I spent the next week feeling like I’d been turned inside out. Nothing made sense, every step I took was off balance, and for every minute I spent hiding in my room, I spent an hour in some office or other, whether it was at Bellfield or the police station.
Ade had been painfully true to her word, with the police arriving the morning after my admission, prepared but not fully ready to believe my story. For the first few hours they had me going over the full events time and again, the same questions, the same loaded comments, until I was convinced that they were trying to make me slip up. But as all I had to tell them was the truth, they seemed to leave a little disappointed.
It wasn’t easy going over it all again. I was still feeling raw from the night before, so to own up to my own stupidity again so quickly felt like I was being rubbed with sandpaper. It didn’t help that Ade was nowhere to be seen, leaving me with Bex, who’d explained that Ade had ‘other things to attend to’.
What other stuff? She’d told me she was going to sort everything out, only to scarper the next day. Bex supported me, reining the police in when they pushed too hard, but I missed Ade and the fact that she believed me so implicitly. I couldn’t help but wonder if Bex thought I’d played my part in what had gone on.
Once the initial interview was over, the police promised to pick up Hobson straight away, so I retreated to my room, forcing myself to plug back into the Walkman and my own words. I was desperate now, needed to be out of here so quickly that I’d do anything to speed the process along. And as Ade wasn’t about to talk to, this was the only option I had.
The week crawled along in the same way. I was buffeted from meeting to meeting, seeing new officers, new psychologists. Even Evelyn pitched up, the first time I’d seen her since she deposited me at Bellfield. Not that she was hugely engaged, more disappointed that I was with Bex and not Eric. I swear her lipstick faded as she clocked us.
There were results from the endless meetings – important ones. The police picked up Hobson quickly and questioned him for hours. He’d been suspended from school and they were researching his family details, whether his mum was alive or dead.
I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted the answers to be. What was more difficult to accept? That he was a manipulator, or that I’d have to let go of my own feelings of guilt?
Bex was adamant, just as Ade had been, that it was all his fault, so I had to put my faith in them and wait it out.
I think this would’ve been bearable if the others at Bellfield hadn’t worked out what was going on. Community meetings became torture, a daily opportunity for Naomi to dig away, telling whoever would listen that they had a right to know what was going on. At least in the meeting she did it in an articulate way; for the other twenty-three and a quarter hours she was in my face and behind my back. There were taunts and insinuations that I’d ‘killed again’, notes shoved under my door asking me where the bodies were buried. She was grinding me down to the point where I considered telling everyone what I’d done. Keeping it secret didn’t seem so important any more.
Support came in an unlikely shape: the lumbering frame of Jimmy. He’d piped up for me in the community meeting that one time, but outside that session he’d been his normal distracted and elusive self. He was a proper Houdini who’d disappear for hours on end, which used to drive Eric to distraction, as he had to spend most of his shifts liaising with the police or combing the streets for him. I often thought Jimmy was playing him, because just as Eric was on the verge of panic Jimmy would materialize, phone clamped to his ear, eyes bulging with adrenalin or some other kind of high.
‘Where have you been, Jim?’ Eric would plead, but Jimmy’s answer was always the same. ‘Jammin’ with mates. No biggie, just jammin’.’
I asked Eric one day if he thought it was true. Not that Jimmy had friends outside of Bellfield, but whether the whole music thing was in any way real.
‘I used to worry about it when he first arrived, but not any more. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter for now. It’s important to him and it gives him security. Once he knows he’s safe here, he’ll let us in.’
There were occasions when I wanted to push Jimmy on it myself, but that didn’t seem fair. I did discover where he spent time during his disappearing acts, though: the laundry room in the basement. It was a grotty narrow space, even more non-descript than my room, the only decoration being half a dozen industrial washer/driers and a gallery of mould on the walls. Hardly the kind of place to linger, unless you were Jimmy.
I’d often find him there, backed up against the wall, eyes fixed as the clothes swirled round. It was like he was watching the telly. His eyes never left the screen, even when I was loading the machine next to his. He was so mesmerized that I found myself sliding down the wall next to him, focusing on the porthole as it tossed my clothes around, an untidy rainbow of socks and Dad’s shirts. We sat there for a few minutes, until I found my breathing had slowed beyond its normal anxious patter. Was this what it offered him? A bit of peace? Each time I found him in there I sat next to him for a while, wondering if he knew I was even there.
It must have been on the fifth occasion that he finally spoke to me, when his machine reached the end of its cycle, breaking the spell.
‘Sweet,’ he whispered, stretching as I used to do when a film reached a satisfactory ending. ‘Can’t beat it, can you?’
I nodded, stretching my mouth into a confused smile.
‘I’m not surprised you like it too. First time I saw you I knew we were alike, me and you.’
‘That right?’ I asked.
‘Too right. You’ve got it, you see, just like I have.’
I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘Got what?’
His arms blurred as he formed this dramatic X shape in front of him.
‘The X-factor, mate, that something special. And that’s the problem, you feel me? That’s why the other two are gunning for you, just like they do me. Jealousy, mate, jealousy.’
He pushed himself to his feet in a long fluid movement, the veins in his arms pulsing with the effort.
‘I’ve seen it before. Seen what they do to people like us. It’s not pretty. Not pretty at all.’ He fixed me with his eyes, until I swear he was looking inside my head, at all the anxieties rattling round inside. ‘But don’t you worry about it. The only thing you need to know is that I’ve got your back. Remember that and everything will be sweet.’
As the words ended so did his gaze, his attention flicking back to his phone, the screen blank as always. ‘I’ve got to be somewhere. Take it easy. I’ll catch you later.’ And he strode towards the door, his fingers strumming an imaginary guitar at his side.
I didn’t know what to think or do after that. Part of me wanted to laugh, while in some ridiculous way I felt reassured and protected. It felt good, whatever it was, so in celebration I slid to the floor and let the washer give me some therapy, Jimmy style.