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Monday 30 October 2023, 5.15 p.m.
JEMMA
This is my story and no one else’s.
In it, I am a killer.
That has nothing to do with what I did or didn’t do. I’m talking about who I am, not who I want to be or have the potential to become.
I felt myself switch over in an instant; something broke inside me and something new and powerful sprouted up in its place. If I didn’t know better, I could almost believe that a button had been pressed, so startling and sudden was the change. And it wasn’t brought about by me murdering anyone. That’s something I’ve never done, and hopefully never will. It’s the other way round: because I now know myself to be a killer on the inside, I have to stop myself from killing. You don’t need to strangle someone with your bare hands, poison them, stab them or shoot them in order to be a murderer.
The being is the chicken and the doing is the egg.
Marianne would say, ‘Ah, but which comes first, the chicken or the egg? If it’s the egg – and it might be, or else that question wouldn’t be asked as often as it is – then you’ve got it the wrong way round.’
She is never not speaking in my head.
When I tell it in my favourite way, what I’m about to tell the police, that’s how it always starts:This is my story and no one else’s. In it, I am a killer. And I might never have become one if someone else hadn’t given me the idea – someone who was a killer before me, who tried but didn’t succeed.That’s neither an excuse nor a distraction.
If stories were buildings, that detail would be a load-bearing wall. It’s funny the way just hearing about someone who tried to do something, even if they failed, plants it in your mind as a possibility.
My favourite way to tell the story is silently, only to myself and far from this cold, humming, brightly lit building, so that no one can sully or distort what I know to be true. But somebody has to be the first to risk the huge leap from concealment to honesty, and I don’t think anyone ever will apart from me. And I crave clarity, more than happiness or freedom or safety. Sometimes I think it’s all I need and want: all of the truth, plainly laid out. Nothing else matters.
I’m here to tell my part of it. To give a statement, and I’m pretty sure those are always the unaltered words of the statement-giver, even if it’s a police officer who notes it down or types it up. It’s a comforting idea: my statement. My words, which no one will subsequently be allowed to change.
Meanwhile, the sergeant on the desk with the bleached blonde hair and red lipstick has already misunderstood me, so the distortion of my story has started. She’s apologised three times for how long it’s taking the promised detective to come and deal with me, convinced I must be finding the delay distressing.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m making the most of this waiting time. I feel calmer than I have in weeks. The ordeal of deciding is over –Was I really going to do it?Yes, I was– and the next ordeal, the telling part, hasn’t started yet.
The sergeant has no idea that I want this small pocket of waiting time to stretch as far as it can. She assumes that, since I’ve said I’m here to confess to a murder, I must want to rush into the confession room and get it over with.
Interview room, I correct myself.This is a police station, not a church: the perfect secular space for giving up your secrets.
Ollie thinks most people don’t understand what’s behind the need for secrecy, and he’s right. It’s one of the things he said when I saw him in July, and I knew immediately, as soon as I heard it, that it was a truth I wanted to memorise and think about later. ‘Our secrets are our property – no one else’s,’ he said. ‘So is what we’ve made them mean. Once other people get their hands on them, the meaning’s up for grabs. Then it feels as if our property is being stolen, and then those others tell more people still, and soon our version’s in danger of becoming the minority report. Like in …Minority Report.’He grinned. I nearly smiled back but stopped myself. We’d loved that movie and watched it together more than once. Ollie was trying to leverage my emotional attachment to the memory, hoping I’d stop demanding that he tell me the truth.
He miscalculated. Our happy memories have lost their power to make me happy, and I knew he’d only said it to distract me from the answers he knew I wanted.
Why wouldn’t you tell me, Ollie? I might not be here now – in danger, being a living, breathing danger to others – if you had. Don’t you realise? Don’t you care?
I wipe my eyes. A new person, a man, has taken over behind the reception desk, and the bleached-blonde sergeant is heading towards me, probably thinking I’m crying about being kept waiting. This reception area is strange. The deep windowsillsare all wood that’s been stained almost orange and, behind its protective wall of glass, the reception desk is the same. I can’t tell if it’s fake wood or just badly and excessively varnished. The floor is yellow square tiles that I’d expect to find in a conservatory, not a workplace. They look too domestic, somehow. So does the desk, which has a curved end that makes me think of a kitchen island.
The blonde sergeant sits down next to me. ‘I’m really sorry about this. I’ve no idea where DC Waterhouse has got to, but it’s getting ridiculous. Let’s find a free room and you can talk to me instead.’
‘I don’t mind waiting,’ I say. ‘I need to talk to a detective.’
‘I used to be a detective, if that makes you feel any better. Might be one again soon too, if I’m crazy enough to agree.’ She raises her eyebrows slightly. ‘Long story.’ She’s twitchy. Can’t sit still in her chair.
‘I don’t mind waiting for DC Waterhouse.’
‘Well, I do,’ she says. ‘I think we’re done waiting. Come on. Follow me.’
I don’t want to move. What if DC Waterhouse appears as soon as we’ve gone?
‘Look, I’m not convinced Simon’s on his way,’ she says. ‘DC Waterhouse, sorry. I think he might have fibbed and said he was, while actually intending to disappear and let everyone down. Because he’s adick.’ She sighs, pushing her hair back from her forehead with one hand. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that, but on the other hand, I’m his wife, so maybe it’s fine.’
‘You’re his wife?’
