Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

‘You can’t blame me for being a bit cautious.’ Olivia looked Charlie up and down as if she’d just met her for the first time. ‘Why should I trust you when you’re quite plainly mad?’ She lowered her voice to a fierce whisper. ‘You made up a boyfriend!’

Charlie looked away, blew a smoke ring into the air. Why did she feel a compulsion to tell her sister everything she did, even knowing perfectly well the flak she’d get?

‘Did you give him a name?’ asked Olivia.

‘I don’t want to talk about it. Graham.’

‘ Graham? Jesus!’

‘I’d had a bowl of Golden Grahams for breakfast that morning. I was too knackered to be imaginative.’

‘If I adopted the same approach, I’d be going out with apple-and-cinnamon Danish. Did Simon believe you?’

‘I don’t know. I think so. He didn’t seem very interested one way or the other.’

‘Does Graham have a surname? Semi-skimmed Milk, perhaps?’

Charlie shook her head, smiling half-heartedly. The ability to laugh at oneself was supposed to be a virtue. It was one Olivia expected Charlie to practise rather too often.

‘Nip it in the bud as soon as you get back,’ Olivia advised. ‘Tell Simon it’s over with Graham. Rejoin the world of the sane.’

Charlie wondered if Simon had said anything to Sellers and Gibbs. Or, God forbid, to Inspector Proust. Everybody in CID saw her as a romantic disaster area. They all knew how she felt about Simon, and that he’d rejected her. They knew she’d slept with more people in the past three years than most of them had in their lives.

Charlie was already attached to her lie, to the new status and dignity it afforded her. She wanted Simon to think she had a proper boyfriend. Not just another of her hopeless one-night stands—a relationship that might last. Like a grown-up.

She hadn’t told Olivia about Alice Fancourt and Simon. It depressed her too much. Why was Simon thinking about Alice suddenly, after nearly two years of no contact? What good could come of seeing her again now? Charlie had assumed he had forgotten about Alice, or was in the process of doing so. It wasn’t as if anything had even happened between them.

He’d told Charlie solemnly that he was planning to ring Alice, as if expecting her to remonstrate with him. He’d known she would care. When she’d dropped her non-existent Graham into the conversation a few days later, it had been obvious that Simon didn’t.

Olivia kept saying as much, as if Charlie were in danger of forgetting. ‘Simon doesn’t care if you’ve got a boyfriend or not. I don’t know why you think you can make him jealous. If he wanted you, he could have had you long ago.’

Was it possible for Simon to find out that she’d invented Graham? Charlie didn’t think she could stand that. ‘Do you want me to ring Silver Brae Charlets or not?’ she said wearily.

‘It cannae be worse than this dump.’ Olivia faked a Scottish accent. ‘Och, aye, lassie, why not?’

5

Tuesday, April 4

‘I WANT TO report a rape,’ I tell Detective Constable Waterhouse.

He frowns, looking at the sheet of paper in his hand as if it might tell him what to ask next. ‘Who was raped?’

‘I was.’

‘When?’

I doubt he’d be so brusque if he believed me.

‘Three years ago,’ I say. His eyes widen. Clearly, he was expecting a different answer. ‘The thirtieth of March 2003.’ I hope I won’t have to say the date again. DC Waterhouse stands by the door as if guarding it, makes no move to sit down.

The interview room we are in is not much bigger than my bathroom at home. The pale-blue walls are covered with posters about solvent abuse, domestic violence, benefit cheats and video piracy. I cannot believe anybody really cares about people making illegal copies of films and selling them, but I suppose the police have to deal with all crimes, whether they care about them or not. All the posters have the police logo in the bottom right-hand corner, which makes me wonder if there is a design department somewhere in this building, someone whose job it is to decide what colour background a poster about Social Security fraud ought to have.

Designing is my favourite part of what I do. My heart always sinks when a customer has too specific an idea of what they want. I prefer the ones who are happy to leave it to me. I love choosing the Latin motto, deciding what kind of stone to use, what colour paint, what furniture. Dial furniture is anything on a sundial that isn’t directly to do with time-telling, any ornamental touches.

I’ve hardly told you anything about my work, have I? You never mention yours, and I don’t want to give the impression that I think mine is more important. I once made the mistake of asking you why you chose to become a lorry driver. ‘You mean I should be doing something better,’ you said immediately. I couldn’t work out if you were offended, or if you were projecting your own feelings about your job on to me.

‘I don’t mean that at all,’ I said. I really didn’t. Once I thought about it, I could see all sorts of advantages to doing what you do. Being self-employed, for a start. Being able to listen to CDs or the radio all day. I started to think that perhaps our jobs weren’t so dissimilar after all. I suppose there must be some ingrained snobbery in me that made me assume all lorry drivers were stupid and coarse, men with pot bellies and crew cuts who become violent at the prospect of rising petrol prices.

‘I like to be on my own and I like driving.’ You shrugged; to you, the answer was simple and obvious. You added, ‘I’m not thick.’ As if I would ever have thought you were. You’re the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. I’m not talking about qualifications. I don’t know if you’ve got O levels and A levels; I suspect you haven’t. And you don’t show off in conversation like some clever people do—quite the opposite. I have to drag opinions out of you. You offer your views and preferences apologetically, as if reluctant to have any sort of impact. The only thing you’re expansive about is how much you love me. ‘I’m my own man,’ you said. ‘Just me and the lorry. It’s better than being a Commie.’ In all the time we’ve known one another, this is the only reference you’ve ever made to politics. I wanted to ask what you meant, but I didn’t because our time together was running out; it was nearly seven o’clock.

‘Why did you ask for me or Sergeant Zailer?’ says DC Waterhouse. ‘I assumed you wanted to talk about Robert Haworth.’

‘I do. Robert is the person who raped me.’ The lie slides off my tongue. I’m not nervous any more. My brazen streak has taken over. I have a crazy, powerful feeling that tells me I can write the rules from now on. Who’s going to stop me? Who has enough imagination to understand what my imagination is capable of?

I’m the person who does the things nobody else would do.

A horrible thought occurs to me. ‘Am I too late?’ I ask.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can I still report it even though it happened so long ago?’

‘Robert Haworth raped you?’ Waterhouse makes no effort to hide his disbelief.

‘That’s right.’

‘The man you’re in love with, and who’s in love with you. The man you meet every week at the Rawndesley East Services Traveltel.’

‘I lied yesterday. I’m sorry.’

‘Everything you said was a lie? You and Mr Haworth aren’t in a relationship together?’

I know from reading rape websites that some women remain romantically or sexually involved with their rapists afterwards, but I could never pretend to be the sort of fucked-in-the-head fool who might do that. Which means there’s only one thing I can say. ‘Everything I told you yesterday was a lie, yes.’