Minutes after I had boarded a new train, finally, after over an hour of fraught waiting, DC Miles’ number flashed up on the screen.

‘Hello DC Miles,’ I said, haughtily, waiting for the grovelling apology.

I stopped in the cyclists’ carriage, letting the throng pass me into the Quiet Zone of this new train.

‘Hello Mrs Bradley. Are you home yet?’

‘My train has been delayed but I’m on my way now.’

‘Well, okay, we’ve spoken to Rosie,’ she paused, ‘and because of what she’s said, we want to do a video interview right away.’

‘What has she done to her?’ I demanded, immediately assuming that Rosie had implicated Mira. Is that where she had been yesterday? With Mira? Was that really possible? My heart began to race. It was all happening too fast. I couldn’t keep up.

‘Rosie’s told me some things that I’m concerned about and we need to get a bit more information from her.’

‘Why can’t you tell me what she’s said?’ My stomach was turning over and over with fear.

‘Again, I’m very sorry, but because it concerns you, that isn’t possible.’

I froze. ‘What do you mean it concerns me?’

‘As I said, we can’t give you more information at this time.’

What did Rosie say? She must have got muddled and said something wrong by mistake. ‘She can’t go through this without me. You have to wait until I get home. I need to see her. She needs me.’

‘Your nanny is here and has kindly offered to take her to the interview room and then return her home and wait for your husband’s return.’

‘But I haven’t been able to get hold of Peter!’ I cried desperately.

‘Harriet has offered to stay with her as long as necessary and wanted me to tell you that Noah is staying at his friend’s house tonight.’

Something inside me collapsed.

‘Oh my God. It’s going to be horrible for her. Oh my God.’ I clamped my hand over my mouth. I didn’t want this woman to hear my distress.

A young cyclist began to stare. My focal point became his blue eyes, as though he and I were friends, as though his steady attention might provide some stability.

DC Miles voice spoke to me from some faraway place, ‘Are you okay, Mrs Bradley? Are you with anyone right now? I feel it is important you get hold of someone who can support you, is that possible? To call someone? A friend or a family member?’

‘Oh my God. I don’t know. Oh my God. I feel a bit faint. I just can’t believe that I’m stuck here like this.’

The cyclist disappeared into the next carriage.

‘Please focus. I think it is important that you call someone. Can you think of someone to call?’

The electric doors beeped open and the cyclist returned with a plastic glass of water. I wanted to hug him for his kindness. My grateful smile was probably more like a grimace as I took the cup from him. The cool water soothed me.

‘Yes, I’ll call Peter. I’ll call Peter. He’ll know what to do. I’ll call Peter.’

Peter answered straight away in his clipped I’m-an-important-property-consultant tone of voice. ‘Hello. How can I help?’

‘Peter, you’re not going to believe it...’ I stopped to expand my chest as far as it would go to find enough air to talk. There didn’t seem to be enough air.

‘Gemma?’

‘Sorry, I’m finding it difficult to breathe.’

‘What’s happened, Gemma? Is the baby okay?’

‘Yes... It’s not that...’

I tried to recount DC Miles’ information to Peter, but I was barely coherent. He asked me again and again to go back and fill in the gaps before he finally understood what was happening.

The train pulled into the next station. The cyclist lifted his bike out of the carriage. I smiled at him, wishing he could have stayed with me.

‘It’s okay,’ Peter said. ‘I’m at the Surbiton site today so I can get home quickly. I’ll get hold of Harriet and meet her at this interview room place and bring Rosie home.’

‘Mira must’ve accused me of something terrible, I just know it.’

‘Well if she has, then Rosie will put them straight, won’t she?’

‘What if she gets confused and says something she doesn’t mean?’ What if she tells them she can see rage in my eyes? What if she’s the one who senses my notional hand raised and poised to strike? What if she is calling out to them for help?

‘You’re getting ahead of yourself.’

‘Peter, I’m not feeling too good and there’s nowhere to sit.’

‘You’re pregnant, Gemma, you need to find somewhere to sit.’

‘Yes, no, I don’t know. The train is full.’ I slumped down to the floor and rested my head on my knees. ‘I’m okay now. Honestly. I’m okay.’

‘Darling, you’re almost home. Get a cab from the station, promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘We’ll sort this out. I love you. See you at home. I love you,’ he repeated.

‘Love you too,’ I said vaguely, wondering if I said it before or after I had hung up.

---

When I returned home forty-five minutes later, Peter and Rosie were not there.

Like a lost old lady who has been told to wait until her relatives rescue her, I sat in silence, with my handbag on my lap, willing them to come clattering through the door, desperate for my phone to ring with news of their imminent arrival.

I didn’t hear the knock, but somehow I was at the door.

I didn’t open it, but somehow it was open.

‘Hello, my name is DC Miles, we spoke on the phone? And this is DC Bennett. Myself and my colleague need to come in if that’s okay.’

The sight of them angered me.

‘Where’s Rosie?’ I barked.

‘Can we come in please?’

‘Where’s Peter?’

I was livid. I looked out, beyond them to the gates, now closing us in.

‘It would be better if you let us in, Mrs Bradley.’

Rather than allowing them entry, I reeled back from them, but the effect was the same, and the two police officers entered my home in their thick black vests.

‘I demand to know where my daughter is.’

‘Rosie is safe. Can we ask you who else is in the house?’ DC Miles said, glancing upstairs furtively.

‘Nobody’s here. Not that it’s any of your business who’s in my own house.’

‘Calm down, Mrs Bradley,’ DC Bennett said.

‘Sorry, but this is not a convenient time I’m afraid,’ I said, feeling anything but sorry. I needed them to leave, right now. I urgently wanted to stop it before it became a reality, because the reality would be too disturbing to live through. But they continued to stand there, in my house.

‘Okay, Mrs Bradley – the time is 17.35 p.m.’ DC Miles looked at her watch and then at her colleague and then at me, speaking factually and unemotionally, as though reading through a shopping list, she continued, ‘Having spoken to your daughter, we are arresting you on suspicion of assault causing actual bodily harm to your daughter. The justification of this arrest is to allow for a prompt and effective investigation and to prevent physical injury to a person. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned anything which you may rely on later in court. Anything that you do say may be recorded and given as evidence in court.’

Shell-shocked and uncomprehending, I tried to process what she had just said but my thoughts flatlined. I held my breath as though letting it out would kill me.

‘Are you serious?’ My knees began to give way.

DC Miles steadied me. ‘Are you okay? Your husband said you’re expecting, is that right?’

‘No, yes, I mean, yes. Nine weeks. Nobody knows at work yet,’ I said, pointlessly.

‘I know this is probably a big shock.’

‘No, no, this can’t be happening. I can’t believe it’s happening,’ I said, shaking my head at her, my eyes wide, my mouth open, a dryness on my tongue.

‘We’re going to need to take you down to the station now,’ DC Bennett said.

DC Miles stepped towards me. ‘Do you think you need a glass of water or something before we go?’

‘I think I do,’ I said through chattering teeth, bizarrely grateful to her, as I had been to the cyclist. A detached, dangling thought entered my mind when I looked at her: I decided that she was too pretty to be a real police officer. Her chocolate-brown fringe was enviably shiny and her curled eyelashes widened her green eyes. She wasn’t real. This was a dream. None of this was real.

‘Which way is the kitchen, Gemma?’

‘Here, this way,’ I said, pointing and letting her lead me to the sink, where I glugged at a mug of water, tasting old tea.

She rubbed at my back. ‘Are you feeling better? Do you think you’re ready for us to go now?’

‘It’s all been a terrible mistake. I never meant to hurt her wrist.’

‘Okay, don’t talk to us about it now because we’ll be interviewing you down at the station and that’ll give you an opportunity for you to give us your side of the story, okay?’

‘Can I have some more?’ I wasn’t ready to go down to a police station. I would never be ready. Was there enough water in the tap to delay me forever?

‘Rosie must’ve explained something wrong,’ I continued.

‘As I say, it’s best you save this for down at the station, okay?’

‘Okay,’ I nodded, like a child.

‘Do you think you’re ready to come with us in the car now?’

‘Okay, I think so,’ I nodded again, looking to this woman as though she would guide me to normality, back to safety again.

The police car was unmarked, a nondescript blue, but once inside, in the backseat, I felt marked. As DC Miles drove me away, I wanted to lie down across the seats to hide away in shame. Would Mira be waiting at her window, nodding in approval as we passed her five-bar gate, tutting at me as we drove away from the cul-de-sac, away from my home, the home that I had chosen to keep my children safe and secure. How ironic. Noah and Rosie, whom I longed for now. They would be utterly confused. I was their sun and their moon. I felt my heart was being yanked out of my chest.

I slumped down and covered my face as well as I could by leaning into my left hand, away from the window on my side.

‘Are you all right back there?’ DC Miles asked.

‘Fine,’ I replied. I was so far from all right it was as though I had left the body of the woman she was asking. Thoughts jumbled, charging and crashing in different directions. Rage towards Mira bloomed in black clouds through my mind, dissipated only by helpless confusion and fear. Was this really happening? Even as it was happening, it wasn’t possible.

Why hadn’t Peter called? Peter would be on my side. He knew me. We knew each other so well, too well. After sixteen years of being with him, I could predict most of his moves, most of his reactions. On Sundays at the White Horse, he would always order the same half pint of bitter to start and choose the same newspapers if they were free, and curse under his breath if they weren’t. He knew my habits just as well. He knew I would always order a double shot in my latte at the end of my meal, and that I would talk too quietly for him to hear, just in case there was a mother at school at the next table, and en route home, he knew that I would always comment on the beauty of the rolling hills, and remind the children of how lucky they were to live here. He knew me. Surely he would not believe I was capable of assaulting Rosie.

When I had shut her wrist in the door, I might have been cross but it had been an accident. When I left her in her room while I danced with Noah, I was separating myself, as all the parenting books told me to do, to protect her. I couldn’t have predicted the broken glass. How could I be in this police car, now driving past the clock tower on the high street, having been arrested? It was beyond comprehension.

A tight feeling began to build in my chest as I sucked in every particle of air I could find, but the sweet taste of the air-freshener that bobbed from the mirror made me want to gag. I was about to be led into a police station as a child abuser; it took my breath away. I had no frame of reference.

As we drove cautiously through the high street, I tried to recall those intense fights with Rosie, in anticipation of questions, but the details wouldn’t come. I could have been calmer with her, wound her up less, I don’t know. My memory was messy and more about feeling than detail, like watching a screen-burst of our rage. The autumn wreath bouncing on the carpet, her fingers shooting through the door that I slammed; the teeth marks on Noah’s arm, her shoulders squeezed by my hands; the beat to a disco track, the blood on her palm. In the eyes of a stranger, cruelty and carelessness and neglect could have fuelled each scenario. I dreaded the police officers scrutinising me, forcing me to relive the shameful details. Laid out on the table, it would look bad. More so, they might have ways of tricking me into revealing more than I should, more of what my mind had put me through in those stressful minutes, more about what I had felt capable of doing to her. The legal parameters of domestic assault were a mystery to me, but I knew I had been wrong to think those things. I might not have actually hit her, but I had certainly wanted to.