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wanted to say. It was self-protection. I hated myself for doing it, but what choice did I have, really?
She talked then, a slow stream of words and it was breaking her to say them.
‘Because I saw the photographs Rachel took, they were photographs of Ben. She loves him. I saw
it for the first time, how much she cares about him, because they’re such beautiful pictures and they
made me feel so guilty.’ She clutched at my arm. ‘I’m telling you because I don’t know what to do and
I want you to help me make it right. You won’t tell anybody, will you? I’ve stopped already. I won’t
do it again.’
‘You can’t come back from this. You cannot,’ I said, but she was pulling her handbag onto her lap,
digging through it.
‘I’ve got a personal email address for the author of the blog. We can track them down. I’ll get it for
you, I’ll get it now.’
She took her phone out. I could see that she had missed calls, but not who they were from, and she
ignored them, as she tried with trembling fingers to access her mailbox.
‘It’s gone too far. You can’t make it right.’
‘We don’t need to tell anybody else,’ she said. She looked pale and fearful, her eyes darting
nervously from me to the phone and back. ‘If you help me we can do it. We can get the blog removed.’
‘You not we. I didn’t do this, it’s got nothing to do with me, and actually you do need to tell them.
Look at me! You’re kidding yourself if you think you can get away with it. And you’re compromising
me just by telling me, let alone expecting me to help you!’
‘Please. I’ll lose my job.’ Her eyes were locked onto mine now, wide and wild with panic.
‘Do I really need to say that you should have thought of that earlier? What you leaked was spiteful,
wicked stuff. Jesus! And now you want me to put myself on the line for you. Do you have any idea
what you’re asking me to do?’
‘Jim.’ It was a plea. ‘I thought you would help me.’
‘I thought I knew you.’
She tried to reach out and touch my face, but as her fingers grazed my cheek I said, ‘Don’t,’ and she
withdrew her hand quickly, as if I’d scalded her.
I massaged my temples, and I felt an exhausted, debilitating sadness because I knew that this was
the end of us, and that I’d made my own bed on this one. It was my own fucking fault. End of.
She took another deep breath. ‘I did it because of what happened to my sister,’ she said, and I could
hear that there was bravery in her voice, that she was working up courage for what she was about to
say, but for me it was too late for that, because she’d betrayed the police force and the investigation,
betrayed Benedict Finch, and betrayed me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not interested. I don’t want to hear it.’
She opened her mouth to reply but something she saw in my face made her close it again, and her
features drained of hope.
‘Jim…⁠’ was all she managed.
‘No.’
I didn’t want to hear it because Emma wasn’t the person I thought she was, and I wouldn’t lie for
her.
She started working at her phone again, desperately tapping at the screen, and it was too much for
me; it was delusional.
I snatched the phone from her, opened the car window, threw it out and watched it clatter across the
pavement and break against the urine-stained wall, pieces of it scattering amongst dark black puddles,
fag butts and other unidentifiable scraps of filthy rubbish. A passer-by paused to give me a look and I