Tania Carver: The Creeper

He did.

And Mickey got that tingle again, that frisson that said he was on to something. And it felt so damned good. He had forgotten just how good. In fact, he was in such a hurry to get back to the quay he almost forgot his bacon sandwich.

Almost.

Suzanne closed the door, put the bolts in place, the chain across, flattened herself against it. Sighed like she had been holding her breath underwater.

She looked down the hall of her flat. At first glance, everything looked the same as it always did, but, looking more closely, she noticed differences. Things had been moved out of place and not put back. Doors and drawers left open that she would usually have shut. And vice versa.

The police. She hoped.

This should have been the place she felt safe, could take refuge in. Not any more. There was nowhere she could feel safe in now. Not even her own body. Not after today. What she had just been through.

The rape suite had been what she expected. White, tiled, functional.

So had the feelings inside her: apprehension, fear, terror.

The detective had taken her into the station, insisting Suzanne call her by her first name of Anni. Taking her straight through to this white room, waving away the paperwork until afterwards. Then pulling up two stiff-backed chairs, sitting opposite each other, talking and maintaining eye contact all the while.

‘You can have counselling, you know. We can arrange it.’

Suzanne couldn’t reply. There were no words in her mouth.

Anni continued. ‘If, you know, you need it. If things…’

Suzanne’s head was still spinning. It was like she had stepped out of her normal life into something surreal. A waking dream or some absurdist theatre play. In the car on the way to the station she had looked out of the window, watched people moving around, going in and out of shops, coffee houses. Carrying shopping, talking on phones, wheeling pushchairs. Normal people doing normal things. Leading normal lives. And there was her. Watching that life through the window, like a TV documentary on an alien tribe.

Suzanne found a nod for Anni. Anni returned it, gave her knee a squeeze. Suzanne’s first instinct was to place her own hand over it, keep it there, pressing hard, her only communication to that normal world. But she didn’t. She just sat there numbly, allowing Anni’s hand to stay where it was. Anni stood up.

‘We need you to undress,’ she said.

Suzanne was still wearing the T-shirt she had slept in the previous night, her dressing gown over the top of it. Anni left the room, gave her privacy, waited until she was in the cotton hospital gown. She sat on the examining table, against the wall, the loose ties at the back of the gown making her feel even more naked.

Anni returned and, with gloved hands, held out a plastic bag for Suzanne to deposit her T-shirt into. She did so. Anni smiled. Suzanne couldn’t return it.

‘Right,’ Anni said, sitting down next to her on the table. ‘I’ve got to nip upstairs to get some paperwork done. You won’t be alone for long. Will you be OK for a couple of minutes?’

Suzanne nodded, her head down, hair wafting back and forth like curtains in a slow breeze.

‘Good. The doctor’ll not be long.’ She placed her hand on Suzanne’s shoulder, gave another small squeeze.

Eventually, with another small squeeze, Anni removed her hand, stood up and left the room.

Now it was just Suzanne. Alone, but with a whole new world in her head for company.

Her mind slipped back to the night before. The dream that might not have been a dream. Her moods, her responses to it, had clicked backwards and forwards all day like a metronome: I’m making it all up. Imagining things. Wasting their time. Then: no. I’m not. It was real and there was someone with me. Someone in my room. In my bed. In my-

She tried to balance her thoughts, still her racing heart. Her hands clamped between her thighs, her ankles crossed. She closed her eyes, attempted to calm her breathing. The same thoughts tumbling over and over in her head.

I’m not giving in to this … I’m not giving in to this … I’m going to be strong, be strong … this bastard isn’t going to win …

And then the door opened.

Suzanne gave a start as a woman in a white coat entered. Overweight, hair a functional bob, clothes muted shades of grey and beige. She held a file, looked at it.

‘Suzanne… Perry?’ She looked at Suzanne with eyes that had a calculated, professional deadness about them, a shield between herself and the wreckage of women she must confront daily.

‘Yes.’ Suzanne’s voice was small, rusty, as if shrunken from disuse. She cleared her throat, spoke again. ‘Yes.’ Stronger this time.

The doctor gave a smile that penetrated the shield and reached her eyes, showed that, no matter how much she tried not to become involved with her patients, she was still a human being.

‘I’m Doctor Winter,’ she said, still smiling, trying to reassure her. She took another look at the file in her hands, then looked back at Suzanne. ‘Right,’ she said, her voice warm and comforting, like a children’s storybook reader. ‘The first thing I want you to do is to provide a urine sample.’

Doctor Winter sent her into a cubicle with two small pots to fill. Suzanne did as she was asked, returned with the pots, put them on the desk as instructed.

‘OK,’ said Doctor Winter, snapping on latex gloves, ‘if you could just pop yourself on the table…’

Suzanne did as she was told. ‘Legs apart, knees bent, please. I’ll try to make this as painless as possible…’

Suzanne put her head back, closed her eyes. She had been fine up until then. This was the part she had been dreading.

It was afternoon, the sun was shining and Castle Park seemed to have been specially designed as the perfect place to enjoy the perfect day.

The castle had stood for two thousand years and looked like it was ready to stand for another couple of thousand. Flowers bloomed from the perfectly maintained beds and borders surrounding it, people strolled along the neat walkways. Even those who were hurrying to weekday work or business appointments slowed down to enjoy the surroundings. It felt to Marina like a small vacation in another world.

The parkland behind the castle sloped down towards the small lake and the children’s play areas. For Marina, sitting on a bench, taking in the view, the castle always brought to mind images of Boudica and her army, blazing around in their chariots. But where once the warrior-queen would have whipped her horses to get up the hill, attacking the castle while dodging arrows and spears, now the grounds were full of school children on educational day trips, young mothers, nannies and au pairs pushing their baby buggies round. The only kind of sustained assault on the castle came from busloads of primary school children running riot or the occasional Lycra-wearing, stroller-pushing mother taking on the hill as part of her jogging route.

One was running past Marina now. She looked up, smiled. The woman, thin, tanned, her blonde hair pulled away from her sweating face in a severe ponytail, saw Marina sitting with one hand resting on Josephina’s buggy, returned the smile.

‘Got to keep going,’ the woman gasped, passing, ‘get my shape back…’ And off she went.

Marina watched her go. What did she mean, get her shape back? The woman looked in perfect condition. Thin, fit-looking, her stomach didn’t even have the slightest bit of sag to it.

Despite the sunshine, Marina felt suddenly cold, like the black cloud from earlier was following her. Was that the kind of thing she was expected to do? Run to get back in shape? To have her new mother’s body scrutinised and deemed either acceptable or unacceptable? She didn’t want that. She couldn’t have that.