A Traitor to Memory

“Are you asking me the same?”


“S'pose.” Vigorously, Yasmin wiped the cleanser into the old bathtub, as if doing so and in such a manner could rub away the spots where the porcelain had worn through to the metal lining beneath it. “I didn't hit anything that I recall. You?”

“Why did he want to know? What business is it of his how a headlamp was broken?” Katja had finished with her teeth and she leaned forward into the mirror, inspecting her face as she always did, as Yasmin herself had done for months upon her final release from prison, checking to see that she was really there, in this particular room, guard-less, wall-less, lock-and-key-less, with what was left of her life in front of her and trying not to be completely terrified of that empty, unstructured stretch of years.

Katja washed her face and patted it dry. She turned from the basin and leaned against it, watching Yasmin finish with the tub. When the taps were turned off, Katja spoke again. “What is he after us for, Yas?”

“You,” Yasmin said. “He's not after me. It's you. How'd that headlamp get busted?”

“I didn't know it was broken,” Katja said. “I haven't looked … Yas, how often do you look at the front of the car? Did you know it was broken before he pointed it out to you? No? It could have been broken for weeks. How badly is it broken? Do the lights still work? Someone probably reversed into it in the car park. Or in the street.”

True, Yasmin thought. But wasn't there something too quick, too anxious to be believed about Katja's words? And why didn't she ask which headlamp? Wouldn't it be logical for her to want to know which of the headlamps it was?

Katja added, “It could have happened when you were driving it, since neither one of us knew it was broken.”

“Yeah,” Yasmin admitted. “I see that.”

“Then—”

“He wanted to know where you were. He went to where you work and he asked about you.”

“So he says. But if he really talked to them, and if they really told him I'd missed four days, why did he give that information only to you and not to me as well? I was standing there, right in the room with the two of you. Why did he not ask me for my excuse? Think about that.”

Yasmin did so. And she saw that what Katja was pointing out did bear weight. The detective constable hadn't asked Katja about her absences from work when the three of them were in the sitting room together. Instead, he'd confided the information in Yasmin, just exactly like they were long-lost mates.

“You know what that means,” Katja said. “He wants to tear us apart because it'll serve his purposes. And if he manages to do it—to tear us apart—he won't waste much effort putting us back together. Even if he gets what he wants … whatever it is.”

“He's investigating something,” Yasmin said. “Or someone. So …” She took a breath that was deep, that hurt. “'S there something you're not telling me, Katja? Something you hiding from me?”

“This is just how it works,” Katja said. “This is just exactly how he wants it to work.”

“But you're not answering, are you?”

“Because I've nothing to say. Because I have nothing to hide from you or from anyone else.”

Her eyes held Yasmin's. Her voice was firm. And they both made promises, those eyes and that voice. They also reminded Yasmin of the history between them, the solace that had been offered by one and grasped by the other, and what had finally grown from that solace to sustain them both. But nothing from the heart was indestructible. Experience had taught Yasmin Edwards that. She said, “Katja, you'd say if …”

“If what?”

“If …”

Katja knelt on the floor next to the bathtub, next to Yasmin. Gently, she ran her fingers round the curve of Yasmin's ear. “You waited five years for me to get out,” she said. “There is no if, Yas.”

They kissed long and tenderly, and Yasmin didn't think as she'd thought at first, How bloody mad, I'm kissing a woman … she's touching me … I'm letting her touch me … Her mouth is here, it's there, it's tasting me where I want to be tasted … this is a woman and what she's doing is … yes, yes, I want this, yes. All she thought was what it felt like to be with her and what it felt like to be safe and sure.