Sue sat in her lounge on the sofa in the dark. All was quiet. She had no idea how long she had been sitting there – just that when she had first sat down it had been light and now it wasn’t. Her body ached all over, her head throbbed, her eyes would hardly focus. She knew she should move, do something, go and get a drink or something to eat, watch TV, read a book, go to bed. Instead she sat.
Was she grieving and, if so, for what? For the insects: suffocated, squashed, trampled? Was she worried about the project? – six months of work spoiled, like she’d told Mark – or Dougie and Gemma’s disapproval? Or not being able to get more funding? It was none of those things. The insects were always destined to die and the technicians had been brilliant at cleaning up; one hour on and you wouldn’t even have known that a massacre had taken place in that white-washed, sterile, high-ceilinged hangar. And the sludge arrived on time. In any event, her research was pretty much there, even with this setback.
No, it was something else bubbling up, something she’d suppressed for so long. She’d been to Yellowstone National Park last year; the trip of a lifetime. She’d hiked and camped and embarked upon early morning and late night treks, seeking wildlife. She’d seen bears and otters and herds of bison, bald eagles and moose. But what had fascinated her most were the geysers, super-heated water below the Earth’s surface, biding its time, waiting for the right moment to force its way up and out into the light. She’d sat by Old Faithful for the best part of an afternoon, making her own predictions about when it might break the surface.
And so it was with Sue, deep down inside – her own geyser, about to blow; the mistake, being mistaken. Why did people say that to you? Tell you you were wrong when they knew you were right and they were the ones at fault. Why couldn’t they be honest? Why couldn’t they say: We know you’re telling the truth, but it’s your word against ours. Or: We know you’re telling the truth, but we have too much to lose. Or: We know you’re telling the truth, but it won’t help anyone. Or: We know you’re telling the truth, but sometimes it’s better to keep quiet and move on. Any of those things would be better than what they did say; that you were mistaken. And why? They did it to belittle you? To make you doubt yourself, doubt your own sanity? To validate their own behaviour and diminish yours?
She hadn’t been mistaken about what she’d seen and heard all those years before – another life snuffed out too early, another person gasping for breath – and she bitterly regretted her silence.
She hadn’t been mistaken about the deliberate sabotage of her project either. The police, accepting there was an additional, unaccounted for sign-in to the building overnight, telling her that, if it was unauthorised, that was her problem. There was no forced entry, they said. And no damage to any equipment; nothing stolen. It was an internal matter, they said. Someone had a security pass left over, hadn’t handed it in, had asked for a duplicate and forgotten to cancel the first. It could be anyone, they said. And why would an intruder want to mess with her project, when there were plenty of valuables in the lab to steal?
It was funny how they had put her last out of the panellists on the prosecution witness list for Nick Demetriou’s trial. There was no logical reason. If they’d listed everyone alphabetically, even by last name, she’d have come ahead of Zoe. Or age; she sat in the middle. Or gender; they’d taken the two other women panellists first. It was significance. They considered Sue’s evidence insignificant. First mistaken, now insignificant. Were you mistaken because you were insignificant to begin with or did your mistake consign you to a future of insignificance?
And then now, this afternoon, the final straw, the lawyer walking past her on his way out of court, without so much as a glance in her direction. The one who’d been so charming when he wanted something. You just come to court and say what you saw. No thought for how anxious that might make her feel, how exposed, how vulnerable. So she’d conquered her fears, she’d reminded herself it was her civic duty, she’d arranged her schedule to take off the time, she’d had the stupid conversation with the farmer.
I thought you needed me, she’d said, when everything had gone quiet and she’d been left sitting there outside a locked courtroom and she’d called the lawyer and been put through by his secretary. No thanks had been the response. We think your evidence has been covered by other witnesses after all. We don’t want to trouble you any further. Our mistake. At least it was their mistake and not hers. But this time, it was a really big mistake. Because Sue did have something new to say, something to tell them all, which no one else had covered or was likely to know. Something connected to that boiling water under pressure, bubbling and seething and almost breaking through.
Sue’s phone rang, somewhere far away, in the depths of her bag. She ignored it, but the sound roused her from her reverie. She registered properly now, for the first time, that darkness had swept down and enveloped the room. She rose, rolled back her shoulders, leaned over and switched on the lamp. Then she grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.