“Yes, I’m here too,” said Tabitha. She walked the length of the hall and into the little wing reserved for showers. The showers were in a row of stalls. Along the far wall was a wooden bench and hooks. Women were pulling clothes on and off. The tiled floor was wet and there was the smell of soap and sweat and bodies. She had a memory of school changing rooms that was so pungent that it hurt. She slowly took her clothes off, looking at the wall so she didn’t catch anyone’s eye. Before she took off her knickers, she wrapped herself in the thin worn towel, like a shy teenager on a beach, and then eased them down.
Inside a free stall she pulled the curtain across and hung the towel from a hook. She turned the tap and a tiny trickle of water emerged from the showerhead. She tried to twist the tap further but it wouldn’t go.
“You need to bang it,” said a voice. “Bang the pipe.”
She tapped the pipe. Nothing happened.
“Harder,” said the voice. “Really hard.”
She made a fist and hit the pipe. There was a little spluttering, coughing sound and the trickle became a faint stream, just enough to wet herself all over. But there was nothing good about it, nothing to lose herself in, nothing to comfort her.
Two
“This way.” The warden was solid with a bored expression. When she walked, her feet slapped down, flat and hard.
“What?”
“Your brief’s waiting.”
“My brief?”
“Your lawyer. You were told about this yesterday.”
Tabitha couldn’t remember that. But then she couldn’t remember much of yesterday, nor of the days preceding it. Everything was a jumble of faces, eyes staring, questions she couldn’t answer, words she couldn’t make sense of, people saying her name over and over again—her name and her address and her date of birth and then pieces of paper pushed toward her, machines clicked on to record what she was saying, long corridors and strip lighting, doors and keys and bars.
“In the visitors’ room,” the woman was saying. Keys jangled at her waist. “It’s not a day for visiting.”
The visitors’ room was large and square and too brightly lit. There were small tables in rows with a chair on either side, two vending machines by the wall. The room was empty except for a middle-aged woman who was sitting at one of the tables with her laptop in front of her. She took off her glasses and rubbed her round face and then replaced them, frowning as she read. As Tabitha approached, she looked up and briefly smiled, then stood and held out her hand, which was strong and warm. She had peppery-gray hair and a steady gaze and Tabitha felt a surge of hope. This woman would sort everything out.
“I’m Mora Piozzi,” she said. “I’ve been asked to represent you.”
“What happened to the other one?” He’d been young and cheerful in a blustery, unreassuring way.
“He was the duty solicitor. He referred your case to me.”
They both sat and faced each other, their chairs scratching across the linoleum.
“How are you?” asked Mora Piozzi.
“How am I?” Tabitha resisted the urge to shout at her. What kind of question was that? “I’m locked up in prison and I don’t know what’s happening.”
“It’s my job to bring clarity to this and to help you.”
“Right.”
“First things first. You need to tell me if you agree to me representing you.”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ve got your prison number, in case you haven’t been issued it yet.”
“A prison number? But I’ll be out of here soon. Why do I need a number?”
“Here.”
She pushed a card across to Tabitha, who read it out loud: “AO3573.” She looked up. “So I’m a number now.”
“It’s just bureaucracy. You’ll need it for people who are going to visit.”
“Visit?”
“As a remand prisoner you’re entitled to have up to three visitors a week. Has nobody explained all this?”
“Everything’s a bit of a blur.”
Mora Piozzi nodded. “It’s hard at first.”
“I just want to leave here as quickly as possible.”
“Of course. Which is why I am here. But, Tabitha, you do understand what the charge is?”
“I know what they say I did.”
“Good. So this is what we’re going to do today: I am going to lay out the summary of the case against you. And then you are going to tell me, in your own words, what happened on the twenty-first of December.”
“Can I ask something first?”
“Of course.”
“What day is it today?”
“Wednesday, the ninth of January.”
“I see.”
Christmas had gone by, and New Year’s Eve, and now she was in another year and another world.
“So,” said Mora Piozzi, looking down at her laptop. “In brief: you are charged with the murder of Stuart Robert Rees, on Friday the twenty-first of December, between the hours of ten-forty in the morning and three-thirty in the afternoon.”
“Why?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why those times?”
Piozzi flicked through her notes.
“There’s a CCTV camera. It’s attached to the village shop. His car drove past it.” She looked down at her laptop. “At ten thirty-four. And as you know, his body was discovered at half past four that day.”
“Yes,” said Tabitha faintly. She paused. “But there’s a spare hour then, between half past three and half past four.”
“I understand the forensic pathologist is satisfied that Rees had been dead at least an hour when his body was discovered.”
Piozzi continued speaking in a low, calm voice, as if it was all routine. “His body was found by Andrew Kane in a shed outside your back door, wrapped in plastic sheeting. You were in the house at the time of discovery. Stuart Rees’s car was parked round the back of your house, out of sight of the road. He had been stabbed multiple times by a knife, but the cause of death was the slashing of his carotid artery.” She looked up. “That’s in his neck. His blood was all over you and all over the sofa where you were sitting.”
“But that was from after he was dead,” said Tabitha.
Piozzi tapped on the keyboard of her laptop. “The
