Chapter 56: Recognised
There were two letters.
Both came to Ruth's office, because my address is not public.
Ruth held them for four days before she gave them to me and told me I did not have to open either.
The first was one side of lined paper in blue biro, no signature, and it said that women like me should be sterilised.
I have read worse things in the comments under videos of matches I lost.
I put it in the bin at the bus stop rather than carry it home.
The second was from a woman forty miles away whose brother-in-law had done something at a wedding that nobody ever mentioned, and she had thought about it for nine years.
She did not ask me for anything. She just wanted somebody to have the sentence.
I did not reply, and I have thought about that since.
On the Tuesday a letter came from Margot Ashford's solicitors, which is a phrase I still find strange, because for three years she was a woman who told me where to put my hands.
It reminded me that the restraining order prohibited contact with the complainant, his mother, and his brother.
His brother.
That is how Julian appears in the legal documents of my life now.
As Damon's brother.
It reminded me that this included indirect contact through third parties and any communication on social media.
I do not have social media.
I have not had it since I was twenty-two, for reasons now printed on page eleven.
The week went like this.
Monday, eleven hours.
Tuesday, eleven hours.
Wednesday off, because Wednesday is when the agency runs a short shift and I could not get one.
Wednesday was the worst day of the week now and it had been the best one for three years.
Two hours, every Wednesday, for three years.
A corridor with a handrail on both sides.
Room fourteen.
Iris Penhale, who was ninety-one, and whose hands were the only hands I touched.
I cut her nails square.
She had been a machinist.
She said round nails were for women who did not work.
I was not allowed within a hundred metres of that building now.
I thought about writing to her and did not, because a letter would be indirect contact with premises operated by the family company, and because I did not know if she was still there.
That is what I mean about the shape of it. They did not have to do anything. The order did it.
On the Thursday somebody at the laundry said something in Portuguese to another woman and they both looked at me and laughed, and I found out four days later that it had been about the supervisor.
That is the thing nobody warns you about. Being recognised does not make people cruel to you. It makes you unable to tell.
On the Friday I finished at six and walked back because the bus is two pounds forty.
Ackerly Road runs north to south and the light at that hour comes straight down it and puts everything in silhouette.
There is a side door to my building between the dry cleaner's window and the alley with the bins. It has a wire-glass panel and a lock you have to lift.
There was a woman standing beside it.
She was not sheltering. There is no shelter there. She was standing with her back not quite against the wall, in the open, where I could see her from thirty metres.
I noted the distance because I note distances.
She was about my age or a little older. Shorter. A navy anorak with the hood down and her hair wet at the front.
She had a plastic bag in her left hand with a folded newspaper in it, and I could see the corner of page eleven through the plastic.
Her shoes were dark across the toes. She had been standing there long enough for the rain to have come and stopped.
Her weight was on both feet, evenly, hands out of her pockets.
People who are afraid of you put their hands in their pockets. People who are about to ask you for something take them out.
I stopped at four metres, which is further than is polite, and I could not help it.
“Are you Nadia Volkov?”
Her voice was steady in the way a voice is when it has been practised in a car.
I said yes.
She looked at me for a long moment, and her chin went, once, and she got it back.
“My name is Priya Raman.”
I did not know the name. There was nothing at all.
“I'm sorry to come to your house,” she said. “I couldn't think of another way and I've been trying for a long time.”
“Trying to do what?”
“To find you.”
The light came down Ackerly Road and put her face in shadow and the wet street behind her white.
“Twelve years,” she said.