or
Sir; that sticks in my craw. I have a lot to tell you, a lot you need to know, to understand. It’s all at my fingertips. I kept a journal, you see, put it all in there, an attempt to make sense of things, navigate the nightmare. Impressions, thoughts, notes of everything I wanted to say to you. So, I will send those letters, and then when I am ready, you will answer my questions. They began that night almost four years ago, and like the hatred they have grown and multiplied. So much I still do not know. Because you denied the crime, contested the charge, because you lied and lied and lied. Two questions haunt me most:
Why did you kill her? And
How did she die?I doubt whether you have the slightest inkling of what it’s been like for me. Too busy saving your own skin. So I am going to tell you. You will hear it in full, no interruptions, no arguments. The whole of it: 3D, with director’s commentary and extra scenes.
Brace yourself.
Ruth
17 Brinks Avenue
Manchester
M19 6FX
It starts with a phone call. Or should I say it ends there? Because that is the point of no return. The moment my world slips on its axis.
That fine September evening, 2009, I am home alone as usual. My latest short-term lodger has returned to London and I’ve no one else booked in. I was out the night before with my friend Bea, to the cinema. District 9, the thriller about aliens and prejudice in South Africa. My Saturday unrolls with a comforting routine: a lie-in until nine (the best I can muster with my advancing age – I am fifty-seven), a trip to the newsagent for the weekend Guardian and a slow breakfast reading it, my cat Milky curled on my lap.
A walk to the village for fish. It’s not been a village in that isolated, hamlet sort of way for decades, but we do that here: Levenshulme village, Withington, Didsbury, Chorlton. Perhaps because the joining-up of all the villages to form the city is relatively recent. A couple of hundred years ago and ‘the village’ was a handful of farms and a toll road. Now it’s just another neighbourhood in Manchester, Britain’s second city.
I’m not working at the library today: I do every other Saturday, but it’s my weekend off. After some chores – washing sheets and hanging them out to dry, emptying the litter tray, cleaning the sink – I eat lunch, then go up to the allotment. We’ve had it for years; officially the tenants are Frank and Jan, but when they first got hold of it, they invited Melissa and Mags and Tony and me to join in. It felt less overwhelming than tackling it on their own, as it was completely overgrown, a wilderness of dock leaves and brambles and dandelions. The division of labour between six of us worked well on the whole, especially as crises occurred every so often, affecting people’s availability. Then last year Frank and Jan moved to Cornwall and Tony and I had been divorced for years, so we were down to three. Neither of the others are here this afternoon, though I can see from the state of the beds that they’ve harvested some potatoes recently.
