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JC: Yes.
FM: Have you seen her since the case?
JC: No.
FM: Do you miss her?
He looks at me, and his eyes are burning with something.
JC: I miss her every day. I miss the months we haven’t had together and I miss the future I thought we
were going to have, because without her it feels pointless, it feels, just, totally flat. Fuck!
This is the kind of candid answer I’ve been waiting for. I hold my breath and I wait because he
needs to pull himself together again before we continue. Then I proceed very carefully.
FM: OK. I’m going to give you another name.
He just looks at me, bruised and weary eyes have a note of defeat in them now. He is playing my
game. He feels as if he’s being beaten, but he’s not.
FM: Joanna May.
JC: I should have seen it when I interviewed her. I’ll never forgive myself for that. Never.
FM: You’re not responsible for what Joanna May did to that child.
JC: If I could have ended it earlier that would have made a difference, at least spared Ben Finch that
night in the woods.
FM: You’re not responsible.
JC: But I’m responsible for making the wrong decision, for going after Nicky Forbes. That was my
call.
FM: As I understand it that was a joint decision with DCI Fraser.
JC: It was me who had the hunger for it. I thought it was her, so I went after her. It was the wrong call.
I humiliated myself.
FM: I’m going to give you one more name. You’re doing well.
He flinches as if he knows what I’m going to say.
FM: Benedict Finch.
JC: I should have been there for him. In the woods. At the end. It should have been me.
FM: Why does that matter so much to you?
JC: Because all along it was all about him. It was about his suffering, because we all knew he was.
And I missed my chance to prevent that and I missed my chance to be there for him at the end.
FM: Do you think it might have helped, if you were there?
JC: I wanted to be with him, to comfort him.