I knew I should say who I was, and admit all of that. It would have been my worst nightmare prior to this. But this was a small country. Maybe I had been naïve to think it would never come out. I let myself think about it for a moment: explaining the real reason I had found the body and run. Telling the truth to the handsome detective with the slippery smile, and then to Marilyn, to Katrin and Tom and the new boy intern, to Audrey even, but most of all to Alex. Watching their faces change as they figured it out.

She’s that girl? Oh my God! I can see it now!

It wasn’t appealing. But the alternative was perhaps spending the next twenty years in a cell like this one, where I could stretch out both arms and touch the cream stone walls. Listening to the sounds of rattling keys and doors clanging shut and women sobbing in their sleep, screaming out with bad dreams. Then there was the unique smell of custody cells: feet and vomit and frightened sweat. I’d been here before. Peeing in front of people, having my body searched and laid bare. Eating mush three times a day, never preparing another meal myself, never petting a dog or seeing the sky. And the worst bit is the things people say about you. People who’ve never even met you, only seen a picture where you’re smiling and drinking a vodka and Coke, wearing a short skirt, because you were nineteen years old and you never knew the world would turn its unforgiving gaze on you.

How long had I been in here? The light outside the tiny barred window looked dark, marshy. I knew how time could unspool in these little rooms, how years of your life could leak away as you waited for someone to help you. At least this was the UK. They couldn’t keep me for more than a few days without a charge, could they? I wished I’d thought to learn all the rules of our legal system, just in case. Twenty-four hours, that came to mind for some reason. All the same, a long time to sit with nothing but your worst thoughts for company.

Footsteps were coming towards me. What now? Were they going to charge me with murder, put me in the system, start me on a path I could not come back from? The door opened. It was the uniformed guard, a middle-aged woman who I think they called the custody sergeant. Her forehead was shiny with sweat, and her uniform blouse had a stain on it, coffee perhaps. I stood up. Heart hammering.

She said, ‘Rachel. Come with me.’

Interview in the Los Angeles Times, 2001