The Girl Before

You gave it to me, remember? You said to phone if there was any more intimidation—

This is my personal phone. If you want to report something, you should call the front desk. I’ll give you the number. Do you have a pen?

You said you’d protect me, I say slowly.

The circumstances have changed, obviously. I’ll text you the right number to call, he says. The line goes dead.

Bastard, I hiss. I’m sobbing again, tears of impotence and shame. I go and stare at the huge red smear. I have absolutely no idea how to get it cleaned off. I know it means I’m going to have to speak to Edward now.

10. A new friend confides she was once sent to prison for shoplifting. It was some time ago and she has turned her life around since. Do you:

? Consider it irrelevant—everyone deserves a second chance ? Appreciate her honesty in sharing this with you ? Reciprocate by confiding a mistake of your own ? Feel sorry for her that she was ever in that situation ? Decide she’s not really the kind of person you want as a friend

NOW: JANE

I come back from my meeting with Saul Aksoy by Tube, wishing I could afford a taxi: the grime, the overcrowding, and the end-of-day smell of damp and dirty bodies are all getting increasingly hard to take. No one offers me a seat, not that I’d really expect them to yet—but a woman with an eight-month-sized bump and a BABY ON BOARD pin gets on at Kings Cross and somebody stands up for her. She sinks into the seat with an audible gasp. In a few months’ time, I think, that’ll be me.

One Folgate Street, though, is my haven, my cocoon. One reason I’m putting off telling Edward about this pregnancy, I’ve realized, is because a part of me is frightened Mia’s right and he’ll simply throw me out. I tell myself he’ll be different when it’s his own child, that our relationship is stronger than his precious rules, that he’ll be fine with baby monitors and buggies and nursery friezes and playmats and all the other messy paraphernalia of parenthood. I’ve even been checking developmental milestones online. Given his parents’ Type-A, disciplined personalities, our child could be sleeping through the night at three months, walking within a year, toilet-trained by eighteen months. Surely it’s not so very long to put up with a little chaos?

But somehow, I haven’t been so confident that I actually call him.

And, of course, however serene my surroundings, there are still my own terrors to be faced. Isabel was born silent and still. This baby—pray God—will be different. Over and over I imagine that moment: the waiting, the first snatch of breath, that exultant, mewling cry. What will I feel? Triumph? Or something more complicated? Sometimes I actually find myself apologizing to Isabel in my head. I promise I won’t forget you. I promise no one can take your place. You’ll always be my firstborn, my beloved, my precious girl. I will always grieve for you. But now there will be another to love, and can there really be such an inexhaustible store of love in me that my feelings for Isabel remain undimmed?

I try to focus on the immediate issue: Edward. The more I tell myself I have to speak to him, the more a little voice reminds me that I don’t really know this man, the father of my child, at all. All I know is that he’s remarkable, which is another way of saying he’s unusual and obsessive. I still don’t even know what really happened between him and Emma: what responsibility, moral or otherwise, he might bear for her death, or whether both Simon and Carol, in their different ways, are wrong about that.

I am as methodical and efficient as ever. I buy three packets of fluorescent Post-it notes in different colors and turn one of the refectory walls into a giant mind map. On one side I stick a Post-it labeled ACCIDENT, then in a row SUICIDE, MURDERED—SIMON WAKEFIELD, MURDERED—DEON NELSON, and MURDERED—PERSON UNKNOWN. Finally, and somewhat reluctantly, I add a Post-it labeled MURDERED—EDWARD MONKFORD. Underneath each one I put more Post-its for the evidence that supports it. Where I have no proof, I put question marks.

There are only a couple of notes, I’m pleased to see, underneath Edward’s name. Simon, too, has fewer than the others, although following my conversation with Saul I have to add one that says REVENGE FOR SEX WITH BEST FRIEND???

After some thought I add another to the row: MURDERED—DI CLARKE. Because even the policeman had a motive. Being made a fool of by Emma had effectively cost him his job. Of course, I don’t actually believe he did it, any more than I think Edward did. But he’d clearly been a little bit smitten with Emma, and I don’t want to rule out any possibilities prematurely.