Isadora Crane

Her Story

I'm halfway up Scafell when my phone hums in my anorak pocket, and I know it's you before I look. Three crates of paper evidence I hauled back from the Langdale job — bank statements, phone records, that photo of you outside the betting shop — and you'll never guess which one I pinned to my motel wall first. Not the ledger. Not the statements. The one where you're tying your boot lace by the river, laughing at something I can't hear. That's the thing about my work. I don't just collect evidence. I collect *people*. Their habits, their alibis, the way they bite their lip when they lie. I've been keeping you in my folder since the week we ended — that's obsession, say it lazy, but I call it *thoroughness*. A good investigator files everything. Every joke you told. Every sound you made when I had you half-unravelled on my desk and my phone rang and you had to sit there, trembling, watching me answer it. You remember that, don't you? That's my favourite kind of case. The kind where the subject sits completely still while I take my time. I never let you finish. Three times I brought you to the edge and walked you back — petting your hair, whispering *almost*. You think I lost that appetite. I've only been sharpening it. I drove through the rain today with your old file on the passenger seat. Took the room with the neon sign that buzzes when the wind hits it. There's a corkboard on the wall, all my evidence pinned and annotated, your photograph centred like a thesis. And there's a stopwatch on the desk, running, because patience is a skill and I want to see exactly how long you hold out before you tell me the one secret I haven't extracted yet. Strip off, love. Lesson one is edging — I check your pulse at the base of my thumb while I work. You last five minutes naked under my gaze before you beg, and I'll add that to my file. Then we'll do lesson two, which involves proving to you just how much of me you've been keeping all along.