Fiona Barton - The Widow

“He’s gone,” Glen said from the hall. “He shouldn’t have come. I told him it’s police harassment and he left. What did he say to you?”

“Nothing. He wanted to know when you’d be back.” Well, he did.

I went upstairs to put my rinsed tights on the drying rack over the bath, then got my laptop out to see if I could delete myself from Bella’s Facebook page. Bit pointless really, as the police had already seen it, but Glen hadn’t. I don’t think Inspector Sparkes said anything to him. That was good of him.

I expected he’d be back, though.

Glen was rummaging in the fridge for something to put in a sandwich when I came downstairs, and I jokily pushed him aside so I could do it for him. “What do you fancy? Cheese or tuna?”

“Tuna, please. Have we got any crisps to go with it?”

I fixed up a plate of food with a bit of lettuce and tomato. He needed to eat more fresh veg. He was looking pasty and putting on weight with all this sitting around indoors.

“Where did you go?” I said as I put the plate in front of him. “Just now?”

Glen put on that face, the one when I’m irritating him. “Down to the paper shop, Jean. Stop checking up on me.”

“I’m just interested, that’s all. How’s your sandwich? Can I have a look at the paper?”

“I forgot to buy one. Now, let me eat in peace.”

I went off into the other room and tried not to worry, but I began thinking that it was all starting again. His nonsense. He had begun doing his disappearing act again. Not in the house—I would have known. But sometimes he’d go out for an hour or two and would come back unable to say what he’d been doing and would get cross if I asked too many questions.

I didn’t really want to know, but I needed to. If I was being honest, I’d thought that was why Bob Sparkes came today. I thought Glen had been caught doing something on a computer again.

I tried so hard not to doubt him, but some days, like today, I struggled. I started imagining what could happen. No point thinking the worst, my dad would say to my mum when she got in a state, but it was hard not to. Hard when the worst is just out there. Just outside the door.

I felt I should do something to stop it. If I didn’t, we’d both be lost.

FORTY-ONE

The Widow

FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 2010

Tom Payne calls me back at the hotel and says the contract looks okay but he’s worried about what they’ll write. It’s hard to talk with Kate in the room, so I go into the bathroom for a bit of privacy. “The press are not your friends, Jean,” he says. “They’ll get the story they want to write. There is no copy control in the contract, so you’ve got no comeback if they twist things around. I’m concerned that you are doing this alone. Do you want me to come over?”

I don’t want Tom there. He’ll want me to change my mind, but I know what I’m doing. I’m ready.

“I’m fine, Tom, thanks. I’ll let you know how I get on.”

Kate’s back in my room, clutching the contract again. “Come on, Jean,” she says. “Let’s get this signed and get on with the interview.”

She’s determined, and I want to go home, so I reach for the piece of paper and sign my name on the dotted line. Kate smiles and her shoulders relax and she sits herself down in one of the armchairs.

“That’s the formalities out of the way, Jean,” she says, and pulls a battered tape recorder out of the bottom of her handbag. “You don’t mind if I tape the interview?” she says, putting the machine in front of me. “Just in case my shorthand blows up,” she adds, smiling.

I nod dumbly and try to sort out how to start, but I needn’t have bothered. Kate’s in charge.

“When did you first hear about Bella Elliott going missing, Jean?”

I’m all right on this. I think back to the day in October 2006, when the story came over the radio as I stood in the kitchen.

“I’d been working that morning,” I tell Kate. “But I’d had the afternoon off for working the Sunday morning shift. I’d just been puttering around, tidying, peeling potatoes for supper. Glen came home for a quick cuppa, and I got ready for my class at the sports center. I’d just got back and was putting the oven on when the news came on the radio. They said there was a massive police search for a little girl who’d gone missing in Southampton. A little girl who’d disappeared out of her garden. I felt really cold and shivery, a little girl like that, still a baby really. Didn’t bear thinking about.”

I feel cold again now. It was a shock to be confronted with that little face, the eye patch and the curls. Kate is looking anxious, so I start talking again.

“The papers the next day were full of it. Lots of pictures and some quotes from her grandma about how sweet she was. Heartbreaking really. We all talked about it in the salon. Everyone was upset and interested—you know how people are.”

“And Glen?” Kate asks. “What was his reaction?”

“He was shocked about it. He’d been making a delivery in Hampshire that day—of course, you know that—and he couldn’t get over it. We both loved children. We were upset.”

The truth is, we didn’t have much of a conversation about the disappearance beyond what a coincidence it was that he’d been in Hampshire. We had our tea on our laps, while he watched the news on the telly, and then he went back upstairs to his computer. I remember I said: “I hope they find that little girl Bella.” And I can’t remember him saying much else. I didn’t think it was odd at the time—it was just Glen being Glen.

“And then the police came,” Kate says, leaning forward over her notebook and looking at me intently. “That must’ve been terrible.”

I give her the story about me being too shocked to speak and still standing in the hall an hour after the police left, like a statue.

“Did you have any doubts about him being involved, Jean?” she asks. I swallow a mouthful of coffee and shake my head. I was waiting for her to ask this—it was what the police asked me over and over again—and I’d prepared my answer. “How could I believe he would be involved in something as awful as that?” I say. “He loved children. We both did.”

But not in the same way, it turned out.

Kate is looking at me, and I suppose I’ve gone quiet again. “Jean,” she says, “what are you thinking?” I want to say I’m thinking about when Glen told me he had seen Bella, but I can’t tell her that. That’s too big to say.

“Just about things,” I say. And then I add: “About Glen and whether I knew him at all.”

“How do you mean, Jean?” she asks, and I tell her about Glen’s face that day he was arrested.

“His face went blank,” I say. “I didn’t recognize him for a few seconds. It frightened me.”

She writes it down, glancing up to nod and look me in the eye. She lets me talk as the stuff about the porn spills out. She sits, writing quickly in her notebook but never taking her eyes off me. Nodding, egging me on with her eyes, all sympathy and understanding. For years I accepted the blame for what Glen did, telling myself it was my sick obsession with having a baby that made him do terrible things, but today he’s not here to give me that look. I can be angry and hurt by what he did in our spare room. While I was lying in bed just across the way, he invited that filth into our house.

“What kind of man looks at pictures like that, Kate?” I ask her. She shrugs helplessly. Her old man doesn’t look at toddlers being abused. Lucky her.

“He told me it wasn’t real. That it was women dressed up as children, but it wasn’t. Not all of it, anyway. The police said it was real. Glen said it was an addiction. He couldn’t help himself. It started with ‘normal porn,’ he said. I’m not sure what normal is. Are you?”