We sit holding hands, Aoife and I, while the first police officer speaks and the second looks on with bored indifference. Turns out the police did care about us after all and I don’t know if we are more scared of them or of Alf when he finds out.
‘Do you know Alf Waites?’ the officer asks. The interview room feels hot, claustrophobic. The smell of smoke seems ingrained in the wooden edges of the worn tables, and the stale stench of previous occupants permeates every pore.
We nod.
‘How did you meet him?’
Aoife squeezes my hand. ‘He owns a café we go to, by the front.’
‘Do you spend a lot of time there?’ He smiles, trying to disguise the importance of the question.
‘Yes, after school mostly. Why do you want to know?’
‘Your social workers have raised a few concerns over the …’ he pauses, ‘… relationship you have with Mr Waites.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it. He’s a friend. We are allowed friends, you know.’
‘Were you ever there alone with him after closing? Or say, at his flat?’
I freeze. How could the social workers know we go there? I try to think of anything we could have done to give the game away, but we always look clean, we don’t have bruises and we don’t skip much school. And anyway, why do they care – being at Alf’s means that we’re out most of the time, so surely that’s two less problem kids to deal with?
Our hands feel hot, sweat sticking them together. The policeman repeats his question. ‘Do you ever go to Mr Waites’s house?’
‘Sometimes.’ Aoife’s tone is guarded and rightly so, as I catch a flicker of interest in the second officer’s face. I give Aoife a look to warn her, but whether she doesn’t see or she doesn’t care, I don’t know.
‘Are you ever there alone with just Alf?’
‘Yes. What of it?’ Aoife replies.
I’ve heard that tone so many times before I know it means the mist has come down, that whatever happens next is not going to be under her control.
‘What did you do when you were there after closing?’
Aoife takes her hand out of mine, leans across the table. ‘Fuck,’ she spits.
The lack of shock on the police officers’ faces should tell us something, but all I can think is, Aoife, don’t ruin it. Don’t take it away from us by telling. They’ll separate us and I’ll be alone again.
The police officer asks more questions but by now Aoife’s anger has made her mute and the fear in my belly has rendered me the same. What is Alf going to say? Will they arrest him? Will he send people to hurt us because we told? But then I have a thought – it wasn’t me who told. I was asked by Harriet and I didn’t say a word. I did what he asked; it was Aoife who didn’t, she is the one to blame.
And in that second, the seed of doubt which has been growing with the baby – the fear she will love me less, the baby more – turns into a gap, just a chink, but I know it can grow to divide us: me one side, Aoife the other, Alf in the middle. Which way will I jump – towards her, or him? And sitting here in the stuffy room with two leering policemen staring at us like specimens in a jar, panic tearing at my heart, I don’t think I know.