The Girl Before

DI Clarke doesn’t look at him. At the time, of course, there was no allegation of rape. It was classified as a break-in. A decision was made by the duty officer not to dust for prints.

He sighs. And then later, we should probably have put Nelson into a lineup. But since you’d told us he was wearing a balaclava, there didn’t seem much point. Unfortunately, a clever lawyer can use that sort of thing to imply the police have been jumping to conclusions.

But if that’s the problem, why don’t I do a lineup now? I say.

Clarke and the lawyer exchange glances. It might help, when it comes to trial, the lawyer says thoughtfully.

This is very important, Emma, DI Clarke says. Have you at any point during the proceedings today caught sight of the defendant?

I shake my head. After all, I don’t know for sure that was Nelson I saw. And even if it was, why should he get off just because the police are so incompetent?

I think we should consider it, the lawyer says, nodding.

Emma? Simon calls, desperate to break into the conversation. Emma, I know you meant it.

Meant what? I say.

That it was only because of that bastard we split up.

What? No, I say, shaking my head. That was for the court, Si. I didn’t…I’m not going back.

Emma, Edward’s voice says, calm and authoritative behind us. I turn to him gratefully. Well done, he says. You were brilliant. He enfolds me in his arms and I see Simon’s horror as he realizes what this means.

Jesus, he whispers. Jesus, Emma. You can’t be.

Can’t what, Simon? I say defiantly. Can’t choose who I go out with?

The police officers and Broome, aware they’re present at some personal drama, look down and shuffle their feet. As usual, Edward takes charge.

Come with me, he says. He puts his arm around me and steers me away. I glance back once and see Simon staring after us, mute with misery and anger.

NOW: JANE

At the weekend, Edward takes me to the British Museum, where an assistant unlocks a cabinet and leaves us alone to examine a small prehistoric sculpture. The carving has been smoothed by time, but it’s still recognizably two lovers, entwined.

“It’s eleven thousand years old—the oldest depiction of sex in the world,” Edward says. “From a civilization known as the Natufians, the first people to create communities.”

It’s hard to concentrate. I can’t stop thinking about the fact he spoke the exact same words to Emma as he did to me. Some of Carol’s other comments I can disregard, given that she never met Edward, but the hard evidence of her notebook is more difficult to ignore.

But then, I think, we’re all guilty of dropping into the same familiar phrases, the same linguistic shortcuts. We all tell the same anecdotes to different people, sometimes even the same people, often in the same words. Who doesn’t repeat themselves sometimes? Aren’t repetition compulsion and acting out just fancy terms for being creatures of habit?

Then Edward passes me the carving to hold, and immediately all my attention is focused on that. I find myself thinking how incredible it is that people have been making love for so many millennia; but of course it’s one of the few constants of mankind’s history. The same act, repeated through the generations.

Afterward I ask if we can go and see the Elgin Marbles, but Edward doesn’t want to. “The public galleries will be full of tourists. Besides, I make it a rule only to look at one thing in a museum. Any more and your brain gets overloaded.” He starts to walk back the way we came.

Carol Younson’s words come back to me. Edward’s behavior seemed reasonable enough to Emma so long as she colluded with it—that is, so long as she allowed him to control her….

I stop dead. “Edward, I really want to see them.”

He looks at me, puzzled. “All right. But not now. I’ll make an arrangement with the director—we can come back when the museum’s closed—”

“Now,” I say. “It has to be now.” I’m aware I sound childish and stressed. An assistant looks up from a desk and frowns.

Edward shrugs. “Very well.”

He leads me through a different door into the public part of the museum. People surge around the exhibits like fish feeding on coral. Edward cuts through them without a sideways glance.

“In here,” he says.

This room is even busier, packed with schoolkids holding clipboards and chattering away in French. Then there are the culture zombies nodding along to their audio guides; the couples clutching at each other’s hands who drift around the room like dragnets; the buggy-pushers, the backpackers, the selfie-takers. And beyond all that, behind a metal rail, some plinths bearing a few fragments of battered sculpture and the famous frieze.

It’s hopeless. I try to look at them properly, but the magic I felt holding that tiny millennia-old carving in my hands is nowhere to be found.