Free Someone Else's Skin by Sarah Hilary Page A

there.
    Broken things were like bad mirrors; they gave out a peculiar light, like . . . catching sight of your face in a pail of milk spoiled by a thunderstorm.
    Simone had known that Hope was in pieces before they ever said a word to one another. In the dark, in this room, she had given her hands for Hope to hold. In silence, sitting together, listening to the silence. Hers and Hope’s.
    Everyone else asked questions. Simone was sick of questions. With Hope, it was different. It was as if, a long time ago, she had dropped a pebble into a well and now – soon – she would hear it hit the water down there. Deep down, in the dark. But not yet. Not until the silence was done with them.
    There was healing in the silence. To sit like that, with your hands in another’s, not speaking but knowing . . . Simone could feel herself mending. And Hope, too.
    She had told this to the policeman, DS Jake. Told him how Leo hurt Hope. How, when you were broken, you mended in a different way.
    She folded her hand into a fist, slowly, hiding the wet from the window in the creases of her palm.
    You mend hard.

17
     
    Five years ago
     
    The court is stiflingly hot. Every half-hour, a slice of cold makes it through the primitive air-conditioning unit to snap at her ankles, before the heat eats it up.
    Stephen sits in the dock with his head bowed, a yoke of shadow on his shoulders. His defence team has coached him in how to sit. ‘Keep your eyes down,’ they’ve told him. ‘Look sorry.’ It’s what Marnie would’ve told him, if she’d been responsible for his defence. She isn’t, of course. She’s here, in the words of the prosecutor, to see justice done. Whatever that means. She knew once, or thought she did.
    They want her to give an impact statement, to stand up and tell this room of strangers how it feels, what he did. She’s refused, because what could she say?
    ‘The pain’s in my head today, above my left ear. It’s possible to put a knife there, if you hit hard enough. He put a knife into my mother’s head there. I don’t know why.’
    If she took the stand that’s all she’d say: ‘I don’t know why. I want to know why.’
    They won’t let her ask this question. Instead, they expect her to strip naked and show her hurt from every angle. To weep. To tell how much her life is changed, how little she has left. She isn’t allowed to ask why.
    Everything else – all the things allowed – it’s just another way of him hurting her. She’s damned if she’ll let him beat that bruise, without answers.
    Day after day they sit here. In the jungle heat of the court. Like a lizard and a locust, or a snake and a mongoose. She won’t be cast as the victim, not even when they say it’ll help with his prosecution. ‘The jury needs to see what he’s done,’ they tell her. ‘Show them what he’s done.’
    The jury have seen the photos, and the pathologist’s face. Marnie thought the man would be better at hiding his emotions. She’s seen the jury’s eyes, their winces and grimaces. You’re not giving them me , she thinks.
    She won’t talk about how much she loved them, what a hole he carved in her life. If she gave him that, he’d take it back to his cell to feast on, or fret over. He’s had enough of their lives. She won’t give him any more.
    The sentence, when it comes, is not a shock, or a relief. She doesn’t understand how it could be either of those things, although the court steps are always crowded with relatives – victims – who weep or rail, grateful or furious at the outcome. She can’t see that there is any outcome. No ‘finally’. Guilty doesn’t mean a thing, when his head’s bowed and no one’s seen his eyes properly, to know if he’s grateful, or furious.
    When they take him away, that’s different. Then, she wants to jump up from the rock where she’s been watching and push through the steaming space that separates her and Stephen. To stop it happening: the taking away, the