Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

‘So, I wonder who bashed Robert’s brains in, then,’ Juliet says matily, as if discussing the latest storyline in a soap opera. ‘ You didn’t do it, did you? You luurve Robert. You’d never hurt him.’

‘That’s right.’ She can’t mock me with something I’m proud of. ‘You did it. Everyone knows you did it. Robert knows. When he wakes up, he’ll tell the police it was you. Did you intend to kill him? Or was it a fight that got out of hand?’

Juliet grins at Sergeant Zailer. ‘Have you trained her? She sounds like one of you lot.’ She turns to me. ‘Maybe you are. I don’t know what you do for a living. Are you a cop?’

‘No.’

‘Good. There’s only so much irony I can take.’ Juliet leans forward. ‘Why do you love my husband?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s a simple question. I suppose Robert’s reasonably attractive, even now he’s got a bit lardy. He was thinner when I met him. But is physical attractiveness enough? You must have noticed by now that he’s a miserable sod and a tightarse.’

‘I made a statement about a rape on Tuesday,’ I tell her, trying not to look at Sergeant Zailer or Waterhouse. ‘I pretended Robert had raped me, to make the police look for him.’

‘You really are off the rails, aren’t you?’ says Juliet.

‘How did you know the details of what I put in my statement?’

She smiles. ‘Why pretend he’d raped you? Rather than, say, beat you up or stolen your handbag?’

‘Rape’s the easiest crime to fake,’ I answer eventually. It has often enraged me, the idea that there might be as many women pretending to have been raped as pretending not to have been. ‘I had no bruises, so he could hardly have beaten me up.’

‘You didn’t pretend anything,’ says Juliet. ‘You were raped. Just not by Robert. I know exactly what happened to you. Scene by scene, frame by frame.’ Juliet makes a loud clicking noise and mimes pushing the button of a camera.

‘That’s impossible,’ I say, as soon as I am able to speak. ‘Unless the police have shown you my statement.’

She looks suddenly impatient. ‘No one’s shown me any statements. Look, I might not answer all your questions, but I won’t lie to you. If I give you an answer, it’s an honest one.’

‘Do you want to stop, Naomi?’ Sergeant Zailer asks me. ‘You can stop whenever you like.’

‘I’m all right,’ I say. This ice-cool woman, I remind myself, is the same Juliet who is too shy to answer the telephone, too spineless to learn how to use a computer, too frail to work, who made you stop doing overnight jobs because she couldn’t bear to be in the house alone.

Remembering all the things you’ve said about her gives me my next line. ‘You’ve changed. You used to be timid and neurotic, scared of your own shadow, reliant on Robert for everything.’

‘True.’ She smiles. It’s a game to her, one she’s enjoying.

‘You don’t seem like that now,’ I say.

‘I’ve been—what’s the word? Empowered.’ She sniggers and looks at Sergeant Zailer, as if hoping to have impressed her.

‘By what? By smashing Robert’s head in with a brick?’ I say.

‘It was a stone acting as a doorstop that caused Robert’s injuries. Haven’t these nice officers told you the basic facts? My bloody fingerprints are all over it. But I could have picked it up after the attack, couldn’t I? The distraught wife, on discovering her dying husband.’

‘Someone who’s been a frail wimp all her life doesn’t suddenly turn into the cool, calculating, confident liar that you are now,’ I say. ‘Even if she does lose it and attack her husband for having an affair.’

Juliet looks bored and disappointed. ‘I’ve known about Robert’s affair with you since before Christmas,’ she says. ‘As you say, I was completely reliant on him. So I kept my mouth shut and put up with it. Pathetic or what?’

‘So why did you attack Robert last week? Did he tell you he was leaving you for me? Was that what made you want to kill him?’

She examines her fingernails in silence. ‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘Someone who’s been a feeble wimp all her life is unlikely to change her entire personality, even after a significant event takes place.’

‘So what are you saying? That you haven’t always been a wimp?’

‘Ah.’ Juliet closes her eyes. ‘I wouldn’t say you’re getting warm, exactly, but you’ve stepped out of the Arctic region.’

‘You faked your weakness,’ I guess aloud. ‘You’re one of those women I hate, who are easily capable of looking after themselves but go all helpless the minute a man turns up. You made Robert believe you were needy and helpless because you knew he’d leave you otherwise!’

‘Oh dear. I’m afraid you’re back in the snow with Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott. You may be gone for some time.’ Juliet looks at DC Waterhouse. ‘Did I get the quote right?’

‘Was it that you didn’t fancy working?’ I stick to my guns, feeling as if I might finally be getting somewhere. ‘Was it easier to stay at home and exploit Robert?’

‘I used to love working, before I stopped,’ Juliet says. Her face twists slightly.

‘What did you do?’

‘I was a potter. I made pottery cottages.’

Zailer and Waterhouse both write this down.

‘I’ve seen them,’ I say. ‘They’re all over your lounge. They’re fucking hideous.’ There is a loud roaring in my ears as I try hard not to picture Juliet’s living room. Your living room.

‘You wouldn’t think that if I made one of your house,’ Juliet says. ‘That’s what people did: commissioned me to make models of their homes. I used to love it—getting all the details right. I can do you one, if you like. I’m sure they’ll let me work in prison. You will, won’t you, Sergeant Zailer? I fancy starting again, actually. Tell you what: if all three of you bring me photographs of your houses, from all angles, in front, behind and the side-on view, I’ll sort you all out.’

‘Why did you give up work if you liked it so much?’ I ask.

‘Welcome home, Mr Shackleton.’ She grins. ‘You’ve lost a few toes to frostbite, but at least you’re not dead. Pull up a chair by the fire, why don’t you?’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

She hoots with laughter at my anger. ‘This is such fun. It’s like being invisible. You can cause mayhem and there’s nothing anyone can do.’

‘Except leave you to rot in jail,’ I point out.

‘I’ll be fine in jail, thank you very much.’ She turns to Sergeant Zailer. ‘Can I work in the prison library? Can I be the person who gets to push the trolley of books round the cell blocks? In the films, that position always has a certain amount of prestige attached to it.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ I ask her. ‘If you really don’t care about being locked up for the rest of your life, why not tell the police what they want to know: if you tried to kill Robert and why?’

Juliet raises her over-plucked eyebrows. ‘Well, there’s one I can answer easily: because of you. That’s why I’m not revealing all like a good egg. You have no idea how much your existence, your place in Robert’s life, changes everything.’

16

4/7/06

‘I FEEL TERRIBLE,’ said Yvon Cotchin. ‘If I’d known Naomi was in prison, I’d have been there like a shot. Why didn’t she ring me?’ She sat with her knees pulled up to her chin, on a faded blue sofa in the middle of her ex-husband’s messy living room in Cambridge’s Great Shelford. Half-empty mugs, balled-up socks, remote controls, old newspapers and unopened junk mail littered the floor.

The house reeked of marijuana; the windowsill was covered with pieces of burned silver foil and empty plastic bottles with holes in their sides. Cotchin, who smelled of shampoo and a rich, sweet perfume, looked out of place in her tight red jumper and smart black trousers, clutching an unopened packet of Consulate cigarettes in one hand and a yellow plastic lighter in the other. More than out of place: marooned.