Our gazes snap together, and the years from then till now unravel themselves into seconds that elongate the silence between us.
‘If she did, I’m sure she had good reason,’ I reply eventually.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asks, our stares still battling it out with each other.
‘It means my daughter is a kind, gentle, thoughtful young woman who wouldn’t hurt anyone unless she had no other choice.’
‘Like you, you mean?’ she replies.
‘My daughter is nothing like me.’
‘And my brother wasn’t “asking for it”,’ she retorts.
‘I never said he was.’
‘Yes, you did. You literally did. When he wakes up, we’re going to find out what really happened.’
If he wakes up, I almost say. ‘Yes, we will, I suppose.’ I unhook my trolley from its position almost melded to hers. ‘I’ll see you, Poppy.’
‘I’ll see you, Serena,’ she replies.
I’m about to turn the corner into the next aisle when she calls me again. I turn back to her. She smiles and says, ‘Give my love to Dr Evan,’ in a voice drizzled with so much honey, so much affection, I abandon my trolley and go straight home to my husband.
verity
Now
‘Gillmare, visitor.’
‘Visitor’ has to mean Darryl since, as my solicitor, he’s the only person I’m allowed to have ‘visit’. This particular police officer doesn’t like me. I don’t know why, and she hasn’t said anything directly, but she does not like me and often gives me the stare of someone who would just love for me to try to escape. I know she wouldn’t hesitate in trying to take me down – a well-placed fist in the gut, a kick to the back of my knee, anything that would stop me in my tracks.
I swing my legs off my cold concrete bunk and stand, unkinking my back and my frozen, locked limbs with careful, big, slow movements so I don’t get myself into trouble. Could I take her? Absolutely. Would she have lots of mates to back her up? Absolutely again. Because I’ve found out something over these hours that I’ve been here: people have long memories.
From the looks and whispers and attitude I’m getting, being the daughter of the Ice Cream Girl Who Got Away With It is almost as bad as being her.
Hilariously (!) I’m sure half these people wouldn’t have been in big school when my mum was notorious, but that doesn’t stop them having an opinion about the ‘fact’ she ‘got away with it’. About the ‘fact’ that it looks like her daughter is about to do the same. I’m sure a few of them – including this woman – would love to get their licks in. I’m not actually sure how many of them I’d be able to hurt before they really hurt me, though.
As I move to my cell door, she leaves it that beat too long to step aside; she contrives to make us collide, to start that altercation she would so love to have. I’m not silly, though. I leave it that bit too long to step through the doorway, so we don’t touch.
She walks behind me, not in reverence or out of respect, but so she can keep an eye on me and I lead the way to the interview room that I’ve started to think of as my interview room. I know the kinks of the wall, the bumps of the table, the flaws of the chairs, the mottles of the two-way mirror. Whenever I’m brought in here, I immerse myself in the feel of the room, its unsubtle stench of sweat and tears and fear and confession. Those things cling to the molecules of air, to the auras of all who enter and exit.
There is a woman sitting in Darryl’s place. Even in this dingy, depressive light, I can see from the way she is dressed, the manner in which she holds herself, that she is a barrister. She wears a black skirt suit over a white shirt with the top button open; she sits rod straight even though she has crossed her legs. Her shoes, though, are not those of a woman who stands on her feet all day – they are shiny black and have pencil-thin heels that would make her tower over most people she stands near. I wouldn’t have thought I’d need a barrister at this stage. Yes, the police have, unusually, been almost outright telling me they are going to try to hold me for the full ninety-six hours they officially can, even if it means going back to court after seventy-two hours, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be charged at the end of it. It just means they think they can find something. I don’t need a barrister.
‘Take a seat,’ she says with a voice as smooth and delicious as syrup.
When I do sit opposite her, I suddenly feel as scruffy as I am in this grey tracksuit.
Not only is this woman well put together, she is very beautiful. Under her flawless make-up, her dark-brown skin is so smooth, I have to wonder why she bothers with foundation and the rest of it. Her large, mascaraed eyes are quick, they have the look of someone who nothing escapes no matter how she outwardly responds to the information that she’s given. She’s Mum’s age, or thereabouts, and doesn’t look weary or cynical. I’m sure she’s probably practised that, found a way to give nothing away so in court the witness has no idea what to expect from her – even if she’s on your side.
‘My name is Nerissa Bawku,’ she says in her syrup voice. ‘I know Darryl Palmer from the Society of Black Lawyers and I work with him sometimes. He has asked me to come and talk to you, to see if I would consider representing you.’
‘OK, I didn’t realise it’d got to that stage. Does he know something I don’t?’
She grins at me and I’m sure that smile has thrown many a guilty and innocent person off, I bet she brings it out and dusts it off in those moments when she either needs to put someone at ease or terrify them. I’m not quite sure which situation this is.
‘You may very well need to go to court when the police ask for the additional twenty-four hours that will take your questioning up to ninety-six hours,’ she says. ‘He asked me because I’m not connected to your firm and he . . . he was worried that you weren’t taking this seriously. I must say, I have to agree with him.’
‘You’ve talked to me for all of three seconds, how can you know if I’m not taking this seriously?’ How dare this woman say that to me. How dare she! ‘Believe me, I am taking this seriously. And you can tell Darryl that.’
‘Verity, if I may call you that, Darryl is extremely worried about you. He knows how them out there’ – she points a manicured nail towards the door – ‘are working around the clock to find the evidence to prove you guilty. And you are guilty . . . according to them.’ She left that a moment too long, she obviously thinks I’m guilty, too. ‘Darryl knows first-hand what a manipulative young woman you are, and he’s concerned that the police will not only see it, they’ll find evidence to prove that it was your manipulative nature that led us here.’
Hang on a second . . . ! ‘Manipulative? Darryl said that about me?’
‘He told me, everything. He told me about how when he had a rare moment of public vulnerability and opened up to you about his late wife, you used it to make a move on him.’
What?!
‘That seconds after he talked to you about his wife, you manoeuvred yourself into a position where he felt compelled to kiss you.’