His & Hers

The dead woman’s mouth is ever so slightly open.

‘Shine your torch on her face.’

Priya does as I ask, and I get down on my knees again to take a closer look at the body. Lips that were once pink have turned blue, but I can see something red hiding in the dark space between them. I reach to touch it, without thinking, as though under a spell.

‘Sir?’

Priya interrupts my mistake before I make it. She is uncomfortably close to me, so much so that I can smell her perfume, along with her breath: a light whiff of recently drunk tea. I turn and see an old frown form on her young face. I would have thought this whole experience – finding a body in the woods for the first time – might have fazed her, unnerved her a little, but maybe I was wrong. I try to remember how old Priya is – I find it so hard to tell with women. If I had to guess I’d say late twenties or early thirties. Still hungry with ambition, confident of her own potential, unscarred by the disappointments that life has yet to hit her with.

‘Shouldn’t we wait for the pathologist to examine the body before we touch anything?’ she asks, already knowing the answer.

Priya sticks to the rules the way good liars stick to their stories. She says ‘pathologist’ like a kid who just learned a new word in school, one who wants people to hear them use it in a sentence.

‘Absolutely,’ I reply, and take a step back.

Unlike my colleague, I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies before, but this is not like any case I have previously worked on. I zone out again while Priya starts to speculate about the identity of the woman. It feels like this is the start of something big, and I wonder if I’m up to the task. No two murders are the same, but it’s been years since I handled a case even remotely like this, and a lot has changed since then. The job has changed, I’ve changed, and it isn’t just that.

This is different.

I’ve never worked on the murder of someone I know before.

And I knew this woman well.

I was with her last night.

Her

Tuesday 06:30

We all have secrets; some we won’t even tell ourselves.

I don’t know what woke me, or what time it is, or where I am when I first open my eyes. Everything is pitch-black. My fingers find the bedside lamp, which sheds some light on the matter, and I’m pleased to see the familiar sight of my own bedroom. It is always a relief to know that I made it home when I wake up feeling like this.

I am not one of those women that you read about in books, or see on TV dramas, who frequently drink too much and forget what they did the night before. I’m not an amateur alcoholic and I’m not a cliché. We’re all addicted to something: money, success, social media, sugar, sex… the list of possibilities is endless. My drug of choice just happens to be alcohol. It can take a while for my memories to catch up with me, and I might not always be happy or proud about what I’ve done, but I do always remember. Always.

That doesn’t mean I have to tell the whole world about it.

Sometimes I think I am the unreliable narrator of my own life.

Sometimes I think we all are.

The first thing I remember is that I lost my dream job, and the memory of my worst nightmare coming true seems to physically wound me. I switch off the light – I no longer wish to see things so clearly – then lie back down on the bed, burrowing beneath the covers. I wrap my arms around myself and close my eyes, as I recall walking out of The Thin Controller’s office, then leaving the newsroom mid-afternoon. I took a taxi home, feeling a little too unsteady on my feet to walk, then I phoned my mother to tell her what had happened. It was foolish, but I couldn’t think of anyone else to call.

My mother has become a bit forgetful and confused in recent years, and phone calls home only make me feel guilty for not visiting more often. I have my reasons for never wanting to go back where I came from, but they are better forgotten than shared. It’s easier to blame the miles for the distance that exists between some parents and their children, but when you bend the truth too far it tends to break. It sounded like Mum at first, on the other end of the line, but it wasn’t really her. After I poured my heart out, she was completely silent for a moment, then she asked whether egg and chips for tea would cheer me up after my bad day at school.

Mum doesn’t always remember that I’m thirty-six and live in London. She frequently forgets that I have a job, and that I used to have a husband and a child of my own. She didn’t even seem to know that it was my birthday. There was no card this year, or last, but it’s not her fault. Time is something my mother has forgotten how to tell. It moves differently for her now, often backwards instead of forwards. Dementia stole time from my mother, and stole my mother from me.

Reaching back inside my memories for a source of comfort was understandable given the circumstances, but I shouldn’t have stretched as far back as my childhood; it’s a bit too hit-and-miss.

When I got home, I closed all the curtains and opened a bottle of Malbec. Not because I was scared of being seen – I just like drinking in the dark. Sometimes even I don’t like to see the me that I become when nobody else is looking. After my second glass, I got changed into something less conspicuous – some old jeans and a black jumper – then I went to pay someone a visit.

When I returned a few hours later, I stripped out of my clothes in the hallway. They were covered in dirt, and I was filled with guilt. I remember opening another bottle and lighting the fire. I sat right in front of it, wrapped in a blanket, gulping down the wine. It took me forever to warm up after being out in the cold for so long. The logs hissed and whispered as though they had secrets of their own, and the firelight cast a series of ghostly shadows that danced around the room. I tried to get her out of my head, but even with my eyes squeezed shut, I could still see her face, smell her skin, hear her voice, crying.

I remember seeing the dirt beneath my fingernails, and scrubbing myself clean in the shower before I went to bed.

My phone buzzes again and I realise that must be what woke me. It’s early morning now, still as dark outside the flat as it is inside, and eerily quiet. Silence is a fear I’ve learned to feel, rather than hear. It creeps up on me, often lurking in the loudest corners of my mind. I listen but there is no sound of traffic, or birdsong, or life. No rumble of the boiler, or murmurs from the network of ancient pipes that try and fail to heat my home.

I stare at my mobile – the only light in the shadows – and see that it was a breaking-news text that woke me. The screen casts an unnatural glow. I read the headline about the body of a woman being found in the woods, and wonder whether I am still dreaming. The room seems a shade darker than it did before.

Then my phone starts to ring.

I answer it, and listen as The Thin Controller apologises for calling so early. He wonders whether I might be able to come in and present the programme.

‘What happened to Cat Jones?’ asks a voice that sounds a lot like my own.

‘We don’t know. But she hasn’t turned up for work, and nobody can get hold of her.’

The little pieces of me I got broken into yesterday start to creep and crawl back together. Sometimes I get lost in my own thoughts and fears. Trapped within a world of worry which, deep down, I know only exists inside my head. Anxiety often screams louder than logic, and when you spend too long imagining the worst you can make it come true.