Safe and sound, p.27
Safe and Sound, page 27
I close my eyes, and open them again.
After eating something, I feel stronger. I think maybe I feel strong enough.
I roll over and lift my phone from where someone has set it down on the bedside table. The screen is tiny, not like on my laptop, but it will have to do. I want to do this now, before I leave here, while I’m in this safe, clear space. I open up the Notes application, a fresh blank screen.
I think about my previous effort at a narrative for the inquest: that empty page, my thoughts a total blank. This time, I pour out everything. I don’t care that it is emotion-filled and unprofessional, or that it feels like trying to describe a dream. It was a dream life that Sarah Jones was living. I conjure up the composite Sarah I have pieced together, and I try to tell the story of her life. The best way I know to explain the circumstances of her death.
It isn’t professional, but it’s what I need to write down. It is what I want people to know. I want to set the panels of her life out clearly, and tell a story people can try to understand.
Share a lesson perhaps for all of us to learn.
It’s just after 6 p.m. when I send the document off. I email it to the address the coroner’s officer gave me.
In there are all the answers I can give. I know these answers apply to me too.
I know some day soon, I will have to set my own record straight.
Chapter 37
3 weeks later
What do you wear to an inquest? I stand in front of the mirror in my small bedroom, holding items of clothing up against me. At least I have regained most of the weight I lost. My clothes fit me again. Just about.
I settle on a pale cream blouse and a pair of dark grey trousers. Some smart shoes, a smart jacket. When I look at my reflection in the mirror, I’d like to say I look like my old self. The outfit is one I could easily have worn to work, and my hairstyle and make-up haven’t changed. But I am different. I am changed. I can see it, clearly. I feel it in the way that, these days, I’m always trying to look myself right in the eye.
I have gained back the weight, but I am still weaker than I should be. I am aware that I tend to move more slowly. I still have some recovering to do. Part of me wonders whether I should even attend this inquest. But most of me knows that I have to see this through to the end.
When I saw my GP after discharge from the hospital, she wanted to refer me back to the mental health team. Small wonder, knowing my history, seeing the state I had got myself in. But I felt something shift in me after that night with Freya. Something that has never shifted before. So maybe I will need the mental health input again but, for now, I’ve managed to arrange a compromise: I’ve agreed to keep seeing my GP every week. And if she still wants to refer me after a month, I won’t say no.
I took Charlie to see the GP too, and all the tests she did say that he’s just fine.
The inquest is being held at Southwark Coroner’s Court. Abayomi has allowed me time off to go. He thought, in fact, that it would be good to have a representative of our Housing Association there, so I can go while Charlie is at school. He’s doing better in class now than ever. His normal teacher is back, recovered from her surgery. She tells me Charlie seems happier and brighter than ever. And I don’t tell her how things went while she was gone.
I’m going to the inquest, but I won’t have to speak. Mike Bernard, the coroner’s officer, has said there is no need for that. I can go there and just listen to what others have to say. To see what sense they have made of this for themselves.
Mike Bernard has drawn my notes up into a statement, a neat-looking document that he posted to me to sign. He had taken out a lot of my scribblings. Just stuck to the pertinent facts, just the part I contributed to Sarah’s sad fate.
Alastair has told me that he will be there. When I rang her, Marianne too said she will come. Chloe is on the other side of the world still, but she sent me a message this morning. She is thinking of Sarah. She will be there through her thoughts.
And Freya.
I can’t stop wondering whether Freya will be there too.
I stand for a last look at myself in front of the mirror. I look at myself square-on. I’m ready. As ready as I can ever be.
I take the bus towards the centre of town. April sunshine beams in through the scratched windows of the upper deck where I sit. It warms the interior so much that I have to take off my coat. I get off at the stop that TfL tells me is the right one and I pull up the address again to check the directions from here. There is a text message on my phone from Alastair: I’ve just arrived. See you soon. I read it through twice, three times, before pushing the phone back into my pocket.
The coroner’s court is on Tennis Street, only a couple of minutes’ walk from the bus stop. I at once see the figure of Alastair, standing outside. He touches me, gently, on the arm when I join him, and tells me that I really am looking better. I tuck my loose hair behind my ears and my chin into the collar of my coat.
From the pavement, I look up at the building that looks so ordinary, like a dozen other council buildings. I can’t help wondering how many stories have been told here. How many truths have been dragged into the light.
Alastair checks his watch then turns his wrist to show me. ‘Shall we go in?’ he says. It is ten to the hour. I nod.
Inside, there’s a little desk, a sort of reception, and I explain that we’ve come for the inquest into the death of Sarah Jane Jones. The man on the desk has grey hair clipped short and skin lined with thick wrinkles. He gives us a book with a sheet to sign and we put our names down, one above the other. I can see from the page that Marianne is already here. She has come, just like she said she would. I spot PC Delliers’ name in there too.
Alastair and I go in.
Inside, the court is small and hushed. The walls are plain beige, and the furnishings kitted out in smooth, pale wood. There is no sense of grandeur, just efficiency. Well-meaning people doing their jobs. There is no judge or jury but I make out the coroner right away. She looks wise, kindly. I wonder what she makes of my statement and whether it has been of any help to her at all.
PC Delliers sits in the very back row. She gives me a smile and a nod as I pass. Then I spot Marianne, sitting near the front. When she sees us, glancing over her shoulder, she stands up and comes over, leaning heavily on her crutch. She leans in to hug me, just like old friends. I wonder how much this day will cost her, how hard it will be for her to learn Sarah’s reality, unpick the gold-edged image she’s held and let it go.
‘This is Alastair,’ I tell her. ‘The man you told me about, Sarah’s ex-boyfriend.’
I’ve set Marianne straight about Alastair; she was suspicious of him, though only looking out for me, but now I know that Marianne and Alastair are both people I can trust. Now when I introduce them, she hugs Alastair too. I think of the funeral that no one came to. The difference this time. Friends of Sarah’s are here. Maybe even family too.
I look around the room again, but I still don’t see Freya. Instead, there is a scattering of people I take to be journalists. Maybe now there will be full articles about Sarah. I imagine now they will release her name. I try to imagine what kind of stories they will print. Macabre stories, or compassionate ones. I think again about the statement I wrote. Whether any of that will form part of their truth.
Freya isn’t here and I’m taken aback by the weight of disappointment in my chest. Usually, in inquest cases, I’ve learned, it is the family who are so desperate for clarity. So much of an inquest is for them. They are the ones, normally, who so need answers. Instead, this time, it was Sarah’s only family fighting tooth and nail to keep things hidden.
And then I see her, slipping in at the back. When she sees me, she smiles, her eyes meeting mine, but I find myself unable to smile back. Instead I turn away. I wonder what I can possibly say to her. I feel as though I have so much, and so little.
But before I can wonder any further, we begin.
The first witness is the pathologist who carried out the post mortem. He describes how the body – Sarah’s body – was identified from her dental records. The coroner’s officer reads from Sarah’s medical records. Her history of allergies to wasp stings; tallying the dates of when she last renewed her Epi-pen. Not recently enough.
A police officer who attended the scene of the flat attests to the set-up in that tiny space. I recognize him, vaguely, as one of the first officers who arrived on the scene. It brings those moments back to me. The cold wall against my shoulder as I leaned in the hallway outside the bedsit; that thick, sandy smell in my nostrils; the thin file of papers clutched to my chest. It all began from there, the shock, the trauma of it. The not-sleeping, not-eating. And the more I searched and searched for answers, the worse it became. A downwards spiral, all those layers of fantasy and falsehood. All my threads of reality breaking down.
They show a picture of the bedsit as we found it. The stark reality of how it was. So different from the fantasy Sarah created for herself. Like the zoetrope rising up to speed, I see it suddenly all coming together.
Chapter 38
BACK THEN
Sarah Jane Jones
After the accident, falling from the roof, Jane was in hospital a very long time. Weeks and weeks went by while they fixed her leg. It hurt a lot, but she tried not to cry.
She was never supposed to cry, she knew now.
A few times, Uncle Brian and Aunt Susan came to visit. When they did, they didn’t bring Prin. For some reason Jane’s cousin wasn’t allowed to see her. And Uncle Brian and Aunt Susan never stayed very long.
There were other people who came to see her too. Fiona, the social worker she remembers from before; once, a policeman. When they talked to her, they used her proper name. She ended up being Sarah all over again. The grown-ups had lots of discussions. She could sense them making important plans.
When Jane tried to think about what happened on the roof, the pictures were all fuzzy in her head. She remembered stars and Prin and flying. She didn’t remember what came after that. And if she thought too much, other pictures came up. Ones she couldn’t stand, and couldn’t get away from.
Not when she was lying in a hospital bed.
In the hospital bed, she could hardly move. She could only lie there and think her thoughts. Terrible memories going round in her head.
She had to find a way to stop them. That’s when she remembered what Prin had taught her. You only have to believe it and it’s real.
That was where the real game began.
Lying in that hospital bed for weeks by herself, Jane had a lot of time to practise. There were a thousand details she could create.
The more she practised, the more real it became, and by the time she was well enough to leave and go home – to a brand-new home all over again – what happened really seemed like nothing but a dream.
And her Make-Believe life felt completely real.
Almost twenty years later, Sarah unfolds the little table in her bedsit flat. The flat isn’t big enough for a proper table, one that would be out all the time. She has to make use of the space as best she can.
She’s bought flowers from Tesco, garishly bright. She unwraps them and arranges them in a vase. In the kitchen is the on-offer bottle of wine she bought from the Sainsbury’s Local near the station, plus all the ingredients for a recipe she will follow.
It is late April and there’s a mini-heatwave in London. Sarah clambers up on the draining board to open the little flap window in the kitchen, to get some air in. The kitchen is dirty; she hasn’t cleaned for quite a while, but Sarah simply ignores the dirt. This window opens out to a scrubby patch of grass at the back, away from the noisiness of Brixton Hill and the main road. The air that comes in creates a breeze, and on the current of air a clumsy wasp slips in too, confused by the unseasonable heat. It lands on the table, its wings iridescent in the afternoon light.
Sarah puts the radio on, the same station she has listened to for years. Capital FM. It’s old-fashioned to have a radio, but she uses her phone so little really. It’s easier without it. That way there’s nothing to disturb her scene. Life has been so tiring for her lately: all those friends she’s made at the office where she temps. Sometimes she loses track of what she’s told them. So often, she can’t remember who knows what. She likes them all, is glad for the company, but other people always, always make it less real. Sometimes, she just gets exhausted. Needs a little time for herself. This time, she feels it more than ever. So much so that she’s ended up deleting all the numbers from her phone and all the contacts from her email account.
She just isn’t sure, this time, that she’ll have the energy to go back.
Up until now, she’s had a little money to see her through: the inheritance from her aunt and uncle. It’s been enough over the years that she doesn’t have to work all the time, so long as she’s careful and lives as cheaply as she can. It’s allowed her to take time out, now and then. But now that money isn’t far off running out.
Not long now until her guests arrive. It’s going to be so wonderful to see them. They’ve been with her for such a long time. But she doesn’t always get to spend time with them like this.
Just for a moment, she feels something tugging at her, like a whisper, as though she is dreaming and – far away – someone is trying to wake her up. A flicker of screaming, blood.
But Sarah ignores it. Nothing matters except for right now. She sets the fold-out table with plates and cutlery. The glasses she puts out are smudged with fingerprints, but the sun makes them sparkle; from a distance they look fine. She removes the sauce from the heat, switches off the cooker for now and sits on the little sofa in the living room, sliding down so that her head rests against the arm.
The radio plays, the sun dazzles in through the tiny window. It’s hard to see clearly against the glare. It’s easier if she simply closes her eyes. She thinks of that summer as a kid, with her cousin. Spinning the zoetrope, turning cartwheels on the lawn. Above her, the wasp traces lazy lines through the hot air of the flat. Sarah can hear it buzzing over the sound of the radio. She should probably be scared, but she isn’t really. To be honest, she isn’t scared of much any more. Maybe in some ways, it would be a relief. The wasp lands gently on the arm of the sofa. Sarah feels its tiny legs tangle in her hair.
It is so peaceful, lying here in the April warmth. When she feels something brush at her neck, she doesn’t mind. She pictures her guests arriving any minute: her parents, the ones she made from the stars. She focuses on how much she loves them, how much they love her. Nothing between them has ever been wrong. The world out there … but she lets the thought extinguish. She refuses to be anywhere else but here.
She can feel the wasp, softly tickling, on her neck. She reaches up a hand – but not to brush it away. With her palm, she makes a little cup over the creature. She feels it vibrate against her skin. It wants out, and she should let it go, but what if …?
What if?
She tightens her hand a little, trapping it. Hugging it close to her neck.
She just wants to sleep, honestly. Sink into a dream. That’s all she’s ever really wanted from this life. She knows the truth is that she never faced what happened. Never came to terms with it, never had the chance to try. She had to just cover the whole thing over, weave a dream life in which she could live. But it’s so tiring to keep all the pieces stitched together; she’s always, always at risk of falling through.
But if she could sleep – if she could sleep for ever … How glorious it would be to never have to wake up.
The sting, when it comes, feels far away and faint. Moments later a mugginess sweeps over her, thickening her tongue, her throat. Distantly – so distantly – Sarah knows what is happening. She knows how dangerous this is. But here and now, all she knows is that the door of her flat is opening and a man and woman are stepping inside. They have come. They’re here. She is drifting, everything around her is fading, but here and now there’s a lovely mother and father with her, just the way she’s always wanted.
A perfect moment she has created. A perfect Make-Believe of a life.
And nothing to wake her up from the dream.
Chapter 39
After just two hours, the coroner reaches her conclusion. An open verdict. She is satisfied, she tells us, that there was no foul play: so much of the evidence points towards natural causes. Only there is not quite enough evidence to rule more conclusively. And so, that is her finding on the cause of death: an open verdict. And it is not her job to go much further than that.
Around me, I’m aware of people getting up and leaving the courtroom. And yet I find myself unable to move.
‘I just need a minute,’ I tell Alastair, and quietly he slips away. I will get up in just one second – it’s not long until I have to collect Charlie from school – but I need a moment. At some level, I already know what I must do. It feels as though this has been the point of this whole journey. Maybe, in the end, that was why I was the one to find Sarah. It’s maybe why from the start I needed so badly to know what had happened. I almost lost my mind on the way, almost sacrificed my health in the process. But maybe I had to walk through that fire, that long dark tunnel to reach this point.
At last I stand, my legs stiff, and make my way out of the courthouse into the pale April sunshine. Alastair and Marianne are waiting for me outside. And Freya too.
Freya steps forward. I can tell at once that there is something she wants to say to me. I let her approach, and push my hands into my pockets, waiting to hear what she has to say.
‘You were right.’ Her words are quiet but direct. ‘And I just want you to know, I’m not working with the team any more. I’m not going to pursue a psychology career. I can’t do it. It wouldn’t be right. Not after everything I did.’
I look at her, and meet her eyes. ‘You told me that you wanted to help people. But you do that by giving them the truth. Instead you tried to mess with my reality too.’
