Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Acknowledgements
Read More
About the Author
Copyright
For Gary, Tom and Lucy,
without whom nothing would mean anything.
I CAN HEAR the sound of her crunching up the path. Heavy footed in high heels. She’s almost at the door, hesitating and smoothing her hair out of her face. Nice outfit. Jacket with big buttons, decent dress underneath and glasses perched on her head. Not a Jehovah’s Witness or the Labour party. Must be a reporter, but not the usual. She’s my second one today – fourth this week, and it’s only Wednesday. I bet she says, ‘I’m sorry to bother you at such a difficult time.’ They all say that and put on that stupid face. Like they care.
I’m going to wait to see if she rings twice. The man this morning didn’t. Some are obviously bored to death with trying. They leave as soon as they take their finger off the bell, marching back down the path as fast as they can, into their cars and away. They can tell their bosses they knocked on the door but she wasn’t there. Pathetic.
She rings twice. Then knocks loudly in that rap-rap-rappity-rap way. Like a policeman. She sees me looking through the gap at the side of my net curtains and smiles this big smile. A Hollywood smile, my mum used to say. Then she knocks again.
When I open the door, she hands me the bottle of milk from the doorstep and says, ‘You don’t want to leave that out, it’ll go off. Shall I come in? Have you got the kettle on?’
I can’t breathe, let alone speak. She smiles again, head on one side. ‘I’m Kate,’ she says. ‘Kate Waters, a reporter from the Daily Post.’
‘I’m—’ I start, suddenly realizing she hasn’t asked.
‘I know who you are, Mrs Taylor,’ she says. Unspoken are the words: You are the story. ‘Let’s not stand out here,’ she says. And as she talks, somehow, she’s come in.
I feel too stunned by the turn of events to speak and she takes my silence as permission to go into the kitchen with the bottle of milk and make me a cup of tea. I follow her in – it’s not a big kitchen and we’re a bit of a squeeze as she bustles about, filling the kettle and opening all my cupboards, looking for cups and sugar. I just stand there, letting it all happen.
She’s chatting about the units. ‘What a lovely fresh-looking kitchen – I wish mine looked like this. Did you put it in?’
It feels like I’m talking to a friend. It isn’t how I thought it would be, talking to a reporter. I thought it would be like being questioned by the police. Thought it would be an ordeal, an interrogation. That’s what my husband, Glen, said. But it isn’t, somehow.
I say, ‘Yes, we chose white doors and red handles because it looked so clean.’ I’m standing in my house discussing kitchen units with a reporter. Glen would’ve had a fit.
She says, ‘Through here, is it?’ and I open the door to the living room.
I’m not sure if I want her here or not – not sure how I feel. It doesn’t feel right to protest now – she’s just sitting and chatting with a cup of tea in her hand. It’s funny, I’m quite enjoying the attention. I get a bit lonely inside this house now that Glen is gone.
And she seems to be in charge of things. It’s quite nice really, to have someone in charge of me again. I was beginning to panic that I’d have to cope with everything on my own, but Kate Waters is saying she’ll sort everything out.
All I have to do is tell her all about my life, she says.
My life? She doesn’t really want to know about me. She hasn’t walked up my path to hear about Jean Taylor. She wants to know the truth about him. About Glen. My husband.
You see, my husband died three weeks ago. Knocked down by a bus just outside Sainsbury’s. He was there one minute, giving me grief about what sort of cereal I should’ve bought, and the next, dead on the road. Head injuries, they said. Dead, anyway. I just stood there and looked at him, lying there. People were running round finding blankets and there was a bit of blood on the pavement. Not much blood though. He would’ve been glad. He didn’t like any sort of mess.
Everyone was very kind and trying to stop me seeing his body, but I couldn’t tell them I was glad he’d gone. No more of his nonsense.
THE POLICE CAME to the hospital, of course. Even DI Bob Sparkes turned up at A&E to talk about Glen.
I said nothing to him or any of the others. Told them there was nothing to say, I was too upset to talk. Cried a bit.
DI Bob Sparkes has been a part of my life for so long – over three years it is now – but I think perhaps he will disappear with you, Glen.
I don’t say any of this to Kate Waters. She sits in the other armchair in the living room, nursing her mug of tea and jiggling her foot.
‘Jean,’ she says – no more Mrs Taylor, I notice – ‘this last week must have been terrible for you. And after all you’ve already been through.’
I say nothing, just stare at my lap. She has no idea what I’ve been through. No one has, really. I’ve never been able to tell anyone. Glen said that was best.
We wait in silence, then she tries a different tack. She stands up and picks up a photo of us from the mantelpiece – both of us laughing at something.
‘You look so young,’ she says. ‘Was this before you got married?’
I nod.
‘Did you know each other a long time before that? Did you meet at school?’
‘No, not at school. We met at a bus stop,’ I tell her. ‘He was very good-looking and he made me laugh. I was seventeen, an apprentice at a hairdresser’s in Greenwich, and he worked in a bank. He was a bit older and wore a suit and good shoes. He was different.’
I’m making it sound like some romantic novel and Kate Waters is lapping it up, scribbling in her notebook, peering at me over those little glasses and nodding as if she understands. She isn’t fooling me.
Actually, Glen didn’t seem the romantic sort at first. Our courtship was mainly in the dark – the cinema, the back seat of his Escort, the park – and there wasn’t much time for talking. But I remember the first time he told me he loved me. I prickled all over, like I could feel every inch of my skin. I felt alive for the first time in my life. I told him I loved him, too. Desperately. That I couldn’t eat or sleep for thinking about him.
My mum said it was a ‘fascination’ on my part when I mooned around the house. I wasn’t sure what it meant, ‘fascination’, but I wanted to be with Glen all the time and back then he said he felt the same. I think Mum was a bit jealous. She relied on me.
‘She relies on you too much, Jeanie,’ Glen said. ‘Not healthy to be going everywhere with your daughter.’
I tried to explain about Mum being frightened of going out on her own, but Glen said she was being selfish.
He was so protective, picking a seat for me in the pub away from the bar – ‘Don’t want it to be too noisy for you’ – and ordering for me at restaurants so I tasted new things – ‘You’ll love this, Jeanie. Just try it.’ So I did and sometimes the new things were lovely. And if they weren’t, I didn’t say anything in case I hurt his feelings. He would go quiet if I went against him. I hated that. Felt I’d disappointed him.
I’d never been out with someone like Glen, someone who knew what they wanted in life. The other boys were just that – boys.
Two years later, when Glen proposed, he didn’t go down on one knee. He held me very close and said, ‘You belong to me, Jeanie. We belong together … Let’s get married.’
He’d won Mum over by then, anyway. He’d come with flowers – ‘A little something for the other woman in my life,’ he’d say to make her giggle and he’d talk to her about Coronation Street or the Royal Family and Mum loved it. She said I was a lucky girl. That he’d brought me out of myself. Would make something of me. She could see he’d take care of me. And he did.
‘What was he like, then?’ Kate Waters asks, leaning forward to encourage me. Then. She means before all the bad stuff.
‘Oh, he was a lovely man. Very lovey-dovey, couldn’t do enough for me,’ I say. ‘Always bringing me flowers and presents. Said I was the one. I was blown over by it all. I was only seventeen.’
She loves it. Writes it all down in a funny scrawl and looks up. I’m trying not to laugh. I feel the hysteria rising but it comes out like a sob and she reaches her hand over to touch my arm.
‘Don’t be upset,’ she says. ‘It’s all over now.’
And it is. No more police, no more Glen. No more of his nonsense.
I can’t quite remember when I started calling it that. It had begun long before I could name it. I was too busy making our marriage perfect, beginning with the wedding at Charlton House.
My mum and dad thought I was too young at nineteen but we persuaded them. Well, Glen did, really. He was so determined, so devoted to me, and in the end Dad said ‘Yes’ and we celebrated with a bottle of Lambrusco.
They paid a fortune for the wedding because I was their only one and I spent my whole time looking at pictures in bridal magazines with Mum and dreaming of my big day. My big day. How I clung to that and filled my life with it. Glen never interfered.
‘That’s your department,’ he’d say and laugh.
He made it sound like he had a department, too. I thought it was probably his job; he was the main breadwinner, he said. ‘I know it sounds old-fashioned, Jeanie, but I want to look after you. You’re still very young and we’ve got everything in front of us.’
He always had big ideas and they sounded so exciting when he talked about them. He was going to be the manager of the branch, then leave to start his own business. Be his own boss and make lots of money. I could see him in a posh suit with a secretary and a big car. And me, I was going to be there for him. ‘Never change, Jeanie. I love you just the way you are,’ he’d say.
So we bought Number 12 and moved in after the wedding. We’re still here all these years later.
The house had a front garden, but we gravelled over ‘to save on cutting the grass,’ Glen said. I quite liked the grass, but Glen liked things neat. It was hard at the beginning, when we first moved in together, because I was always a bit untidy. Mum was forever finding dirty plates and odd socks in the fluff under my bed at home. Glen would’ve died if he’d looked.
I can see him now, clenching his teeth and his eyes going all narrow, when he caught me brushing crumbs off the table on to the floor with my hand after we had tea one night, early on. I didn’t even know I was doing it – must’ve done it a hundred times without thinking, but I never did it again. He was good for me in that way, taught me how to do things right so the house was nice. He liked it nice.
In the early days, Glen told me all about his job in the bank – the responsibilities he had, how the juniors relied on him, the jokes the staff played on each other, the boss he couldn’t stand – ‘Thinks he’s better than everyone, Jeanie’ – and the people he worked with. Joy and Liz in the back office; Scott, one of the counter staff, who had terrible skin and blushed about everything; May, the trainee who kept making mistakes. I loved listening to him, loved hearing about his world.
I suppose I did tell him about my work, but we seemed to drift back to the bank quite quickly.
‘Hairdressing isn’t the most exciting job,’ he’d say, ‘but you do it very well, Jeanie. I’m very proud of you.’
He was trying to make me feel better about myself, he told me. And he did. It felt so safe being loved by Glen.
Kate Waters is looking at me, doing that thing with her head again. She’s good, I’ll give her that. I’ve never spoken to a journalist before, apart from telling them to go away, never mind let one in the house. They’ve been coming to the door for years, on and off, and no one has got inside until today. Glen saw to that.
But he’s not here now. And Kate Waters seems different. She’s told me she feels ‘a real connection’ with me. Says she feels like we’ve known each other for ages. And I know what she means.
‘His death must’ve come as a terrible shock,’ she says, giving my arm another squeeze. I nod dumbly.
I can’t tell her how I started lying awake, wishing Glen was dead. Well, not dead exactly. I didn’t want him to be in any pain or suffer or anything, I just wanted him not to be there any more. I would fantasize about the moment when I’d get the call from a police officer.
‘Mrs Taylor,’ the deep voice would say, ‘I’m so sorry, but I’ve got bad news.’ The anticipation of the next bit almost used to make me giggle. ‘Mrs Taylor, I’m afraid your husband has been killed in an accident.’
I then saw myself – really saw myself – sobbing and picking up the phone to ring his mum and tell her. ‘Mary,’ I’d say, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve got some bad news. It’s Glen. He’s dead.’
I can hear the shock in her gasp. I can feel her grief. I can feel the sympathy of friends at my loss, gathering my family around me. Then the secret thrill.
Me, the grieving widow. Don’t make me laugh.
Of course, when it actually happened it didn’t feel nearly as real. For a moment, his mum sounded almost as relieved as me that it was all over, then she put the phone down, weeping for her boy. And there were no friends to tell and just a handful of family to gather around me.
Kate Waters chirps up about needing the loo and making another cup of tea and I let her get on with it, giving her my mug and showing her the downstairs cloakroom. When she’s gone, I look around the room quickly, making sure there’s nothing of Glen’s out. No souvenirs for her to steal. Glen warned me. He told me all the stories about the press. I hear the toilet flush and she eventually reappears with a tray and starts up again about what a remarkable woman I must be, so loyal.
I keep looking at the wedding picture on the wall above the gas fire. We look so young we could’ve been dressing up in our parents’ clothes. Kate Waters sees me looking and takes the photo off the wall.
She perches on the arm of my chair and we look at it together. September the sixth, 1989. The day we tied the knot. I don’t know why but I start to cry – my first real tears since Glen died – and Kate Waters puts an arm round me.
KATE WATERS SHIFTED in her chair. She shouldn’t have had that cup of coffee earlier – what with that and the tea, her bladder was sending distress signals and she might have to leave Jean Taylor alone with her thoughts. Not a good idea at this stage of the game, especially as Jean had gone a bit quiet, sipping her tea and gazing into the distance. Kate was desperate not to damage the rapport she was building with her. They were at a very delicate stage. Lose eye contact and the whole mood could change.
Her husband Steve had once compared her job to stalking an animal. He’d had a glass too many of Rioja and was showing off at a dinner party.
‘She gets closer and closer, feeding them little bits of kindness and humour, a hint of money to come, their chance to give their side of the story, until they are eating out of the palm of her hand. It’s a real art,’ he’d told the guests round their dining-room table.
They were his colleagues from the Oncology department and Kate had sat there, wearing her professional smile and murmuring, ‘Come on, darling, you know me better than that,’ as the guests laughed nervously and sipped their wine. She’d been furious during the washing up, sloshing suds over the floor as she threw pans into the sink, but Steve had put his arms around her and kissed her into a reconciliation.
‘You know how much I admire you, Kate,’ he’d said. ‘You’re brilliant at what you do.’
She’d kissed him back, but he was right. It was sometimes a game or a flirtatious dance, to make an instant connection with a suspicious – even hostile – stranger. She loved it. Loved the adrenalin rush of getting to the doorstep first, ahead of the pack, ringing the bell and hearing the sounds of life inside the house, seeing the light change in the frosted glass as the person approached and then, as the door opened, going into full performance mode.
Reporters had different techniques on the doorstep; one friend she’d trained with called it his ‘last puppy in the basket’ look to get sympathy, another always blamed her news editor for making her knock on the door again, and one had once stuffed a pillow up her jumper to pretend she was pregnant and asked to use the loo to get in.
Not Kate’s style. She had her own rules: always smile, never stand too close to the door, don’t start with an apology, and try to distract from the fact that you’re after a story. She’d used the bottle-of-milk thing before, but milkmen were a dying breed. She was very pleased with herself for getting through this door with such apparent ease.
In truth, she hadn’t wanted to come in the first place. She needed to get to the office and finish her expenses form before her credit-card bill came through and cleaned out her bank account. But her news editor was having none of it.
‘Go and knock on the widow’s door – it’s on your way in,’ Terry Deacon shouted down the phone above the radio news headlines blaring out beside him. ‘Never know. Today might be your lucky day.’
Kate had sighed. She knew immediately who Terry meant. There was only one widow everyone wanted to interview that week, but she also knew it was a well-trodden path. Three of her colleagues at the Post had already tried – and she was sure she must be the last reporter in the country to knock on this particular door.
Almost.
As she reached the turning into Jean Taylor’s road, she automatically checked for other press and immediately spotted the man from The Times, standing by a car. Boring tie, elbow patches and a side parting. Classic. She edged her car forward as the traffic crawled along the main road, but kept one eye on the enemy. She’d have to go round the block again and hope he’d have left by the time she got back.
‘Bloody hell,’ she muttered, signalling left and swinging down a side street to park up.
Fifteen minutes and a flick through the dailies later, Kate put her seatbelt back on and restarted the car. Her phone rang and she dug deep into her bag to find it. Fishing it out, she saw Bob Sparkes’ name on the display and turned off the engine again.
‘Hello, Bob, how are you? What’s happening?’
Detective Inspector Bob Sparkes wanted something; that was obvious. He wasn’t the sort of bloke to ring for a chat and she bet herself the call would last less than sixty seconds.
‘Hi Kate. Good, thanks. Quite busy – you know what it’s like. Got a couple of cases on the go, but nothing interesting. Look, Kate, just wondered if you were still working on the Glen Taylor case.’
‘Christ, Bob, have you got me on CCTV or something? I’m just about to go and knock on Jean Taylor’s door.’
Sparkes laughed. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not on the surveillance list as far as I know.’
‘Anything I should know before I see her?’ Kate asked. ‘Anything new since Glen Taylor died?’
‘No, not really.’ She could hear the disappointment in his voice. ‘Wondered if you’d heard anything. Anyway, I’d appreciate a heads-up if Jean says anything.’
‘I’ll give you a call afterwards,’ she said. ‘But she’ll probably slam the door in my face. That’s what she’s done to all the other reporters.’
‘OK, speak later.’
End of. She looked at the phone and smiled. Forty-one seconds. A new record. She must tease him about it next time she saw him.
Five minutes later she’d cruised down Jean Taylor’s newly media-free street and walked up the path.
Now, she needed the story.
Oh for God’s sake, how can I concentrate? she thought, digging her nails into her hand to distract herself. No – no good.
‘Sorry, Jean, but would it be all right to use your loo?’ she said now, smiling apologetically. ‘Tea goes straight through you, doesn’t it? I’ll make us another if you like.’
Jean nodded and rose from her seat to guide the way. ‘It’s through here,’ she said, standing aside so Kate could edge past into the peachy haven of the downstairs loo.
Washing her hands with the perfumed guest soap, Kate glanced up and caught her expression in the mirror. She looked a bit tired, she thought, smoothing her unruly hair and tapping the bags under her eyes with her fingertips as instructed by the girl who did her occasional facials.
In the kitchen on her own, she idly read the notes and magnets on the fridge while she waited for the kettle to boil. Shopping lists and holiday souvenirs; nothing much for her here. A photo of the Taylors taken in a beach restaurant showed the couple smiling and raising their glasses to the camera. Glen Taylor, all tousled dark hair and holiday smile, and Jean, dark blonde hair done for the occasion and tucked neatly behind her ears, going-out make-up slightly smudged by the heat, and that sideways glance at her husband.
Adoring or in awe? Kate wondered.
The last couple of years had clearly taken their toll on the woman in the photo. Jean was sitting waiting for her in cargo pants, baggy T-shirt and cardigan, her hair escaping from a stubby ponytail. Steve was always teasing her about how she noticed the little things, but it was part of the job. ‘I’m a trained observer,’ she’d joked and delighted in pointing out tiny, telling details. She’d immediately spotted Jean’s rough and cracked hands – hairdresser’s hands, she’d thought to herself – and the skin around the nails, frayed from nervous chewing.
The lines around the widow’s eyes told their own story.
Kate took her phone out and photographed the holiday snap. She noted that everything in the kitchen was immaculate – nothing like her own, where her teenage sons would, no doubt, have left a trail of detritus from their abandoned breakfast – stained coffee mugs, souring milk, half-eaten toast, a lidless jar of jam with a knife sticking out of it. And the obligatory filthy football kit festering on the floor.
The kettle – and thoughts of home – clicked off and she made the tea and carried the mugs through on a tray.
Jean was staring into space, her teeth working on her thumb.
‘That’s better,’ Kate said, plonking herself down. ‘Sorry about that. Now, where were we?’
She had to admit, she was beginning to worry. She’d spent nearly an hour with Jean Taylor and had a notebook full of bits and pieces about her childhood and early married life. But that was all. Every time she edged a bit closer to the story, Jean would change the subject to something safe. They’d had a long discussion at one point about the challenges of bringing up kids, and then there had been a brief interlude when Kate had finally taken one of the insistent calls from the office.
Terry was beside himself when he heard where Kate was. ‘Brilliant!’ he yelled down the phone. ‘Well done. What’s she saying? When can you file?’
Under Jean Taylor’s watchful eyes, Kate muttered, ‘Hang on a minute, Terry. The reception isn’t very good here,’ and slipped into the back garden, signalling mock irritation to Jean with a weary shake of her head.
‘For God’s sake, Terry, I was sitting next to her. I can’t talk now,’ she hissed. ‘It’s a bit slow, to be honest, but I think she’s beginning to trust me. Let me get on with it.’
‘Have you got her under contract yet?’ Terry asked. ‘Get her under contract and then we can take our time getting the full works.’
‘I don’t want to scare her off by pushing things, Terry. I’ll do my level best. Speak later.’
Kate pressed the Off button on the phone with feeling and considered her next move. Maybe she just needed to mention the money straight away. She’d done the tea and sympathy and now she had to stop dancing round the edge.
After all, Jean might be hard up now her husband was dead.
He wasn’t there to provide for her any more. Or to stop her talking.
SHE’S STILL HERE, an hour later. Before today, I’d have asked her to go. I’ve never had a problem before telling the press people to get lost when they knock. Easy when they are so rude. ‘Hello,’ they say, then they’re straight into their questions. Horrible, intrusive questions. Kate Waters hasn’t asked anything hard. Yet.
We’ve talked about all sorts of things: when Glen and I bought, the price of property round here, what we’ve done to the house, the price of paint, the neighbourhood, where I grew up and where I went to school, that sort of thing. She chimes in with everything I say. ‘Oh, I went to a school like that. I hated the teachers, didn’t you?’ That kind of thing. Makes me feel I’m chatting to a friend. That she’s just like me. Clever really, but maybe it’s what she does every time she does an interview.
She’s not so bad really. I think I could quite like her. She’s funny and seems kind, but maybe it’s all an act. She’s telling me about her husband – her ‘old man’ as she calls him – and how she must give him a ring later to let him know she might be late home. Not sure why she’ll be late – it isn’t even lunchtime yet and she only lives thirty minutes round the South Circular – but I tell her she needs to ring straight away or he’ll worry. Glen would’ve worried. He’d have given me hell if I stayed out without telling him. ‘It’s not fair on me, Jeanie,’ he’d have said. But I don’t tell her that.
Kate is laughing and says her old man is used to it now, but will complain because he’ll have to deal with the kids. She’s got teenagers, she tells me, Jake and Freddie, with no manners and no respect.
‘He’ll have to cook dinner,’ she says. ‘But I bet he orders a pizza. The boys’ll love that.’
The boys are driving her and the old man mad, apparently, because they won’t clear up their bedrooms.
‘They’re living in a pigsty, Jean,’ she says. ‘You won’t believe how many cereal bowls I found in Jake’s room. Practically a dinner service. And they lose socks every week. Our house is like the Bermuda Triangle of footwear.’ And she laughs again because she loves them, pigsty or not.
All I can think is: Jake and Freddie, what lovely names. I stash them away for later, for my collection, and I’m nodding like I understand how she feels. But I don’t, do I? I’d have loved her problems. I’d have loved to have a teenager to nag.
Anyway, I find myself saying, ‘Glen could be a bit difficult when I let the house get in a mess,’ out loud. I just wanted to show her I had my own fair share of problems, that I was just like her. Stupid, really. How could I ever be just like her? Or anybody? Me.
Glen always said I was different. When we were going out, he’d show me off, telling his mates that I was special. I couldn’t figure it out really. I worked in a salon called Hair Today – Lesley, the owner’s, little joke – and spent all my time shampooing and making cups of coffee for menopausal women. I thought hairdressing was going to be fun – glamorous even. Thought I’d be cutting hair and creating new styles, but at seventeen I was bottom of the ladder.
‘Jean,’ Lesley would call across to me, ‘can you shampoo my lady and then sweep up round the chairs.’ No please or thank you. The customers were all right. They liked telling me all their news and problems because I listened and didn’t try and give them advice, like Lesley. I nodded and smiled and daydreamed while they rabbited on about their grandson and his glue sniffing or the neighbour who was throwing her dog mess over the fence. Whole days would go past without me giving an opinion beyond ‘That’s nice’ or making up holiday plans to keep the conversation going. But I stuck at it. I did the courses, learning how to cut and colour, and started getting my own clients. It wasn’t very well paid but I wasn’t really fit for anything else. Didn’t work at school. Mum told people I was dyslexic, but the truth is I couldn’t be bothered.
Then Glen showed up and I was suddenly ‘special’.
Nothing much changed at work. But I didn’t socialize with the three other girls because Glen never liked me going out on my own. He said the other girls were single and out for sex and booze. He was probably right if their Monday-morning stories were anything to go by, but I just made excuses and in the end they stopped asking me.
I used to enjoy my work because I could drift off in my head and there was no stress. It made me feel safe – the smells of chemicals and straightened hair, the sounds of chatter and running water, hairdryers roaring and the predictability of it all. The appointment book, marked up in blunt pencil, ruled my day.
Everything was decided, even the uniform of black trousers and white top – apart from Saturday when we all had to wear jeans. ‘Demeaning on a woman of your experience. You’re a stylist, not a junior, Jeanie,’ Glen had said later. Anyway, it meant I didn’t have to decide what to wear – or do – most days. No grief.
They all loved Glen. He’d come and pick me up on a Saturday and lean on the desk to talk to Lesley. He knew so much, my Glen. All about the business side of things. And he could make people laugh even when he was talking about serious stuff.
‘He’s so clever, your husband,’ Lesley would say. ‘And so good-looking. You’re a lucky girl, Jean.’
I always understood that she couldn’t believe Glen had chosen me. Sometimes, I couldn’t either. He would laugh if I said it and pull me in to him. ‘You are everything I want,’ he’d say. He helped me see things for what they were. He helped me grow up, I suppose.
I didn’t know the first thing about money and running a home when we got married, so Glen gave me housekeeping each week and a notebook to write down everything I spent. Then we’d sit and he’d balance the figures. I learned so much from him.
Kate is talking again, but I’ve missed the start. It’s something about an ‘arrangement’ and she’s talking about money.
‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I was miles away for a minute.’
She smiles patiently and leans forward again. ‘I know how difficult this is, Jean. Having the press on your doorstep, night and day. But honestly, the only way to get rid of them is to do an interview. Then they’ll all lose interest and leave you alone.’
I nod to show I’m listening. but she gets all excited, thinks I’m agreeing to it. ‘Hang on,’ I say in a bit of a panic. ‘I’m not saying yes or no. I need to think it through.’
‘We’d be happy to make a payment – to compensate you for your time and to help you at this difficult time,’ she says quickly. Funny, isn’t it, how they try and dress things up. Compensate! She means they’ll pay me to spill the beans, but she doesn’t want to risk offending me.
I’ve had lots of offers over time, the sort of money you win on the Lottery. You should see the letters that’ve been pushed through my letterbox by reporters. They’d make you blush, they’re so false. Still, I suppose it’s better than the hate mail that gets sent.
Sometimes people tear out an article from the papers about Glen and write MONSTER in block capitals with lots of underlining. Sometimes they underline it so hard their pen goes through the page.
Anyway, the reporters do the opposite. But they are just as sickening, really.
‘Dear Mrs Taylor,’ – or just Jean sometimes – ‘I hope you won’t mind me writing to you at this difficult time, blah, blah, blah. So much has been written about you, but we would like to give you the chance to tell your side of the story. Blah, blah, blah.’
Glen used to read them out in one of his funny voices and we’d laugh and I’d stick them in a drawer. But that was when he was still alive. There was no one to share this offer with.
I look back down at my tea. It’s cold now and there’s a bit of a skin on the top. It’s that full-fat milk that Glen insists on. Insisted. I can get low-fat milk now. I smile.
Kate, who’s doing her big sell on how sensitive and responsible her newspaper is and God knows what else, sees the smile as another positive signal. She’s offering to take me to a hotel for a couple of nights, ‘To get away from the rest of the reporters and all that pressure,’ she says. ‘To give you a break, Jean.’
I need a break, I think.
As if on cue, there’s a ring on the front-door bell. Kate peeps through the net curtains and hisses, ‘Bloody hell, Jean, there’s a bloke from the local TV station outside. Keep quiet and he’ll go away.’
I do as I’m told. As usual. You see, she’s taking over where Glen left off. In charge. Protecting me from the press outside. Except, of course, she’s the press too. Oh God, I’m in here with the enemy.
I turn to say something but the bell goes again and the letterbox flap pings up. ‘Mrs Taylor?’ a voice shouts into the empty hall. ‘Mrs Taylor? It’s Jim Wilson from Capital TV. I only want a minute of your time. Just a quick word. Are you there?’
Kate and I sit looking at each other. She’s very tense. It’s strange to see someone else going through what I go through two or three times a day. I want to tell her that I’ve learned to just stay quiet. I even hold my breath sometimes so they won’t know there’s a living soul in the house. But Kate can’t sit still. Then she gets her mobile out.
‘Are you going to phone a friend?’ I ask, trying to break the tension, but of course the telly bloke hears me.
‘Mrs Taylor, I know you’re there. Please come to the door. I promise I’ll only take a moment. I just need to speak to you. We want to give you a platform—’
Kate suddenly shouts, ‘Fuck off!’ and I stare at her. Glen would never have allowed a woman to say that word in his house. She looks at me and mouths, ‘Sorry,’ and then puts her finger to her lips. And the telly man does fuck off.
‘Well, that obviously works,’ I say.
‘Sorry, but it’s the only language they understand,’ she says and laughs. It is a nice laugh, sounds genuine, and I haven’t heard much laughter lately. ‘Now then, let’s sort out this hotel before another reporter comes.’
I just nod. The last time I went to a hotel was when Glen and I went to Whitstable for a weekend, a few years ago now. 2004. For our fifteenth anniversary.
‘A milestone, Jeanie,’ he’d said. ‘It’s longer than most armed robbers get.’ He liked a joke.
Anyway, Whitstable was only an hour from home, but we stayed in a lovely place on the seafront and ate posh fish and chips and went walking along the stony beach. I picked up flat stones for Glen and he skimmed them through the waves and we counted the skips together. There was the clanging of sails on the masts of the little boats and the wind whipping my hair into a mess, but I think I was truly happy. Glen didn’t say much. He just wanted to walk and I was happy to get some of his attention.
You see, Glen was disappearing from my life really. He was there but not there, if you know what I mean. The computer was more of a wife than I was. In all sorts of ways, as it turned out. He had a camera thing so people could see him and he could see them when they were talking. The lighting on those things makes everyone look like they are dead. Like zombies. I just left him to it. To his nonsense.
‘What do you do on there all evening?’ I’d say, and he’d shrug and say, ‘Just talking to friends. Nothing much.’ But he could spend hours doing whatever it was. Hours.
Sometimes I’d wake up in the night and he wouldn’t be there, beside me in bed. I could hear the murmur of his voice from the spare room but I knew better than to disturb him. He didn’t welcome my company when he was on the computer. When I used to take him a cup of coffee I had to knock before going in. He said I made him jump if I came into the room suddenly. So I’d knock and he’d turn off the screen and take the cup off me.
‘Thanks,’ he’d say.
‘Anything interesting on the computer?’ I’d ask.
‘No,’ he’d answer. ‘Just the usual.’ End of conversation.
I never used the computer. It was very much his department.
But I think I always knew there was something going on in there. That’s when I started calling it his nonsense. Meant I could talk about it out loud. He didn’t like it being called that, but he couldn’t really say anything, could he? It was such a harmless word. Nonsense. Something and nothing. But it wasn’t nothing. It was filth. Things that no one should see, let alone pay to look at.
Glen told me it wasn’t him when the police found it on his computer.
‘They found stuff I didn’t download – horrible stuff that just finds its way on to the hard drive when you’re looking at something else,’ he said. I didn’t know anything about the internet or hard drives. It could’ve happened, couldn’t it?
‘Loads of blokes are being wrongly accused, Jeanie,’ he said. ‘It’s in the papers every week. People steal credit cards and use them to buy this stuff. I didn’t do it. I’ve told the police that.’
And when I didn’t say anything, he went on, ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be accused of something like this when you haven’t done anything. It tears you apart.’
I reached out and stroked his arm and he grabbed my hand.
‘Let’s have a cup of tea, Jeanie,’ he said. And we went into the kitchen to put the kettle on.
When I was getting the milk out of the fridge, I stood and looked at the photos on the door – us on New Year’s Eve, all poshed up, us painting the ceiling in the front room, covered in spots of magnolia, us on holiday, us at the fair. Us. We were a team.
‘Don’t worry. You’ve got me, Jeanie,’ he’d say when I came home after a bad day or something. ‘We’re a team.’ And we were. There was too much at stake to split up.
And we were in too deep for me to walk away. I’d lied for him.
It wasn’t the first time. It started with ringing up the bank to say he was ill when he didn’t fancy going in. Then lying about losing the credit card when he said we’d got into financial trouble so the bank would write off some of the withdrawals.
‘It doesn’t hurt anyone, Jeanie,’ he’d say. ‘Go on, just this once.’
Of course it wasn’t just once.
I expect that this is what Kate Waters wants to hear about.
I hear her say my name in the hall and when I get up to look, she’s talking to someone on the phone, telling them to come and rescue us.
Glen used to call me his princess sometimes, but I’m sure no one is coming on a white horse to save me today.
I go and sit down again and wait to see what happens.
BOB SPARKES SMILED the first time he heard Bella Elliott’s name. His favourite auntie – one of his mum’s flock of younger sisters – was called Bella; the joker in the pack. It was the last time he smiled for weeks.
The 999 call had come in at 15.38. The woman’s voice was breathless with grief.
‘She’s been taken,’ she said. ‘She’s only two. Someone has taken her—’
On the recording, played over and over again in the ensuing days, the soothing alto tones of the male operator could be heard in an agonizing duet with the shrill soprano of the caller.
‘What is your little girl’s name?’
‘Bella – she’s called Bella.’
‘And who am I talking to?’
’I’m her mum. Dawn Elliott. She was in the garden, at the front. Our house. 44a Manor Road, Westland. Please help me.’
‘We will, Dawn. I know this is hard, but we need to know a few more things to help us find Bella. When did you last see her? Was she on her own in the garden?’
‘She was playing with the cat. On her own. After her nap. She hadn’t been out there long. Just a few minutes. I went out to bring her in about three thirty and she’d gone. We’ve looked everywhere. Please help me find her.’
‘OK. Stay with me, Dawn. Can you describe Bella? What is she wearing?’
‘She’s got blonde hair – in a ponytail today. She’s only little. She’s just a baby … I just can’t remember what she was wearing. A T-shirt and trousers, I think. Oh God, I can’t think. She had her glasses on. Little round ones with pink frames – it’s because she’s got a lazy eye. Please find her. Please.’
It was thirty minutes later, after two uniforms from the Hampshire force had gone to confirm Dawn Elliott’s story and make an immediate search of the house, that Bella’s name came to DI Sparkes’ attention.
‘Two-year-old gone missing, Bob,’ his sergeant said as he barged into the DI’s office. ‘Bella Elliott. Not been seen for nearly two hours. In the front garden, playing, and then gone. It’s a council estate on the edge of Southampton. Mum’s in pieces – the doctor’s with her now.’
Sergeant Ian Matthews laid a slim folder on his boss’s desk. Bella Elliott’s name was written in black marker on the cover and attached with a paper clip was a colour photo of a little girl.
Sparkes tapped the photo, taking it in before opening the file. ‘What are we doing? Where are we looking? Where’s the dad?’
Sergeant Matthews sat down heavily. ‘The house, the loft, the garden so far. Doesn’t look good. No sign of her. Dad is from the Midlands, mum thinks – a brief encounter who left before Bella was born. We’re trying to trace him, but mum isn’t helping. She says he doesn’t need to know.’
‘And what about her? What’s she like? What was she doing while her two-year-old was playing outside?’ Sparkes asked.
‘Said she was making Bella’s tea. The kitchen looks out over the back garden so she couldn’t see her. There’s only a low wall at the front, barely a wall at all.’
‘Bit careless to leave a child that age unsupervised,’ Sparkes mused, trying to remember his two kids at the same age. James was now thirty – an accountant, of all things – and Samantha twenty-six and newly engaged. Had he and Eileen ever left them in the garden as toddlers? He couldn’t remember, to be honest. Probably wasn’t around much at that stage, always out at work. He’d ask Eileen when he got home – if he got home tonight.
DI Sparkes reached for his coat, on a hook behind him, and fished his car keys out of a pocket. ‘I’d better get out there and have a look, Matthews. Sniff the air, talk to the mum. You stay here and get things organized in case we need an incident room. I’ll call you before seven.’
In the car on the way to Westland, he turned on the radio to hear the local news. Bella was top of the news bulletin, but the reporter had found nothing that Sparkes didn’t already know.
Thank goodness for that, he thought. His feelings towards the local media were decidedly mixed.
The last time a child had gone missing, things had turned ugly when the reporters started their own investigation and stomped all over the evidence. Laura Simpson, a five-year-old from Gosport, had been found, dirty, scared and hidden in a cupboard at her step-uncle’s place – ‘It was one of those families where every Tom, Dick and Harry was a relative,’ he’d told Eileen.
Unfortunately, one of the reporters had removed the family album from the mother’s flat, so the police hadn’t seen a photo of Uncle Jim – a registered sex offender on the patch – or realized his connection with the missing girl.
He’d tried to have sex with the child but failed, and Sparkes believed he would have killed her as the detectives ran round in circles, sometimes only yards from her prison, if another member of the extended family hadn’t got drunk and rung in with his name. Laura escaped with bruising to her body and mind. He could still see her eyes as he opened the door to the cupboard. Terror – no other word for it. Terror that he was going to be like Uncle Jim. He’d called a female detective forward to hold Laura in her arms. Safe at last. Everyone had tears in their eyes except Laura. She looked numb.
He’d always thought he’d let her down somehow. Should’ve found the link earlier. Should’ve asked different questions. Should’ve found her quicker. His boss and the press had treated her discovery like a triumph, but he couldn’t celebrate. Not after he’d seen those eyes.
Wonder where she is now? he thought. Wonder where Uncle Jim is now?
Manor Road was filled with reporters, neighbours and police officers, all interviewing each other in a verbal orgy.
Sparkes pushed his way through the knot of people at the gate of Number 44a, nodding at the journalists he recognized.
‘Bob,’ a woman’s voice called. ‘Hi. Any news? Any leads?’ Kate Waters pushed forward and smiled mock-wearily. He’d last seen her during a grisly murder in the New Forest and they had enjoyed a couple of drinks and a gossip in the weeks it took to nail the husband.
They went way back, bumping into each other every so often on different cases and picking up where they’d left off. Not really a friendship, he thought. It was definitely all about work, but Kate was all right. Last time, she’d held on to a line in the story she’d stumbled on until he was ready for the information to come out. He owed her one.
‘Hello, Kate. Just got here, but maybe I’ll have something to say later,’ he said, ducking past the uniform guarding the house.
There was a smell of cats and cigarettes in the front room. Dawn Elliott was huddled on the sofa, her trembling fingers clutching a mobile phone and a doll. Her blonde hair was tethered off her face in a half-hearted ponytail, making her look even younger than she was. She looked up at the tall, serious-looking man in the doorway, her face collapsing.
‘Have you found her?’ she managed.
‘Ms Elliott, I’m Detective Inspector Bob Sparkes. I’m here to help find Bella and I want you to help me.’
Dawn looked at him. ‘But I’ve told the police everything. What’s the good of asking the same questions over and over? Just find her! Find my baby!’ she shouted hoarsely.
He nodded and sat down beside her. ‘Come on, Dawn, let’s go through it together,’ he said gently. ‘There may be something new you remember.’
So she told him her tale, dry sobs choking her words. Bella was Dawn Elliott’s only child, the result of a doomed relationship with a married man she’d met at a nightclub; a sweet little girl who loved watching Disney videos and dancing. Dawn didn’t mix much with the neighbours – ‘They look down their noses at me – I’m a single mum on benefits – they think I’m a scrounger,’ she told Bob Sparkes.
But as they talked, his team and scores of volunteers from the community, many still in their work clothes, were searching back gardens, dustbins, hedges, attics, basements, sheds, cars, kennels and compost heaps all over the estate. The light was beginning to fade outside and a voice suddenly cried out, ‘Bella! Bella! Where are you, lovey?’ Dawn Elliott jumped to her feet to look out of the window.