The Widow

Chapter 20

Friday, 11 June 2010

The Widow

WE HAVE CROISSANTS and fruit salad for breakfast at the hotel. Big linen napkins and a cafetière of proper coffee.

Kate won’t let me eat on my own. ‘I’ll keep you company,’ she says and plonks herself down at the table. She gets a cup from the tea and coffee tray under the television and pours herself a coffee.

She’s all business-like now. ‘We really need to sort out the contract today, Jean,’ she says. ‘The paper would like to get the formalities out of the way so we can press on with the interview. It’s Friday already and they want to publish it tomorrow. I’ve printed a copy of the contract for you to sign. It’s quite straightforward. You agree to give us an exclusive interview for an agreed fee.’

I can’t really remember when I’d said yes. Maybe I hadn’t. ‘But-’ I say. But she just passes me several sheets of paper and I start to read them because I don’t know what else to do. It is all ‘the first party’ and ‘the second party’ and lots of clauses. ‘I haven’t got a clue what it means,’ I say. Glen was the one who dealt with all the paperwork and signed everything.

She looks anxious and starts to try and explain the legal terms. ‘It really is very simple,’ she says. She really wants me to sign it. She must be getting grief from her boss, but I put the contract down and shake my head and she sighs.

‘Would you like a lawyer to have a look at it for you?’ she asks. I nod. ‘Do you know one?’ she says and I nod again. I call Tom Payne. Glen’s lawyer. It’s been a while – must be two years – but I still have his number on my mobile.

‘Jean! How are you? I was sorry to hear about Glen’s accident,’ he says when the secretary finally puts me through.

‘Thank you, Tom, that’s kind of you. Look, I need your help. The Daily Post wants me to do an exclusive interview with them and they want me to sign a contract. Will you look at it for me?’

There is a pause and I can imagine the surprise on his face.

‘An interview?’ he says. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing, Jean? Have you thought this through?’

His real questions remain unasked and I’m grateful to him for that. I tell him I’ve thought about it and this is the only way to get the press off my doorstep. I’m starting to sound like Kate. I don’t really need the money. Glen got a quarter of a million in compensation for the trick the police pulled – dirty money we put away in a building society – and there’ll be the insurance money from his death. But I might as well take the fifty thousand pounds the paper wants to pay me.

Tom sounds unconvinced, but he agrees to read the contract and Kate emails it over to him. We sit and wait and she tries to persuade me to have a facial or something. I don’t want to be fiddled with again so I say no and just sit there.

Tom and I have had a special bond since the day Glen’s case ended.

We stood together waiting for him to be released from the dock and Tom couldn’t look at me. I think he was scared of what he’d see in my eyes.

I can see us standing there. The end of the ordeal, but not the end really. I’d been so grateful for the order that the court case had given my life. Every day planned out. Every day setting out from home at 8 a.m., dressed smartly, like I was going to work in an office. Every day, home at five thirty. My job was to be supportive and say nothing.

The court was like a sanctuary. I liked the echoing halls and the breezes wafting the notices on the boards and the canteen chatter.

Tom had taken me there before Glen was due to appear, to be committed for trial, so I could see what it was like. I’d seen the Old Bailey on the telly – on the news with a reporter standing on the pavement in front of it, talking about a murder or terrorist or something, and the inside, in police dramas. But it was still nothing like I expected. Dim, smaller than it looked on TV, dusty-smelling like a classroom, old-fashioned with lots of dark wood.

It was lovely and quiet when we went for a look round before business began for the day. Hardly anyone else there. Bit different when Glen appeared so they could set a date for his trial. It was packed. People had queued to see him. They brought sandwiches and flasks like it was the sales or something. And the reporters crammed into the press seats behind me. I sat with my head down, pretending to look for something in my handbag, until Glen was brought into the box by the prison warders. He looked small. I’d brought in his best suit for the appearance and he’d had a shave, but he still looked small. He looked over and winked. Like it was nothing. I tried to smile at him but my mouth was too dry, my lips got stuck to my teeth.

It was over so quickly I hardly had time to look at him again before he disappeared down the stairs. I was allowed to see him later. He’d changed out of his suit into his prison stuff, a sort of tracksuit, and taken off his best shoes. ‘Hello, Jeanie love. Well, that was a bit of a farce, wasn’t it? The whole thing is a farce, my solicitor says,’ he said.

Well, he would, I wanted to say. You’re paying him to say just that.

The trial was set for February, four months away, and Glen was sure it would be thrown out before then. ‘It’s all nonsense, Jeanie,’ he said. ‘You know that. The police are lying to make themselves look good. They need an arrest and I was one of the poor sods who was driving a blue van in the area that day.’ He gave my hand a squeeze and I squeezed back. He was right. It was nonsense.

I went home and pretended everything was normal.

Inside the house it was. My little world stayed exactly the same – same walls, same cups, same furniture. But outside, everything had shifted. The pavement in front of the house was like a soap opera with people coming and going and sitting looking at my house. Hoping to get a glimpse of me.

I had to come out sometimes, and when I did I dressed anonymously, covering myself completely, and I steeled myself in the hall before leaving suddenly and quickly. It was impossible to avoid the cameras but I hoped they’d get tired of the same shots of me walking down the path. And I learned to hum a song in my head so I could blank out the remarks and questions.

The visits to the prison were the worst part. It meant catching a bus and the press would follow me to the stop and photograph me and the other passengers as we waited together. Everyone got upset with them and then me. It wasn’t my fault, but they blamed me. For being the wife.

I tried walking to different bus stops, but I got fed up with playing their games, and in the end I just put up with it and waited for them to get bored.

I’d sit on the 380 bus to Belmarsh with a plastic carrier bag on my knee, pretending to be on a shopping trip. I’d wait to see if someone else would press the bell before the prison stop and then get off quickly. Other women would get off as well, with a tangle of crying kids and pushchairs, and I’d walk a long way behind them to the visitors’ centre so people wouldn’t think I was like them.

Glen was on remand so there weren’t so many rules about visits, but the one I liked best was that I couldn’t wear high heels, short skirts or see-through clothes. It made me laugh. The first time, I wore trousers and a jumper instead. Nice and safe.

Glen didn’t like it. ‘I hope you’re not letting yourself go, Jean,’ he said, so I put lipstick on next time.

He could have three visits a week, but we agreed I’d only come twice so I didn’t have to deal with the reporters too often. Mondays and Fridays. ‘It’ll give my week a shape,’ he said.

The room was noisy and brightly lit and it hurt my eyes and ears. We’d sit across from each other and when I’d told him my news and he’d told me his, we’d listen to the other conversations going on around us and talk about them instead.

I thought my job was to comfort him and reassure him that I was standing by him, but he seemed to have that covered already.

‘We can weather this, Jeanie. We know the truth and so will everyone else soon. Don’t you worry,’ he’d say at least once a visit. I tried not to, but I felt like our life was slipping away.

‘What if the truth doesn’t come out?’ I asked him once and he looked disappointed that I would even suggest it.

‘It will,’ he insisted. ‘My lawyer says the police have screwed up royally.’

When Glen’s case wasn’t thrown out before the trial, he said the police ‘want their day in court’. He looked smaller every time I saw him, as if he was shrinking inside himself.

‘Don’t worry love,’ I heard myself say. ‘All over soon.’

He looked grateful.