Fiona Barton - The Widow

In the end I made a drink and took it up to bed with the handful of cards and letters from the family. I’d burned the nasty ones on the stove top.

The bed felt bigger without him. He wasn’t always in it—sometimes he slept on the sofa downstairs when he was restless. “Don’t want to keep you awake, Jean,” he’d say, and pick up his pillow. He didn’t want to go in the spare room anymore, so we’d got a sofa that pulled out into a bed and he’d crawl into it in the middle of the night. We kept a duvet behind it during the day. I didn’t know if anyone noticed.

FORTY-NINE

The Detective

SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2010

After the funeral, Bob Sparkes read the coverage and looked at the photographs of Jean at the crematorium and a close-up of the word “Glen” spelled out in flowers. “How Will We Find You Now, Bella?” the papers said, taunting him.

He tried to concentrate on the job but found himself staring into space, lost and unable to move forward. He decided to take some leave and get his head together. “Let’s pack up the car and drive to Devon. Find a place to stay when we get there,” he said to Eileen on Saturday morning.

She went to talk to the neighbor about feeding the cat, and he sat at the table with the post.

Eileen crashed in through the back door, her hands full of runner beans and peas. “Picked them quickly; otherwise they’ll be over by the time we get back. Shame to waste them.”

Eileen was clearly determined that life would go on in their house, even if it was stuck on pause in her husband’s head. He’d always been a thinker—it had been what she loved about him. Deep, her friends had said. She liked that. His deepness. But now it was just blackness.

“Come on, Bob, finish shelling these peas while I pack a bag. How long are we going for?”

“A week? What do you think? Just need a bit of clean air and long walks.”

“Sounds lovely.”

He did his chore mechanically, sliding a nail along the pod and pushing the peas into a colander, as he struggled with his feelings. He’d let it get personal, he knew. No other case had touched him like this, had reduced him to tears, had threatened his career. Maybe he ought to go back to the crazy counselor? He laughed, just a short bark of a laugh, but Eileen heard it and rushed downstairs to see what had happened.

The journey was painless; it was a warm summer’s day before the school holidays with little traffic on the motorways that Sparkes took to put distance between him and the case as quickly as possible. Eileen sat close to him, occasionally patting his knee or squeezing his hand. They both felt young and slightly giddy at their spontaneity.

Eileen chatted to him about the children, filling him in on his family, as if he were emerging from a coma. “Sam says she and Pete will get married next summer. She wants to do it on a beach.”

“A beach? Suppose it won’t be Margate. Well, whatever she wants. She seems happy with Pete, doesn’t she?”

“Very happy, Bob. It’s James I’m worried about. He’s working too hard.”

“Wonder where he gets that from,” he said, and glanced at his wife to see her reaction. They smiled at each other, and Sparkes’s stomach began to unclench for the first time in weeks. Months, really.

It was wonderful to be talking about his own life instead of other people’s.

They decided to stop at Exmouth for crab sandwiches. They had brought the kids there for a summer holiday when they were little, and it held memories of being happy. It was all still there when they pulled up—the blue pompons of the hydrangeas, the flags fluttering around the Jubilee Clock Tower, the screeching seagulls, the pastel shades of the beach huts. It was as if they had stepped back into the 1990s, and they walked along the promenade to stretch their legs and look at the sea.

“Come on, love. Let’s get going. I’ve phoned the pub to book a room for tonight,” he said, and then pulled her to him and kissed her.

Another hour or so and they’d be at Dartmouth and then on to Slapton Sands for a fish supper.

They drove with the windows down and the wind blowing their hair into mad shapes. “Blowing the badness out,” Eileen said, as he knew she would. It was what she always said. It made him think of Glen Taylor, but he didn’t say anything.

• • •

At the pub, they sprawled on the benches outside, soaking up the last warmth of the sun and planning their swim in the morning. “Let’s get up early and go,” he suggested.

“Let’s not. Let’s give ourselves a lie-in and then meander down. We’ve got all week, Bob,” she said, and laughed at the thought of a whole week to themselves.

They went up to their room late and, from habit, Sparkes clicked on the television to catch the late news while Eileen had a quick shower. The video clip of Jean Taylor sitting in her living room, being interviewed, made his stomach contract into its familiar knot, and he was back in role. “Eileen, love. I’ve got to go back,” he called through to her. “It’s Jean Taylor. She says Glen took Bella.”

Eileen came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, with another pulled around her wet hair in a turban. “What? What did you say?” Then she saw the faces on the television and sank down on the bed. “Christ, Bob. Is there no end to this?”

“No, Eileen. I’m so sorry, but there isn’t until I know what happened to that little girl. Jean knows, and I’ve got to ask her again. Can you be ready to leave in fifteen minutes?”

She nodded, loosening the towel on her head and rubbing her hair dry.

The journey back was quiet. Eileen slept as Sparkes drove on deserted roads, flicking on the radio every hour on the hour to see if there were any updates.

He had to shake his wife awake when they reached home, and they fell into bed with barely a word exchanged.

FIFTY

The Reporter

SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 2010

Here she is, our star reporter!” the editor shouted across the newsroom when Kate walked in the next morning. “Brilliant exclusive, Kate. Well done!” There was a smattering of applause from her colleagues and calls of “Great stuff, Kate.” She felt herself blushing and tried to smile without looking smug.

“Thanks, Simon,” she said when she finally reached her desk and could shrug off her handbag and jacket.

The news editor had already sidled over to bask in any glory being handed out. “What have we got for day two, then, Kate? Another scoop?” the editor bawled, yellow teeth bared in triumph.

Kate knew the editor knew because she had filed it overnight, but Simon Pearson wanted to put on a bit of a show in front of his people. He hadn’t had much of a chance lately—“Bloody boring politics. Where are the exclusives?” was his mantra—and today he was going to make the most of it.

“We’ve got the story of the childless marriage,” Terry said. “Is This What Turned Mr. Normal into a Monster?”

Simon smiled widely. Kate winced. The headline was crass and screamed, turning her probing and sensitive interview into a cinema poster, but she should have been used to it. “Sell the story” was another of the editor’s mantras. He was a man for mantras. Brute force and rote learning was his preferred MO with his executives, none of your pretentious creative thinking and questioning. “Simon Says,” the execs joked.

The editor knew a good headline and believed it was always worth using a good one more than once. Every week, sometimes, when it particularly took his fancy, then promptly discarded when even he realized it was becoming the source of derision in journalist drinking holes. The question in the headline—“Is This the Most Evil Man in Britain?”—was a classic. It hedged bets. Just asking, not saying.