Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

N.J.: I know you had a breakdown, and I know why.

[ Long pause .]

J.H.: Really? Do share.

N.J.: Go on. You were in the queue.

J.H.: I got to the front and found I’d forgotten my purse. It felt like the end of the world. My first trip out—my parents were so proud—and I’d gone and ruined it by forgetting to bring any money. Nearly wet myself, I did. I knew I’d have to go home empty-handed and admit I’d failed, and I knew I wouldn’t dare to go out again after that. [Pause.] I started mumbling to the woman behind the till—don’t remember what, really. Actually, I think I just kept apologising over and over again. Everything’s my fault, you see. Ask our good detectives here. I’m a wannabe murderess and a theatrical porn entrepreneur. But back to the story: next thing I know, someone’s tapping me on the shoulder. Robert. My hero.

N.J.: He paid for the video.

J.H.: Paid for the film, scooped me up off the floor, walked me home, reassured me, reassured my parents. God, they were keen to get me off their hands. Why do you think I married Robert so quickly?

N.J.: I imagine it was a whirlwind romance.

J.H.: Yes, but what made the wind whirl? I’ll tell you: my parents didn’t want to look after me, and Robert did. It didn’t scare him like it scared them. Madness in the family.

N.J.: Didn’t you love him?

J.H.: Course I bloody did! I was a total wreck. I’d given up on myself, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was comprehensively worthless, and Robert came along and told me I’d got it all wrong: I wasn’t worthless at all, I’d just been through a bad patch and needed to be looked after for a while. He said that some people weren’t cut out for working, that I’d already achieved more than most people did in a lifetime. He promised to look after me.

N.J.: This great achievement—he meant those ugly pottery houses of yours? I’ve seen them. In your lounge. In the cabinet with the glass doors.

J.H.: And?

N.J.: Nothing. I’m just telling you I’ve seen them. It’s funny. Your work made you have a nervous breakdown, yet you’ve got those models all over your living room. Don’t they remind you? Bring back memories you’d rather forget?

[ Long pause .]

C.Z.: Mrs Haworth?

J.H.: Don’t interrupt, Sergeant. [Pause.] My life’s had its ups and downs, but do I want to erase it from my memory? No. Call me vain if you want to, but it’s important to me to hang on to some sort of evidence that I’ve existed. If that’s all right with all of you? So that I know I didn’t imagine my entire fucking life?

N.J.: I can understand that.

J.H.: Oh, I’m so pleased. I’m not sure I want to be understood by someone who pulls her pants down for the first stranger she bumps into in a service station. A lot of rape victims go on to become promiscuous, I believe. It’s because they feel worthless. They give themselves to anyone.

N.J.: Robert isn’t anyone.

J.H.: [Laughs.] That’s certainly true. Boy, is that true.

N.J.: Did you get to know him properly before you fell in love with him?

J.H.: No. But I know a lot about him now. I’m a real expert. I bet you don’t even know where he grew up, do you? What do you know about his childhood?

N.J.: I told you before. I know he doesn’t see his family, that he’s got three sisters . . .

J.H.: He grew up in a small village called Oxenhope. Do you know it? It’s in Yorkshire. Just down the road from Brontë country. Which is a greater masterpiece—Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights?

N.J.: Robert raped a woman who lived in Yorkshire. Prue Kelvey.

J.H.: So I’ve been told.

N.J.: Did he do it?

J.H.: You should get Robert on the subject of the Brontës. Assuming he ever speaks to you again. Or anyone, for that matter. He thinks Branwell was the one with the real talent. Robert goes for the underdog every time. When he was growing up, he had a poster of a painting of Branwell Brontë on his wall—a feckless drunkard and a layabout. Odd, isn’t it? With Robert being such a hard worker.

N.J.: What are you implying?

J.H.: He only told me all this after we were married. He saved it, he said, like people used to do with sex in ye olde days. I assume you’ve noticed my husband’s addiction to deferred gratification. What else? His mum was the village bike, and his dad was involved with the National Front. Left the family for another woman, in the end. Robert was six. It really fucked him up. His mum never stopped loving his dad, even though he’d discarded her, even though he’d used her as a punchbag for most of their marriage. And she didn’t give a shit about Robert, even though he adored her. She just ignored him, or criticised him. And because they were so poor after the dad left, she had to stop shagging everything in trousers and go out to work. Guess what line of work she chose?

N.J.: Did she make ridiculous pottery ornaments?

J.H.: [Laughs.] No, but she was a businesswoman. Started her own company, just like you and me. Except hers was telephone sex. She made a lot of money from it, enough to send the kids to a posh private school. Giggleswick. Heard of it?

N.J.: No.

J.H.: Robert’s dad never loved him. He labelled Robert the thick one, and the difficult one, the second child he’d been tricked into having that he’d never wanted. So when he upped and left, the mum blamed Robert for driving him away. Robert became the official black sheep. He failed his exams, despite the expensive education, and ended up working in the kitchen at the Oxenhope Steak and Kebab House. Maybe that’s why he identifies with Branwell Brontë.

N.J.: You could be making this up. Robert’s never told me any of this. Why should I believe you?

J.H.: Do you have a choice? It’s the information I give you or it’s no information. Poor Naomi. My heart bleeds.

N.J.: Why do you hate me so much?

J.H.: Because you were going to steal my husband, and I didn’t have anything else.

N.J.: If Robert dies, you’ll have nothing.

J.H.: [Laughs.] Wrong. You’ll notice I used the past tense: I didn’t have anything else. I’m fine now. I’ve got something much more important than Robert.

N.J.: What’s that?

J.H.: Work it out. It’s something you ain’t got, I’ll tell you that much.

N.J.: Do you know who raped me?

J.H.: Yes. [Laughs.] But I’m not going to tell you his name.

21

4/8/06

‘THE BRONTËS CAME from Haworth,’ said Simon. ‘Robert’s surname is Haworth.’

‘I know.’ Charlie had had the same thought.

‘Know the name of the man Charlotte Brontë married?’

She shook her head. It was the sort of thing Simon knew and most normal people didn’t.

‘Arthur Bell Nicholls. Remember Robert Haworth’s sister Lottie Nicholls, the one he told Naomi Jenkins about?’

‘Jesus. The three sisters! Juliet hinted that they were dead.’

‘Looks like Haworth took his identification with Branwell Brontë a bit too far,’ said Simon grimly. ‘What about his surname? Think it’s a coincidence?’

Charlie told him what she’d told Naomi Jenkins the previous day: ‘I don’t believe in coincidences. Gibbs is pursuing the Giggleswick School and Oxenhope angles, so we should have something concrete soon. No wonder we got nothing from the Lottie fucking Nicholls connection.’

‘I don’t like these interviews.’ Simon swirled an inch of lukewarm tea around the bottom of his Styrofoam cup. ‘Robert Haworth’s two crazy women. They give me the creeps.’

He and Charlie were in the police canteen, a bare-walled, windowless hall with a broken one-armed bandit machine in one corner. Neither was happy with the backdrop, or the tepid, weak tea. Normally, they would have had a conversation like this in the Brown Cow over a proper drink, but Proust had made a comment to Charlie about how in future he wanted his detectives to do their work at work, not slope off to sleazy lap-dancing clubs in the middle of shifts.