Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

‘Hello,’ I respond, surprised. ‘Come in. I’ll put the kettle on.’

She shakes her head. ‘Thanks, but no, I can’t this time. I’m really just passing by, but there was something I had to drop off to you and I thought, no time like the present.’

She holds out a small brown packet that she has taken out of her handbag.

I regard it with curiosity and a touch of reluctance.

‘Take it,’ she says kindly. ‘It’s nothing bad. We need to return this to you.’

When she’s gone and I have shut the door, I open the packet with shaking fingers.

Inside there is a paper bag, secured with a sticker marked ‘EVIDENCE’, some numbers and my name. I rip the seal, shaking the contents of the bag out into my palm.

The little tarnished silver cross and chain glint back at me.

I know the story of this necklace now. It came out in Christopher Meeks’s confession. I stir the dull links with one finger, thinking.

After a moment I lift it up and fasten it around my neck.

Tomorrow I’ll take it into the jewellers and get it cleaned.

But for now, it’s fine.

‘So, am I coming to yours tonight?’ he asks.

I am silent, thinking, my mobile pressed to my ear.

‘Margot?’

‘You know what, Martin, can I come to yours instead?’

‘What? Yes, of course. Is something the matter?’

I play with the cross with my free hand, gently turning the cool silver in my fingers, feeling the chain brush my neck. ‘No. But there’s something I need to do, and I might be back quite late.’

‘Is it what you were talking about last week?’ he asks.

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you want me to come?’

I think for a moment. That’s so, so tempting.

‘No,’ I say finally. ‘Thanks. But I need to do it alone.’

‘If you’re sure.’

I bite my lip. ‘Yeah. I am.’

It is late when I reach my destination – nearly seven o’clock – and the sun has set. I have second thoughts about the whole endeavour, but somehow I manage to find the little road and bang the ornate knocker.

When Flora Bellamy answers and sees me, her face sets like iron.

I hold up my hands, palms outward.

‘It’s all right. I understand if you don’t want to speak to me, and if you like, I’ll go.’

There is silence as she waits for me to state my business, but I can see the thin skin on her knuckles whitening around the door.

I realize that there is no other way to do this.

‘My name is Bethan Avery,’ I say. ‘And I knew your daughter.’

An acknowledgement is a terrifying thing to write – no book, or indeed writer, happens in isolation. If I have missed anyone out here, I apologize now. It was not intentional.

I’d like to thank everyone at Michael Joseph, in particular my editor Emad Akhtar (and his wonderful, perceptive suggestions for the text), my publicist Ellie Hughes and my copy-editor Shauna Bartlett. I’d also like to thank Claire Wachtel and Hannah Wood at HarperCollins and Sally Wofford-Girand at Union Literary in the US for believing in me.

None of this would have been remotely possibly without my agent Judith Murray and her unflagging faith, encouragement, and good counsel, so all praise goes to her and to everyone at Greene and Heaton.

I could go no further without acknowledging my buds from my bookselling days – in particular Jon Atkin, Lesley Baker, Trish Beswick, Sam Hobbs, Marie Kervin, Nick Lewis, Julian Rafot and the rest of the Manchester crew. Thanks, guys.

I owe a huge debt to the T Party writing group in London, and to the following people for a fund of friendship and laughter: Jack Calverley, Peter Colley, Gary Couzens, Sarah Ellender, David Gullen, Caroline Hooton, Julia Knight, Martin Owton, Sumit Paul-Choudhury, Tom Pollock, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Gaie Sebold, Allyson Shaw and Sara Jayne Townsend, as well as Raymond Dickey, Chuck Dreyer, Gordon Fraser, Lucia Graves and Luke Thomas. I would also like to remember Mark McCann and Denni Schnapp, who are sadly missed.

Special thanks must go to KD Grace for her unflinching encouragement, hours of writing talk, wonderful Anglo-American Christmasses and for not panicking that time I nearly drowned us on the way home from Avebury. Blame the ghost – I do.

Likewise, love is owed to the dazzlingly clever Melanie Garrett for gourmet cookery, inspired criticism, big ideas and bigger cocktails. She taught me that there is no problem in life or literature that cannot be knitted into submission. The next coffee in Cobham is on me.

I also gratefully remember Iain Banks, a generous friend and cherished correspondent who at all times and in all places showed me how to be a real writer.

Finally I’d be nothing without my friends and family. To Julie Revell, who never reads anything I write; to my brothers John and Joseph and my sister Jacqueline and to their families; and at last to my long-suffering parents, George and Ellen Callaghan – thanks. We got there in the end.

HELEN CALLAGHANwas born in California to British parents, and her early years were spent in both the United States and United Kingdom. She was a fiction specialist and buyer for Athena Bookshop, Dillons, and Waterstones for eight years. She read archaeology at Cambridge University, a subject she is still passionate about, and works in IT.

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