Right. Did that mean that Jimmy had left already? Or did that really mean that the police didn’t want us to talk before they’d taken our statements separately? Or worse. Much worse. Did it mean that Jimmy didn’t want to speak to me?
‘What the fuck have you DONE?’ The last thing he had said to me. I’d assumed it was said in panic, in disbelief. In that specific momentary madness that the brain foists on you when something happens that you cannot process normally. But what if it wasn’t just of the moment? Could that thought have taken hold? Could it even now have laid down roots in Jimmy’s trusting brain, burrowing deep so that when the first shock wore off and he’d managed to get some sleep, he’d wake up and believe it?
Jimmy wasn’t the kind of person to not trust his own thoughts. Me, I had thoughts all the time that I dismissed, knowing them to be warped, self-defeating, treacherous. Intrusive thoughts which feel like your own, but they aren’t, not really. They’ve muscled their way into your brain and dressed up as your thoughts. ‘Your mother was a whore’， ‘you want to fuck that old man until he collapses’， you know the kind of thing. Jimmy won’t know not to trust his thoughts because when has he ever had a thought so scary or perverse that he’s come to understand that his brain isn’t always his ally? If he wondered whether I somehow played a part in Caro’s death, then why would he question it? His brain had come up with the seed, would that be enough for him to run with it?
I hoped I hadn’t betrayed myself in front of the policeman. He was still watching me, waiting for my answer. Outside, the sun was rising ever higher in the sky.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘How can I help everyone?’
*
I was taken to the police station in Battersea, and made a mental note not to cross the river again any time soon. Drunk men stumbled about in red chinos, drunk girls fell off balconies. Nothing good happens there.
Despite the carefully curated oatmeal atmosphere – constant offerings of tea, a cheery woman behind the desk offering to get me a jumper – everything suddenly felt like a trap. Why weren’t me, Jimmy, and that bland friend of Caro’s huddled together, sharing our shock, explaining the night and then being released to go and recover together? I was led into an interview room that looked exactly like it might have been hastily built for a mediocre ITV crime drama and left there for fifteen minutes. I looked around for a mirrored wall where someone would potentially be observing me, or an obvious microphone designed to catch out a weak criminal prone to blurting out his deeds when given five minutes alone, but there was nothing. Just me and the weak tea I was pretty much forced to accept. Why offer tea when you’re facing prison? Give me some vodka and at least I could have some fun when the questions get going.
When the door finally opened it wasn’t Detective Barker but a young woman wearing a polo neck and a silk skirt. Both her gender and her outfit exposed the internalised misogyny that I would normally give myself a pass on because how does anyone grow up not absorbing it at least a little? I do wince at the sight of a female pilot though. Not sure I can let myself off for that.
The detective, upon closer inspection wasn’t so young, but she wasn’t exactly a grizzled Jane Tennison type either. No wedding ring. Nice nails. I wondered what red that is, Crimson Tide? I was always on the lookout for the perfect red.
‘Hello, Grace. I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, we’ve been a bit all over the shop this morning, Sundays aren’t normally as busy as today. All our cells are full and we’re playing catch up. I’m Gemma Adebayo and my colleague joining us is Sandra Chisholm.’ As she talked, a dumpy blonde woman in regulation police garb slipped into the room and sat down next to Adebayo. She smiled tightly.
‘We’re just here to have a chat about the sad events of this morning. It’s not under caution or anything like that, Grace, it’s just to get a statement so that we understand the chain of events and hopefully get some peace for Caroline’s family.’ Gemma raised her eyebrows in what I took to be an encouraging gesture and started the tape recorder, stating the date, time, and people present.
I spoke slowly, explaining everything that had happened at the party. I told the officers that Caro was drinking heavily, taking drugs, and that she’d seemed edgy, wound up and nervous. I didn’t tell them anything we talked about, instead I said that we had a drunken chat about weddings and dresses, as though we were mates bonding over her special day. That seemed like something a bride would do at her engagement party with the best friend of her betrothed. That is, if the bride was a normal basic girl excited to have invites designed featuring love birds and gold embossed lettering and not an entitled mess marrying my best friend just because she wanted someone to love her who wasn’t her father. Christ, what is wrong with women that they demand so little? ‘Not your father’ seemed like a low fucking bar. Does anyone have a father that doesn’t disappoint in some low level but ultimately incredibly damaging way? Oscar Wilde （him again） once said, ‘All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.’ There’s too much that’s wrong with this to unpack but just to say, he’d have been better off looking at the men who end up like their fathers. You’d come closer to fixing the problems of society if you focused your search there.