‘I don’t know,’ he sighs. ‘If you’d asked me that question a year ago I would have laughed at you, told you there was no chance Sally would have laid a finger on her child. But after that night with the wine bottle . . . she was like a different person, Kate, like a monster. The anger, it was like nothing I’ve seen before.’
I nod my head. He may not have seen it before but I have. He might as well be describing my father. I think of those nights when I would cower in my room after a beating and have to listen while my father kicked the shit out of my terrified mother. It would go on for hours and hours. And the next day I would ask Sally if she’d heard it and she would look at me as though I was talking nonsense.
‘You need another drink,’ I say to Paul, putting my hand on his. ‘Same again?’
When I return from the bar he is gone, though his coat is still on the back of the chair. I put his pint down and take another long sip of my wine. The bottle’s nearly finished. Funny how after years of abstinence drink can so quickly become a habit again. I think of Sally and tell myself that after tonight I’ll go back on the wagon. I look up and see Paul weaving his way through the bar.
‘Sorry about that,’ he says as he sits down. ‘Call of nature.’
‘Cheers,’ I say, lifting my glass.
‘Cheers,’ he replies. ‘And thanks for the pint.’
I drain the glass and pour myself another. I feel quite tipsy. Tomorrow I’ll stop, but tonight I’m going to enjoy this warm fuzzy feeling. It feels like I’m holed up in a cocoon where nothing can get me, no nightmares, no voices, no images of him.
Paul is talking about his work but I’m not really listening any more. I catch snippets of words – Calais, paperwork, migrants – and I make sympathetic noises as he tells me about the upcoming forty-eight-hour strike by the French lorry drivers.
I swill the wine in my glass, and feel the bar spin slightly. I rather like it.
‘It’s going to cause chaos . . . Have to work late that week.’
As his story continues I take another gulp of wine, then another and another until his voice forms a strange snake-like coil around my head, binding me to the past. I’m aware of Ray watching me from the bar and suddenly I’m seventeen years old again, sipping Vermouth and lemonade with some unsuitable lad while Dad’s friend keeps an eye on me. But somewhere in the centre of my consciousness I know why I’m drinking. I’m thinking of him.
‘Where are you, Chris?’ I whisper to the swirling room and for a moment I think I see him over by the bar, standing next to Ray, but the image disintegrates and Paul is back, telling me that if the strike goes ahead he might have to ‘stay over in Dover’.
‘Ha! Over in Dover. That rhymes.’ My voice is jagged and I feel the words tensing against my teeth as I speak. ‘Over in Dover. That’s brilliant.’
I go to grab my glass to make a toast to Paul and the lorry drivers’ strike and the delights of Dover but I miss my target and warm liquid seeps underneath my arm.
‘Whoa, careful! Time to call a cab.’
I hear Paul’s voice through the clanking sound of a bell ringing somewhere on the edge of my consciousness. Then a hand clasps round my waist, a gust of cold air whips into my face and I am on the ground, shuffling on my belly towards the men. I feel blood in my mouth, congealing and thickening as I try to breathe. Then the sound of gunshot pummels the air. I put my head down, close my eyes and start to count, and when I open them I see his face.
14
Herne Bay Police Station
30.5 hours detained
‘Did you sleep well?’
I look up at Shaw as she waits for my reply. She looks refreshed. Her navy trouser suit has been replaced with a cream skirt and black polo neck jumper. She will have slept in her own bed, next to her husband. She will have eaten breakfast at her own table, showered in her own bathroom. She is a free woman. As I sit here in yesterday’s clothes, the smell of the police cell embedded in my hair and skin, my back aching from the hard mattress I spent the night on, I try to remember what being free feels like. It seems like I’ve been held here for ever.
‘What do you think?’ I shoot back. ‘It’s not exactly the Ritz, is it?’
Shaw smiles awkwardly then begins.
‘Can you tell me about the incident in Soho, Kate?’
I look up at Shaw again. She is reading from a new set of notes.
‘What incident in Soho?’
‘The Star cafe on Great Chapel Street?’
My body tenses. She knows.
‘What about it?’
‘You went there the day after the incident with Rachel Hadley, didn’t you?’
She looks at me unblinkingly, her face a mask.
‘Yes,’ I whisper and as she prepares to ask me more questions I see myself that evening, fresh out of hospital and pumped up with painkillers, walking and walking like a zombie through the streets of Soho.
‘Can you tell me what happened?’
‘I was going for a coffee.’
‘But you didn’t quite make it to the cafe, did you?’
I look down at the linoleum floor, remembering the big hole outside the Star that was blinking and groaning at me like some great sea monster.
‘What stopped you from going inside, Kate?’
‘I was looking at the hoardings.’