Except that everything seems to be collapsing around and within me. Apart from what I feel for Imogen, which is growing. It’s colossal and beautiful.
Where is she?
I see her talking to a policewoman who leans in toward my daughter, intent on her every word. I’m so proud of Imogen. She gesticulates as she speaks and at one point, they turn to look at me. I don’t know what she’s saying but the expression on their faces indicates grave concern. Is she worried for me?
I must go over there and introduce myself as her father, let them know that they don’t have to look after her because I’m here.
I make my way toward them, strobed and disoriented by the blue lights.
Police Constable Rosie Jones puts her arm around Imogen. The girl is distraught, she thinks. She’s been telling quite a story about the gentleman who we found with her at the scene. He looks as if he’s coming over here now.
“Billy,” she calls. Her colleague’s talking on the radio. He’s sitting in their patrol car, which is parked behind the vehicle that’s blocking the driveway of the house where the girl lives. The scene is chaos, but the paramedics and fire crew have just extracted the female driver from her car and are loading her into the second ambulance. She looks unconscious.
“Billy!” Rosie wants him to take Imogen into her house and look after her. The girl’s in shock. They need to get her out of here to a place of safety.
Billy jogs toward them.
“Listen to this,” he says. “The numberplate of the car blocking the driveway has a marker on it. It’s just pinged on the ANPR in our car.”
“What kind of marker?”
He pulls her aside and talks to her urgently, out of Imogen’s earshot.
They’ve left Imogen on her own, standing amid the carnage and in the middle of all this terrible ugliness she’s a beacon, a beautiful, angelic girl.
“Sweetheart,” I say, as I approach. “I love you so much.” I smile. She doesn’t hear me. She’s staring at the cars. She looks distraught.
My legs feel like jelly, but I pick up my pace.
Imogen notices me and turns her back, edging closer to the two officers who are huddled by their car.
But I’m nearly beside her now, and I extend my arms because I need to hug her again, so she knows that she’s safe, so that I know I am.
And I’m going to take her away from here and it’ll be okay because she and I don’t need Ruth or Toby or anyone else to be happy. We’re going to start out all on our own, and in a way, this makes it a bit easier. It helps me erase my past.
I’m almost with her, and although she’s backing away, faster now, I find a surge of strength as I cover the last few yards between us and I’m so close that I can almost smell her when a young policeman cuts in.
“Mark Pavey?” he asks. He has a brightness in his eyes, like a magpie, eyeing a jewel.
“Yes?” I try not to snap because I have respect for authority, generally, but he’s being quite rude.
“You’re Mark Pavey?”
“I just said so, didn’t I?” I try to see past him, to where Imogen is.
“Mark Pavey, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder of Edie Porter and Paul Ramsay.”
Before I have a chance to respond, he seizes my arm and pulls it right up my back and his body pushes against mine as he tries to cuff me, but he fumbles, and fails to get the cuffs on, and I try to get out of his grip, but he yanks my arm harder and I cry out because I feel like it’s going to break and I know from my training that if I move, it will.
“Edie’s my mum!” Imogen screams. “That’s my mum! What did you do?”
She flies at me like a banshee, and it takes one of the policewomen all her strength to hold Imogen back and I’m incapacitated and speechless and I never wanted this to happen; it’s breaking my heart. I struggle to free myself again and Imogen almost breaks out of the grip that the policewoman has her in.
“Get him in the car!” she shouts at her colleague.
“He’s not cuffed.”
“I don’t care.”
