I take the towel and make my way back across the landing to the bathroom. I turn on the light and am greeted by a sight so horrifying it makes my toes curl: my reflection in the full-length mirror. Here I am, looking all of my thirty-nine years and then some. My face is lined and puffy, my hair a thick ball of greying wire wool. I make a mental note as I turn on the shower to check in with Anton for a full head of highlights as soon as I get back to London.
The water burns my skin and as I scrub my face I smile at the futility of worrying about my appearance. What are a few grey hairs compared to the horrors of the last few weeks? My life has imploded and all I can think of is a cut and blow-dry.
But then I remember my lovely friend Bridget Hennessey, one of the most fearless journalists I have ever known and my mentor when I started out. She had just come back from reporting on the war in Kosovo when we met and had endured a mock execution at the hands of a rebel gang. For ten days she was held hostage with a sack tied over her head while the sound of gunshots rang out from the room next door. They told her they had killed her driver and cameraman and that she would be next. The psychological torture she endured would have sent most of us mad but she held herself together until she was released. I remember watching her in the newsroom as she calmly typed up the account of what had happened, her perfectly manicured fingernails tapping at the keyboard. I sat there with my unkempt hair and bitten fingernails and wondered how she could have gone through such a terrifying ordeal and still think it necessary to get her nails done.
‘But that’s the whole point, Kate, my dear,’ she said when I asked her about it later. ‘Real life can’t stop – it mustn’t stop, otherwise those bastards have won.’
I step out of the shower and wrap myself in the large white towel. Warmth envelops my body and I close my eyes, imagining I’m in our favourite hotel in Venice and Chris is waiting for me in the bedroom. I can feel his rough warm skin next to mine as I walk along the corridor; his fingers working their way inside me; the taste of mulled wine on his lips. But the bedroom is empty and cold and the feeling dissolves as I slip under the polyester sheets and close my eyes.
Moments later I am in a shop filled with dust. It swirls around the room, seeping into the cavities and crevices like poisonous gas. As I step further inside, the dust thickens and I can’t see. My mouth is dry with fear but I must keep going.
This shop was once full of customers, full of life. Piles of travel brochures and black-market cigarettes lined its shelves and a small boy ran down the aisles telling his stories to anyone who would listen, but now all is silence as I walk through the mounds of rubble.
The ground is different here, slick and wet, and when I look down I see my boots are covered in dark red stains. I’m no longer walking on rubble but trudging through thick, glutinous blood.
I hear a camera click and its flash illuminates the room. The shock of the light makes me lose my footing and I fall, face down, into the fluid. Looking up, I see a pile of stones, a small shrine amid an ocean of blood, and I crawl towards it, sensing what lies beneath. I feel his heartbeat vibrating beneath my hands and I begin to dig. I am a burrowing animal as I pull away the rubble, clawing at it with my fingernails. Spots of crimson dot the stones and I realize it is coming from my hands though I feel no pain. Then I see him, lying on his back, eyes wide open, arms raised upwards; a baby looking for its mother.
I try not to look at his face as I bend down to pick him up. Behind me, the camera flashes and the boy is illuminated in a harsh white glare. I can’t see him; he is dissolving into the light. Stop it, I cry to the man with the camera, you can’t photograph this, and as my voice echoes against the shattered walls the ground shakes. The boy looks at me, pleadingly, and I try to grab hold of his hand but it slips through my fingers. He is dust and I watch as he returns to the earth. But in the final moments he calls out.
‘Help me!’
It’s the last thing I hear as the camera’s flash blinds me and I blink myself awake.
I am lying crouched on the floor, scraping my nails against the carpet, and though I know that I’m safe, that it was just another nightmare, my mouth still tastes of dust. Hauling myself up from the floor, I see that the room is full of a cold, bluish light. I’d been so tired I’d forgotten to close the curtains.
I go to the window. The sky is clear and cloudless. Such a contrast to the polluted skies I see each night in London. I stand for a moment looking at the moon and the twinkling marine stars and I think of Syria. There, darkness came down fast. Like a guillotine, Chris used to say. And I feel myself disconnect. It seems as though all of that – Syria, London, Chris – is another life, and this life, this town on the edge of the sea, is the only one that exists. I’m no longer a fearless journalist, I’m a scared teenager crouching once more behind the curtains, scared of the nightmares that come when I close my eyes.
3
Herne Bay Police Station
10 hours detained