hand flew to his chest. ‘Ah. Oh. Yes, good morning,’ he blurted and carried on up towards the canal, but in those few seconds, I knew two things: one, he hadn’t seen me until I’d spoken; and two, I knew him like I’d known that chap in the park the day before. I don’t mean knew him as in knew him inside out and back to front sort of thing – I’m not psychic. I mean by instinct. That he was a GP, for a start. Well educated. And that he was lonely. I thought he might be divorced, although thinking about it, I could have noticed the pale band where his wedding ring used to be. There was something in the weary set of his shoulders, his face beaten and harassed at the same time.
He walked to his car and grabbed a file of documents from the passenger seat. I was still rooted to the spot, watching. I see now that maybe that was a strange thing to do, but I wasn’t one hundred per cent aware of myself in that moment. It was only the fact of him coming back down the path that shook me out of one of what Katie calls my ‘earth to Mother, come in, Mother’ moments. When I blink out of them, she always says, ‘Three, two, one… you’re back in the room,’ like the funny hypnotist off that comedy show.
I came back to myself. My breathing was ragged and I felt faint. A cloud of heat was expanding inside me but I wasn’t sure exactly where it was, whether it was in my brain or my body or what. A rivulet of sweat trickled down between my breasts. Knowing I should move but for some reason unable to, I watched the GP stride past. Off he went, rounding the corner clutching what I suspected were a patient’s files. He was diligent. He’d taken some case notes home to read through.
I think about how that must sound, how I must sound. I don’t want Blue Eyes to think I’m bonkers, even though it’s a bit late for that now, and besides, what anyone thinks of me is irrelevant.
‘I didn’t know any of this for certain, obviously,’ I qualify. ‘But it’s like Lisa said: when you get to a certain age, you get the hang of people. University of Life, as I said. But it was still weird. What I mean is, it felt weird.’
Blue Eyes frowns in a way that suggests she thinks everything I’ve said is reasonable. The fact that she’s treating me with respect and warmth and kindness makes me think she might have kids, though younger than mine – she looks about thirty-five. Not that you need to have kids to show compassion to someone who has done terrible things, but just… something. It could be tactics, obviously. She’s the good cop, not pinning me against a wall to force the cuffs on, more holding them out for me to willingly place my guilty wrists inside.
‘So what are you saying?’ Her mouth purses and she chews the inside of her cheek again, then presses her lips together, inflates them to stop herself. Ah. The cheek chewing is a nervous habit; she’s trying to quit.
‘I suppose I’m saying that I was noticing other people more than I had before. Or that I was noticing how much I noticed them, if you know what I mean. And I was starting to wonder if noticing people was connected to being invisible in some way.’
How it all connects to the bleeding bodies left for dead, I don’t know. But she’s told me to take my time, and time is what I’ll take and maybe we’ll find out together. For the moment, her guess is as good as mine, but it does feel good to lay it all down in this silent room in front of the woman with the neutral smile and the crystal-blue eyes that seem to see me in a way I can’t remember being seen for a long, long while.
I admit that my imagination took over as I made my way through the bus station onto Church Street. I had this GP chap’s marriage failing because his wife had left him for another man; now he was involved in a new relationship with a woman he really liked but who he worried would cheat on him in the end. His kids were both at university, and he feared he would lose