Sophie Hannah: The Other Half Lives aka The Dead Lie Down

She hitches her brown leather bag over her shoulder and starts to walk towards the looming red-brick building that casts a long, square shadow over the car park: Spilling Police Station. I instruct myself to follow her, but my legs don’t move. Shivering, I huddle beside my car. The winter sun warming my face makes my body feel colder by contrast.

There is no connection between the building in front of me and the only other police station I have been inside-this is what I must tell myself. They are simply two buildings, in the way that cinemas and restaurants are also buildings, and I am never stiff with fear when I walk past Spilling Picture House or the Bay Tree Bistro.

Detective Sergeant Zailer is moving slowly towards the entrance: double glass doors with a sign saying ‘Reception’ above them. She fumbles in her handbag. It’s the sort I like least-long and squashy, with a silly number of zips, buckles and protruding side pockets. She pulls out a packet of Marlboro Lights, throws it back in, then pulls out her mobile phone and stops for a moment, jabbing the keys with her long-nailed thumb. I could easily catch her up.

Go. Move . I stay where I am.

This time is nothing like last time, I tell myself. This time I am here by choice.

If you can call it that.

I am here because the only alternative would be to go back to Mary’s house.

Frustrated, I clamp my mouth shut to stop my teeth chattering. All my books advocate the technique of repeating encouraging mantras in your head. Useless . You can issue yourself with sensible instructions endlessly, but making those words take root in your mind and govern how you truly feel is another matter. Why do so many people believe that words have an innate authority?

A lie I told as a teenager pushes to the front of my mind. I pretended I’d said something similar to my father about the Bible, boasted to my friends about the terrible row it caused. ‘It’s only words, Dad. Someone, or maybe lots of people, sat down thousands of years ago and made it up, the whole lot. They wrote a book. Like Jackie Collins.’ The lie was easy to tell because those words were always in my head, though I lacked the courage ever to speak them aloud. My school friends knew Jackie Collins was my favourite writer; they had no idea that I hid her books under my bed inside empty sanitary-towel packets.

Disgust finally gets me moving: the realisation that I’m thinking about my father in order to dishearten myself, offering myself an excuse to give up. Charlotte Zailer is heading towards the doors, about to disappear inside. I start to run towards her. Something has found its way into my shoe and it’s hurting my foot. I’m going to be too late; by the time I reach reception, she’ll be in an office somewhere, making a coffee, starting her day’s work. ‘Wait!’ I yell. ‘Please, wait!’

She stops, turns. She has been unbuttoning her coat on her way up the steps, and I see she’s wearing a uniform. Doubt stills me, like an invisible blow to the legs, then I lurch forward again, staggering. Detective sergeants don’t wear uniforms. What if it isn’t her?

She is walking towards me. She must think I’m drunk, swaying all over the car park. ‘Are you after me?’ she calls out.

Other people are looking at me too, those getting into and out of their cars; they heard me shout, heard the desperation in my voice. My worst nightmare, to be seen by everybody. Strangers. I can’t speak. I’m confused, hot and cold at the same time, in different parts of my body. I can’t work out any more if I want this woman to be Charlotte Zailer or not.

She draws level with me. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks.

I step back. The thing in my shoe presses into the skin between my little toe and the next one as I put my weight on my left foot. ‘Are you Detective Sergeant Charlotte Zailer?’

‘I was,’ she says, still smiling but more guardedly. ‘Now I’m just plain sergeant. Do we know each other?’

I shake my head.

‘But you know who I am.’

I have rehearsed what I will say to her countless times, but not once did I think about what she might say to me.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Ruth Bussey.’ I steel myself for signs of recognition, but there are none.

‘Right. Well, Ruth, I’m part of the community policing team for Spilling now. Do you live in Spilling?’

‘Yes.’

‘This isn’t a community matter, is it? You wanted to speak to a detective?’

I can’t let her pass me on to someone else. My hand closes around the piece of newspaper in my pocket. ‘No, I want to talk to you. It won’t take long.’

She looks at her watch. ‘What’s it about? Why me in particular? I’d still like to know how you knew who I was.’

‘It’s… my boyfriend,’ I say in a monotone. It won’t be any easier to get the words out once we’re inside. If I tell her why I’m here, she’ll stop asking how I knew her name. ‘He thinks he killed somebody, but he’s wrong.’

Charlotte Zailer looks me up and down. ‘Wrong?’ She sighs. ‘Okay, now you’ve got my attention. Look, come inside and we’ll have a chat.’

As we walk, I move my foot around inside my shoe, trying to dislodge whatever’s digging into the pad of soft skin beneath my toes. It won’t budge. I can feel a sticky wetness: blood. Ignore it, block it out. I follow Sergeant Zailer into the reception area where there are more people-some in uniform, others in blue Aertex tops with the words ‘Police Staff’ printed on them. There’s a lot of blue here: the herringbone carpet on the floor, two suede-effect sofas forming a right angle in one corner. A long counter of pale, varnished pine with a semi-circular end protrudes from one wall like a breakfast bar jutting out into the middle of a kitchen.

Sergeant Zailer stops to speak to a middle-aged man with a pot belly, a dimpled chin and fluffy grey hair. He calls her Charlie, not Charlotte. I press down on my coat pocket with my right hand and listen to the faint rustle of the newspaper, trying to remind myself of the connection between us-between me and Charlie-but I have never felt lonelier in my life, and only the pain charging up from my foot through all the nerves in my body stops me from running away.

After what I’ve told her, she would run after me. How could she not? She’d chase me and she’d catch me.

‘Come on,’ she says to me when she’s finished talking to the grey-haired man. I limp after her. It’s a relief once we’re alone, in a corridor with uncovered brick walls that looks much older than the reception area. There is a background noise of running water; I look around, but its source isn’t obvious. Along the walls on both sides, against the brick, are pictures at eye level. On my right is a series of framed posters-domestic violence, needle exchanges, building safer communities. Opposite these are framed black and white etchings of different streets in Spilling. They’re atmospheric in a jagged sort of way, conveying the narrow, claustrophobic feel of the interlocking roads in the oldest part of town, the uneven house- and shop-fronts, the streets with their slippery cobbles. I feel a pang of sympathy for the artist, knowing that his or her exhibition is displayed here purely for its local relevance; no one values these pictures in their own right, as works of art.

‘Are you all right?’ Charlie Zailer asks me, waiting for me to catch up. ‘You’re limping.’

‘I sprained my ankle yesterday,’ I say, feeling a flush spread across my face.

‘Did you?’ She turns and stands in front of me, forcing me to stop. ‘Sprained ankles generally swell to twice their size. Yours doesn’t look swollen. It looks to me as if it’s your foot that’s sore. Has someone hurt you, Ruth? You seem very far from all right to me. Has your boyfriend hurt you, maybe?’