Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

‘It’s nothing to joke about. This is going to get worse before it gets better, Mrs Lewis,’ he said, in his fussy no-nonsense lawyer voice. ‘There’s Christopher Meeks to consider. The arrest is just a taster. The trial will be a trial.’

He walked me up to High Holborn and left me with a cordial goodbye near Chancery Lane before being swallowed up by the swirling crowds descending into the Underground. I pulled my coat tighter around myself and ducked out of the human current, sliding in next to the kiosk dispensing the Evening Standard just until I could orient myself. The air smelled of fuel exhaust and hops. It was already nearly dark and the railings for the Tube entrance were cold at my back as I pulled out my phone, about to tap out a message.

Something made me glance up – a familiar voice.

Eddy was a mere few yards away, talking urgently into his phone, his forehead furrowed. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he was saying, his hand straying up to his collar to tug it as he often did when nervous. ‘I never promised…’

He turned, saw me. His mouth thinned. I could see him thinking – should I turn my back to her? Pretend I haven’t seen her?

In the end, to my surprise, he did neither of those things.

‘Look, I’ll ring you back, all right?’ He swiped the phone off, dropped it into his pocket and strolled over, with a little studied nonchalance, as though it meant nothing.

‘Fancy meeting you here.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I had business in town.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, clucking his tongue. ‘Me too.’

He came and stood next to me, and we both stared out at the tide of commuters flowing past, while we rested in the little harbour provided by the kiosk.

We could have been spies, meeting to pass on information.

‘You know,’ he said after a few moments, and his jaw was tight, ‘half of the stuff they printed in that newspaper didn’t come from me. I don’t know where they got that from.’

I sighed. The subject was already exhausted as far as I was concerned. Part of our signed agreement was that he promised never again to sell information about me to any newspaper or media outlet – rather like shutting the stable door after the horse is gone, in my view, but Stephen was insistent.

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ I said. It didn’t.

‘I know I’ve hardly been the ideal husband,’ he murmured, ‘but I really am sorry it worked out this way.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’ My hands were cold and I shoved them into my pockets. On the road, taxis were honking at one another over some perceived slight. The chill had brought out the roses in his cheeks.

‘Can I ask a question? Since we’re here?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

‘Did you really not know you were this Bethan Avery person?’

I craned up to look at him. ‘Are you serious?’

He shrugged, as if to say, Well yes.

‘No,’ I said coldly. ‘No I didn’t.’

It was his turn to sigh. ‘I suppose it explains a few things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like why our marriage failed.’ He opened his palms, as though this were a fait accompli. ‘I mean, if you had no idea who you were, how was I supposed to know who you were?’

I stood up straight. It was time to go.

‘Does it matter? The important thing has always been that you knew who you were. You knew who you were and what you wanted and kept me posted.’

‘But…’

I wanted to tell him that our marriage failed because he left me for another woman, because he was greedy and egotistical, but instead, I simply tightened my scarf around my neck.

‘Eddy, I would love to stay and chat, but I have to go.’ I extended a hand. ‘I’ll see you around, no doubt.’

He wanted to say more, I think, but realized it would be pointless. We shook hands, like business colleagues, and within moments the human swell of commuterdom had funnelled him away into the depths of the Central Line, leaving me alone.

Martin was waiting outside the Delaunay, chafing his gloved hands together.

‘How did it go?’ he asked.

‘Eddy,’ I sighed out. Though my old rage, that furious, uncontrollable chthonic monster, has now subsided, sunk back into the depths, I am still bitterly disappointed in Eddy. However, I was not surprised. I could see past it.

I was coping better than Martin, it seemed.

‘You can’t stop the greedy bastard selling his story again,’ he said. ‘He can just turn “anonymous source”, and unless we catch him red-handed, there’s nothing you can do.’ He ground one fist into his palm, an unconscious gesture of rage. ‘Just so you know.’

I nodded. I understood.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, and one of those hands now closed around my own.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’ I actually meant it.

‘Are you ready to celebrate your divorce?’

I gazed up at the brilliantly lit windows of the restaurant, and bit my lip. It smelled good. It looked good.

‘Yeah, I am…’ I was tired, and not terribly publicly inclined right then, but there was no way to say this without hurting him.

‘You’re not so sure, are you?’

I hesitated, mortified that my feelings had been so obvious to him. This was meant to be a treat he’d planned for me, after all.

‘You know,’ he said, and there was a warm twinkle in his eye as he slipped my hand into his pocket, ‘it’s entirely possible to celebrate divorces at home too, and in equally splendid style. Which is an option we should consider.’

‘But I-’

‘No. Not another word. You’re exhausted, I can tell. Let’s get a takeaway, stay in and chill some champagne.’

I grinned at him, pleased and relieved that he got it.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home.’

I took the arm he offered, and we began the journey back to Little Wilbraham, to the house on the Fens.

‘What do I call you now?’ he asked me, the first time he took me back there. His voice was thick, drowsy.

I turned around in his arms. I had been sure he was asleep. I do not really sleep, myself, not yet.

‘What do you call me?’

I had been dodging this question for nearly two weeks at that point. I told everybody I was too exhausted to think about it – the reporters, the police, concerned well-wishers… the parents of the other murdered girls. Yes, I’ve been meeting them too. Again and again, I keep waiting for them to confront me – if Bethan, the first victim, had gone to the police instead of on some seventeen-year amnesiac bender, then so many lives might have been saved.

But none of them confront me.

Instead, they pity me.

It’s much, much worse.

‘Yes, you silly mare,’ said Martin. ‘You need a name.’

He was quite right. I must pick an identity and stick with it. Until then, I was in limbo.

‘I can’t decide,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be Bethan Avery – you know, the mad girl who was kidnapped and kept in a cellar, then forgot about it for nearly twenty years. And I’m not sure I’m legally allowed to be Margot Lewis still.’

‘I can’t see why you’d want to be Lewis anyway.’

Well, that much was definitely true.

They fired me in the end, once Eddy’s revelations hit the papers.

It was bound to happen, of course. It’s a different world nowadays, or so they would have you believe. What with the dissociative amnesia, identity theft, fugue states and putting a child molester’s eye out – it all marks a girl’s card.