then I was alone. The bliss of the job. I’d opened my laptop at a moment when the ebb and flow of the shop had been mostly flow, and called up a familiar selection of news feeds. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m in this little shop in this little city that makes me so keen on keeping up with the news. It hardly matters to me, most of it, but I read it with diligence.
My headache notwithstanding, I refocused my eyes on the computer screen. Minutes, maybe fifteen or twenty, had passed since I’d started my usual scanning, and thus far the online media wasn’t proving itself much more enticing than the day’s print versions I’d already perused.
The headlines were hardly works of art. I know a lot of effort goes into them by the poor saps whose job it is to dream up one-liners that make the boredom-inducing sound enticing. But effort isn’t always enough to breed interest.
STOCKS TRADE DOWN – BROKERS KEEP HOPES UP.
That, in the journalistic world, is apparently what passes for catchy. The down and the up; directional contrapposto. Whoever wrote that got full marks in Journalism 101.
BART TRAIN DELAYS THROW PASSENGER PATIENCE OFF THE RAILS.
This attempt to convey poignantly uninteresting content about the Bay Area Rapid Transit system under the guise of a catchy tagline – it’s an art. Like a record producer fronting an album with one catchy tune and filling the remaining eleven tracks with artless crap. By the time anyone hears them, the’ve already bought the record. (Though I can hear Tim Cook yelling at me now: ‘No one “buys a record” any more, Amber. It’s all about streaming, about personalized subscription!’ then smiling seductively and somehow charging me another $9.99 a month.)
CRACKS IN BRIDGE DIVIDE COUNTY OFFICIALS.
I’d paused at that one, tapping to see the paragraph-length summary. The concrete of a sixty-year-old bridge outside Napa, in our neighbouring county to the east, was suddenly the cause of ‘grave concern’ amongst the county administration (note the adjective ‘grave’ in a story that might involve tragedy: I read enough to know that’s strong copy), despite the fissure in the concrete having been visible for more than three decades.
I tapped my keyboard again, my waning interest spent.
Then, without any deliberate intention, my glance wandered upwards. A few headlines above the one I’d clicked, less than an inch away from scrolling off the top of the screen, a different caption grabbed me.
I can’t identify precisely how it did it – how it affected me. It was a spark, and it launched a fire in my spine that shot through me like badly wired electrics. Before I’d even taken full account of the words, I could feel the voltage in my head change.
I shoved my tea aside with a jolt, slammed the palm of my hand against the spacebar to stop the feed scrolling off the screen, and glued my eyes to the headline. I was barely aware that I had all but stopped breathing. My eyes didn’t want to focus.
The words were simple and unadorned.
WOMAN’S BODY FOUND ON SHORELINE. FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.
And there it was, that buzzing at the surface of my scalp again. Electrics. An immediate tension in my chest.
There was nothing in the headline that should have caused such a reaction. It presented none of the witty word play of the other titles (wit, I have often observed, is generally disapproved of in writing about death, since almost nobody successfully navigates the line between banter and respectability). It was unfussy. A simple statement of fact.
WOMAN’S BODY FOUND ON SHORELINE. FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.
I read it again, and again, and gradually became aware that my spine had gone rigid. I’m sure there was a thin film of sweat between my fingertips and the etched glass of the trackpad.
The noise of the bookshop seemed to have vanished, and if there was anyone left in the store, they had become invisible to my attention. My mind, drawn in by this headline for reasons I couldn’t explain, raced through the limited details that could be inferred from such a minuscule amount of text. ‘Foul play’ means possible homicide. Fine. I mean, horrible, of course; but comprehensible.
But my reaction, it was not comprehensible at all. I blinked, and my eyelids left trails as they rose back into their folds.
WOMAN’S BODY FOUND ON —
The words grabbed hold of me. Assaulted me. Inexplicably, at that instant, I wanted to scream out from the very depths of my belly.
Isn’t that the very strangest thing?
Then, with the shift of no more than a second, the agony fled. The headline was just a headline, clear and crisp on my screen with a stark lack of factual detail, and I was disinterested and dismissive and —
And it was back, as quickly as it had gone. My breath outpaced my pulse, my eyes clamped closed, and in an explosion of the unexplained, I couldn’t even make out the conclusion of my own thoughts. Though for a moment, just for a moment, I thought I heard them telling me that my world was coming to its end.
I was perched across from her, the day I met the woman that changed my life. I don’t know for how long. It doesn’t matter. I was in my government-issued moulded plastic chair, clipboard in hand, diagonally opposite her position in the little room.
I didn’t know who she really was then when we first began. I only knew what was in the official reports and my stack of references.
‘I’ve read your file, Miss.’ I listened to the doctor’s voice as he spoke directly to her, facing squarely across the metal table between them. ‘What the records say about you is pretty clear.’
He spoke in cold, formal phrases. He was a medical professional, of course, and of many years’ standing. But he was also an officer of the state, and she was not here under circumstances any would consider friendly.
Her expression didn’t change. Her eyes remained motionless. From my position in the shadows at the side of the room, I felt unnerved by her solidity.
‘We both know what’s brought you here,’ my superior added. Dr Marcello was an old hand at this, and I’d heard him make similar beginnings before. I craned my neck, trying to observe some emotion on the woman’s face.
‘Do you realize why you’re in this room, at this moment?’
A common formula of approach. Begin with a querying of the context; find out how much the person in front of you is willing to admit of their position, and proceed from there. With an assistant at the side, from the pharmaceutical wing, taking notes in silence in order to help with the medicinal diagnoses.
Thus far, Dr Marcello was keeping things by the book.
The woman said nothing. She was alone in the room, for all her expression would have suggested. She just stared through the walls into a space I couldn’t see.
‘You’re
