Colin’s question had shocked me. There was an inference there that hadn’t occurred to me. I had assumed that if Harry’s mother really had seen me outside her house, I had been there because of Harry. That something in my subconscious had been worried about him and that I had gone to make sure he was OK.
I hadn’t thought for one moment I might have driven there because of Petra.
If I was feeling bad for having opened up to Colin, that one realisation made me feel a whole lot worse. It begged the question — who had I gone to see during my first blackout?
The biggest part of me refused to believe that I would be spying on or stalking young girls. But the evidence of the dreams, and being in Rose’s room, needed addressing. A small part of me had to accept that, sickening though it was, it was possible.
Colin spent the rest of the hour asking me about my childhood, particularly school friends. He asked me whether I had been bullied at school, whether there were any girls who were nastier than the others. When I told him my school days were fine he said that maybe something had happened that was so painful that my mind had shut it off. Perhaps it wasn’t physically possible for me to remember it. Was there anyone else I could talk to about that time? Perhaps my parents might remember something?
When I left his house my mind was spinning. I couldn’t string any coherent thoughts together and I forgot to write down the mileometer reading. I didn’t remember to do it when I got home either.
I felt grubby. I considered having another shower, but instead I pulled a blanket from the airing cupboard, grabbed my pillows from the bed and settled down on the sofa in the living room. I just needed some space in my head. I needed to stop thinking. Sleep was the only way I could achieve it. I had no alcohol left in the house. I ticked off 11:30 on my time-sheet.
As I drifted off to sleep, my thoughts diminishing slightly, I remembered that during the tickling session I had wanted to hurt both the kids, not just Rose. I found this comforting.
Several raps on the front door woke me up. I couldn’t understand why they weren’t using the doorbell. A thud pulsed through my forehead and temples. I thought about ignoring the front door and hunting instead for some paracetamol. As I stretched my body under the blanket my invisible leg pain twanged.
The knocking at the front door came again. Loud and forceful. I swung my legs out from under the blanket and ruffled my hands through my hair in an attempt to wake myself up. A glance at the clock told me I had been sleeping for less than an hour. It was 12:15.
Before opening the front door I checked that the safety chain was across. I also made sure there was a closed umbrella next to the shoes, just in case I needed to defend or attack. I thought that whoever was the other side of the door would have heard me shuffling to open it, but apparently they hadn’t. Another set of very loud raps made me jump.
I opened the door slightly less than the safety chain would have allowed. As I peered through the tiny gap I saw the uniform of a police officer. My heart took an extra beat.
‘Mrs Marsden?’
A female voice.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘PC Stephanie Chalmers, Mrs Marsden,’ she said. ‘May I come in?’
I shut the door slightly and pulled the safety chain from its lock. When I opened it again I recognised the police officer. She was on her own. She had been the pretty one at the hospital straight after I had been attacked. She was still pretty. She held a shopping bag.
She looked at my hair, then the rest of my face.
‘Are you OK?’ she said.
‘I was asleep,’ I said. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘May I come in?’ she said.
I stood back. As we walked to the living room I asked her again if something was wrong.
‘Everything is fine, Mrs Marsden,’ she said. ‘I may have some good news for you.’
I caught my breath.
‘Have you found him?’ I said. ‘The man who attacked me?’
My eyes felt as though they had doubled in size. I took a deep breath — and involuntarily held it.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not yet. But we are still working very hard to do just that.’ She pointed at the sofa. ‘Can we sit down?’
I gathered the pillows and blanket into my arms and dumped them in the dining-room.
She sat on the sofa, I chose the armchair. She pulled the shopping bag onto her lap, put her hand in and looked up at me. She looked as though she was about to do a magic trick. Maybe pull a rabbit out of the bag.
‘We think we have your handbag.’
I recognised it before it was all the way out. She didn’t hand it to me — just held it up, like she was displaying it to prospective purchasers at an auction.
The bag looked dirty and scratched. A smell of damp and mould hit me. I reached out for it.
‘Is it your bag?’ she said, pulling it back from my outstretched hand.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘At least, I think it is.’
She let me take hold of it. The strap felt cold.
‘Am I allowed to look inside?’ I said. ‘Has it been… checked for fingerprints or whatever?’
‘To be honest, Mrs Marsden, we’re not likely to find anything of much use on it. It has been handled since it was found. There’s nothing inside it.’
I looked anyway. Two chewing-gum wrappers and a pencil. I couldn’t remember ever putting a pencil in there.
‘I don’t think the pencil is mine,’ I said. ‘Has that been checked?’
‘We wouldn’t get anything off that either I’m afraid. Of course, it’s possible that you put it in there and forgot about it?’
It sounded like she was trying to put the idea in my head. Almost as though she was forcing the idea on me.
‘It is possible,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think I did.’
‘Can you confirm that the bag is yours? Now that you’ve looked inside?’
I nodded.
‘Yes, it’s mine. Where did you find it?’
‘Actually, a council worker found it. It was in some bushes by the bus depot. They were trimming the foliage back and saw it tangled in the undergrowth. As you can see, it looks like it’s been there for some time.’
I turned the bag over in my hand. Obviously it was ruined. I could add it to my ink-soaked current one.
‘Did they find anything else?’ I said. ‘My purse, or keys?’
‘Nothing else was handed in,’ she said. ‘We can get a beat officer to check it out just to make sure.’
‘When was it found?’
‘Yesterday morning, I believe. This is the first opportunity we’ve had to get it round to you.’
I couldn’t believe that they hadn’t already checked to see if there was anything else of mine in the bushes. And I found it hard to get my head around the virtual certainty that they hadn’t even checked the bag for fingerprints, or DNA or whatever they needed to do.
‘Is there any likelihood that you’ll catch the person who attacked me?’ I said. ‘I mean, on a scale of one to ten — is it likely?’
She folded her shopping bag and stood up.
‘As I said, we’re still working on the case. You never know what might turn up. Sometimes we get lucky.’
I felt heat rising up my neck. My eyes narrowed and the venom glands on my tongue opened up in readiness.
‘Lucky?’
‘It only takes one mistake from him and we could have him,’ she said.
‘One mistake? You mean like “leaving my ransacked handbag around for weeks in a public place” type of mistake?’
‘I’m afraid I really need to go, Mrs Marsden. I’m pleased we have been able to return your bag to you. Should anything else turn up, or if we find the suspect, we will, of course, be directly in touch.’
I know my neck was flushed red. I could feel it. I showed her to the door and thanked her for bringing the bag back to me. I pushed the front door shut — probably harder than was necessary. I slammed the safety chain back into place. On the way back i
nto the living-room I kicked a slipper that had dropped off the shoe rack.
I put my hands on the back of the sofa and leaned into it, stretching my neck and shoulder muscles. My body felt too tense. Pushing against the back of the sofa helped. It drew some of the tension out from me. The sofa absorbed it. I stretched my legs out one at a time, flexed my arms and elbows. Each movement pulled more of the tension out from my heated body. I pushed my head back and breathed out slowly through my nose. A few minutes passed. The red heat on my neck withdrew. My heart rate normalised.
‘Fucking Cunts,’ I said aloud. ‘Bastard Fucking Cunts.’
Of course, now that I had some perspective, I could see that the case wasn’t as important to the police as it was to me. For them, it was simply a mugging. I had been injured, of course, which made it a bit more serious, but it was essentially just a mugging. Just. So apart from the injury, all that happened was that my handbag was nicked. Now it had been returned. If they just happened to find the chap that did it — then all well and good. If not — well hundreds of crimes went unsolved every month. Many of them much more serious than mine.
So to them — the police — it was already an old case. Not even a thorn in their side anymore. Just a pile of unfinished, but probably already filed away, paperwork.
But to me, it felt as though my life may never be the same again. It had been, at least temporarily, shattered. I felt as though an axe hung over my head, waiting to come down on me, waiting to take control of my mind altogether. I feared losing my children. I feared hurting them, physically and mentally. I feared losing my husband. And I feared myself. From one moment to the next I had no idea what I would do. My life was no longer something over which I had complete control. Something else had crept in, through the dark torn curtain. A monster — which, to me, seemed alive with evil — was roaming my brain, looking for the next area to claim for itself.
I felt scared. Petrified in fact. And in that moment, leaning forward against the back of our sofa, tension oozing from my body, I thought about suicide. I know it is regarded by some as “the coward’s way out”, but at that moment it felt like an act of courage and selflessness. I was filled with anxiety of what had become of me, and horrified about what might still be to come.
I used to be The Mighty Atom. I still was. And I couldn’t find anything to beat these things that were happening to me.
I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. In fact, as all the tension dissipated, I felt stronger and more lucid than I had done in weeks.
I had time to write letters to Michael and Rose. And to Neil. One for Mum and Dad. They would see it as an act of bravery too. I would explain that I had tried every other weapon and that this was the ultimate one. The one that couldn’t fail.
I had options. The Clifton Suspension Bridge seemed too dramatic, but there were other places. I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone else, although if I landed on the skateboarder that would be a bonus. A feeling of calm came over my body, as though I was being covered in velvet or silk. I knew it was the right thing to do — and I felt at peace.
The peace was shattered by the phone ringing.
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