Page 64 of None of This is True

‘But in between?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘But – you said that the argument started when you got home. And it only lasted a few minutes. I just—’

Josie interjects. ‘No. It didn’t happen when we got home. I didn’t say that. It happened when Walter got out of bed. Like he does nearly every night. Like I told you. We went to bed and then I couldn’t sleep. It took me ages. And then I finally dropped off and I felt him, I felt him peel back the covers. I knew. I knew what he was doing. Where he was going. And that was when I confronted him.’

‘So, you were in bed. In your pyjamas?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then you got up and followed him?’

‘Yes. I saw him going to Erin’s door. And that was when I screamed at him.’

‘But you weren’t wearing your pyjamas when you came to me. You were wearing the dress. The lovely dress.’

‘I put it back on. I wasn’t going to walk halfway across Kilburn in my pyjamas.’

‘But the dress had blood on it. How did the dress have blood on it if you weren’t wearing it during the attack?’

‘Alix. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Are you saying that you don’t believe me?’

‘No! Not at all. Of course not. But listeners are going to be hearing this like it’s a novel, they’ll notice plot holes. You and I have been having this conversation for a month, but listeners will be gobbling this down in a day once it’s out there and edited down. It needs to make sense. For the listener. Do you see?’

Josie sighs deeply. ‘Well, yes. I suppose. But you’d think that the sort of people who listen to your stuff would have some sympathy, some empathy. You’d think they’d understand that when something like that happens, like what’s happened to me, when someone has been the victim of abuse and violence and gaslighting, that maybe they might get a bit confused.’

‘Yes. Josie, yes, of course. That’s absolutely true. So I just want to help you to unpick it all a bit and then put it back together. So that it makes sense. That’s all. So Walter got out of bed in the early hours. You accosted him. He attacked you. He tried to attack Erin. Then you and Erin collected a few things – you got redressed – and then you both left together?’

Josie nods firmly. ‘Yes.’

‘And you walked here – and Erin? Where did Erin walk?’

‘The opposite direction.’

‘At three in the morning?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she have things with her?’

‘I suppose so, yes. A small bag.’

Alix smiles glassily at Josie. She wants to push through. She wants to understand how Josie could have left her vulnerable daughter to walk somewhere, God knows where, all alone in the middle of the night. She wants to know. But she can tell that Josie is shutting down now, pulling up her drawbridge. She sighs. ‘I hope Erin is OK. It’s very scary thinking of her all alone in the night.’

‘Yes,’ Josie replies firmly. ‘But she’s safer out there than she ever was in her own home. Wherever she is, she’s safe.’

She says this with a strange certainty, as if the world were not full of dangerous people who prey on the vulnerable, as if nothing bad could possibly have happened to her daughter between three o’clock on Saturday morning and now.

‘I really think we should try to track her down, Josie. It’s been nearly six days. No messages. No calls. I know she’s safe from Walter now. But is it possible she might have found herself somewhere worse? That maybe her online friend wasn’t who they claimed to be? I mean, you hear that sort of thing a lot, don’t you? People with fake online identities. It’s just—’

‘She’s fine , Alix. She’s fine. She can take care of herself.’

‘But you said she can’t. You said you’ve been feeding her baby food. You said—’

Alix flinches as Josie pulls off her headphones and slams them on the tabletop. ‘I’m trying to tell you my story, Alix. My truth . And you seem to be trying to make it into something it isn’t. You either want my story or you don’t. You can’t have it both ways. You just can’t.’

And then she picks up her dog from her lap and storms out of the recording studio, leaving Alix reeling in her wake.

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