Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

‘Shall I turn on the TV?’ Yvon asks.

‘No.’

‘There might be something light, something—’

‘No.’ I don’t want to be distracted. If this enormous pain is all I have left of you, then I want to concentrate on it.

I prepare myself to say something more substantial. It takes a few seconds, and energy I don’t feel I can spare. ‘Look, I’m really glad you came and I’m glad we’re friends again, but . . . you might as well go.’

‘I’m staying.’

‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ I tell her. ‘If you’re hoping for progress, forget it. There’s not going to be any. I’m not going to start to feel better, or put it to one side and chat about something else. You can’t take my mind off it. All I’m going to do is sit here and stare at the wall.’ Somebody ought to paint a big black cross on my door, like they did during the Plague.

‘Maybe we should talk about Robert. If you talk about it—’

‘I won’t feel better. Look, I know you’re only trying to help, but you can’t.’ I long to let my grief pull me under. Fighting it, making an effort to appear civilised and in control, is too hard. I do not say this, in case it sounds melodramatic. You’re only supposed to talk about grief when someone has died.

‘You don’t have to put on any kind of act for me,’ says Yvon. ‘Lie on the floor and howl if you want. I don’t care. But I’m not leaving.’ She curls up at the other end of the sofa. ‘Have you thought about tomorrow?’

I shake my head.

‘What time’s Sergeant Zailer coming to get you?’

‘First thing.’

Yvon swears under her breath. ‘You can’t speak or eat, you can barely summon the energy to move. How the hell are you going to get through another interview with Juliet Haworth?’

I don’t know the answer to that. I’ll get through it because I have to.

‘You should ring Sergeant Zailer and tell her you’ve changed your mind. I’ll do it for you, if you want.’

‘No.’

‘Naomi . . .’

‘I have to speak to Juliet if I want to find out what she knows.’

‘What about what you know?’ Yvon’s voice is loaded with frustration. ‘I’ve never been Robert’s greatest supporter, but . . . he loves you, Naomi. And he’s not a rapist.’

‘Tell that to the DNA experts,’ I say bitterly.

‘They’ve got it wrong. So-called experts make mistakes all the time.’

‘Stop, please.’ Her false consolations are making me feel even more wretched. ‘The only way I can handle this is to face up to the worst possibility. I’m not going to let myself latch on to some unlikely theory, and be disappointed again.’

‘Okay.’ Yvon humours me. ‘So what is the worst possibility?’

‘Robert’s involved in the rapes,’ I say, in a dull, dead voice. ‘He does some, the other man does some. Juliet’s involved, maybe even in charge. They’re a team of three. Robert knew all along that I was one of the other man’s victims. Same with Sandy Freeguard. He went out of his way to meet us for that reason.’

‘Why? That’s crazy.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe to check we weren’t going to go to the police. That’s what spies do, isn’t it? They infiltrate enemy territory, report back.’

‘But you said Sandy Freeguard had already been to the police, before she started seeing Robert.’

I nod. ‘The boyfriend of a rape victim would know how the investigation was progressing, wouldn’t he? The police would keep the victim informed and the victim’d confide in her boyfriend. Maybe Juliet—or the other man, or Robert, or all three of them—wanted to be able to keep tabs on what the police were up to, in Sandy Freeguard’s case. Haven’t we always said Robert’s a control freak?’ I cannot stop the tears from escaping as I say this.

Do you know what the worst thing is? All the kind, loving, sweet things you’ve said and done have been so much more concrete and tangible in my mind since you rejected me in the hospital. It would help if I could make the bad times stand out, step forward into the spotlight. Then I might find a pattern I’ve overlooked until now and prove to my heart how wrong it has been about you. But all I can think of are your passionate words. You have no idea how precious you are to me. You said that at the end of every phone call, instead of goodbye.

My memory has turned against me, is trying to overwhelm me with the contrast between how you were this morning and how you have been in the past.

‘Why did Juliet smash Robert’s head in with a stone?’ asks Yvon, picking up half of my sandwich and taking a bite. ‘Why does she want to provoke you and taunt you?’

I can’t answer either question.

‘Because Robert is in love with you. It’s the only possible explanation. He finally got round to telling her that he was leaving her for you. She’s jealous—that’s why she hates you.’

‘Robert’s not in love with me.’ I am crushed by the weight of these words. ‘He told me to go away and leave him alone.’

‘He wasn’t thinking straight. Naomi, she tried to kill him. If your brain had been bleeding and swelling, if you’d been unconscious for days, you wouldn’t know what you were saying either.’ Yvon brushes crumbs off the sofa on to the floor. It’s her idea of cleaning. ‘Robert loves you,’ she insists. ‘And he’s going to get better, all right?’

‘Great. I get to live happily ever after with a rapist.’ I stare at the bread on the floor. For some reason it makes me think of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. Food is essential to any rescue mission. Magret de Canard aux Poires from the Bay Tree. There was food on the table in the little theatre where I was attacked, course after course.

‘Put that sandwich down,’ I tell Yvon. ‘Are you hungry?’

She looks caught out, ashamed to be thinking of food at a time like this. I’m also thinking about it, though I don’t think I could eat even a mouthful. ‘What time is it? Will the Bay Tree still be taking orders?’

‘The Bay Tree ? You mean the most expensive restaurant in the county?’ Yvon’s expression changes; the agony aunt has been replaced by the strict headmistress. ‘That’s where Robert got that food from, wasn’t it, the day you met him?’

‘It’s not what you think. I don’t want to go there because I’m nostalgic for the good old days,’ I say bitterly, mortified to think of what I used to believe in: the past, the future. The present. What you’ve done to me is worse than what the rapist did. He made me a victim for a night; thanks to you, I’ve been mocked, debased and humiliated for over a year without even knowing about it.

Yvon could see there was something wrong with our relationship from the start. Why didn’t I see it? Why can I still not see it? I am determined to think the unthinkable about you, believe the unbelievable, because I have to kill the part of me that loves you in spite of everything I’ve been told. It should be small and ailing by now, but it isn’t. It’s huge. Rampant. It has spread inside me like a cancer, conquered too much territory. I don’t know what’ll be left of me if I succeed in wiping it out. Just scars, emptiness, a gaping hole. But I have to try. I must be as ruthless as a hired assassin.

Yvon doesn’t understand why I suddenly want to go out, and I’m not ready to explain it to her. One horror at a time. ‘If it’s not nostalgia, then why the Bay Tree?’ she says. ‘Let’s go somewhere else and not bankrupt ourselves.’

‘I’m going to the Bay Tree,’ I tell her, standing up. ‘Are you coming or not?’

The building that houses the Bay Tree bistro is one of the oldest in Spilling. It’s been standing since 1504. It has low ceilings, thick uneven walls and two real fires—one in the bar area and one in the restaurant itself. It resembles a well-turned-out grotto, though it’s entirely above ground level. There are only eight tables, and normally you have to book at least a month in advance. Yvon and I were lucky; it’s late, so we got a table somebody had booked weeks ago for seven-thirty. By the time we arrived, they were long gone—sated and not insignificantly poorer.