I didn’t do it. I was going to, but I did not. There are two very good reasons why it wasn’t me: first it happened two days earlier than planned; second, I didn’t do it.
I should say this. Explain so they stop this process of bringing me in for questioning, which feels a very small, pigeon-type step away from being arrested.
‘No!’ says Mum loudly. In two steps she is by my side, and her hand clamps on the arm of the uniformed police officer. ‘She didn’t do it,’ she says. ‘It was me. It was me. I did it. Not her.’ The plain-clothes officer stares at the lady with the honey-blonde streaks in her greying hair, who is about to start wrestling with a man twice her height and probably five times her strength. ‘It was me. I did it.’
The uniformed officer plucks my mother off himself like she is an annoying but insignificant insect, and places her a little distance away.
When I was a child I had nightmares that someone was going to come and take me away. I wasn’t ‘real’, I didn’t belong here, maybe I would be taken somewhere else. Sometimes it was the police, sometimes it was a big faceless monster that lived in the bright, blinding spaces that made up my pain. Sometimes it was my ‘real’ parents; people I didn’t know who wanted to steal me away from the only life I’d ever known and force me to live in a strange place, away from the people I loved. In these dreams, when this would be happening, my mother would be shouting and screaming that they couldn’t take me, that I was hers and they should take her instead.
This is my nightmare: I’m being taken away and my mother is screaming.
‘Mum, please don’t.’ That stops the uniformed officer: he looks at me, looks at Mum and then looks at me again. The other officer obviously knows the score since he doesn’t react at all. ‘Mum, just don’t.’
‘But it was me,’ she says. ‘I did it. Arrest me, it was me who did it.’
This is my mother’s nightmare, too. The thing she has feared more than anything is happening: someone is taking me away from her. It isn’t my original parents as she probably always thought it would be, but the police.
‘Nobody is under arrest,’ the plain-clothes officer states. ‘It’s merely questioning.’
‘Please.’ She turns to him, hands linked together, begging, pleading. ‘Please, please. I did it. I know exactly how it was done and when. It was me, please. Take me.’
‘We have your daughter’s fingerprints on the murder weapon and other parts of the room where they shouldn’t have been. There are no others that haven’t been accounted for.’
That stops Mum. She focuses on me. ‘When did the police get your fingerprints?’ Mum asks.
My gaze flicks to Seth, who is standing in the bay window, rooted to the spot with horror. He knew this would happen if I did it and this is the reality he doesn’t want to deal with.
‘We were arrested once on a protest march,’ Seth says after clearing his throat of the fear that has clogged it up. ‘We … we accepted a caution even though we didn’t do anything.’
My mother swings towards him. ‘You! You did this? You’re the one who got my daughter’s fingerprints on record so now she’s being treated like a criminal?’
‘Mum, it’s not his fault. And you can’t stop this. It’s all a big misunderstanding. I didn’t do it and the police will find that out as soon as we get to the station.’
‘I know you didn’t do it. I did.’
I return to looking at my husband. ‘I didn’t do this,’ I mouth at him.
‘I know,’ he mouths back with a nod.
I move my head slightly, nodding towards my mother. ‘Please,’ I mouth again.
‘Mrs Smittson.’ Seth comes to life and goes to my mother. ‘Mrs Smittson, please, come. Come.’ He gently takes her arm and she struggles against him, wanting to come back to where I am. ‘This isn’t helping Clem,’ he says to her. He moves his head, trying to get her to focus on him so the police officers can take me. ‘Please, come here with me and I’ll drive us both to the police station.’ She finally looks at him. ‘Yes? OK? OK?’
‘They can’t take her,’ Mum says to Seth. She’s begging him.
‘It’s only questioning, not an arrest. We’ll get her back. And when we do, they won’t be able to take her again,’ Seth says. ‘OK?’
He’s making sense to her: her body sags in resignation, and she doesn’t look at me. She probably can’t. Seth nods at me and the police officers.
‘We’ll see you later,’ Seth says. He takes my mother in his arms and holds her close as the plain-clothes officer asks if I’m ready to go.
I nod instead of speaking. I’d love to pretend that the reason I don’t speak is so it can’t be used against me at some point. In reality, my mouth barely works, my throat feels like it is fused shut because I am scared. I am terrified of what is going to happen next. I am thirty-seven, I have lived long enough to know that people get sent down all the time for crimes they have not committed.
To prove I’m innocent I’ll have to tell them that I was going to do it but I never got the chance. Is that intent to kill? To prove I’m innocent I may have to confess to what might amount to another crime, which may or may not get me into just as much trouble.
I’m staying silent, not saying anything because I’m scared that I am going to get done for something I never got the chance to do. Is this the Universe’s way of telling me that the decision I made was the wrong one? That I shouldn’t have even thought about committing the ultimate crime, even if it was what the victim wanted.