But my reaction, it was not comprehensible at all. I blinked, and my eyelids left trails as they rose back into their folds.
WOMAN’S BODY FOUND ON —
The words grabbed hold of me. Assaulted me. Inexplicably, at that instant, I wanted to scream out from the very depths of my belly.
Isn’t that the very strangest thing?
Then, with the shift of no more than a second, the agony fled. The headline was just a headline, clear and crisp on my screen with a stark lack of factual detail, and I was disinterested and dismissive and —
And it was back, as quickly as it had gone. My breath outpaced my pulse, my eyes clamped closed, and in an explosion of the unexplained, I couldn’t even make out the conclusion of my own thoughts. Though for a moment, just for a moment, I thought I heard them telling me that my world was coming to its end.
I was perched across from her, the day I met the woman that changed my life. I don’t know for how long. It doesn’t matter. I was in my government-issued moulded plastic chair, clipboard in hand, diagonally opposite her position in the little room.
I didn’t know who she really was then when we first began. I only knew what was in the official reports and my stack of references.
‘I’ve read your file, Miss.’ I listened to the doctor’s voice as he spoke directly to her, facing squarely across the metal table between them. ‘What the records say about you is pretty clear.’
He spoke in cold, formal phrases. He was a medical professional, of course, and of many years’ standing. But he was also an officer of the state, and she was not here under circumstances any would consider friendly.
Her expression didn’t change. Her eyes remained motionless. From my position in the shadows at the side of the room, I felt unnerved by her solidity.
‘We both know what’s brought you here,’ my superior added. Dr Marcello was an old hand at this, and I’d heard him make similar beginnings before. I craned my neck, trying to observe some emotion on the woman’s face.
‘Do you realize why you’re in this room, at this moment?’
A common formula of approach. Begin with a querying of the context; find out how much the person in front of you is willing to admit of their position, and proceed from there. With an assistant at the side, from the pharmaceutical wing, taking notes in silence in order to help with the medicinal diagnoses.
Thus far, Dr Marcello was keeping things by the book.
The woman said nothing. She was alone in the room, for all her expression would have suggested. She just stared through the walls into a space I couldn’t see.
‘You’re not here because you asked to be,’ Dr Marcello added, stating the obvious. No one came into that room by choice. Still, the comment might jog her.
Her eyes had begun to drift upwards, as if something on the ceiling was attracting her attention. My superior almost spoke again, but then a sound – nearly imperceptible – emerged from the woman’s lips.
‘Not … by … choice.’
It was the first time I heard her speak.
She was mimicking Dr Marcello’s speech, or so I thought, but still – her voice. Almost. She whispered the words, as if holding back a more personal moment.
I leaned forward in my chair, frustrated by the odd angle that kept me from gazing at her face-on. I tried to make out everything I could. She had short black hair, cropped and fine. Visible softness in her cheeks. Rose gloss on her lips that glistened in the fluorescent light as she whispered.
She was beautiful. It might have been wrong for me to think that way. Inappropriate to institutional objectivity. Too subjective and personal. But she was, and I noticed. Even from an angle, even out of reach. She was beautiful.
Dr Marcello remained impassive.
‘Call you tell me your name?’ he asked, hoping to elicit more words from her with a question that hardly required analysis.
The woman’s eyes fell back from the ceiling, straight into his. And then, to my shock, she swivelled her head and stared straight into mine.
Our first gaze. The moment my life changed.
‘My name,’ she said softly, ‘is Emma Fairfax.’
Somehow, the day has disappeared. I’m not sure how it’s happened. I’ve been in the bookshop since it began, going about my usual routine, and it doesn’t seem it’s lasted that long. Not long enough for end-of-the-workday noises to be emerging from the street outside, or for quick drinks at Trader Tom’s around the corner to be the subject of conversations by colleagues, not quite out of earshot, as the metal blinds are lowered inside the windows. Yet I hear them, just like that, and the clock on my monitor agrees with the voices.
Time, I suppose, gets away from us all, now and then. Einstein may have theorized that time changes relative to speed, but I’m pretty certain it also changes relative to concentration. Focus on something hard enough – as I’d apparently been doing with the news on my screen and the other work of the day – and the clocks slow down. Then you blink a few times, smear away the haze of all that intensity from your eyes, and you find you’re back in the present, situated awkwardly in the skin of the person you’d forgot you’d been a few moments before.
So I refuse to be too surprised by the noises around me, now, of a workday at its end. Nor am I overly disappointed. I love this little den of respite, yes, but I’m not a lonely woman, wedded only to my work to give my day its meaning. I have my corner of the shop, my papers, my computer, my employment that feels half like a retreat. But I also have home.
I have David.
I’m out the door by 5.07 p.m.
Mitch walks behind me. With all that mass, it’s rare he walks in front.
‘You going straight home, or you up for a drink?’
His questions are always pure, though he says them with the kind of raunchily exaggerated tone of voice that suggests we might follow up that drink with a steamy escapade, entwined in each other’s naked skin in a hotel that charges by the hour. But it’s all smoke and sarcasm with Mitch. In reality, he is devoted to Susan, the most doting wife in the world, and he knows I’m well and truly hitched and not looking to break that bond. He’s just a kind man, and one who’s fairly certain alcohol won’t be on the menu when he gets home. Nor, for that matter, any particular act that could be described as an ‘escapade’.
‘Not today, Mitch.’ I smile, pausing to allow him to catch up and lowering a hand onto his wide shoulder. There’s the uncomfortable sensation of moisture rising through the fabric of his shirt. I force myself not to lift my hand away. ‘Thanks for the offer, though.’
‘You sure? Wouldn’t take more than an—’
I switch my grip to a pat. The motion accentuates my headache, which has grown worse throughout the foggy day. ‘I’m sure.’ A bigger smile. ‘Stuff on the mind. But go