The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [65]
I was asked afterwards by a Dorset policeman what Jess and I had discussed during the five hours she spent with me, and I said I couldn’t remember because it wouldn’t have been anything important. Jess wasn’t the type to ask questions, and I had already said more than I wanted to. Jess wouldn’t have remembered either…
I REMEMBER the conversation I had with Peter later. He had no such inhibitions about asking questions, particularly when Jess wasn’t present. He’d already filled in most of the gaps from what he’d read about my abduction, and reached a number of valid conclusions from my behaviour since.
He told me that my fear of him had been very pronounced from the beginning, although I didn’t seem to realize I was showing it. It was an involuntary withdrawal—holding myself in a rigid posture, always maintaining a healthy distance, crossing my arms as soon as I saw him, never sitting down when he was standing—yet I showed none of the same aversion towards Jess.
At times I even allowed her to sit beside me, although never close enough for accidental touching. According to Peter, an immature woman, who had difficulty expressing emotion, was my perfect companion. I might have longed for someone with more sensitivity and insight, but I couldn’t have coped with the threat they posed. “If that had been the case you’d have stayed with your mother,” he pointed out. “She’d have put her arms around you and coaxed out the truth…but that’s not what you wanted.”
“Sometimes I think Jess is the most perceptive person I’ve ever met. She always knows when not to be curious.”
“But she’s still a virtual stranger to you, Connie…and you’re not worried what strangers think. Few of us are. Self-image is about how the people we know and love perceive us, not the passing acquaintance whom we’re never going to meet again. For most of us the universe is very small.”
I thought how wrong he was. “Until your life is deconstructed across the pages of a newspaper.”
“Is that what you’re worried about?”
I didn’t answer immediately. His questions reminded me of Chas and Dan in Baghdad—“But you seem distressed, Connie”—“Talk to me”—and I understood why my father lost his temper when well-meaning people poked him with well-meaning sticks. There’s so much arrogance in curiosity. It suggests that nothing can surprise the listener, yet how would Peter have reacted if I’d let out the scream that had been in my head for weeks? How would Dan have reacted?
I hunkered down in my chair. “I keep thinking of all the proverbs to do with retribution. Reap what you sow…live by the sword…an eye for an eye. I wake up in the middle of the night with them churning round and round in my head. It seems so inevitable.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve made a career out of exploiting other people’s anguish. I keep remembering a Sierra Leonean woman who’d watched her family being slaughtered by rebels. By the time I met her she was so disturbed she was raving, but I didn’t think twice about using her for a story.” I paused. “It’ll be an apt punishment if the same thing happens to me.”
“I can’t agree with you.”
“You should. Everyone gets what they deserve in the end. It’ll happen to you, too, Peter. We all get paid in our own coin.”
“What’s yours?”
“Death. Disaster. Other people’s misery. I’m a war correspondent, for Christ’s sake.” I dug my fingers into my eyes. “Not that it makes much difference. It would be the same whatever kind of correspondent I was. There’s no such thing as a ‘good news’ story. Who gives a damn about happiness? It makes readers jealous to learn that someone’s better off than they are. Build ’em up ’n’ cut ’em down…that’s all your average Joe wants. If he can’t make it, why should anyone else?”
“That’s very cynical.”
“But I am cynical. I’ve seen too many innocent people die for nothing. Every tinpot dictator knows that