
The man stands up, slings a bag over his shoulder, gathers his things. Picks up a magazine on his desk, tries to tear it in half, but it’s too thick. Now, feeling foolish, he glances up, as if he senses he is being watched. Her neck prickles – has he seen her?
But no, the man has not seen her. Of course not, she scolds herself. She is safe here, in the shadows. The man tosses the magazine into the wastepaper bin instead. Then, finally, he picks up the envelope on his desk. Here we are, she thinks. Here we are. The man takes the envelope, rips it open and pulls out the contents onto his desk. She watches, gleefully, this silent film. She feels her fingers twitch, the saliva pool in her mouth, as the bag slips off the man’s shoulder, as he grabs for the side of his desk, as if he has been tossed, untethered, into space. Into a place without air, a place without gravity.
KATIE
As I sit in court, I try hard to focus on the evidence. I take down the defendant’s answers in shorthand, my pen makes a scratching sound against my notebook.
‘Her eyes were open.’ The defendant is tall, blond, with bright blue eyes. His palms are turned up and outwards in the body language of honesty. ‘She pulled me towards her.’
‘And then what happened?’
‘We kissed.’
‘You kissed her?’
‘Yes, and she kissed me back.’
‘And you were in no doubt whatsoever that she consented to this contact?’
He smiles, looks straight at the jury. ‘None whatsoever.’
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
‘And what happened after that?’
The weather is getting cold now; the clerks wear cardigans and scarves inside the courtroom, plug heaters in at the walls. Everything about the room is starting to grate on me; the awful, cheap patterned carpet, the filthy plug sockets, the musty smell, the dust along the windowsills. DCI Carter is here again. He is wearing a diamond-patterned jumper under his suit jacket. I nod at him and he gently nods back.
After we went for coffee that time, I’d kept thinking about the way he’d reacted when I said that thing about rape cases. It made me wonder whether something had happened, in the past. Back at the office, I’d pulled up the digital archive, searched for his name. There were murder cases, kidnapping cases. Not many for rape.
Eventually, I’d found it. The papers had called it the Boathouse Rape. The echoes with the current case had been obvious. The privileged backgrounds of the accused. The vulnerability of the victim. The beauty of the backdrop. The ugliness of the detail.
It had been even worse for the victims back then. They couldn’t report this girl’s name, of course – she’d have anonymity for life under the law. But everything else about her life had been laid out in lurid technicolour. The underwear she’d had on, the number of drinks she’d had at the party. The way she’d been dressed, the way she’d behaved, how much sexual experience she’d had before. It was all in the stories, every last bit. She had been just sixteen years old.