Hard (6 page)

‘So, tell me why you went into the courthouse,’ he said. ‘What
made you go in there that day?’

I sighed, hating this part of our sessions where I had to go back,
to remember, and face up to what had happened. I was glad I only had to be here
for an hour — any longer and it would be too much.

‘I’d had one of those light-bulb moments,
d’you
know the kind I mean? That my life wasn’t going anywhere and that if I stayed
where I was I’d end up a mother of three, trapped in a marriage with a man who
didn’t really care about me, and what I’d wanted to do had passed me by. So I
sat there one night in the pub with my friends and
didn’t
join in much. I watched them, laughing and joking, talking about the same
things we talked about every night after work, and I
realised
…’

‘
Realised
what, Lisa?’

‘That I wanted more.
That I ought to be
doing
something.’

‘What did you want to do?’

I blushed, feeling silly at the career choice
I’d
wanted to make.
I’d
had the ambition as a kid, but
those days were well and truly gone too.
I’d
been
stupid to think I had it in me to do it. I sighed again. ‘I wanted to go to
uni
, study journalism. Get a job where something new
happened every day. And that’s why I went into that courtroom.’

‘What did the courtroom have to do with journalism?’ Stephan
asked, poking his pen into the salt-and-pepper hair at his temple,
surreptitiously scratching his head.

The rasping sound grated.

‘I’d thought… Silly as it sounds, I’d thought that if I went and
watched a trial, something I’d maybe have to do as a reporter, I’d know then
whether it was the career for me.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, you have to write about all sorts, don’t you? I wanted to
see if I could handle things like that and remain impartial. I know we all have
opinions, and mine would certainly cloud whatever I wrote to some extent, but
if I could just see how a court session went… I was going to go home and write
about it after, see how it turned out but…’

‘But what?’
He took the
pen from his hair and ran it under his nose.

‘But I didn’t get the chance.’ I shuddered, thinking of that day,
wishing
I’d
been happy with my life, wishing I hadn’t
wanted a change, but no amount of wishing could make the past go away.
I’d
tried and it hadn’t worked.

‘No, you didn’t,’ he said, giving me a sad smile. ‘Still, you’re
going to be able to get through this, you know. It may seem an impossible task
now — after all,
we’ve got
so much to get through, and
we’ve already done a lot — but it can and will be done. You just need to have
faith in yourself.’

I’d
heard all this
before, from several people, and I repeated it to myself often enough. Maybe
one day
I’d
believe it was true.

‘What do you want me to do this week?’ I asked, changing the
subject so I
didn’t
have to think of back then, referring
instead to the tasks he set me, clever little things that would seem pointless
to someone else but had proved invaluable to me. I’d
practised
breathing exercises, going out alone after dark — and that wasn’t hard, being
alone, because I had no friends, no one to walk with anyway — and generally
trying to change my ways and habits. Those habits were a result of the past —
the gnawing of the skin beside my thumbnails, the obsessive cleaning, the need
to cover the windows as soon as night began falling. I
couldn’t
let go of any of them yet, but hoped that one day soon I’d be able to sit in
front of a window, the curtains open, and stare out into the darkness without
wanting to throw up.

I’ll
only be able to do that when they’re caught.
When
they’re
in prison.

A shiver went through me, and I held myself rigid so Stephan
wouldn’t
see it.

‘What did you just think about then?’ he asked.

‘Him.
Them.
Watching.
Being
outside my place in the dark.’

Stephan nodded. ‘This is your biggest problem, and it’s one we’ll
tackle shortly. If you think about how far
you’ve
come
in such a small space of time, Lisa, you really ought to be proud of yourself.
You go to work, you use public transport,
you
live
alone. These are all things another person might not be able to handle after
going through such an awful ordeal.’ He nodded again. ‘Yes, you should be very
proud.’

I supposed he was right, I
had
come far, but I hoped he
didn’t
leave the nighttime
issue for too long. The seasons were changing, the days getting shorter, and
soon
I’d
be going to and from work in the dark.

Where they could be waiting.

* * * *

I left Stephan’s practice, glancing left then right, making sure
it was safe to go down his path and onto the pavement. No one was around, so I
walked on, getting to the street and checking once again. Cars were parked the
length of the rise, jammed so tight it was a wonder any of them could be driven
away. Steady traffic hummed along, the road almost reduced to a single lane in
places where it narrowed and residents’ cars hogged the edges.

I went a little way down the hill to the bus stop and waited,
hands in coat pockets, a habit of mine as I was conscious of the fingers of one
of my hands being wonky since
they’d
been broken. A
bus appeared at the top of the road, a double
decker
,
Stagecoach written on the front above the radiator. It pulled to the
kerb
in front of me, slotting into the white
dash-space-dash rectangle painted on the road specifically for it. The doors
wheezed open and I got on, paid the driver then went up the aisle, looking at
everyone else on the bus to check if any of them were
people
I knew.
If any were
them.
They’re weren’t
, and I wasn’t sure what I’d do if they
were. Run? Scream? I shook my head and took a seat on the bottom deck right at
the back. I could see everyone from here,
who
got on,
who got off, and with my hand curled around my mobile in my pocket I felt okay.

The journey into the city
didn’t
take
long. I hated this part, where I changed buses, as I avoided the city proper as
much as I could. I got off and scurried past MacDonald’s, shot around the
corner, ignoring a little church wedged there, then headed along the street.
The Clarendon Centre’s many doors all opened at once as a stream of shoppers
came out, surrounding me, jostling me along. I panicked, shoving through the
throng, seeing space ahead but unable to reach it fast enough. I shoved harder,
my breaths coming short and sharp, and emerged on the other side of the crowd
shaken and annoyed with myself that I
hadn’t
checked
the faces of everyone back there.
I’d
been so intent
on getting away that my usual pattern had been disturbed.

A bus to Blackbird Leys idled at the
kerb
,
and I got on, paid, and scanned the other
travellers
.
Recognised
no one.
Walked to the back of the lower deck and sat. This was my life
now, checking, checking, checking, and I was sick of it and of myself.

Things needed to change before I
became crippled
by my fear.

* * * *

Once outside the tower block where I lived, I did the usual and looked
in all directions. A row of shops stood opposite, and a gang of youths hung
around, hoods covering their heads, pulled low over their brows so I
couldn’t
see their faces. At one time they would have made
me uneasy, even though I’d been brought up with tougher kids, but after what
I’d been through they didn’t faze me much. I’d smiled at them once, thinking if
they thought I didn’t mind them being there they’d be all right with me, but
they’d scowled, sucked their teeth, and left me under no illusion they thought
I didn’t belong. And they were right.

I entered the flats, assaulted, as usual, by the stench of urine
where kids
couldn’t
be bothered to climb the stairs to
home where they could relieve themselves, and held my breath. I
didn’t
bother trying the lift to see if it worked — it
rarely did — and took the stairs, climbing the levels until I reached my floor.
Mine was the middle flat of three, and I slid my key in the lock, sighing at
the latest rainbow-
coloured
scrawl of graffiti on the
walls between my home and that of the old man next door. I hurried inside,
slammed the door, locked it, and pressed my back against it. Let out a long
breath, fortifying myself for more checking.

I went through the rooms, ticking off the things on my mental
list. Yes, everything was as
I’d
left it. Yes, I could
relax now. I went to the windows and resisted closing the curtains, deciding to
try what Stephan had suggested earlier and close them an hour after it had got
dark. That hour would be a long one, with me sitting on the floor in the corner
of my bedroom, no doubt, curled up, head down, waiting for the alarm on my
mobile to bleep, telling me I could get up and close myself in.

But it had to
be done
, didn’t it? I had
no choice.

If I wanted to get better, I had no bloody choice.

Chapter
Two

Then

The man standing next to me in the courtroom smelt of musty old
books with a hint of days’-old aftershave. He could be anyone’s father, a man I
wouldn’t
normally look twice at if I passed him on the
street. Short brown hair brushed back from his pasty face to reveal a high
forehead.
Hazel eyes and deep pink lips that appeared on the
thin side owing to the grimace that contorted his face.
Average chap, average height.
Average everything. Yet there
was something about him that intrigued me, had me staring at him a little
harder than I usually would. Perhaps the air of danger coming off him was what
had snagged my initial attention, made me take notice of his appearance.

He stared ahead at the proceedings, and I wondered if he was the
same as me, someone who had strolled in off the street, hoping he’d get lucky
and be admitted to a courtroom so he could take in the details of other
people’s lives to save him having to inspect his own. That was something
I’d
only acknowledged about myself recently, that I was in
need of a distraction, anything to shift my inability to stop thinking about
how boring my life had become. I used to party. I used to be fun. Since
breaking up with a guy named John two years ago,
I’d
changed, was this woman I no longer knew, who had no spark or even the merest
hint that anyone would be interested in me. Relationships seemed so futile, and
given the pick of men in my circles, I
wouldn’t
have
been happy with any of them anyway.

I’d
walked past
the courthouse on numerous occasions, staring at the grey-bricked façade,
letting my mind wander to what happened inside the large building, who had committed
crimes and why. Law
wasn’t
my thing, but crime
interested me, and the pull to just walk in and join the public gallery had
been squashed too many times to count.

Today, though, had been different.
I’d
walked in around ten minutes ago, head held high as if I did this kind of thing
every day, and chose a random courtroom doorway to breeze through. There was no
guard outside, and I knew I
shouldn’t
just walk in,
but I did. I hadn’t expected it to be so full — standing room only was all that
had been available — nor had I expected to be beside this man who oozed menace that
transferred to me and left me antsy. I should leave, leave and go home where I
knew what would happen next and how my day would end. But being here held a
certain charm, an excitement, and it was also a lure, daring me to stay, to do
something different,
get a new career
going. Here
wasn’t
me — and being me was something I wanted to get far
away from, if only for an hour or two.

The man shuffled, nudging me with his elbow, the movement a
painful jab to my ribs. I wanted to say something to him, something witty yet
at the same time a reprimand that would ensure he didn’t touch me again, but
the court was quiet except for one of the solicitors asking questions and a
frail-looking, middle-aged woman on the stand giving one-word answers. My sharp
response
would be heard
, and I might be asked to
leave. I nudged him back, and he looked at me with narrowed eyes and a harsher
grimace than the one
he’d
displayed before. He
appeared threatening then, not your average man at all, and my stomach muscles clenched.