Then – March 2016
The bruises were taking longer to fade than she’d expected. Almost a month on they were still faintly visible across her ribs, a slight yellowing in some places, brownish smears in others, and still painful when she touched them or stretched too far this way or that. Her mother insisted it was because she hadn’t been taking proper care of herself while she was away at uni.
Healthy bodies healed quickly; unhealthy ones didn’t have the internal resources.
So, she’d made chicken soup and fruit smoothies packed with protein powder, hearty puddings, heavy on the cream, because she’d heard that fat wasn’t bad for you any more and did Ella know that in Italian hospitals patients were fed double cream and prosciutto to speed up their recovery?
It wasn’t working, but Ella dutifully ate every meal that was put in front of her, then went to walk them off. She took the footpath that bordered the bottom of her parents’ garden, following it in a five-mile loop around the village, passing the primary school she’d hated and the churchyard where she’d had her first sip of alcohol. Passed fields full of early wheat and paddocks where old friends stabled their horses and the farmhouse, white and very distant beyond the edge of the village, where her last serious boyfriend still lived and now worked, so she’d heard, as an unpaid hand doing the heavy lifting his father could no longer manage.
Coming home was not part of the plan, but she had dutifully done that too.
The last few weeks it felt like somebody else was making all of her decisions for her. Where she slept, what she ate, who she spoke to and precisely what she was allowed to say to them. One last decision, freely made by her – the wrong one, apparently – and then everything changed. She was no longer in control of her own life.
Maybe some people would enjoy this, she thought, as she let her jumper fall back down over her abdomen, sick of the sight of her bruised skin and the memory of how it happened. Some people would love to have the burden of responsibility lifted off their shoulders, but Ella was not that kind of person.
She was desperate to be in control again.
In her bedroom, tomorrow’s outfit was laid out ready for her. Had been laid out by her mother, an act she hadn’t performed since Ella was a little girl, about to start primary school. She almost felt like that child now, remembered how monumental the first day seemed and how she’d cried the night before.
She felt the same sense of apprehension about tomorrow morning, but this fear was more like stage fright. Half nerves, half excitement.
It would be easier to get through if she thought of it as a performance and this her costume. Her mother had taken her shopping, into the grand old department store where they used to go for afternoon tea on her birthday, and Ella let her make the decisions, content to accept that this was one thing her mother knew better than her: the art of looking respectable.
They’d come away with a knee-length tweed skirt in shades of brown and a white shirt her mother decided would be best worn under a simple camel jumper. Thick tights and low-heeled boots were tucked under the cheval mirror, where her outfit was hanging to keep it free of creases. On the dressing table her mother had laid out the gold crucifix Ella hadn’t worn for years and a pair of small pearl studs, which were a family heirloom.
‘I thought the first time you borrowed these would be on your wedding day,’ her mother had said, smiling sadly as she closed the lightly worn shagreen box.
Ella had long since given up on being the kind of daughter her mother wanted, but she couldn’t quite shake off the sense of failure bound up in those words. Not her failure, but her mother’s. How sad it was that she couldn’t see any bigger achievement than marriage, that she truly believed Ella was a lost cause already at twenty-four years old. Maybe it would be different if she understood what was really happening here.
But Ella doubted it. Knew she’d never be truly proud of her until she presented a fiancé and then a grandchild.
Her father, who knew everything – almost – wasn’t proud. At first he was furious with her. Told her not to complain, work it out for herself, she was a big girl, she was smart, if she couldn’t deal with something like this then what hope did she have of standing up against hardened criminals once she was qualified?
Then she showed him the bruises on her ribs. It made her wonder how she would have convinced him without the physical evidence. If she’d been attacked another way – if she’d been drugged and raped – would he have believed her?
The question kept gnawing at Ella and she found herself looking differently at her father, wondering just how well he’d done his job all those years; if he truly was, as her mother always said, ‘a good man’. Because if he doubted his own daughter’s word then how would he have reacted to a stranger making a similar complaint?
He apologised the next morning. Confessed that he knew it was always a danger of her joining up, that his name would make her a target for people who would believe she was getting an easy ride and try to knock her down a peg or two. He’d seen it happen before, he should have warned her, but he thought times had changed.
Then Ella told him the rest and he got furious all over again.
Four days later, he still hadn’t calmed down. Had barely talked to her since he’d delivered a long and rambling screed about her poor decision-making and her lack of experience and why she shouldn’t have done anything without talking it through with him and her mother first.
He thought she was throwing her life away.
He didn’t realise she was simply embracing an opportunity to make her life much more fulfilling than the one he’d mapped out for her.
From the bedroom window she could see him exorcising his temper on the garden, hacking away at the clogged heart of an ancient crab-apple tree, which should have been pruned in the winter rather than now, when it was putting on new shoots and birds were building their nests in its highest branches.
If they were going to make up before she left, Ella knew she would have to be the one to take the first step.
She went down into the kitchen and brewed a pot of the Guatemalan coffee her father liked, found his special mug and added sugar and a splash of cream. He wasn’t supposed to have the stuff since his GP had put him on medication for a slight heart problem, but she knew he preferred his coffee made that way and would sneak one when her mother wasn’t there to watch him.
Outside the sawing had stopped and he was pulling the cut branches free, tossing them on to the immaculately mowed lawn, swearing as he did it.
‘Made you a cuppa, Dad,’ she called, as she crossed the grass.
He climbed out of the tree more nimbly than a man his age had any right to be doing, on to the stepladder, which didn’t look too firm, and down to meet her.
‘I was just about to come in for one,’ he said, taking the cup from her. ‘Thank you.’
Ella tucked her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. ‘The garden’s looking good.’
‘I’ve had a think about your predicament,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I’m not happy with what you’re doing. I think this is the biggest waste of potential I’ve ever seen and that you will live to regret your decision.’
There was a but coming.
‘But I’m going to help you as best I can.’ He started towards the house. ‘Come on, then, before I regain my senses.’
They went upstairs to his study and he told her to sit down as he lifted a sheet of paper from the tray of the printer on his desk.
‘Read this.’
Ella scanned it quickly, not quite believing what she was holding in her hand: an outline of the hearing she was going to face tomorrow. There were too many specifics in there for it not to be the real thing.
‘How did you get this?’
He waved the question away. ‘Never mind that now. What we need to do is get you properly prepared so they can’t trip you up. Because that’s what they’re going to try and do. If they can undermine your version of events or smear your reputation, they will.’
‘I told you what happened,’ Ella said, resenting the suggestion. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Of course I do.’ He sipped his coffee and placed it carefully on the coaster. ‘But you have to appreciate that this process isn’t about establishing the truth. It’s about your credibility versus his. And, since you’ve decided on this course of action, you have to consider the implications. Once all of this is down on record it’s there for ever and for anyone determined enough to look it out to read. You might be walking away from Garton but it will always be there in the public domain. Do you understand?’
She nodded.
‘Good.’ He nudged the mouse on his desk and his computer screen blinked into life. ‘So, while your mother’s out, you and I are going to construct a solid, unexploitable narrative.’
‘Is that . . . it doesn’t seem right.’
He peered at her over his reading glasses. ‘Do you want to win, Ella?’
They spent an hour thrashing out a first draft, Ella telling her version and then her father finessing it, pumping up elements, toning down others. He asked her questions that weren’t in the briefing, tougher ones, telling her she needed to be prepared for blindsides. He stood up for those, looming over her, hardening his stance.
This was the version of him that had risen through the ranks so quickly. The man who had a fearsome reputation within his own force and beyond. A man you did not want to cross.
She would never be like him, she realised. No matter how well she was schooled or how long she spent learning on the job, she would never have acquired the right instincts to be a detective. As he blasted and cajoled her, forcing her to repeat her story again and again, his version of it now, Ella became even more convinced that she’d made the right decision.
‘Isn’t it true that you provoked Mr Pearce?’
‘No.’
‘Several people have reported that you threatened him,’ her father said, staring down at her, radiating impatience and disbelief. ‘And I quote – “If you touch me again, I’ll fucking drop you.”’
‘I’m the victim here,’ Ella said.
He sighed, took off his glasses and pinched his nose. ‘More emotion, Ellie. You sound like the woman who does the speaking clock.’
‘You use the speaking clock?’
‘Concentrate.’ He snapped the piece of paper at her. ‘Come on, again. Remember how you felt when it happened. Tap into that.’
She remembered the stunned faces watching in silence, the dirty carpet pressed against her cheek, the smell and texture and how she knew she wasn’t the first person to bleed on it. She remembered the look in his eye, a sick mix of lust and fury.
And then the sensation of becoming splintered.
‘I’m the victim here.’
‘Better,’ her father said. ‘But don’t be afraid to go bigger. They want you to appear detached and unaffected. That’s what a good copper does in this situation. If you play it that way you’ll lose. You need to be unpredictable, unhinged even. Hysterical.’
‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath, trying to blow out the tremors that had crept up on her, remembering how she’d struggled to get away, crawling over the filthy carpet, blinded by tears and pain.
‘I know this is an intimidating process,’ her father said, putting aside his glasses and the paper, wheeling his captain’s chair over to her. ‘It’s designed to be intimidating because it wheedles out false accusations that way.’
Ella glared at him but he didn’t seem to see the anger.
‘I’ll be right there with you.’ He patted her hand. ‘Try not to worry. We’ll get you through this, poppet.’