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There were two men in suits sitting on chairs behind her.
    “Who are they?” I asked Gram.
    She turned back to me. “Police . . . they’re investigating the attack on Lucy and Ben. I told them you didn’t know anything about it —”
    “Perhaps we could ask Tom himself,” one of the policemen said, getting to his feet. He was tall, fair-haired, with tobacco-stained teeth and bad skin. “Hi, Tom,” he said, smiling at me. “I’m DS Johnson, and this . . .” He indicated the other man. “This is my colleague, DC Webster.”
    Webster nodded at me.
    The wound on my head tingled, reminding me of the dream that wasn’t a dream, the crazy stuff in my head — the electric silence . . . an infinite invisibility of absolutely everything . . . spoken words, words in a newspaper — A 15-year-old girl has been raped by a gang of youths on the Crow Lane Estate . . .
    “Who did it?” I asked DS Johnson.
    “Who did what, Tom?”
    “Lucy was attacked . . . Lucy Walker. She’s a friend —”
    “How do you know she was attacked?”
    “What?”
    “Did you see anything?”
    “No . . . no, I didn’t see anything. I was knocked out . . . I was lying on the ground with my head smashed open. I didn’t see anything.”
    “So how do you know what happened?”
    “I don’t know what happened.”
    “Sorry, Tom,” Johnson said, “but you just asked me who did it. You just said that Lucy was attacked . . . which seems to suggest that you do know what happened.”
    My mind was struggling now. I was confused, not sure what to say. But I still only hesitated for a second. “I saw the report in the local paper,” I said. “The Southwark Gazette .”
    “Right . . .” Johnson said doubtfully. “And when was this?”
    “Today . . . earlier on. I was in the toilets, down the corridor . . . someone had left an old copy of the paper behind.”
    Johnson nodded, looking at Webster. Webster shrugged. Johnson looked back at me. “So you’re saying that you don’t have any firsthand information about the attack, you only know what happened because you read about it in the newspaper. Is that right?”
    “Yeah . . .”
    And it was right, I realized. It was the truth. It might not have been the whole truth, but I wasn’t going to tell him that, was I? I wasn’t going to tell him that the newspaper report just appeared in my head out of nowhere.
    Gram said to Johnson, “I think that’s enough for now, don’t you? Tommy’s tired. He’s still very weak.”
    “Yes, Mrs. Harvey, I realize that, but —”
    “It’s Miss,” Gram said coldly.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “ Miss Harvey. Or Ms. Not Mrs.”
    “Right . . .” Johnson muttered. “Anyway, if Tom wouldn’t mind —”
    “He’s told you everything he knows.”
    “Well —”
    “No,” Gram said firmly. “No more. If you need to talk to him again, you’ll just have to wait.”
    “But —”
    “Do you want me to start screaming?”
    Johnson frowned at her. “What?”
    “One more word from you,” Gram told him calmly, “and I’m going to start screaming and sobbing. And when the nurses and doctors come running in, they’ll find a poor old grandmother crying her eyes out because the two nasty policemen have been virtually torturing her gravely ill grandson.” She smiled at DS Johnson. “Do you understand?”
    Johnson nodded. He understood.
    “Good,” said Gram. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you both to fuck off.”

“They [gang rapes] happen all the time, man. You hear about them in school . . . It’s so common. You know that if you talk about it, they can do it again. If they want you to be quiet, that’s all you gotta do, just bite your tongue and continue. It’s a sad thing, but it’s reality. Hard reality.”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jun/05/gender.ukcrime

     
    The next seven days were a bewildering mixture of mind- boggling weirdness and mind-numbing boredom. I was kept in my private room for a couple of days so the doctors