The Widow

Chapter 14

Thursday, 10 June 2010

The Widow

THEY LET ME REST for a bit and then we have dinner by the big windows in Kate’s room, overlooking the gardens. The waiter wheels in a table with a white tablecloth and a vase of flowers in the middle. The plates have those fancy silver domes on them. Kate and Mick have ordered starters, mains and puds and they’re stacked on a shelf under the table.

‘Let’s push the boat out,’ Kate says.

‘Yeah,’ Mick says. ‘We deserve it.’

Kate tells him to shut up but I can see they’re really pleased with themselves. They’ve won the big prize – an interview with the widow.

I have chicken and play with it for a bit. Not hungry for it or their celebrations. They pile into the wine and order a second bottle, but I make sure I don’t drink more than a glass. Must stay in control.

When I feel tired, I pretend to cry and say I need some time alone. Kate and Mick exchange a look. Obviously this isn’t going to plan. But I stand and say, ‘Good night. See you in the morning.’

They scrape their chairs back and stumble to their feet. Kate walks me to my door and makes sure I’m safely inside.

‘Don’t answer the phone,’ she tells me. ‘If I need to talk to you, I’ll knock on the door.’

I nod.

It’s boiling hot in my room so I lie on the enormous bed with the windows open to let out the heat of the radiators. Today is playing over and over in my head on a loop and I feel dizzy and out of control, like I’m a bit drunk.

I sit up, to stop the room spinning, and see myself reflected in the window.

It looks like someone else. Some other woman who’s let herself be taken away by strangers. Strangers who, until today, were probably banging on my door and writing lies about me. I rub my face and so does the woman in the window. Because it is me.

I stare back at myself.

I can’t believe I’m here.

I can’t believe I let myself agree to come. After everything the press have done to us. After all the warnings Glen gave.

I want to tell him that I don’t actually remember agreeing, but he’d say I must have done or I wouldn’t have got into the van with them.

Well, he’s not here any more to say anything. I’m on my own now.

Then I hear Kate and Mick talking on the balcony next door.

‘Poor thing,’ Kate says. ‘She must be exhausted. We’ll do it in the morning.’

Whatever ‘it’ is. The interview, I suppose.

I feel dizzy again. Sick inside, because I know what is coming next. There’ll be no more massages and treats tomorrow. No more chat about what colour the kitchen units are. She will want to know about Glen. And Bella.

I go into the bathroom and throw up the chicken I’ve just eaten. I sit on the floor and think about the first interview I gave – the one to the police, while Glen was in custody. It was Easter when they came. We’d planned to walk up to Greenwich Park the next day to see the Easter egg hunt. We went every year – that and Bonfire Night were my favourite times of the year. Funny the things you remember. I loved it. All those excited little faces looking for eggs or under their woolly hats, writing their names with sparklers. I’d stand close to them, pretend they were mine for a moment.

Instead, that Easter Sunday, I sat on my sofa while two police officers went through my things and Bob Sparkes questioned me. He wanted to know if Glen and I had a normal sex life. He called it something else, but that’s what he meant.

I didn’t know what to say. It was so horrible being asked that by a stranger. He was looking at me and thinking about my sex life and I couldn’t stop him.

‘Of course,’ I said. I didn’t know what he meant or why he was asking me that.

They wouldn’t answer my questions, just kept asking theirs. Questions about the day Bella disappeared. Why was I at home at four, instead of at work? What time did Glen come in the door? How did I know it was four o’clock? What else happened that day? Checking everything and going over the same things again and again. They wanted me to make a mistake, but I didn’t. I stuck to the story. I didn’t want to make any trouble for Glen.

And I knew he’d never do anything like that. My Glen.

‘Do you ever use the computer we took away from your husband’s study, Mrs Taylor?’ Inspector Sparkes suddenly asked.

They’d taken it the day before, after they searched upstairs.

‘No,’ I said. It came out as a squeak. My throat betraying me and my fear.

They’d taken me up there the day before and one of them sat down at the keyboard to try and start it. The screen lit up but then nothing happened and they asked me for the password. I told them I didn’t even know there was a password. We tried my name and birthdays and Arsenal, Glen’s team, but in the end they unplugged it and took it away to crack it open.

From the window, I’d watched them leave. I knew they’d find something, but I didn’t know what. I tried not to imagine. In the end, I couldn’t have imagined what they found. DI Sparkes told me when he came back the next day to ask more questions. Told me there were pictures. Terrible pictures of children on there. I told him Glen couldn’t have put them there.

I think it must’ve been the police who let Glen’s name out of the bag because the morning after he finally got home from the police station the press came knocking.

He’d looked so tired and dirty when he walked through the door the night before and I’d made toast and pulled my chair close to his so I could put my arms round him.

‘It was awful, Jeanie. They wouldn’t listen to me. Kept going on and on at me.’

I started crying. I couldn’t help myself. He sounded so broken by it.

‘Oh love, don’t cry. It will be all right,’ he said, wiping my tears with his thumb. ‘We both know I wouldn’t harm a hair on a child’s head.’

I knew it was true, but I felt so relieved hearing him say it out loud that I hugged him again and got butter on my sleeve.

‘I know you wouldn’t. And I didn’t let you down about coming home late, Glen,’ I said. ‘I told the police you were home by four.’ And he looked at me sideways.

He’d asked me to tell the lie. We were sitting having our tea the night after the news came out that the police were looking for the driver of a blue van. I said maybe he ought to ring in and say he’d been in a blue van in Hampshire on the day she went missing so they could rule him out.

Glen looked at me for a long time. ‘It would just be inviting trouble, Jeanie.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look, I did a little private job while I was out – a delivery I took on for a friend to make a bit of extra money – and if the boss finds out, he’ll sack me.’

‘But what if the boss reports that you were in the area in a blue van?’

‘He won’t,’ Glen said. ‘He’s not keen on the police. But if he does, we’ll just say I was home by four. Then everything will be all right. OK, love?’

I nodded. And anyway, he did ring me at about four to say he was on his way. Said his mobile was on the blink and he was ringing from a garage phone.

It was practically the same thing, wasn’t it?

‘Thanks, love,’ he said. ‘It’s not a lie really – I was on my way – but we don’t want the boss to know I was doing that extra work on the side. We don’t need any complications or me losing my job. Do we?’

‘No, course not.’

I put some more bread in the toaster, breathing in the comforting smell.

‘Where did you go for your extra drop?’ I said. Just asking.

‘Over near Brighton,’ he said. And we sat in silence for a while.

The next morning, the first reporter knocked on the door – a young bloke from the local paper. Nice lad, he looked. Full of apologies.

‘So sorry to disturb you, Mrs Taylor, but please may I speak to your husband?’

Glen came out of the living room just as I was asking the lad who he was. When he said he was a reporter, Glen turned on his heel and disappeared into the kitchen. I stood there, not sure what to do. Frightened that whatever I said, it would come out wrong. In the end, Glen shouted through, ‘There’s nothing to say. Goodbye,’ and I closed the door on him.

We got better at dealing with the press after that. We didn’t answer the door. We sat quietly in the kitchen until we heard the footsteps going away. And we thought that was the end of it. Course it wasn’t. They went next door, and across the road, to the paper shop and the pub. Door-knocking for bits of information.

I don’t think Lisa next door said anything to the reporters at the beginning. The other neighbours didn’t know much, but that didn’t stop them. They loved the whole thing and two days after he was released, there we were in the papers.

‘HAVE POLICE FINALLY MADE A BREAKTHROUGH IN BELLA CASE?’ one headline read. In another one, there was a blurry picture of Glen from when he played for the pub football team, and a load of lies.

We sat and looked at the front pages together. Glen looked shell-shocked and I took his hand to reassure him.

In the papers, lots of it was wrong. His age, his job, even the spelling of his name,

Glen smiled at me weakly. ‘That’s good, Jeanie,’ he said. ‘Maybe people won’t recognize me.’ But of course they did.

His mum rang. ‘What’s all this about, Jean?’ she said.

Glen wouldn’t come to the phone. Went and had a bath. Poor Mary, she was in tears.

‘Look, it’s all a misunderstanding, Mary,’ I told her. ‘Glen has had nothing to do with this. Someone saw a blue van like his on the day Bella went missing. That’s all. It’s a coincidence. The police are just doing their job, checking out every lead.’

‘Then why is it in the papers?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know, Mary. The press get excited over everything to do with Bella. They’ve chased all over the place when people have said they’ve seen her. You know what they’re like.’

But she didn’t and neither did I, really. Not then, anyway.

‘Please don’t worry, Mary. We know the truth. It’ll all blow over in a week. Take care of yourself and love to George.’

After I put the phone down, I stood in the hall in a daze. I was still there when Glen came down from the bathroom. He had wet hair and I could feel his damp skin when he kissed me.

‘How was my mum?’ he asked. ‘In a state, I suppose. What did you tell her?’

I repeated the whole conversation as I made him some breakfast. He had hardly eaten for two days since he got home from the police station. He had been too tired to eat anything except toast.

‘Bacon and eggs?’ I asked.

‘Lovely,’ he said. When he sat down, I tried to talk about normal things, but it sounded so false.

In the end, Glen stopped me talking by kissing me and said, ‘There are going to be some very difficult days ahead, Jeanie. People are going to say some terrible things about us and probably to us. We need to be prepared. This is a terrible mistake, but we mustn’t let it ruin our lives. We need to stay strong until the truth comes out. Do you think you can do that?’

I kissed him back. ‘Of course I can. We can be strong for each other. I love you, Glen.’

He smiled at me properly then. And squeezed me tight so I wouldn’t see him getting emotional.

‘Now, is there any more bacon?’

He was right about it ruining our lives. I had to give up work after he was questioned. I tried to keep going, telling my clients that it was all a terrible mistake, but people stopped talking when I got near them. The regulars stopped booking appointments and began going to another hairdresser down the hill. Lesley took me to one side one Saturday night and told me she liked Glen and was sure there was no truth in the press reports, but I had to leave ‘for the good of the salon’.

I cried because I knew, then, it would never end and nothing would ever be the same again. I rolled up my scissors and brushes in my colouring overall and shoved them into a carrier bag and left.

I tried not to blame Glen. I knew it wasn’t his fault. We were both victims of the situation, he said and tried to keep me cheerful.

‘Don’t worry, Jean. We’ll be fine. You’ll find another job when this blows over. Probably time for a change, anyway.’