Gilly MacMillan - What She Knew

I pounded down the stairs of my building and I took her in a hug when I found her on the pavement outside, but she was somehow awkward and I only got a bit of a dry-lipped peck on the cheek in return. She had a pool car with her, a green Ford Focus that hadn’t been properly cleaned out since a couple of sweaty DCs camped in it for a surveillance job. She handed me the keys. She was old-fashioned like that sometimes. My dad would have loved it.

We set off into the city, and within minutes we’d got locked in a traffic system round Broadmead where Saturday shoppers and roadworks had brought everything to a standstill.

It was one of those moments where it seems surreal that ordinary lives go on around you, that other people can actually afford to tolerate delays, when all you can focus on is the gigantic ticking clock that’s your head, counting time on somebody else’s life.

We were diverted onto Nelson Street, the city’s so-called open-air street art gallery, where graffiti murals covered every dank, depressing concrete facade available: psychedelic art meets calligraphy meets art deco meets the recesses of the minds of a dozen artists from around the world. A dreamscape all of its own.

I waited for Emma to start talking, but the whole time she sat motionless beside me, coat buttoned, collars pulled up, scarf wrapped high on her neck, just staring out front.

‘Em?’ I said when the silence started to get to me. ‘What do you want to talk about?’

Still she said nothing. If anything, her silence seemed to have settled deeper on her, like it meant to bury her. I pulled over into a loading bay.

‘What’s going on?’ I said. ‘What’s wrong?’

The ignition was still running and the wipers squealed as they made a pass across the windscreen.

There was so much happening in her eyes that I felt my insides wrench.

‘Emma?’ I said. Whatever the thing was, I was desperate to sort it, to make it right. I put my hand on hers, but she kept her fingers curled away from mine, pressing her palm flat onto her leg.

‘I don’t know how to say it.’ Her voice was small, as if she’d swallowed half of it.

‘For Chrissakes try.’

She made me wait for an answer until I was fit to burst.

‘I’ve done something bad and I don’t know what to do.’

‘What have you done?’ And even then I was thinking, it can’t be so bad, Emma’s so hard on herself that whatever she’s done will be easy to put right. I thought that even as I watched her shut her eyes, and press her lips together until her face folded around them and she didn’t look like the girl I knew. Not one bit.

Her next two words were her confession, her downfall, and the first sparks of a wildfire that was to burn through everything we’d had together with startling speed.

‘The blog.’

I was slow; I didn’t understand at first. She had to spell it out for me, blow on the sparks until I could see that they were dangerous, and that they would spread uncontrollably.

‘I’ve given information to the “Where is Benedict Finch?” blog.’

‘You’re the leak?’

She nodded.

I gave myself a nasty bruise on the side of my hand where I slammed it on the dashboard. Pain shot up my arm. It made Emma jump and then she seemed to contract into herself a little more.

‘Why?’ One puny word, to express all the incredulity and anger that I felt.

‘I feel so stupid.’

‘Tell me why!’

‘Don’t shout,’ she said. ‘Please.’

I watched her as she tried to compose herself. She carefully tucked her hair behind her ears in a gesture that I knew and loved. She took a deep breath, exhaling audibly, and just when I was about to shout at her again she said, ‘I wanted to punish Rachel Jenner, for letting Ben out of her sight in the woods.’

I didn’t expect that.

‘What? Why? For fuck’s sake, why would you do that? Why’s that even your business?’

‘It got to me, I’m sorry. I started looking at the blog, for research, and I got sucked into it. First I just put a comment, because people were saying some stupid things, but then I found myself agreeing with some of them, and I’ve got strong feelings about it, because it’s a massive issue for me. And I know none of it’s an excuse but I was getting tired, it was hard to cope with the family and I was scared I wasn’t up to the job. I know I shouldn’t have. It was weak. I just couldn’t help thinking about how if she’d been a bit more responsible then it wouldn’t have happened. Oh God, Jim. I’m so sorry. My head gets so fucked up sometimes. It’s complicated. It’s personal. Something happened that I’ve never told you.’

‘What happened?’

She didn’t answer. Instead she shook her head, and covered her face with her hands.

‘Emma! What happened?’

Her hands fell away and her voice veered into hysteria.

‘Stop shouting! I said stop!’

She wiped at her face brusquely, streaking the sleeve of her coat.

Then she turned to look at me with an expression of vulnerability that I’d never seen on her before and she pleaded. It was awful, that diminishment of her. She said, ‘Oh God, I’ve been so stupid. It’s so hard for me to explain but please know that I’m trying to be honest with you because I love you. I do. I know we’ve never said that to each other but I think I actually do.’

But I was too angry to hear it. I was facing the charred remains of our relationship, of Emma’s career, possibly of mine too. I said, ‘Do you know how many resources Fraser’s had to put into finding out who the leak is?’

‘I’m sorry.’ A bright, high note on a scale.

‘You’ve risked that boy’s life!’

‘I’m sorry.’ The scale descending into tones of hopelessness.

‘You owe me a proper explanation.’

‘I know. I’m scared you won’t understand.’ Just a whisper.

‘Try me.’ My tone was cynical now. I’d become my professional self, tucked away the things I wanted to say. It was self-protection. I hated myself for doing it, but what choice did I have, really?

She talked then, a slow stream of words and it was breaking her to say them.

‘Because I saw the photographs Rachel took, they were photographs of Ben. She loves him. I saw it for the first time, how much she cares about him, because they’re such beautiful pictures and they made me feel so guilty.’ She clutched at my arm. ‘I’m telling you because I don’t know what to do and I want you to help me make it right. You won’t tell anybody, will you? I’ve stopped already. I won’t do it again.’

‘You can’t come back from this. You cannot,’ I said, but she was pulling her handbag onto her lap, digging through it.

‘I’ve got a personal email address for the author of the blog. We can track them down. I’ll get it for you, I’ll get it now.’

She took her phone out. I could see that she had missed calls, but not who they were from, and she ignored them, as she tried with trembling fingers to access her mailbox.

‘It’s gone too far. You can’t make it right.’

‘We don’t need to tell anybody else,’ she said. She looked pale and fearful, her eyes darting nervously from me to the phone and back. ‘If you help me we can do it. We can get the blog removed.’

‘ You not we . I didn’t do this, it’s got nothing to do with me, and actually you do need to tell them. Look at me! You’re kidding yourself if you think you can get away with it. And you’re compromising me just by telling me, let alone expecting me to help you!’

‘Please. I’ll lose my job.’ Her eyes were locked onto mine now, wide and wild with panic.

‘Do I really need to say that you should have thought of that earlier? What you leaked was spiteful, wicked stuff. Jesus! And now you want me to put myself on the line for you. Do you have any idea what you’re asking me to do?’