Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

‘I know who you are. Leave me alone.’

Something inside me is falling, falling. This cannot be happening. You love me. I know you do. ‘You love me,’ I say aloud. ‘And I love you.’ I’ve felt it once before, this tearing feeling, the sensation of everything good in the world being ripped away from me. I know from experience that it’s only a matter of seconds before it tears off completely and I’m adrift: every last link to safety and happiness has been destroyed and there is nothing to cling on to.

‘Get out,’ you say.

‘Why?’ I am too shocked and cold inside to cry. If you were in your right mind, you would not have said what you said, but I still have to ask for an explanation; what else can I do? I want to pound your chest with my fists and make you be your real self again. This is my worst nightmare. Before the police found you, when my imagination was full of dreaded tragic endings, I never once thought of this.

‘You know why,’ you say, looking straight at me. But I don’t. I am about to say this, to start pleading with you, when suddenly your back arches and you groan. Your eyes roll back and you begin to shake, as if there’s an earthquake inside your body. White foam spills out of your mouth. It’s a few seconds before I remember the emergency button and press it. I hear a faint, repetitive bleep coming from the corridor.

‘Naomi?’ Sergeant Zailer’s voice is behind me. She looks at my finger on the button, at the glass and spilled water on the floor. ‘Jesus Christ!’ She drags me by my arm out into the ward corridor. ‘What the fuck happened?’ she yells. My body feels limp and icy, like a sponge that’s been left in cold water. My mind searches frantically for an emergency exit, a way to undo the last few minutes of my life.

I don’t care what you said. I would happily die if it meant you would live.

The last thing I see before I am pushed out of the intensive care unit is three nurses running into your room.

‘I haven’t told you the truth,’ I confess to Sergeant Zailer. ‘I lied. I’m sorry.’ This morning I didn’t care a damn what she thought. She has no idea how much I need from her now, how the power balance has shifted. For as long as I was sure you loved me, I was all-powerful.

We are nearly in Rawndesley. I don’t want to be dropped off at my house, alone. I can’t let Sergeant Zailer leave me there. I have to keep her talking. As she drives, I fight off vivid memory flashes—like movie stills—from what happened to me before, when I was kidnapped: the bed with acorn posts, the wooden table. The man. Your love for me was a padded layer that kept all that at bay, and now it’s been peeled away. My soul is mangled and exposed.

‘Lied?’ says Sergeant Zailer. I feel as if I might suffocate in her indifference.

‘My rape story was true, all of it. Except it wasn’t Robert. I don’t know who he was. I’m sorry for lying.’ Yvon was right. This is all my fault, everything bad that’s happened. I told a lie that blended the best thing in my life with the worst thing. Sacrilege. Casual vandalism, you would call it. And now I’m being punished.

‘I could and should charge you with obstruction,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘What about the panic attack at Robert’s window, last Monday, the terrible thing you claimed you saw but couldn’t remember? Was that a lie too?’

Another bright flash, like a shutter being pulled back, and I can see your living room again. I am there, looking through the glass. I gasp, grabbing the seat, the dashboard. ‘Stop,’ I manage to say. ‘Please!’ I fumble with the catch that will release the door as if my life depends on it, like a person whose car is submerged in water. I can see that room, the glass cabinet. I am zooming in in my mind, speeding towards it. I have to get out.

Sergeant Zailer pulls over by the kerb. I open the car door and take off my seat belt. ‘Put your head between your knees,’ she says. I feel better with the belt off. The tight feeling in my chest gradually subsides, and I gulp in as much air as I can. Sweat drips from my forehead on to my hands.

‘Where did you find him?’ I ask, panting. ‘Robert. Was he in the lounge? Tell me!’

‘He was in the bedroom, lying on the bed,’ said Sergeant Zailer. ‘We found nothing in the lounge.’

What I saw—the unbearable thing—was in the glass cabinet. I know that now, but I’m scared to tell Sergeant Zailer. A specific detail like that might make her suggest we go there, and I can’t. I’d rather swallow poison than look through that window again.

‘What’s your first name?’ I ask, once I’ve got my breath back.

She frowns, as if annoyed to be asked. ‘Charlotte,’ she says. ‘Why?’

‘Can I call you Charlotte?’

‘No. I hate the name, makes me sound like a Victorian aunt. I’m Charlie, and no, you can’t call me that either.’

‘Phone the hospital again. Please.’

‘Robert’s still alive. If he wasn’t, I’d have had a call.’

I am too weak to argue. ‘Whatever I’ve said and done wrong, you’ve got to understand . . . I’m fighting for my life,’ I tell her. ‘That’s how it feels.’

‘Naomi, do you remember I left Robert’s room to make a phone call?’ Sergeant Zailer says gently.

I nod.

‘DS Kombothekra from West Yorkshire CID showed Prue Kelvey and Sandy Freeguard a photograph of Robert earlier today. That’s what the call was about.’

At first I can’t place any of the names. Then I remember. I close my eyes, relieved. I hadn’t even realised I’d been waiting for this news. ‘Good,’ I say. ‘So you no longer suspect Robert of being a serial rapist.’ The stupid, awful thing I did has been undone and we can all forget it ever happened.

‘Prue Kelvey said she wasn’t sure . . .’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘She didn’t make a positive identification, but she said he was the right type, it might have been him.’

‘That’s ridiculous. She can’t remember. She probably thought it must be Robert, if a cop was showing her his photo, and she didn’t want to ruin things by pointing out that it wasn’t him!’

‘I’m sure that’s true,’ says Sergeant Zailer. ‘It’s not her response I’m interested in. We’ve got a DNA profile to compare with Robert’s in her case, so if he didn’t do it, that’ll soon prove it . . .’

‘What do you mean, if he didn’t do it? You know I made up that story. Don’t you? The part about Robert.’

She nods. ‘I think so. But when a person lies as easily as you did, it’s hard to know what to believe. Would you recognise your assailant’s face, do you think, after all this time?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re more confident than Prue Kelvey. Her response to the photograph wasn’t very useful. It’s Sandy Freeguard’s response I’m more interested in. She said Robert definitely wasn’t the man that raped her—’

‘Thank goodness one of them’s got a memory!’

‘—but she also said she knew him. “That’s Robert Haworth,” she said.’

My mind tilts. Once again, everything familiar starts to spin, to rearrange itself into a new, random pattern. Nothing is where I think it is, or what I think it is. ‘Tell me,’ I say.

‘Three months after she was raped, she met Robert. They started going out together.’

‘Where did they meet? That’s bollocks. No woman who’s been through anything like what I went through would get herself a new boyfriend so quickly.’

‘Sandy Freeguard did. They met in Huddersfield town centre. Her car collided with his.’

‘You mean his lorry?’ I am determined to fend off each new fact as it approaches. There must be some mistake. I don’t know this DS Kombothekra, so why should I trust what he says?