“It’s going to be all right, Em,” he said, and I nodded.
It’s funny. I always imagined the police coming to my door. Here I am, coming to theirs.
At the front desk, we give our names and ask to speak to DI Sinclair. He’s been quoted in all the stories about Alice as the man in charge. The young officer on duty tells us to take a seat and Paul sits next to a man who looks like he’s been beaten up. He’s drunk and bloody and crying. Paul gives him tissues to mop the mess and tries to speak to him, but he’s too out of it to hear him.
I sit, jiggling my knee in time to my internal music.
When we’re called over to the desk, Paul pats my shoulder and we stand.
We walk what feels like miles, the constable’s big feet making an echo chamber of the corridor. Everything seems exaggerated—the time, the sounds, the glare of the lights. I dig my nails into my skin beneath my handbag. It’s going to be all right, Em, is my mantra.
The young officer can’t tell us anything, but he offers us a drink and brings thin plastic cups of sweetened tea that neither of us can stomach. We wait in silence. Each caught in our own bubble. We have said all there is to say to each other.
“No more secrets,” I’d said to Paul, and he’d said, “No,” and looked away.
Now I have to tell my secrets to DI Sinclair. I wonder if they will believe that the baby didn’t breathe? Maybe they’ll think I killed it. They might lock me up straightaway.
The detective comes in quietly and introduces himself. Not as old as I expected. Chubby face. All polite. He puts his reading glasses on when he sits down and opens his file. I can see the corner of a photograph poking out from under documents. He notices me looking and closes the file.
“Mrs. Simmonds,” he says. “Can you tell me why you have come here today?”
I’m ready.
“To tell you that the baby you found in Howard Street is not Alice Irving. It is my baby. The baby I had a week after my fifteenth birthday,” I say. My prepared statement.
He looks at me carefully. Like Kate did. Weighing me up. Weighing my words.
“When was your baby born, Mrs. Simmonds?”
“April 1, 1985. I had the baby on my own, in the bathroom at home, 63 Howard Street.”
“That must have been a frightening ordeal,” he says. But I know he doesn’t believe me. He’s playacting concern.
“Did anyone know about your pregnancy or the birth?”
“No, I was too frightened and ashamed to tell anyone. I hid it all,” I say.
“Right. When did you bury your baby?”
“The same day,” I say.
“And how did your baby die?”
Paul suddenly speaks. “You don’t have to answer that question, Emma.”
“It’s okay, Paul,” I say. “I want to tell the police everything I know. No more secrets.”
I turn back to the policeman and say, “I don’t know. It never made a sound when it was born.”
I am back in the smothering silence of the bathroom and I clench my fists against my thighs.
“Mrs. Simmonds, we have DNA evidence that this baby is Alice Irving,” he says too gently, as if he is talking to a child. Be careful with the madwoman, he must be thinking.
“Then you must have made a mistake,” I say. “There cannot be two babies.”
DI Sinclair rubs his head. His hair is very short and he’s got little blond prickles on his scalp. I wonder what they feel like when you rub them. I’m drifting. Must focus. I twist the skin on my stomach.
“As you say, it would be against all odds,” he says. “Are you all right, Mrs. Simmonds?”
“Yes, thank you,” I say and sit on the front edge of my chair to show I’m listening to him.
“My wife has had a very traumatic experience,” Paul says and I silence him with a look.
“It’s fine, Paul.”
DI Sinclair clears his throat. Must be finding it hard to ask the next one.
“I think you spoke to a reporter last night, didn’t you?”
I nod. I feel sick. He’s talked to Kate. Why didn’t she tell me? She’s lied to me. And I fumble with the idea that no one can be trusted.
“You told the reporter that you had done something terrible. What was the terrible thing you did, Emma?” he says. “Did you have anything to do with burying Alice Irving?”
Him using my first name catches me off guard and I almost don’t hear the accusation that follows. Then it crashes in on me.
“No, of course not. It isn’t Alice. Why won’t you believe me? The terrible thing I have tortured myself with since the age of fourteen is that I had sex with my mother’s boyfriend. And I believed I made him want to do it.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“He said I had seduced him and if I said anything about what we’d done, my mum would hate me forever,” I crash on, my words spilling out into the room. “But I didn’t. I know that now. He raped me and he made me feel I was to blame.”
He glances up at me as I recount the loss of my virginity and I wonder if he has daughters.
“You are saying you were raped?” he asks.
“Yes, Will Burnside raped me,” I say.
It is all said. No going back now.
The officer scribbles it down in his notes.
“And you claim he is the father of the baby you say you gave birth to?” the officer asks and I nod.
There is a pause as he finishes his notes and I close my eyes. When I open them, he has pulled out some photos from a file and put them in a stack, facedown on the table.
“Mrs. Simmonds,” he says, all formal again. “I would like to show you some Polaroid photographs that have come into our possession as part of another inquiry. Can I ask you to look at them to see if you recognize any of these women?”
I don’t understand and I look at Paul. He doesn’t understand, either.
DI Sinclair turns them over and spreads them out, so I can see the images. I can’t make them out at first. They are bits of things. People. They are bits of people. A leg, a breast, a cheek. But gradually, they come into focus and I put the pieces together. I look at the faces—the eyes are open but they are not seeing. They look blank. Dead eyes. Like Barbara Walker’s face. Like the photo in Will’s drawer. These are the photos Kate got from Al Soames.
? ? ?
I look up at DI Sinclair. “What have these got to do with me?” And I hear Paul’s gasp.
I follow his eyes to a photo in the middle and I know immediately it is me.
And I reach out to take it, to gather her in. I have the dead eyes of the other girls and, for a moment, I’m glad. At least she didn’t know, I think. I don’t want to put the photo down. I can’t bear the idea that strangers will see me like this. Exposed.
I want to be the keeper of my last shred of dignity. For a bit, at least. He should allow me that.
I look at it again and I shudder when I notice the hand in the corner of the photo. A man’s hand, touching Emma’s face. My face.
I can’t stop looking at the image, but DI Sinclair is speaking and Paul is crying.
“Is this you?” the DI asks gently.
“Yes,” I say. “Where did you find this? Who took them?”
“We are investigating that. But can you tell me if you know a man called Alistair Soames?”
“Yes,” I say. “Al Soames was the landlord of our house in Howard Street.”
And I see his face in my head. I feel his hand brushing my breast. At a party. The party Will took me to when I was fourteen and Jude had food poisoning.
I taste vomit at the back of my throat and swallow hard, trying to remember more about that night.
How did I get home? I’m shivering.
And DI Sinclair is talking to me, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. I must remember. I play memory games, trying to kick-start my brain. But I can’t remember anything about the end of the evening.
“Did he take the photos?” I say, interrupting the DI.
“As I said, Emma, I can’t give you any more details at the moment. But I will be talking to you over the next few days as things progress.”
It’s a policeman’s answer. Saying something but nothing.
“What about my baby?” I ask. “What are you going to do about my baby?”
He plays for time, shuffling his papers, but I repeat my question.