Chapter Text
She dreams of it still. That square house upon the moor. In long, sweat-filled hours, her dreams brimming over with that primal, prickling uncertainty. As the axis of her earth had suddenly slanted violently away from her. Within the thick confines of that house, rising, square and solid, from a sea of purpling heather.
Grey stone wall corralling the garden against the walls, gathering up plants and weeds alike. Almost left to run wild, ivy clinging to once well-loved roses. Entwined so tightly it appeared as though they had mated, creating mutant, monstrous heads of violent red petals strangled by three-pointed leaves. Straggling, staggering, trailing across the thin gravel footpath that lead, meandering, up to the front door. Crumbling plant pots containing mostly weeds on the front step, a child’s muddy wellington boots kicked haphazardly beside them.
Greying paint peeling from the wooden front door.
The portcullis to this boxy little castle. The bars to this gargantuan cage.
And the house itself. Its pitched roof and its wonky floorboards. The little back bedroom, ceiling slanting sharply down towards the flat white sheet of the single bed. Oddly angled, leaving her body feeling oddly off-balance.
She had slept there, once upon a time. Once or twice.
Until-
The headboard was pressed against the windowsill. Uninterrupted view of the moors spreading beyond, unmarred by even a dark shell of an abandoned barn. Naught but a sea of greying bracken, blushing into lilac heather at the very edges of her blurring vision.
Blurring out, as she had cried.
In those grey, thin days, she had once thought that she might drown there.
Exposed, in that empty landscape.
And even now, very late at night, she imagines she can hear the wind rushing against the old wooden windows once more. Single panes of glass trembling in their frames. As the wind would race, screaming, into the crumbling chimneys. It would grow long, groping tendrils, to pummel against the grey front door.
Some hysterical would-be intruder, shrieking as it shakes fruitlessly at the house.
Back then, a tightly wound spring, she would shoot bolt upright in that little bed, sheets falling away from her chest, groping for-
It’s a panic one doesn’t process easily. A panic that perhaps she hasn’t processed at all.
Her prison, her paradise, her protection.
So, miles away and a different woman entirely, she hears it still. That low whistle slicing through the night. As though the sound is stuck, lost in the maze of her inner ear. But now. Today, tonight. The bed is warm and the light on the landing casts a long, golden sliver through the crack in their bedroom door. This safety was not earned, but won, bloodied, on a battlefield.
Fought out in a courtroom.
But, finally, as she haemorrhaged, won under the grey slate roof of that little square house on the moors.
And she’ll never go back there.
Not now, not again.
That was perhaps her prize. Her hard-won plunder.
She rolls over, and slips once more to sleep.
——
“It simply isn’t a practical use of department resources or time. We have to be realistic-”
“She will be dead within hours if she walks out of here!”
Defeated, exhausted, she rests her forehead against the cold metal table of the interview room. And she hears, out in the corridor, a woman’s voice rise, edging terribly close to hysterical.
Fucking great.
In that moment, she doesn’t actually care if she lives or dies. She’s been in this fucking room for nearly eighteen hours. She’d give her life, gladly, to just walk out of there a free woman, and feel the afternoon sun against her cheeks, if only for a moment.
She will be killed. Of that she is very almost certain.
But the harsh glare of the white overhead lights are killing her just the same.
She glances at the clock in the corner of the room.
Half past eight.
She has forgotten if it is morning or night. As the hours slipped treacherously away from her. As she had been confined within this windowless box.
God, she needs a drink.
Countless too-milky teas, too-grainy coffees had been pressed into her shaking hands, almost continuously, from the moment she started talking. She is sure that the old grey-faced detective who had sat opposite her for hours must have a bottle of cheap whiskey in his desk drawer. She wonders what she might have to say to persuade him to pour her three shots into a flimsy white polystyrene cup.
Four shots.
(She might need to show him her breasts-)
The voices in the corridor outside rise once more.
She closes her eyes, and listens.
“And that is concerning, Lisa, but-”
“Sir, please, with all due respect-”
The woman’s voice falls away. Respectfully.
She holds her breath. Listening intently.
She can feel her pulse in her throat. Hear the steady ticking of the clock.
Her lawyer, beside her, moves to place his hand against her upper back, but almost immediately seems to think better of it. Leaving the flat of his palm hovering, uncomfortably, above the thin fabric of her best black jacket.
(In the middle of the night, she had thrown on the first thing she had touched. As the police had rammed their way through her front door.)
(And knocked her life apart.)
She twitches, almost imperceptibly, under his almost-touch.
She hears as he clears his throat, and then grips his hands together in front of him. Dry skin against dry skin.
Perhaps even he, her expensive lawyer, is somehow nervous too.
She doesn’t look up. Tries not to care. Although she is very sure that it’s a very bad sign, that even her lawyer is a little nervous.
Perhaps she only need start really worrying when she, somehow, hears his palms start to sweat.
She is so on-edge, every sense so heightened, that she feels sure she would hear as his skin pressed, wetly, together.
Red hot exhaustion races alongside scarlet rage and dull maroon fear in her veins, her adrenaline no longer ignited but still buzzing. It’s an odd, heady cocktail. She feels wild, she feels furious.
She feels as though she wants to go to sleep, and perhaps never wake up.
The voices in the corridor outside rise once more. And she turns her head a little, listens intently.
“Detective Sergeant, she will require round-the-clock monitoring, probably from firearms-trained officers, and access to a safe house somewhere out of the city. At least until you’ve rounded up all the names on that list, and possibly until after a trial. The CPS is severely backlogged, we could be talking about months, not weeks, until an initial hearing. We just do not have the budget to-”
“I, we, need her to testify. She’s the…the pin that holds all these different strands of the investigation together, without her testimony we have, what, a bit of CCTV, some dodgy bank records?”
“We have good evidence, a solid paper trail, we easily have enough to start making arrests, and I’m confident we’ll be able to bring charges.”
She doesn’t breathe.
“Sir, the jury will need to see a face. They need to hear her speak. She’s a perfect witness, sympathetic, articulate, she’d be ideal on the stand. And she’s willing to do it! But the moment we start making arrests, her life will be in danger. In fact, it probably already is, if half the names on this are correct, then we have-” a pause. A breath. And then the woman’s voice lowers. “-three officers at this station alone-”
“Swain. My office. Now.”
A pause, a heartbeat, and then footsteps.
And then. Finally. Silence.
Absolute.
Silence.
She hears the clock tick. Hears her own heartbeat.
She can’t fucking stand it.
She sits up, suddenly.
Turns to her lawyer. Eyes wide, suddenly furious.
“A fucking babysitter? Are they joking?” she hisses.
He pinches his nose, slowly takes off his glasses, rubs at his eyes, puts his glasses back on. Adjusts them slightly. She knows that he’s playing for time, thinking of the right thing to say.
He’s a delicate, intelligent man. He speaks slowly, his every word carefully considered. And she knows that she makes him nervous. Which is funny, because he makes her feel safe.
His hesitancy prickles against her flesh. She wants to grab him by the shoulders, and shake. Until he fizzes over, and tells her nothing but the raw truth.
“They don’t want you getting hurt. You’re no good to them, well-.”
“Dead? Yeah, well I can look after myself, I don’t want-”
“I fear, Mrs Barlow, that this isn’t about what you want anymore.”
“Ms Connor.”
“I’m sorry?”
She laughs, low and sick and humorless. Rubs at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m pretty sure my marriage was over the moment I started talking, Mr Harrison.”
He smiles back at her grimly, all lips, no teeth.
“I think your marriage might be the very least of your worries, Ms Connor.”
She sighs, slumps back in her chair. Runs her hand roughly through her hair. Checks her wrist for a hairband, finds it gone.
It’s gone. All gone.
Her life as she had once known it is over.
“I don’t care, I want to go home. I want a bath, a bottle of wine.” She feels like a girl again, like a child. She feels selfish. She knows that she is whinging. She wants to tuck her legs up to her chin, hug them to her chest. hold herself. Hold herself together.
But, of course, it had been her own choice to speak to the police.
She had been detained. Of course.
Some boy, young enough to be her son, hovering at her elbow. Touching at the handcuffs on his waist, as she had insisted ‘please don’t touch me, don’t cuff me, I’ll come quietly.’
As some pretty, petite blonde had pinned her husband’s hands behind his back, and then shoved him roughly into the back of a police car. And she’s sure he loved every second of it.
The drugs, the dirty money, they had been of no consequence to her. She had been able to, even happy to, look the other way for years.
She liked money, liked nice things, liked beautiful things. She had worked hard, had made enough of her own. So where Peter got his money, well-
(No comment, no comment, no comment. Lawyer. No comment. I want to speak to my lawyer.)
But the girls?
When the old man across the table from her had, finally, agonsingly slowly, slid across a brown paper envelope, stuffed full of girls. Their names, passports, photographs. How they had been smuggled, moved from city to city, from country to country, as if they were mere livestock.
Their dates of birth.
And when she saw the number-
The date of birth-
Two thousand and seven-
She hadn’t even hesitated.
(The number is burned into her iris. She will never fucking forget it.)
(She had slept beside him for years. Stood beside him, stood up for him. Once upon a time, she had so desperately wanted a child with him.)
And now? She had opened her mouth and simply fucking spilled her guts.
Answered every question. Details, names, addresses, phone numbers. Quick, accurate. She hadn’t even hesitated as she had signed on the dotted line.
And then, neatly, vomited into a metal toilet bowl.
It had been one of the worst days of her life, in a life full of very bad days. And now, she just wanted it to be over. All of it. She wants to strip, step into hot water, and emerge a different woman entirely. Burn herself, burn her sheets, curl up upon her bare mattress, and fall into herself.
Or away from herself completely.
There, against the cold metal of the interrogation room table, beside her expensive lawyer, she begins to cry.
(2007)
(Two thousand and seven.)
She tries not to think about it too much, but fears she will be thinking of those four little numbers for the rest of her life. Her breath catches in her throat. She can now barely recognise the woman she was in the early hours that morning. Stumbling blindly amid the darkness to dress herself, thinking of nothing but her own modesty. There was before. And now there is only after.
Now there will only ever be after.
And now-
Hurried footsteps in the corridor outside.
And-
The door to the interview room springs open, ricocheting against the wall with a crash.
The glass rattles.
And Carla feels as though her very bones shake.
The room is suddenly very, very silent.
And the air suddenly tastes very, very thin.
She feels as though the tears streaking down her cheeks stop in their wet rivulets. As though gravity itself is staid by the force of-
A blonde. Younger, but not exactly young. Hair tied back, once probably neatly pulled back from her face, but now a little ruffled. Loose strands falling around her cheeks. Face tired, strained, thin line between her brows. And Carla realises that she was wrong, before.
(She had been wrong about so many things.)
Because she wasn’t pretty.
But beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Positively radiant.
It feels silly to Carla, that she can recognise beauty on a night like this. That beauty could even be found in a place like this.
She is a flame through the darkness. A bloom in the depths of winter.
Abloom, or aflame.
Carla, somehow, chokes on her own breath. And, humiliated, sinks deeper into her own personal hell.
And it’s certainly too late for any deliverance. Even pretty, blonde salvation.
(She’s always liked nice things. Liked beautiful things.)
The woman, the police officer, pauses a moment, hands on hips.
(Eighteen hours ago, this woman had forced Peter’s body, roughly, against the bonnet of her car. And now, Carla hopes that she had broken every single one of his ribs.)
(Wishes that he were fucking dead.)
(Wishes that she herself were dead.)
The woman’s eyes sweep, cooly, rapidly, over Carla’s face, over her body. And then back up again.
Her expression absolutely stoic. Completely unreadable.
(She does not quite meet her gaze.)
And Carla, inexplicably, feels a hot flush race up her chest. It feels oddly clinical, to be observed like this under these cold white lights. As though she were stripped, already a dead weight against a slab. Her hands shake as she grips them together on the table in front of her. Freezing cold metal burning against her wrists.
(She supposes that she better fucking get used to it.)
As the blonde finally, fucking finally, looks at her.
It’s simply terrible.
Intense, cold, eye contact.
Carla feels her gaze slice through to her very bones. Little cuts against her ribs. Shards of bone, sent splintering into her lungs.
Suddenly breathing is very, very difficult.
The woman clears her throat. Looks down, looks away.
And Carla has felt a lot of loss. Perhaps more than her fair share. But she feels this one keenly. Feels it deep within her chest.
The woman’s voice is low, guarded, as she finally speaks.
“I’ve been ringing round safe houses. Trying to find you a place.”
“I don’t need a fucking babysitter! I want to go home.” She snaps.
“You can’t.”
“Okay, fine, let me get my passport, and I’ll go away-”
“No.” The detective looks at her once more. Piercing, painful, eye contact. “We’re going to need to interview you again. You can’t go anywhere. And unless you want us to arrest you, and I’m sure it won’t be hard for me to find something-”
“You don’t have to do that-”
“You’ll be safe in our cells-”
“I gave you every single name you wanted, I told you everything I know! And if you want to arrest me for a parking ticket from ten years ago-”
“I’ll pull bank records from that precious factory of yours, and every penny that ever went through your books better be squeaky fucking clean-”
It was like arguing with a fucking blonde, pretty brick wall.
(A brick wall that made her fucking sweat.)
So. They had argued. Head-to-head. The detective looming over her, aggressive, agitated. Until the other woman had had enough, had slammed both her hands down on the table in front of her, had tossed those loose strands of hair away from her cheeks, and had looked at her.
It was like looking down the barrel of a gun.
Pretty blue eyes-
(Perhaps she should get used to it.)
“Mrs Barlow. Carla.” Her name, her husband’s name dripped painfully from her tongue. And Carla just sat there, mute, and took it. It felt like a slap against her already-stinging cheeks. She smarts. So, fuck it, one more hit couldn’t possibly make a difference now. “I need you alive to testify. And, right now, I don’t care that you don’t care if you live or die. But know that I owe it to those girls. And, I think, so do you.”
Carla nods, dumbly.
For once, her voice is lost, deep within her chest.
She isn’t sure if she ever wants to speak again.
The fight fucking beaten out of her, she cowers under the other woman’s gaze, obedient at last.
The woman inhales deeply. Closes her eyes for a moment, as though collecting her thoughts. Collecting herself.
Carla tries to steel herself for the next blow.
Like a sprinter in the starting blocks, she tenses.
As the woman exhales slowly.
And attempts something that could, perhaps, be a smile.
“Right. Okay. It’s settled then. You’re coming home with me.”