Page 82 of 59 Minutes
CARRIE
ONE YEAR AFTER THE ALERT ST JAMES’S PARK
Emma Dabb is now level with Carrie’s shoulder.
Even though Carrie knew Emma’s name was on this wall, even though her mum and John came here for the official unveiling last month, she is still stunned that it’s true.
That Emma, her Emma , has been immortalised in this way.
A pseudo celebrity. At once publicly infamous and one of too large a group to ever be truly known.
What’s the Stalin quote … a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.
But Emma’s absence is a tragedy and she doesn’t belong with these neighbours – these Dabengwas, Daleys, Dangs and Darwins – people she never met.
Emma Dabb, eight dead letters unequivocally chiselled into the wall by a hand steadier than Carrie’s. She lifts her fingers slowly to trace the letters, but she can’t do it. Can’t bear to touch this evidence. Her arm aches like a warning as she drops her hand limply again.
She and Clementine are both full Dabbs now, changed by deed poll.
It’s not much, but it’s something to call herself Mrs Dabb, for both members of the parenting unit to be represented by name.
She wears Emma’s ruby ring on her wedding finger, a ring given to Emma by her mother and John for her eighteenth birthday, plucked from her body by Pepper before thieves came for it.
A sentence that is so horrific it must be fiction but is somehow truth.
She spins it now, slightly too big but she cannot bring herself to adjust it. It must remain untouched.
A man approaches the wall. He’s wearing a ‘ban the bomb’ hoodie, with a ‘Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’ logo she’s seen a lot during her brief return to the city.
Until recently, she hadn’t seen a CND badge since childhood and even back then it was retro.
The man wavers, as if looking for the right section of wall, then walks around to the other side.
At his side, a small bunch of flowers he’s gripping tightly are shedding petals.
Carrie came this early to avoid the crowds, with which she has not been good since last year and can’t imagine ever trusting again. But there are already more people here than she expected.
A group of protestors assemble near the drinking fountain in woolly hats and puffy coats.
They stamp their feet and blow into cupped hands.
Some have reusable cups, others clutch single use bottles of water which aren’t sold in Chagford anymore, where she now lives.
The protestors’ heads huddle as if in conference, the glow of street lights from Birdcage Walk illuminating the bobbles of their hats like Christmas decorations.
Some protesters have signs which dangle by their sides, or sit propped against trees.
A mixture of ages, genders and ethnicities, they wear jeans, baggy leggings or joggers, stuffed into trainers or boots.
Probably expecting to be on their feet for hours, but they’ll be lucky to last an hour unhampered once the sun comes up.
The Met have made no secret of plans to arrest protestors again, according to Pepper, who worried she’d be mistaken for one.
Carrie can’t make out most of the signs from here, but a middle-aged woman in a mustard scarf twists her placard around and the black block letters sit in stark relief to the white backing board.
STOP THE GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARDS!
The emergency Hail Mary laws were only applied to people who pleaded guilty, and Carrie did not plead guilty to anything. She has never told the truth to anyone but Pepper. She took that truth away from Emma’s family and no one but them ever looked for it. Even Mary has stopped asking.
The police initially warned her that Ashley Curtiss would likely be eligible for an express sentence, but he has refused to plead guilty.
Instead, the woman and the girl that he and his brothers kidnapped will have to come to court to relive that day, and autopsies and statements about her mother’s last moments will be pinned up and pored over by a jury.
Ashley Curtiss has asked for her to visit him in remand prison repeatedly, his solicitor has sent several letters that she has burned without reading.
He is pleading not guilty, claiming it was an accident.
Some people are not brave enough to admit what they have done and it turns out she and him are birds of a feather in that respect.
And yet, the child made from their combined genes is the kindest, most caring girl.
She can never know who her biological father is, can never be forced to wonder at the blood sloshing through her, and the poison it could carry.
This will be Carrie’s sole focus from now on.