Diane Jeffrey - The Guilty Mother

‘She was a bright child. A wayward teenager. She and my wife Ivy were always at loggerheads with one another. She was kind and funny.’ He smiles wistfully. ‘She was a good mother to Callum.’

He pauses for a moment, and I mull over that last sentence, noting Mr Moore’s use of the past tense, too.

‘We – Ivy and I – don’t see as much of Callum as we’d like to. He’s all grown up now. I suppose he prefers to hang out with friends his own age. But when Melissa first …’

He breaks off, staring vacantly at one of Melissa’s felt pictures on the wall. This time he remains silent for so long that I don’t think he’ll finish his sentence. But then he says, ‘Well, we used to see more of our grandson.’ His voice wavers slightly. ‘We tried to help Simon out. We picked Callum up from school, took him to his activities and clubs, that sort of thing. Ivy gave him a hand with his homework assignments. He had dinner with us and slept here when my son-in-law had to work late.’

I note that he refers to Simon Goodman as his son-in-law despite the fact he and Melissa had divorced and she was remarried. I’m about to ask how old Callum is now, but then it comes back to me that he was thirteen years old at the trial. I do the mental arithmetic in my head. Eighteen. ‘What’s Callum doing these days?’ I ask instead.

But before George can answer, the front door slams and we hear a woman’s voice. At first I think she’s with someone, but I soon realise she’s talking to George from the hallway. She’s plump and she waddles into the living room, unwrapping a ludicrously long scarf from around her neck.

‘So, I asked to see the manager!’ she continues, without looking our way. ‘So rude! I’m dying for a cup …’ She stops mid-rant when she catches sight of me. Mr Moore leaps to his feet and helps her off with her jacket, and I stand up and approach her, introducing myself and holding out my hand. She doesn’t take it. ‘A journalist? We don’t talk to reporters.’

Up close, I can see she’s wearing abundant make-up that doesn’t completely conceal the wrinkles criss-crossing in furrows across her face. I know she was once attractive from the photographs I’ve just seen, but the only trace that remains of her beauty is her eyes. She has the same striking eyes as her daughter.

‘But he’s from The Redcliffe Gazette ,’ George says. They must buy The Rag , I realise.

‘I heard about your daughter’s application for an appeal, Mrs Moore,’ I explain. ‘My editor has asked me to cover it and I just want to get my facts straight.’

‘Perhaps next time you can phone before showing up on our doorstep,’ Mrs Moore says. ‘George, I’ll make some tea while you show your visitor out.’ She kicks off her shoes, bends down to pick them up and about-turns to leave the room.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say to Mr Moore as we step outside.

‘Don’t mind Ivy,’ he says. ‘She hates the press. We had reporters and photographers practically camping outside our house for weeks. A proper media circus, it was. We couldn’t open the front door without them bombarding us with questions and shoving cameras in our faces.’

‘I’m sorry about that, Mr Moore,’ I say, a strange mixture of shame and culpability washing over me at the thought that the Moores were hounded by people in the same profession as me.

‘The media branded Melissa as guilty from the start,’ he continues. ‘How could they prove she was innocent when everyone’s minds were already made up?’

I go to leave, but he grabs my arm. I turn to face him. He frowns, pinching his thick eyebrows together.

‘She didn’t do it, you know. My daughter could never have hurt anyone.’ His voice is loud, to override his emotion, I suppose, and for his sake I hope his wife can’t hear him.

‘Who was in the house when Melissa’s baby died?’ I ask. The words fly from my mouth before the question has fully formulated in my head, and I realise my mistake as soon as I see George’s face cloud over.

‘Which baby?’ he whispers at the same moment his wife shouts his name from within the house, putting an end to our conversation.

I hadn’t wanted to host the dinner party in the first place, but Michael insisted it was high time we invited our friends round. It was only Rob and Jenny, he said. They were coming with their daughter, who was a few months younger than Callum. Michael’s daughter, Bella, would be there, too. She seemed to spend as much time as possible at her mum’s – she was taking her A levels that year and apparently it was quieter for her to study there – but, to Michael’s delight, she’d agreed to come to us for the weekend. With Clémentine, our au pair , that made eight of us, not counting the twins.

Clémentine helped out with all the food preparation. She was a godsend, that girl, or so I thought at the time, and I’d been hoping she would extend her stay with us after her year was up. I realised just how much I’d come to rely on her in the short two months she’d been with us and I didn’t know what I’d do without her. She shopped and cooked and helped me look after the twins. Her patience was boundless and self-confidence oozed out of every pore of her flawless olive skin. No matter what I asked her to do, she did it graciously. She often took the initiative, too, anticipating what needed to be done before I could make a to-do list in my head.

Clémentine had even impressed Michael, who had initially been reluctant to employ an au pair . But once my husband, a self-professed wine buff, found out that Clémentine’s parents were winegrowers in the Rhône Valley, it was a done deal. The two of them had taken to discussing and tasting wines in the evenings and Michael had started to take Clémentine with him to his oenology classes once a fortnight.

As for Callum, he was besotted with her. His eyes practically popped out of his spotty face on stalks whenever she sashayed into the room, a cloud of Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle invariably wafting in with her. I’d heard him stutter more than once as he tried out his schoolboy French on her and then witnessed him blushing when she answered in her native tongue and he didn’t understand. I think it amused Clémentine.

I couldn’t fault her except for one thing. For some reason, she always seemed to tend to Ellie, leaving me to look after Amber. I’d tried to talk to Michael about this, but he argued that at only a few weeks of age, it probably didn’t matter one iota to the twins who looked after them as long as someone fed them, changed them and talked to them. I sometimes wondered if I wished Clémentine would take Amber more often because she was prone to colic and colds whereas her sister Ellie was considerably calmer. I kept that thought to myself, though, feeling guilty whenever it wormed its way into my mind.

I tried to convince myself it would be lovely to see Jenny again, but in truth I wasn’t looking forward to having guests. Despite that, I’d put a lot of thought into making myself presentable for them coming. I’d had my hair layered and highlighted that afternoon, and as I still didn’t fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes, I bought a new outfit in Oasis, opting for dark colours in the hope of concealing my bulges.

If I’d spent a little money getting ready for this evening – too much for Michael’s liking – I didn’t get to spend much time. Amber cried for what seemed like hours and by the time I finally got her down, I was running late. I did a quick job with my make-up and I was doing up my dress when the doorbell went. I appraised the result in the bedroom mirror. Not perfect, but not too bad. It would do.