Cath Staincliffe - Half the World Away

I am bracing myself for when she comes round, determined not to fall apart at the pitiable sight of her.

She smells still, an awful stench, like putrid meat, but the doctor reassures me that there is no sign of blood poisoning, which would almost certainly kill her.

The vigil is terrifying and also profoundly boring. Which seems like sacrilege. The minutes stretch out. Sometimes I doze, or I stare at my phone, wander from website to website. Frustrated time and again to find them censored, not accessible, stuck behind China’s great firewall.

I am there, half asleep, when she first stirs. She makes a whimpering sound, no words, her face slack. Her eyelids flutter open, eyes unfocused. And then a whisper, raw: ‘Mum?’

My heart tumbles in my chest. My breath stops. ‘I’m here, love. It’s Mum. I’m here, Lori.’ Gently, fearful of hurting her, I put my hand on her shoulder. She winces and I pull it back. ‘You’re safe now,’ I tell her. ‘You’re in hospital.’ I touch her hair. It feels dry and brittle. Leaning in close, I try to ignore the rotten smell. ‘You’re safe now.’ Oh, my sweet girl. She is awake. She is awake. I want to run through the halls calling everyone to see. She is awake!

She makes a sound, a small cry in her chest, but she doesn’t speak and I say, ‘You rest, and as soon as you’re better we’re going to get you home.’

Her eyes close and sleep overtakes her.

She knows me, she can speak, she can understand. She is coming back to us. So many fears I’ve been carrying, like demons on my back. Gone now, lifted and flown away. I ring Tom.

A car picks us up in turn to take us to the police station. I don’t know what I expected from them, some recognition, perhaps, that our efforts were instrumental in unmasking Bradley and in saving Lori – but there is nothing. Just bland formalities and tight half-smiles as I go through my statement. At least this time there is a police translator, whose English is good and who takes it all down, a few sentences at a time, before reading the whole thing aloud in Chinese to Superintendent Yin and Detective Song.

I sit in the stifling heat and feel sweat beneath my breasts, at the back of my knees. I see that same file, the picture of Lori: almost unrecognizable from the gaunt-faced waif she is now.

Lori wakes again as Tom gets back from the police station.

Her eyes flutter open and she makes a mewing sound.

‘Hello, love,’ I say. I reach and touch her shoulder. And again she flinches. My heart drops. Tom walks round to the other side of the bed and she shrinks away from him, her eyes dark pools, haunted. She cannot bear to be touched.

‘It’s OK, Lori,’ I say. ‘We’re here now. You’re in hospital, getting better, and then we will take you home.’

I long to wrap her in my arms and kiss and comfort her. To feel her warmth against mine and sing her to sleep. To fill this empty ache.

‘No way,’ Tom says, his lips taut, bleached at the edge, when Peter Dunne tells us that the police want to arrange a time to take Lori’s statement. ‘She nearly died and they want her to dredge it all up. Ain’t going to happen.’

‘She’s not well enough,’ I say. ‘She’s still traumatized.’

‘She will need to speak to them before you go home,’ Peter Dunne says.

‘Or what?’ Tom says. ‘They’ll stop us leaving?’

Peter Dunne’s silence is answer enough.

‘Jesus!’ Tom says. ‘She might have died. Left up to them she probably would have.’

‘And another woman did,’ Peter Dunne says. ‘They need Lorelei’s account as a victim and a witness. They want to build the strongest possible case against Carlson.’

Lori hasn’t spoken about it yet. Tom and I agreed that we would not put pressure on her, not ask any questions, but make it clear that we would be ready to listen whenever she wanted us to. ‘Anything you want to tell us,’ I had said, smoothing the sheet, longing to touch her, ‘anything at all, no matter how bad, we want to hear it. When you’re ready. OK?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her brow furrowed, eyes sunken and dim.

Now, accepting that her statement is something that must be done, I say, ‘And they must send someone who speaks English. It’s going to be difficult as it is.’

Peter Dunne nods.

‘And we want to be with her. She’ll need support,’ Tom says. ‘One of us should be with her.’

‘I’ll pass that on,’ Peter Dunne says, ‘and nothing will happen until she’s well enough.’ He takes a breath. ‘They have recovered images from Carlson’s laptop, photographs of both women.’

My stomach flips over. I think of the Internet, the paedophile rings and the like, people with sick predilections swapping obscene material.

Oh, Lori. ‘Was he sharing them?’ I say.

‘Seems not, though they’re still working to confirm that,’ Peter Dunne says.

‘If he’s convicted,’ Tom says, ‘what will he get?’

‘Murder is a capital crime. With the crimes against Lorelei in addition, he would either face life in prison or execution.’

Execution. Something twists inside me. Hanging. The electric chair. Lethal injection. Beheading. I don’t agree with capital punishment. Never have. But now… He should be dead, I think. He should be torn into pieces and left for dogs to eat. He should be killed. But some part of me is revolted by the idea. The barbarity.

‘I’m not sure we’d want that,’ I say. I turn to Tom, enlisting his support.

He moves his head slowly, his mouth tightening a fraction. ‘I’d put the rope around his neck myself,’ he says.

‘It’s usually by injection, these days,’ says Peter Dunne.

Which is not the point.

I squash my emotions, ignore the impulse to agree with Tom, to indulge the lust for vengeance. If taking a life is wrong, then executing someone is wrong. If we lose all our principles, aren’t we as bad as he is? ‘If we objected-’ I say.

‘It’s not our call,’ Tom says. ‘That bastard took a life. People will want him to pay the price. We’re a sideshow.’

Peter Dunne reacts: ‘I wouldn’t describe it-’

Tom cuts across him: ‘And Lori needs to understand that,’ he says fiercely. ‘No guilt trips about compassion and forgiveness and the sanctity of human life. This is not down to us. It’s not our country. He probably wouldn’t get the chop just for the abduction but he killed someone so he forfeits his life. We have to make her see that.’

‘We don’t make her do anything,’ I say.

‘The boys want to talk to Lori,’ Nick says, when we speak again. He sounds exhausted, as if it’s an effort to get the words out.

‘Just tell them she’s still too poorly.’

We couldn’t work out at first how to explain what had happened but my instinct was to stay close to the truth and keep it simple. Lori’s story would be all over the papers: it wouldn’t be fair to tell them some fairy tale and for them to find out we’d lied.

‘A bad man wouldn’t let her go home. He kept her in a garage,’ I said.

‘And when they ask why?’

‘We’re all asking why,’ I almost snapped. Why on earth? ‘Say we don’t know. It was a mean thing to do and he shouldn’t have done it and now the police have locked him up.’

Now I say, ‘She is getting stronger all the time, though.’

‘That’s good,’ Nick says.

‘And once she can walk they say we can take her home. They’ve not found her passport anywhere so we’ll have to get an emergency one from the consulate.’

‘OK. Give her my love,’ Nick says. ‘I’d better go.’ I can hear Benji barking in the background and Finn calling. I long to be back there with them.