Alice Feeney - I Know Who You Are

‘Don’t worry, I doubt your husband has left the country. Based on what we know so far, I don’t expect he is too far away.’

‘What makes you say that?’

She doesn’t respond.

‘DI Croft has solved every case she’s been assigned since joining the force,’ says the male detective, like a proud father. ‘You’re in safe hands.’

I don’t feel safe, I feel scared.

‘Mind if we take these?’ She slips Ben’s phone and wallet inside a clear plastic bag without waiting for an answer. ‘Don’t worry about the photo for now, we can collect it next time.’ She removes her blue plastic gloves and heads out into the hall.

‘Next time?’

She ignores me again and they let themselves out. ‘We’ll be in touch,’ he says, before walking away.

I sink down onto the floor once I’ve closed the door behind them. I felt is if they were silently accusing me of something the whole time they were here, but I don’t know what. Do they think I murdered my husband and buried him beneath the floorboards? I have an urge to open the door, call them back and defend myself, tell them that I haven’t killed anyone.

But I don’t do that.

Because it isn’t true.

I have.

Galway, 1987

I was lost before I was even born.

My mummy died that day and he never forgave me.

It was my fault – I was late and then I turned the wrong way. I’m still not very good at looking where I am going.

When I was stuck inside her belly, not wanting to come out for some reason that I do not remember, the doctor told my daddy he’d have to choose between us, said he couldn’t save us both. Daddy chose her, but he didn’t get what he wanted. He got me instead, and that made him sad and angry for a very long time.

My brother told me the story of what happened. Over and over.

He’s much older than me, so he knows things that I don’t.

He says I killed her.

I’ve tried awful hard not to kill things since then. I step over ants, pretend not to see spiders, and when my brother takes me fishing, I empty the net back into the sea. He says our daddy was a kind man before I broke his heart.

I hear them, down in the shed together.

I know I’m not allowed, but I want to know what they are doing.

They do lots of things without me. Sometimes I watch.

I stand on the old tree stump we use for chopping wood, and peek through the tiny hole in the shed wall. My right eye finds the chicken first, the white one we call Diana. There is a princess with that name in England – we named the chicken after her. Daddy’s giant fist is wrapped around its throat, and its feet are tied together with a piece of black string. He turns the bird upside down and it hangs still, except for its little black eyes. They seem to look in my direction, and I think that chicken knows I’m watching something I shouldn’t.

My brother is holding an axe.

He’s crying.

I’ve never seen him cry before. I’ve heard him through my bedroom wall, when Daddy uses his belt, but this is the first time I’ve seen his tears. His fifteen-year-old face is red and blotchy and his hands are shaking.

The first swing of the axe doesn’t do it.

The chicken flaps its wings, thrashing like a banshee, blood spurting from its neck. Daddy clouts my brother around the head, makes him swing the axe again. The noise of the chicken screaming and my big brother crying start to sound the same in my ears. He swings and misses, Daddy hits him again, so hard he falls down on his knees, the chicken’s blood spraying all over their dirty white shirts. My brother swings a third time and the bird’s head falls to the floor, its wings still flapping. Red feathers that used to be white.

When Daddy has gone, I creep into the shed and sit down next to my brother. He’s still crying and I don’t know what to say, so I slip my hand into his. I look at the shape our fingers make when joined together, like pieces of a puzzle that shouldn’t fit, but do – my hands are small and pink and soft, his hands are big and rough and dirty.

‘What do you want?’ He snatches his hand away and uses it to wipe his face, leaving a streak of blood on his cheek.

I only want to be with him, but he is waiting for an answer, so I make one up. I already know it is the wrong one.

‘I thought you could walk me to town, so I could show you the red shoes I wanted for my birthday again.’ I’ll be six next week. Daddy said I could have a present this year, if I was good. I haven’t been bad, and I think that’s the same thing.

My brother laughs – not his real laugh, the unkind one. ‘Don’t you get it? We can’t afford red shoes, we can barely afford to eat!’ He grabs me by the shoulders, shakes me a little, the way that Daddy shakes him when Daddy is cross. ‘People like us don’t get to wear red bloody shoes, people like us are born in the dirt and die in the dirt. Now fuck off and leave me alone!’

I don’t know what to do. I feel strange and my mouth forgets how to make words.

My brother has never spoken to me like this before. I can feel the tears trying to leak out of my eyes, but I won’t let them. I try to put my hand in his again. I just want him to hold it. He shoves me, so hard that I fall backwards and hit my head on the chopping block, chicken blood and guts sticking to my long black curly hair.

‘I said, fuck off, or I’ll chop your bloody head off too,’ he says, waving the axe.

I run and I run and I run.

London, 2017

I run from the car park to the main building at Pinewood. I’m never late for anything, but the unscheduled police visit this morning has thrown me off balance in more ways than one.

My husband has disappeared and so has ten thousand pounds of my money.

I can’t solve the puzzle, because no matter how I slot the pieces together, there are still too many missing to complete the picture. I remind myself that I have to keep it together for just a little while longer. The film is almost finished, just three more scenes to shoot. I bury my personal problems somewhere out of reach as I hurry along corridors towards my dressing room. As I turn the final corner, still distracted, I walk straight into Jack, my co-star.

‘Where have you been? Everyone is looking for you,’ he says.

I glance down at his hand gripping the sleeve of my jacket and he removes it. His dark eyes see straight through me and I wish they didn’t, it makes it almost impossible to lie to him, and I can’t always speak the truth; my inability to trust people won’t allow it. Sometimes, when you spend this long working with someone, when you get this close, it’s hard to hide the real you from them completely.

Jack Anderson is consciously handsome. His face has earned him a small fortune and more justifiably than his intermittent acting skills. His uniform of chinos and slim-fitted shirts are cut to flatter and hint at the muscular shape of him underneath. He wears his smile like a prize and his stubble like a mask. He’s a bit older than me, but the grey flecks in his brown hair only seem to make him more attractive.

I am aware that we have a connection. And I am aware that he is aware of that, too.

‘Sorry,’ I say.

‘Tell it to the crew, not me. Just because you’re beautiful, doesn’t mean the world will wait for you to catch up with it.’

‘Don’t say that.’ I look over my shoulder.

‘What, beautiful? Why? It’s true, you’re the only one who can’t see it, which just makes you even more enchanting.’ He takes a step closer. Too close. I take a tiny step back.

‘Ben didn’t come home last night,’ I whisper.

‘So?’