Chapter One

Now

 

Even though I’ve washed and rewashed my hands, there is still dried blood beneath my fingernails. Like rust on a bike chain. I sit in the eerie quiet of this room and stare at the magnolia walls, the little table which has been bolted to the carpet‑tiled floor, the recorder tucked into the recess of the alcove, and try not to think about the cracked skull or the look on your face.

     The chair creaks beneath my fidgeting weight. Getting comfortable after hours spent sitting is impossible; my back aches and my legs are stiff, and my tongue lies like a raisin in my mouth thanks to a night stretched thin answering questions.

     Because of you.

     I lift my hand to bite my nails – a habit I thought I’d left behind – and stop when I remember the blood and the ink staining my fingers. T hen, the door to this magnolia hell swings open and another nondescript policeman strides in. The plastic cup of water looks too small in his large hand. He doesn’t speak as he places it on the table, but the accusation in his eyes is clear: murderer.

     He leaves and when the door closes behind him, it is gun‑shot loud and makes me jump. My hand shakes as I pick up the cup, water sloshing over the sides and dripping onto the clothes I was given by the police when they brought me in. My own are somewhere in the station, carefully folded into a clear plastic bag labelled ‘evidence’.

     Even though I try not to think of you, I am swept along memory lane and the first pitstop is your university room; we were nineteen, huddled beneath the bedcovers, when you whispered those magic words for the first time, ‘How much do you love me?’

     ‘To the moon and round the stars.’

     ‘Not enough,’ you breathed. ‘How much do you love me?’

     ‘As much as you want me to and even more.’

     Through the silky blackness, I could feel your smile.

     But these words are the poisoned spell that brought me here. They are the reason for the body lying in the morgue.

     My hand is wet. I’ve squeezed the neck of my cup until it has split, its watery insides gushing out. Dropping it onto the table, I stare down at the blood beneath my fingernails and then back at the closed door. They are waiting for an answer to a question that has been asked so many times in the last few hours, each word is seared into my skin. At the thought of blistering my tongue with the truth, of burning you, panic drags me down into the twisting dark, and I am wearing guilt like a pair of iron boots.

     If screaming were a feeling, it would be this.