‘Time of arrest?’

‘17.35.’

‘Offence?’

‘Assault of a child causing actual bodily harm,’ DC Miles replied to the man behind the counter – the Duty Sergeant, I’d been told. He ran his eyes across me from behind his modern rectangle glasses, taking in details of my appearance with professional speed.

He tapped into his computer as he spoke. ‘Based on what the officers have told me I will be detaining you here in the station, okay?’

‘Okay.’ My lips quivered. I bit the side of my mouth. DC Miles disappeared into the back room and I felt that much more lost without her there.

‘Any drugs or alcohol in your system in the last twenty-four hours?’

‘No.’

‘Sorry, what was that?’

I tried to put some energy into my voice. ‘No.’

‘Any medication or medical conditions we need to know about?’

‘I’m pregnant?’ I said, wondering if that was relevant, hoping it might mean he was kinder to me. ‘Nine weeks.’

He tapped that in.

Nine weeks pregnant and I was under arrest. How had this happened to me?

‘Occupation?’ he said.

‘Head of Human Resources at CitiFirm.’

Before typing it in, he flicked one of the spikes of hair fanning across his forehead as though it had itched him all of sudden.

‘You have a right to speak to an independent solicitor that’s free of charge. And that can be in person or on the telephone.’

‘Do I need one?’ I tried to ask, before realising my voice box wasn’t working properly again. After clearing my throat, I said, croakily but loudly enough to be heard, ‘I think I know someone.’ There was only one solicitor I would call, amongst the dozens that I’d worked with over the years.

‘You’ll have an opportunity to call them before we take you down to one of the detention cells, okay?’

A cell. I was going to be put in a cell.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ I said, shaking my head back and forth, biting my lip and pressing my fingers into my forehead, one escaped tear leaking from my right eye. I sucked in my breath and looked at the ceiling. I was not going to cry.

The custody sergeant looked at me, and then at DC Bennett, who had been standing quietly beside me, and scratched under his hair again, ‘It won’t be too bad, we’ll get you interviewed as soon as we can, okay? Would you like a tea or coffee now?’

I felt pathetic. ‘Sorry, it’s the hormones. A tea would be good, thank you. Thank you very much.’

DC Bennett took over. ‘Okay then, Gemma, could you empty your pockets for me please?’

In a daze, I placed each of my possessions onto the high counter. The chewing gum, the lucky stone that Noah had given me, the velvet button, the tube of lip balm. I looked at them lying there, thinking about how personal they were to me, these small little pieces of my life. Didn’t they in themselves prove that I loved my children? The chewing gum and lip balm were generic pocket-things, but the others were not. Noah had given me the grey pebble when we had been walking on the beach. He had asked me to keep in it in my pocket forever. And so I had, until now. And the little black velvet button belonged to Rosie’s Scottish china doll. It was a jolt to be taken back to that evening a few weeks ago, when I had found the button, when everything had been simpler. Peter and I had been going out to meet Jim and Vics at the local pub for some supper, but we had been delayed by a frantic search for the lost button. I had found it down the side of the sofa, which had delighted Rosie. The babysitter had offered to sew it on that evening, but it had seemed important that I do it myself, so I had popped it into my coat pocket, this same coat pocket. And look, it was still there, not sewn onto the doll’s blouse and now in a plastic bag at a police station.

‘And the handbag, please,’ DC Bennett said.

‘Wallet. Sunglasses. House keys. Car keys. IPad...’. DC Bennett listed the contents, placing them into a clear plastic bag while his colleague behind the counter typed the items into his computer.

The soft leather of my wallet, the discreet designer logo on the edge of my sunglasses, my silver key ring with my initials engraved onto the heart, the branding of my car on my car-clicker, the snakeskin cover to my touchpad, all of which I had worked so hard to buy, seemed gaudy and out of place here. How little they meant, how unhelpful and useless these over-priced little badges of success were to me now, how worthless.

‘Sign here and then you can call your solicitor, okay?’

After I had signed the small black pad, another officer led me to a small room that smelt of dusty telephone books even though there had probably not been a telephone book in there for decades. The officer’s Sikh turban created a surreal silhouette through the frosted glass of the door and reminded me of when Rosie had very politely asked our brick layer why he was wearing Mummy’s Indian scarf on his head, and how in response he had unravelled it and shown her his long hair. The look of amazement on her face made me smile even now and reminded me of how inquisitive and confident she was, and for a second, took me out of hell.

The plastic receiver was sticky. I knew the Letwin Assosciates’ telephone number off by heart. Philippa could surely help me. I liked her, having needed her countless times for legal wrangling over contractual issues. Strangely, I had only met her in person once before at a Christmas party. She’d had an immaculate grey bob and a short, lined forehead that gave her a permanently determined expression, and she had repeatedly sucked on an electric cigarette, holding it to her red lips with her heavily ringed fingers. The real smell of cigarette smoke had lingered in the air for a long while after she had walked away.

‘Letwin Associates, how may I direct your call?’

‘Could I speak to Philippa Letwin please?’

‘Who’s calling, please?’

‘Gemma Bradley, from CitiFirm.’

I was put on hold for a few minutes while Beethoven’s 5th Symphony played into my ear; how appropriately doom-laden.

‘Someone asking for too much money again?’ Philippa croaked with her husky smokers’ voice.

This was how she always greeted me on the telephone.

‘I’m afraid it’s not work related.’

‘Don’t tell me, you’re getting a divorce,’ she sighed, and then breathed in, probably from her e-cigarette.

‘I wish it was that simple.’

‘Spit it out then woman.’ I heard her tapping into her computer.

‘I’ve been arrested.’

As though her attention had snapped into place, her voice sounded less muffled.

‘You know I’m not often surprised in this job, but now you’ve got me. What for?’

‘They say I’ve assaulted my daughter, but I didn’t do it. In fact, I’m not even sure what it is that I’ve meant to have done.’

I was sounding brave, but I felt anything but. There was something about speaking to Philippa Letwin that gave me some false courage, and reminded me of how to conduct myself professionally in a stressful situation.

There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation before she said, ‘How can I help?’

‘I know before you turned corporate, your background was in criminal, wasn’t it?’

‘I wish I’d never moved on.’

‘D’you think you’d know someone who might come down and get me out of here?’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘I can’t ask you to do that.’

‘You didn’t. I offered.’

My professionalism disappeared and the urge to cry again pushed at my throat. ‘Thank you, Philippa. Thank you.’

‘Give Lucy your details and I’ll be there as soon as I can. They’ll have twenty-four hours to charge or bail.’

I didn’t really want to engage with what this meant for me, still hoping that I would be out of here in a couple of hours and back at work tomorrow as though nothing had happened. I knew I could ask her everything when I saw her. ‘And Philippa, don’t mention anything to anyone, will you?’

‘Client privilege, Bradley.’

The Custody Sergeant took me back to the custody desk. ‘Take a seat, we’ll be with you shortly.’

Wiping a scratchy grey tissue under my nose, resolutely not at my eyes, I sat down on one of the three plastic-moulded chairs. Immediately I was handed tea in a plastic cup which scalded my mouth, and within five minutes I was being led by DC Bennett down corridors that reminded me of halls of residence at university, but interjected by barred gate doors and CCTV cameras and ominous warning signs.

Beeps and clanging and thuds echoed around me, but there was no screeching or weird, scary people as I had seen on television, simply a series of police officers passing us, briefly looking me up and down, too busy to concentrate on me.

I could smell the reek of vomit and disinfectant before DC Bennett even opened the cell door.

‘If you could take your shoes off and just leave them here please. Do you want a blanket or anything?’

‘No, thank you,’ I said, thinking about how horrible the blanket would be and how many others might have had it before me.

As I bent down I noticed a pair of laced high boots two doors down and wondered who was behind that locked door.

‘I know it’s not the nicest room in the world.’

‘How long will I be in here for?’

‘When your solicitor gets here, we’ll come get you, okay?’

I stood in the middle of the room and he slammed the heavy metal door closed.

The white walls shot up around me, the smell from the low metal toilet in the doorless cubicle soured my tastebuds. Everything was too unfamiliar to take in, and I stood paralysed in the middle of the room, transfixed by the shadows moving behind the warped glass of the grid window above the plank bed. I was catatonic with fear. My attention was drawn to this natural light, outside of which was freedom, and I wanted to stand on the bed to peer out to feel connected to the outside world somehow, but I felt self-conscious of every move I made. The CCTV camera, in the left-hand corner above the cell door, flashed its tiny red light. I sat down on the low bed with my knees pulled up to my forehead, my face buried in the lock of my arms, hiding from my surroundings.

By the time the little small square window slid open, I was shivering violently.

‘You’re going to speak to your solicitor now, okay?’

Bleary-eyed, I slowly unpeeled, one vertebra at a time, to sit straight. My back was stiff and my sitting bones were numb as I stood from the bench. I must have been in the same hunched position for over an hour, too frightened and forlorn to move an inch from the spot.

By the time I was sitting in front of Philippa Letwin’s red lips, her perfume and cigarettes stinging my eyes, I was in a stupor, barely managing to articulate a sentence to answer her questions. Her teeth were yellow as she talked.

‘I’ve spoken to the DS and basically your daughter has accused you of slapping her face causing a bloody lip. Can you talk me through this from your point of view?’

Rosie’s accusation didn’t register properly at first.

‘Slapped her? Are you serious? I’ve never slapped her? Why would the police make that up?’

‘The police didn’t come up with that, Rosie did.’

‘No, no, she wouldn’t say that when it never happened.’

‘Apparently Rosie can’t specify exactly when it happened, which is good for you.’

‘It didn’t happen at all.’

‘She told the police that when you came back from work, you were in a “grumpy” mood and you slapped her because she hadn’t finished her homework.’

I wanted to laugh with relief, knowing for certain that I didn’t do it, feeling confident I could persuade anyone of this. ‘I have never slapped Rosie in my life. Surely they can’t believe I would.’

‘Have you had any other dealings with the police or Social Services before this recent spat with the neighbour?’

‘No, never. The first time was two weeks ago as I told you.’

And then came the question that shocked me out of my momentary relief.

‘Can you think of a reason why Rosie would lie then?’

My mouth was dry, I gulped repeatedly before I spoke. ‘I have no idea.’

I could pull one reason out from the recesses of my mind. I felt nauseous and an uncomfortable feeling crept under my skin. ‘She must have got confused or something. The police must have twisted her words.’

‘Have you heard of TED?’

‘Who’s Ted?’

‘Tell me. Explain to me. Describe to me. That’s how the police question a child witness. In a recorded interview if they tried to lead the child into an answer to suit their own narrative, it would be inadmissible in court.’

‘There must be ways of getting stuff out of kids.’

‘But why would they bother? Believe me, they don’t have time. So I’m going to ask you to think about why she might have lied.’

‘She must be angry with me about something.’

‘Get her not to be, because you know, if she takes it back, the case’ll be dropped like that,’ she said, snapping her fingers in the air like she could conjure a magic trick.

‘When can I talk to Peter?’

‘When you’re home.’

Home. There’s no place like home, I thought, echoing Dorothy’s whimsical words after the storm. I felt my feet encased by ruby red slippers, as red as Philippa’s lips, and imagined Rosie’s envy of them. A haze obscured my vision and I felt the violent shuddering take over my body again. My poor, unborn baby would be feeding on toxic adrenalin.

To calm myself down, I focussed my mind on Rosie’s face, her beautiful blue eyes filled with regret and concern.

A few months back, when I had been out at the supermarket one weekend, Peter had texted me a photograph of Rosie that was meant to act as an amusing begging plea for sweets for movie night. The dark circles that ringed her eyes and the exaggerated desperation in her expression spoke more to me of pain than of fun. I had pretended to be won over, but the image of her face had stayed with me for days. She had looked unhappy, and I wondered now if such unhappiness – undiagnosed, brushed under the carpet – could lead to a lie, a big lie, a lie based on a depth of feeling I had no handle on. It was hard to examine the possibility that the decision we had made to withhold information from her about her maternal donor was festering in her subconscious. However tormenting her tantrums were, and however much I knew I needed to fix them, part of me had hoped that they were some form of cathartic release, an exposure of her frustrations, not the repression of something more hateful or sinister, something that she felt deep down, an unexplained something, something that would lead to an innate confusion about her core identity.

As I pictured that face of hers, my whole being seemed to ache, and I wondered whether I was separate from her at all, whether there was an almost other-worldly communication between us, as though our emotional worlds were interlaced. We seeped into one another; our pain was intertwined, never more so than when we fought. And as I sat in this small, stuffy room, powerless, completely powerless to help her, I felt this more keenly than ever. If she was hurting, I was feeling it. Her pain had become mine. This was love. This was punishment. A just punishment, perhaps, for my own lies.

‘In the meantime, you’d better get it together for this interview,’ Philippa patted my hand.

I squeezed her fingers as though she were my mother, panic charging through me, ‘What if they don’t believe me?’

‘Then you’ll be in deep shit,’ she said, squeezing my hand back.

---

Back in the isolation of the cell, bent into the same position as before, the torture of revisiting my fight with Rosie, when I had unleashed my secret, began to churn like a rumination. I am not your real mummy, I am not your real mummy, I am not your real mummy. There was no peace in my repetitive, tormenting analysis of how and why and why and how. All I knew was that the shame of what I had said in a moment of anger wrapped itself around my face like a plastic wrap.

---

DC Miles unwrapped the cellophane from a CD and placed it in the black machine that sat on the desk between us.

‘Have you ever been interviewed before?’ DC Miles said, smiling. Her teeth were so white I imagined diamonds embedded in them.

Next to DC Miles, DC Bennett flicked open his black book and wrote onto the top of a clean page but remained silent as DC Miles continued.

‘No,’ I replied.

The double shot of espresso that Philippa had forced me to drink beforehand had sharpened my mind and I felt a little more clear-headed.

‘So you’ve never been arrested?’

‘No, no.’

She tapped onto the touch screen of the machine. Next to me I could hear Philippa’s gravelly breathing as she rolled her pen up and down the notebook that rested on her lap.

‘This interview is being recorded and may be used in evidence if this case is brought to trial. It is 19.32 on November the second 2017. Present here is myself, DC Miles, my colleague, DC Bennett, and then Mrs Gemma Bradley and her solicitor, Miss Philippa Letwin.’

DC Miles opened her purple A4 notebook onto her lap and leant back in her seat, and looked me straight in the eye.

‘You’ve been arrested for the offence of assault causing bodily harm to your daughter. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention now something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Okay,’ she paused, ‘my first question is, are you responsible for slapping your daughter causing her lip to bleed?’

‘No, I have never slapped her. Never in my life.’

‘Can you tell us why your daughter would have said that?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know. I can’t understand it.’

DC Miles looked over at DC Bennett, and DC Bennett pursed his pointy wet lips.

‘She said the left corner of her lip was bleeding and that she “was crying with pain”,’ DC Miles said, reading from her notebook.

‘I don’t know why she said that. She can be quite a drama queen.’

‘What do you mean by a drama queen?’

‘I mean she gets a bit over dramatic about stuff sometimes and works herself up. She has a really vivid imagination.’

‘Do you ever get angry with her about not doing her homework?’

‘If she’s messing around, I can get cross, yes.’

Philippa cleared her throat. ‘When you say “cross”, what do you do when you’re cross with Rosie?’

‘I shout at her,’ I said, dropping my gaze to my lap where I saw how my fingers picked at the skin around my thumb.

‘And when you shout at her and you feel that cross, do you want to do anything else to her.’

Philippa spoke up. ‘It’s not relevant what she “wants” to do. Please could you stick to questions relating to the charge?’

‘I’m just trying to understand how you feel in that moment when Rosie hasn’t done her homework.’

‘I get frustrated with her, of course.’

‘And angry? Or “cross” as you put it?’

‘All mothers get angry, don’t they?’

She paused her questioning as she read from her purple notebook and smoothed her chocolate brown fringe down with both hands.

‘And on the sixteenth of October, you were visited by PC Connolly and PC Yorke, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me what happened that day.’

‘Rosie had a massive tantrum and she threw a teddy at the picture, which must’ve fallen off the wall, and when I went in, the glass was smashed everywhere.’

‘How did she cut her hand?’

‘She was trying to tidy up the glass.’

‘Why didn’t you do that for her?’

‘By the time I had got in there she had already started picking it up.’

‘Why wouldn’t she ask you to do it? Doesn’t she know the dangers of cut glass?’

‘I would have thought she’d have known, yes,’ I admitted, crushed by the thought of Rosie sitting there amongst the cut glass.

‘Might she have been scared of telling you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Might she have been scared of your reaction?’

‘I suppose she might’ve thought I’d tell her off, yes.’

‘How would you have punished her, by hitting her?’

‘No. I have told you, I would never ever hit Rosie.’ I was beginning to feel a little disorientated.

‘Why was Rosie having a tantrum that day, Gemma?’

‘I sent her to her room because she bit Noah on the arm.’

‘Does Rosie often have violent reactions to situations?’

‘She can get quite physical with me sometimes.’ I was hit hard by the vision of her circling me and screeching, and kicking, and how much she seemed to hate me.

‘In what way?’

‘When she tantrums she hits me and pulls at my clothes and stuff like that.’

‘That must be really hard to take.’

I gulped, trying to swallow a lump in my throat. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘So hard that you want to hit her back?’

‘No. No. I do not hit her back.’ I shook my head, imploringly. No, no, no.

‘Do you ever feel like you are going to snap when she is having a tantrum?’

‘I do shout at her,’ I said, quietly, unsure of myself.

‘How do you think she feels when you shout at her?’

Shrugging, I conceded, ‘Upset, I suppose.’

‘And scared?’

‘That’s a horrible thought, but yes, probably scared too.’

‘Do you scare her to get control of her?’

‘No! I never want to scare her, it just comes out like that.’

‘I suppose you never want to hurt her either, but it just comes out like that.’

‘No. That’s not true. That is twisting what I said.’

Philippa leant forward, ‘Those questions are leading. She has made it clear she has never hit Rosie.’

DC Miles consulted her notes again, smoothed her fringe. The silence seemed to last forever.

‘Your next-door neighbour Mrs Mira Entwistle told us that she had been round to your house a few days before the incident on October sixteenth, and noticed that Rosie had hurt her wrist.’

‘Yes, she got it trapped in the door.’

‘Tell us how it got trapped in the door.’

‘She and Noah were playing and he slammed it on her hand.’

‘And if we were to speak to Noah, he would remember this would he?’

I looked to Philippa and then held my head in my hands. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I said that, I was the one who slammed her hand in the door by accident. I swear it was a mistake.’

‘So why did you just tell us that Noah did it?’

I started feeling the room’s heat. Sweat stung the torn-at flesh around my thumbnail.

‘I don’t know, I really don’t know. I would never hurt her on purpose. I was trying to keep her away from me because she was screaming at me and flailing around and I didn’t know how to control her and so I stormed out of the bedroom and pulled the door shut, but just as I closed it she put her hand through it.’

‘When you don’t know how to control her, do you think a quick slap might be the answer, to shock her out of it? I mean I would understand it if you felt that way. It can be frustrating when they scream and I imagine you feel pretty desperate.’

‘I feel desperate, yes, I feel so desperate, but I don’t want to slap her.’

‘Okay, right, let’s go right back to 2007, when you took Rosie to A & E for a fracture of the right ulna.’ DC Miles pointed to her right forearm.

My mind flicked back through the years, through the many A & E incidents, back to the Whittington Hospital where we had taken Rosie when she was about eighteen months old. She had woken in the middle of the night screaming, and I had instinctively known she was in pain, though I hadn’t been able to place where in her body.

‘Yes, Rosie broke her arm.’ I looked to Philippa. I couldn’t understand how they knew about that.

‘How did it break?’

‘We’re not sure.’

Philippa shifted in her seat.

‘Two police officers came to speak to you about this, didn’t they?’

My heart skipped a beat. ‘Well, yes, they talked to us at the hospital briefly, but the doctor said it was standard when a baby breaks something. We think she got her arm stuck in the bars of her cot. Is this really relevant?’

I looked to Philippa, whose expression remained unreadable. I began talking again, letting the words tumble out by way of explanation.

‘Peter had thought I was being melodramatic, and kept saying she’d had a bad dream or colic or something, but I knew she was in serious pain and when the X-rays showed a fracture, I felt vindicated.’

‘You felt vindicated when you found out your daughter had broken her arm?’

‘I was devastated for her, obviously, but relieved, quite honestly. I had imagined all sorts of other grim things that she might have had. Her screams were so piercing.’

That night in A & E came back to me in full colour. It had been the most worrying of my life, as they had subjected my baby Rosie to test after test, before finally finding her broken arm. Privately, I had harboured fresh concerns about Kaarina Doubek’s medical records, fretting that she had lied or that the donor clinic had covered up a genetic condition that we were about to discover in Rosie. The police had been the least of our worries. Their attitude to us had been friendly, casual even, their presence barely registering as I had cradled Rosie. Afterwards, we thought nothing of them. I had had no idea it would have been placed on a police report and filed on my records somewhere.

‘Do you see that there seems to be a pattern here? Rosie hurts herself and your explanations are...’ she paused, looked to DC Bennett, and said, ‘a bit rubbish, quite frankly.’

‘When you mention all these things, it sounds bad, I know it does, but seriously, they are totally unrelated, you have to believe me,’ I pleaded, feeling acutely anxious now. I ripped a bit of skin off my thumb and sucked at it, tasting the metal, imagining the red absorbing into my tongue and how it might spread through my body, colouring my thoughts.

‘Do you lie often, Gemma?’

‘I don’t lie. I am not lying.’

‘So, if you’re not lying, that means your daughter is a liar?’

DC Miles’ eyes seemed to have turned from green to red. Blinking it away, I clung to the edge of my chair and breathed deeply, trying to grip onto reality.

‘No, my daughter is not a liar.’

‘So she’s not lying then? You did slap her?’

‘I think she’s got mixed up or something and told you something that isn’t true. I don’t know why she’d do this, I don’t know why, honestly.’

At a desperate loss, I pushed my fingers into my hair and then worried the blood from my thumbnail was smeared onto my temple. I began wiping the side of my face with my fingers, and checking for the blood on my fingers.

‘Sorry, do I have blood on my face?’ I said, showing the left side of my face to Philippa.

‘No, Gemma, you don’t.’

‘My thumb was bleeding and I was worried it...’ I trailed off as I noticed how DC Miles and DC Bennett were looking at me. DC Bennett bent into his notebook and scribbled something down.

‘Are you sure you’re not the one getting mixed up?’ DC Miles asked.

I couldn’t answer her question.

‘You understand why it seems strange to us that we have three unexplained incidents where your daughter has been hurt in your care?’

I felt cold to the bones and my muscles began to quiver. Every scratch of pen was deafening, every creak of a chair raked across my hearing like torture.

‘I don’t know,’ I rasped, barely audible.

‘Are you okay, Gemma? Do you need a glass of water or something?’ DC Miles asked.

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know why she’s lying about this.’

‘Would you say you had a close relationship with Rosie?’

‘I love her so much.’

The blue walls of the room seemed to wrap around me, like a much-needed comfort blanket.

‘Yes, of course you do, Gemma. But sometimes things can get out of hand, can’t they?’

‘Sometimes I think she hates me.’

‘Why would she hate you?’ DC Miles’ voice was soft and sympathetic.

‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

‘Tell us why, Gemma.’

‘I seem to spend my life feeling guilty about her.’

‘What do you feel guilty about?’

‘Not being good enough. Ever.’ I felt the tears rising.

‘Look, being a mother is tough, I understand that, we can get you and Rosie the help you need.’

Her patronising tone agitated me. ‘I don’t need any help,’ I stated indignantly.

‘There is no shame in it, if it makes things better. But we have to talk about what happened first.’

‘I have told you what happened.’

Philippa spoke up, as though sensing my irritation brewing. ‘I think that Gemma has been very cooperative and told you everything she can.’

DC Miles sighed. ‘Yes, okay. We’ll wrap things up for now. Gemma, I understand today must have been very stressful for you as the implications are huge and I’m concerned about that.’

Her words hit me with a jolt. I resented her patronising tone and the ‘huge implications’ she referred to. I knew DC Miles was not concerned one iota. One by one DC Miles had pushed my buttons, the last of which was the jackpot: fury shot straight out of my mouth, ‘Does it really concern you?’

The mood of the room changed. She sat up straighter, and looked over at DC Bennett, whose hand had stopped writing abruptly.

‘Yes, it does concern me, Gemma.’ DC Miles smiled, calmly blinking her curly eyelashes at me. ‘I have a duty of care to make sure you’re okay and you do seem very upset.’

‘Of course I’m upset, because all of this is completely ridiculous. I haven’t done anything wrong and you’re acting as though you don’t believe me.’

‘It is not our job to sit here and judge anyone, Gemma, we are just trying to establish what happened so that we keep your daughter safe, do you understand?’

‘But she is safe! Or she was, until you lot barged in,’ I yelled, completely losing my temper.

DC Miles held my gaze triumphantly, and then closed her notebook.

‘Okay, I think we have what we need for now. Before I finish this interview, is there anything else you would like to say?’

‘No,’ I said, unrepentant. They were trying to break me down into some gibbering wreck and I was not going to be broken.

‘Thank you everyone. The interview is now terminated and I’m turning off the tape. The time is 20.16 on November second.’

As she turned it off, my defiance turned itself off too.

Awkward and sullied, I stood up with the officers.

I wanted to switch the machine back on and have a rerun so that I could do it better next time. I couldn’t face going back to that cell again. I needed so badly to go home, to see Peter’s loving face, to feel his arms around me, to hear him tell me it’s all going to be okay.

---

As I was led back to my cell, a piercing screech rang through the corridor. It was getting louder and louder. Two cell doors down, three officers held down a young woman as she yelled and struggled and kicked out. She was wearing the same fashionable black lace-up boots that I had seen placed just where she writhed now.

‘Fuck you, you fucking motherfuckers! I haven’t done fucking nothing and you’re locking me up in that fucking hole again, get your hands off me you fucking perverts!’ she screamed, her face red and contorted, her bobbed brown hair sticking to her face, which was wet with tears or sweat or both.

‘What you looking at you stuck-up bitch? Eh? Wanna cop a feel too, you fucking lesbian whore!’

‘She’s in weekly, that one. Can’t stay off the booze,’ DC Bennett said, looking on sympathetically. ‘Sometimes I think she wants to end up in here.’

I didn’t know how to respond, but as I looked on at the woman, half-fascinated, half-terrified, I recognised her anger. In my restrained and educated way, I had done the same in that interview room. I had lost my cool and destroyed any hope I might have had of getting DC Miles on my side. Everything I had been striving to achieve – the perfect children, the perfect family, the perfect home, the carefully calculated work-life balance – might as well have been smashed to pieces, because in that one vital second under pressure, I couldn’t hold my temper, just like this raving banshee couldn’t right in front of my eyes.

DC Bennett slammed the cell door.

My desire to rant and rave and kick was growing, billowing. It took Herculean effort to hold it down. It growled and boiled in my body until the tension to hold it there was unmanageable, as though the smallest provocation could unleash it. I was almost grateful to be locked away in the cell.

The woman’s wailing echoed through the metal door. I wondered what had prodded at her anger that night, what lay deeper, what had built up over the years to come bursting out in such a fury on the officers that night. The sound of her terrible anger became mine; this anger that I felt now, that I was trying so hard to control, to suffocate, to keep away from a naked flame. I felt the surge of a self-pitying, tearful frustration, like a lifetime of repressed rage, rise up through my body and I slapped the wall with both hands as if I was trying to shove it over. The shockwaves shot up my arm and stung my palms and I did it again, and again, until my hands were hot and red and painful. It wasn’t like me, to have done that. I wondered at the police officers watching me on their screens, imagining them laughing at me, this middle-class woman, with her tailored navy trouser-suit, slapping at the wall, but it made me feel better to let it go, to feel the pent up tension in my body ebb away.

I sat slumped on the floor, impotent, numb. However much I might have pounded on and scraped at these walls, they would remain intact, while my skin would be torn to shreds.

Tucked under my armpits, my hands throbbed. A flash of Rosie’s contorted face mid-tantrum came into my mind. I couldn’t summon the teenage photograph of Kaarina Doubek, whose face had housed all my fears about Rosie’s ill-temper. I saw only my own anger reflected back at me.

In spite of Philippa Letwin’s repeated reassurance that I would be released on bail shortly, I couldn’t help feeling that I would never be set free.