I Know Who You Are. Alice Feeney

if the us I thought we were is being demolished, lie by lie, leaving little more than the rubble of a marriage behind.

      I’m starting to think I didn’t know my husband at all.

Twelve

       Essex, 1987

      ‘Time to wake up now,’ says Maggie.

      I wasn’t sleeping.

      The sky outside the car window has turned from blue to black.

      ‘Come on, don’t dawdle, out you get.’ She folds down the front seat so that I can climb out. Her hand scrunches itself into a cross shape, just like my daddy’s hands do.

      I stand on the side of the street, blinking into the darkness, looking up at the strange-looking line of shops I’ve never seen before. Then Maggie takes my hand and pulls me towards a large black door. I have to run to keep up. She walks just as fast at night as she did during the day.

      ‘Where are—’

      ‘Shh!’ She flattens out the hand that was scrunched up and covers my mouth with it. Her fingers smell of bubble bath. ‘It’s late and we don’t want to be waking the neighbours. No more talking until we’re inside.’ Her hand is covering my nose as well as my mouth and it is hard to breathe, but she doesn’t take it away until I nod to show that I understand. ‘Fingers on lips,’ she whispers, and so I do what she says, copying the way she holds her finger to her own lips, doing my best to look just like her.

      She takes a giant set of keys out of her bag – there must be at least a hundred of them, or maybe just ten. They are all different shapes and sizes, jingling and jangling and making far more noise than I did when I opened my mouth just now. She slots a key into the lock and opens the door.

      I’m not sure what I was expecting to see, but it wasn’t this.

      It’s just a staircase. A really long one. It goes so high that I can’t even see what is at the top, as though the stairs might lead right up to the moon and the stars in the sky. I want to ask Maggie whether I could catch a star if I climb all the steps, but my finger is still on my lips, so I can’t. The stairs are made of wood, which has been painted white along the side bits, but left bare in the middle. Just inside the door we’ve walked through, is another door on the left. It’s made of metal and Maggie sees me looking at it.

      ‘You don’t ever go through this door unless I say it is okay. Do you understand?’ I nod, suddenly desperate to see what is on the other side. ‘Go on then, up you go.’ She pushes me in front of her and closes the outside door behind us.

      I start to climb. The steps are quite big for my little legs so it takes me a while, but when I slow down she pokes her fingers in my back to tell me to hurry up. Adults are always doing that – saying things with their hands or eyes instead of their mouths. There is no rail, so I put my hand on the wall. It’s covered in tiles that look and feel the same as the corks that come out of my daddy’s wine. My brother used to thread them with cotton to make me cork crowns and necklaces, and I would pretend to be a princess.

      I’m busy looking down at my feet to make sure I don’t fall, but something like a shadow high above makes me look up. It isn’t a cloud or the moon or the stars, though. Instead, a tall, skinny man at the top of the stairs is smiling down at me. He’s funny looking. He has three bushy black eyebrows, the third resting on top of his lip, his skin is white like a ghost, and when he smiles I can see that one of his crooked front teeth is made of gold. I scream. I didn’t mean to. I remember that I was supposed to be quiet, but I’m so scared the scream comes out all by itself. I try to turn back down the stairs, but Maggie is in the way and won’t let me pass.

      ‘Stop that noise at once,’ she says, twisting her hand around my arm so tight it feels like a burn. I don’t want to go any farther up, but she won’t let me go back down, so I’m left feeling a little bit stuck. I don’t want to be here, wherever this is. I’m tired and I want to go home.

      I look back at the man standing at the top of the stairs. He’s still smiling, that gold tooth of his twinkling in the darkness like a rotten star.

      ‘Well hello there, little lady. I’m your new dad, but for now, you can just call me John.’

Thirteen

       London, 2017

      ‘You can just call me Alex,’ she says with a childish grin.

      ‘Thanks, but I’d rather stick with Detective Inspector Croft, if that’s okay,’ I reply.

      She’s waiting for me outside my front door when I get back from my morning run. They both are. Her middle-aged sidekick says very little as usual, making the kind of mental notes that are so loud they can almost be heard. It isn’t even seven o’clock.

      ‘I have a lot to do today,’ I say, fumbling for my keys and opening the front door, trying to hide us all inside as soon as possible. I don’t know my neighbours, I couldn’t tell you any of their names, but I’m of the belief that while the opinions of strangers shouldn’t matter, they often do.

      ‘We just wanted to update you, but we can come back another time—’

      ‘No, sorry, now is fine. I have to be at Pinewood in an hour, that’s all. It’s the last day of filming, I can’t let them down.’

      ‘I understand.’ Her tone makes it clear that she doesn’t. ‘Did you run far this morning?’

      ‘Not really, 5k.’

      ‘Impressive.’

      ‘It’s not very far.’

      ‘No, I meant it’s impressive the way you’re just carrying on like normal: running, working, acting.’ She smiles.

       What the fuck does that mean?

      I hold her stare for as long as I’m able, then my eyes retreat to the face of her silent partner. He towers over her, must be twice her age if not more, but never says a damn thing. I wonder if all her bravado is just her way of trying to impress this man, her superior.

      ‘Are you just going to stand there and let her speak to me like this?’ I ask him.

      ‘Afraid so, she’s my boss,’ he replies with an apologetic shrug. I look back at the young detective in disbelief, and notice that her smile has disappeared.

      ‘Have you ever hit your husband, Mrs Sinclair?’ she asks.

      The hallway feels smaller, seems to turn a little, catches me off balance.

      ‘Of course not! I’ve never hit anyone. I’m very close to making a formal complaint—’

      ‘I’ll get you a form from the car before I go. We went to the Indian restaurant you said you visited with your husband the last time you saw him … ’ She reaches inside her bag and takes out what looks like an iPad. ‘The place has security cameras.’ She taps on the screen a couple of times, before holding it up. ‘Is this you?’

      I look at the frozen black-and-white image of us, surprisingly clear and crisp. ‘Yes.’

      ‘Thought so. Did you have a nice time?’ She taps the screen again.

      ‘How is this relevant?’

      ‘I was just wondering why you hit him?’ She turns the iPad around again, her childlike finger swiping and scrolling through a series of images. They show me slapping Ben across the face before leaving the restaurant.

       Because he accused me of something I didn’t do and I was drunk.

      I feel my cheeks burn. ‘We had a silly row, we’d been drinking. It was just a slap.’