I Am Watching You(29)

‘Do you know what, Mr Ballard? On reflection, I think it might be better if we continue this a little more formally. At the local police station. DS Melanie Sanders will give us access to one of her nice interview suites, I’m sure.’

Henry can feel a terrible panic rising within him. A sort of change of temperature which sweeps right through his body. His mind is in such turmoil that for a moment he cannot tell whether he feels too hot or too cold. Just somehow all wrong in the clothes he is wearing. The fabric too close to his skin. Clinging, as if he is still wet from the shower.

In the midst of this panic he looks at his wife, but there is no support or comfort there. Only terrible and wild confusion in her eyes.

‘Shall we go then, Mr Ballard?’

Henry thinks that perhaps he should ask whether he has a choice. Whether this is an arrest—or a request. Whether he should get Barbara to phone their lawyer? Dig his heels in and actually refuse to go? But then he quickly regroups, thinking that he needs to be very, very careful. Saying the wrong thing or being uncooperative now could go very badly for him. Could be entirely misunderstood.

And so Henry Ballard stands, and as they walk outside he tries to calm himself, and decides, for now at least, to say nothing more at all.





CHAPTER 17


THE WITNESS

I have been lying in bed thinking about karma. Silly, I know, but that postcard has really gotten under my skin.

I keep having these mixed-up dreams. Anna on the train. The noise of Sarah and her bloke in that wretched toilet cubicle. And then the shock over Luke and his girlfriend.

I’m not one for popcorn psychiatry normally, but you can’t miss the irony, can you. And it just feels – I don’t know – as if everything in my life is trying to teach me some terrible lesson and my brain just can’t cope.

Some nights it gets so bad I get this tight feeling in my chest. Then I have to get up and make a cup of tea and then, of course, Tony gets up too – worried sick – which is the last thing I want. Spreading the guilt. What I try to do is go over it in my mind when I am on my own, playing rewind to think over and over and over about exactly how responsible I am for whatever happened to that poor girl. Wishing so much that I could go back and play it differently.

And then? The problem is, hand on heart, I still cannot go back there in my mind’s eye and be anything other than appalled at the thought of that girl and that man having sex in that toilet so soon after they met.

I wish that I could bounce this off people properly. Ask them openly what they would have done. Whether they would be shocked or upset to be confronted by what I heard. The problem is that the police have only ever released information that the ‘witness’ overheard the girls being chatted up by the guys just out of prison, and that the ‘witness’ was shocked at how quickly they became close. How quickly they made unwise plans together. Dangerous plans.

I’ve been judged for that and that alone. For not stepping in because two country girls were being so clearly targeted by two guys with records. That’s what all the social media and tabloid press has been about. What would you have done? Would you have minded your own? Two sixteen-year-old girls. Two guys just out of prison.

The police have never released the detail of the sex in the toilet, and asked me to keep it quiet for reasons of evidence, so I have only ever been able to tell Tony. He says I was right to be shocked – and that people would keep their noses out of it if they knew all the facts.

We’ve talked it over again since this business with Luke and his girlfriend, and Tony says it’s very different – a young girl having sex with a virtual stranger in a public toilet, and Luke and Emily making a mistake in a caring relationship. I know he’s right, but I still feel a bit hypocritical now for judging Sarah so very harshly.

He’s gone into work early today, my Tony. He’s in retail himself, but a very different sector – selling cereals to supermarkets. He’s acting regional manager and is up for the job permanently if his sales figures hit their target. I’m terribly proud of him, though it’s a lot of pressure and I wish he didn’t have to do so much travelling.

For now, with him away so much, I have promised to juggle my working hours so that I am not alone at the shop out of hours too much. At least not until we hear from the police and feel a bit steadier.

So this feels odd for me. A second cup of coffee in bed. It’s 8 a.m., which for a florist amounts to a lie-in. I am having a really good think.

About karma.

Also, whether I am a prude. I mean, I certainly hold my hands up to being a bit out of touch. Naive to imagine that my seventeen-year-old son wouldn’t be having sex yet. More and more I keep testing myself, worrying that I am a hypocrite over what happened on the train. Was my judgement about gender? Because my first thought was that Sarah clearly wasn’t as ‘nice’ a girl as I had imagined, which is why I stepped away from the whole situation. Yet if it had been Luke? No. On reflection, maybe not so hypocritical, because I would still be totally appalled and shocked if a son of mine, or any young man, had done that with someone they had just met.

Maybe the truth is that I just like some boundaries. Because don’t get me wrong, this is not about sex, per se; Tony and I get along very well in that department ourselves, thank you very much. I just think it’s private. Sex. Not something casual; something to be talked about with strangers at dinner parties. And certainly not something to share with a complete stranger in a train toilet.