Her hair had started to thin shortly after she first became a woman. When she was recovering from her night with the knife. She tried to grow it long at first, brush over the places where it was thinning, but eventually that got too much. So she shaved the lot off and wore a wig. Long and black, thick and matted. Sometimes, if she was at home by herself, she didn’t bother with it, just kept her bald head uncovered. But she didn’t do that for too long because it began to confuse her and make her depressed. If she was a woman, she should have hair. That was all there was to it. So she wore the wig. It was old and tatty, but she restyled it regularly, brushing the knots out and trying to cover the bare patches. Usually she managed, but sometimes she couldn’t and had to wear her outdoor scarf indoors just to keep it in place.
Her hands left her head, came down the sides of her face. She kept it shaved, as smooth as possible. That was the way her husband liked it. And there was no excuse. There was no shortage of blades in the house.
Then over her shoulders and down her chest to her breasts. She knew she was touching her nipples because she could see herself doing it in the mirror, but she couldn’t feel it. She pushed harder, stuck her nails into the flesh until it went white. But she still felt nothing. That dark feeling came over her again. She knew it would once her hands were on her tits. It always did.
It reminded her of the night with the knife and what happened afterwards. She had taken the blade to herself when she could no longer bear his words. His voice. That taunting, raging voice. Their father’s voice. Telling Hester what he was, what he wasn’t. Hitting him. Hurting him. And then turning to Hester’s sister. Smiling. Because she was the special one. He made no secret of that. He did special things with her, from when she was tiny. Hester hated him for it. He hated what the man did to his sister. But even worse, he hated the fact that he didn’t do it to him. Because Hester wasn’t special the way she was. And never would be.
His sister hated her father so much she tried to leave and didn’t care how she did it. She got away. But Hester stayed. Then it all changed. She couldn’t remember exactly what happened. Every time she thought back, it got hazier and hazier. Like she had wiped it out of her mind. But she knew some things. Her father disappeared. And then her husband appeared. And they became so close that she began to hear him in her head. His voice in her head all the time. Like he wasn’t just next to her, he was inside her, part of her. She liked that. That was what love was supposed to be.
She remembered something else too. Something he had said when he first appeared and saw her naked:
Hester was taken to see people who knew what to do with bodies, how to make them different. They had done things to themselves and proudly displayed their work to her. Bodies shaved, tattooed, branded. Pieces, sometimes important ones, missing and parts stuck on. Metal lizard spikes implanted in their arms or steel balls under their skin. Tongues cut and forked like snakes.
They took her out, introduced her to others. Took her to clubs where she watched people on stage having their mouths and eyelids sewn up, getting cut and stitched, being whipped, suspended over the audience by hooks through their skin and bleeding on the watchers below. People hurting themselves for other people’s amusement. For the first time in Hester’s life, surrounded by freaks and outsiders, the mutilated and the modified, she felt like she belonged.
But it wasn’t to last. What she needed doing was relatively easy. Her own handiwork was cleaned up and she was given breasts. It wasn’t a very good operation, happening as it did in the back room of a specialist club in east London, but it worked. She was asked if she wanted a vagina instead of the scarred gash she had created, but her husband decided that wasn’t necessary. One hole was enough for him, he said.
And then it was back to the house, and life with her husband.
And here she was. She ran her hands over the stubby, scarred area at the tops of her thighs, between her legs. Where Hester should have had a womb, there was just an aching, painful void. She put her hand once more over where her heart should be, felt only insensitive scar tissue. Barren. Just a cruel joke of a woman.
The darkness was beginning to fall inside her once more. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t allow it. Not now, not today. Because today was special. Today was the day that her new baby arrived.
She managed a smile at the thought. The new baby.
Hester closed her eyes, the earlier blackness disappearing. It would soon be time for her husband to go to work. Then she would get things ready for when he came back. She would dress up in her good frock, make a nice dinner. Might even have a bath. Get herself all nice and prepared for the baby. Ready to be a proper mother. Because that was what it had all been for. The journey she had taken, the pain she had endured. All for this. To be a proper woman. A proper mother.
A proper family.
38
‘Right,’ said Phil, ‘earpiece and throat mic.’ He tucked the wire behind his ear, pointed to the desk Marina was sitting at. There was a receiver and a microphone built into a console in front of her. ‘Comes through here.You want to talk to me, flick that switch. I’ll hear you, Brotherton won’t.’
Marina managed a small smile. ‘I do remember, you know.’
He paused, looked at her. She could see from his smile that her response had jolted him out of his professional mode for a few seconds, broken through that thin veneer that separated their feelings from their ability to function as work colleagues. She didn’t want that to happen. Certainly not now.
‘Just get it over with,’ she said. ‘And we can move on.’
‘Words to live by,’ said Phil.
Marina didn’t answer him.
‘So,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘same neurolinguistic interview techniques we used last time?’
‘Why not?’ said Marina. ‘Stick with what works.’
She nodded, looked down once more at the folder before her, trying to familiarise herself with what was in there even though she had gone over it countless times and was as prepared as she could ever be. To an extent it didn’t matter what was in the file or what notes she had made. She had to follow the interview, be in the moment, ready to interject only if she thought Phil had missed something or felt a line of enquiry could be pursued further.
‘Look,’ said Phil, ‘before, with Fenwick…’
‘Let’s not think about it,’ she said, looking up.
Phil nodded. ‘Right. He’s a tit at the best of times. Even worse under pressure.’
She smiled. ‘I agree.’
The observation room was functional. The desk was anonymous, blond wood and metal that could have come from any office in any enterprise park in the country. It was a clone of the one Marina had had in her university office. The walls were two tones of beige, the carpet industrial grey, matching the filing cabinet. There were two office chairs, black, adjustable and with arm rests, both well used. Overhead strip lights provided illumination; a desk lamp added more directed lighting. The room was cramped and airless but not oppressive; for one thing, the two-way mirror into the adjacent interview room acted like a window. But the main reason for the lack of stuffiness was the function of the room itself. There was a crackle of energy round the walls that came not just from the nylon carpet, but because whoever used the room did so for the sole purpose of controlling the lives of others. And with that control came power, which in its turn bestowed superiority. It could become a rush, a thrill, if allowed to. Marina could imagine why so many police came across as arrogant.
But not Phil, thankfully. Beside her, he busied himself with his wires and battery pack. He wasn’t having much success. Every time he pushed the pack down into his waistband, his earpiece pulled loose.
‘Bugger…’
‘Oh, give it here.’
Marina stood up, took the earpiece from his fingers. She stood directly in front of him and fitted it into his ear, holding it there with two fingers. ‘Plug it in now,’ she said.
Phil reached round to the small of his back, pushed the battery pack into the waistband of his trousers. Marina adjusted the wire behind his ear, smoothing it down the side of his neck. She was aware of his breathing, of the warmth of his skin. She wasn’t aware that she had stopped breathing.
