The Woman Before Me (22 page)

It was moments. Only moments. But when I came to my feet I saw Emma’s back, saw her husband hold the door open for her, as she left. I thanked whoever had been looking down on me that she hadn’t looked back. I thanked Mum and Rita that you hadn’t seen Luke.

34

When Jason Clark opened the door on Monday morning his hair was still wet from the shower and his shirt half unbuttoned. Cate checked her watch, wondering if she was early, but it was gone ten. He stood aside to let her enter, pointing upstairs. “You know where to go.” The last time she had seen him he had been crying on the floor, but his face betrayed no memory of this.

He followed her to the lounge, which was neater than the last time she’d been here. The CDs were filed away and the table clear of clutter. “Do you want a drink?”

“Coffee, please.”

“Black, one sugar, right?”

“Thanks.”

He disappeared into the kitchen and she heard him moving around, the click of a boiled kettle. As she waited she took her notebook and pen from her bag and placed them on the table.

He appeared in the room, holding two steaming mugs. “Don’t spill it this time.”

“I won’t. Sorry about that.” Cate looked down at the carpet, where a dark stain showed. “You were pretty upset when I left.”

“Yeah, well.”

“You said I shouldn’t try and open a can of worms. What did you mean?”

“Just what I said. Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible. The parole board are meeting next week and I need to ask questions to write the report.”

“And Rose needs a good report from you to get released.”

“Yes.” Cate blew the heat from her drink.

“Will it be good?” he fixed her with a hard stare.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to tell you that, even if I had made a decision yet.” Cate used her coffee cup like smokers use cigarettes, sipping between sentences and using her mug as a barrier.

“See, that really pisses me off. You come into my home, ask all these questions, but you won’t tell me anything. For God’s sake, she’s been locked up for four years. Isn’t that enough?”

His voice was raised and his shoulders tense. Cate put her mug on the table.

“Rose was found guilty of manslaughter. I need to assess if she has sufficient insight into her offence to accept full responsibility, to be as sure as I can be that she’ll never offend again.”

“It was an accident,” Jason’s eyes welled and she remembered how last time he had swung from upset to anger. “She’s suffered enough.”

“I have to be certain that there is no risk of future offending.”

“Of course there isn’t any bloody risk!”

“Well, I need to be certain. That’s why I have to ask these questions. I need to get a handle on what led her to stalk Emma. You said that losing Joel was the tragedy that triggered her obsession, but I also need to consider if Emma was just a trigger, the seeds were sown in her childhood.”

“Christ, you’re even digging into that? Her mum committing suicide when she was a girl. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes, it is. Insight into her behaviour is crucial. If Rose understands why she did it, she can recognise the signs if they happen again. And seek help.”

“You people!” He leaned towards her, his face so close she could smell his breath. He’d been drinking. “Why do you do it? I mean, what’s in it for you? Power, is that it? I hate the prison.

Can’t stand visiting. But you… you’ve chosen it.”

Cate leaned away, “I didn’t exactly choose it. I think it’s just something I have to do. And anyway, aren’t you making a choice too?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re still with Rose. A lot of relationships don’t survive prison.”

His breathing was ragged and he looked at Cate with bitterness. “I’ve just been pulled along by events. When Rose was arrested it was a shock. I just got bogged down keeping journalists away and speaking with solicitors, keeping it together at work, that sort of thing. It never felt like a choice. Just like you, I think it’s what I have to do.”

“That would be hard for anyone.”

He toyed with her pen lying on the table in front of them. “I didn’t have time to think, which made it easier. The trial was the worst part. Speaking in the witness box knocked me for six. I don’t know how Rose was so calm. I kept breaking out in a sweat. And when I saw Emma... poor Emma.” His eyes welled with tears and he looked away.

Cate thought about Emma, her terrible loss. “It would have been worse for her than anyone.”

He stood up, moved to the window so all she saw was the outline of his back, the rays of sun making it hard for her to look at him.

“I hadn’t seen her in a while, and I was shocked. The last time I saw her was just before… before it happened. She had always been so beautiful. So – I don’t know – vibrant. But in the courtroom she didn’t seem to know who I was. She couldn’t make it to the witness box without staggering. Her husband managed well enough, though, the bastard. He stared at Rose the whole time he was giving his evidence.” Jason turned and the sun made him a silhouette.

“He was acting like Rose was a murderer. He said as much in the witness box. Thank God the jury didn’t believe him.”

“Did you never doubt her?”

His voice rose, “it was an accident.”

He reached out to her, grabbing her wrist with his hand, “I need to show you something.”

Pulling her arm free, she stood up. “I think I’d better be going, you seem agitated…”

“If you want to know what’s going on in Rose’s head you need to see this!” Jason grabbed her wrist, led her down the hall, past the kitchen and bathroom, to the closed door at the end of the hall. She felt her heart hammering in her chest, and wondered where he was taking her but let herself be lead to the closed door.

He slowly opened it.

The room beyond gave her a shock. It was a baby’s nursery. A cherry wood cot, with all its bedding neatly folded. A rocking chair, a changing table. An unopened pack of nappies. Most heartbreaking of all was a row of baby clothes on tiny pastel hangers. The clothes still had their tags attached. In the corner was a pram with the distinctive beige and cream check of Burberry.

They both stood in silence, taking in the perfection of the room.

“I’ll never forgive myself,” he murmured, as if to himself.

“What do you mean?”

He snapped his head to her, as if remembering she was there. “She wouldn’t let me redecorate. I wanted to get rid of all the baby stuff, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Rose used to spend hours in here, just staring into space. She would sit in that chair, holding a toy, or looking at the clothes. I thought it comforted her. Now I think it made her worse. I shouldn’t have let her dwell on it.”

Cate searched for a response, knowing that whatever she said would be inadequate.

“Look at this room, how she’s kept it so perfect. She wouldn’t even let me get rid of the pram. How could a woman with this much love in her, harm a baby?” Jason turned to Cate. “Rose loved Luke as much as she loved Joel.” He looked her in the eye.

“She would never harm him.”

35

Black Book Entry

After Joel died we tried to pick up the pieces, but nothing made sense anymore. When the phone rang I ignored it, because the only words I wanted to hear could never be said. I didn’t open any post, as the only news I wanted to hear was impossible – that Joel was alive. Each morning my first thought was that he was gone.

You were still doing occasional shifts at Auberge, but business was so quiet you’d taken on a part time job in a record shop. You liked it, being surrounded by loud music that deafened your thoughts, and you would go to work each morning, leaving me in bed and come home to find me still there. I didn’t care. I had nothing to say to you. You had no idea how to cope with the stranger I’d become, so you left me for the world you understood, where music and chit chat were the order of the day.

I got into the habit of sitting in the nursery where Joel would have slept. The cot was made up with fitted blue sheets and baby blankets. I’d bought tiny blue and white babygros, which still smelt of new cotton, not of warm skin and baby lotion like they should. I couldn’t throw any of it away. I took the blackbird nest from the back of my knicker drawer and carried the nest to the nursery, gently placing it in the cot, nestled against the jointed teddy bear.

I sat in that sterile room hour after hour until I heard your key in the door. I always pretended to be asleep but you came up and sat next to me, stroking my face. I knew you were trying, but I wouldn’t let you reach me. It felt like a betrayal of Joel, to let anything in my heart but grief. What I remember most is the loneliness, as I sat through the long days nursing a blanket stolen from Joel’s hospital cot. It still smelt of him, though less each day. I would never wash it.

I hadn’t been out of the flat since the funeral. You gently commented on the mess and the lack of food in the fridge, we were living on takeaways and whatever could be foraged from the cupboards. But I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t do anything.

Three weeks after we buried Joel, I forced myself to get up, steeled myself to sit at the breakfast table despite the tiredness in my arms and legs. You were pleased to see me, and gripped my hand. Then you looked at my baggy pyjamas. I was still wearing maternity clothes, which now swamped me. It was all I could do to butter a piece of toast, which I had no desire to eat.

“Maybe, Rose,” you said softly, “it would be an idea if you saw a doctor.”

I occupied myself in scraping the butter on the toast. “I saw plenty at the hospital.”

A beat of a pause. “Not that kind of doctor, pet. A psychiatrist. I think we need help.”

But you didn’t mean ‘we’. You meant me. How could you think that I could ever see a psychiatrist? I wasn’t afraid of the drugs – I’d had those in hospital and welcomed their temporary numbing effect. But an ordinary doctor could give me those. To see a shrink meant I would have to talk. And not just about Joel, but about other things, too. Things better left hidden. Things I had kept buried so deep all these years that I’d be damned before I’d let someone dig them out of me. I would have to talk about my childhood, about Mum. About Peter and Mrs Carron. About Auntie Rita.

I’d have to talk about the blackbirds.

Talking wouldn’t do any good anyway. Joel was gone, and nothing could change that. Even in my dreams I was alone and empty. I never had my boy even when I was asleep.

You were worried, though, and I knew I had to show you I was getting better, on my own. So, after you kissed me goodbye and I heard the front door shut, I went to the cupboard with all the cleaning things. I hadn’t opened it since the week before Joel was born when I’d polished and dusted the whole flat. The memory of this winded me.

I did just enough. Enough for the smell of bleach and beeswax to fool you into thinking the flat was clean. I should have stripped the bed, changed the sheets, but I couldn’t face doing it. One step at a time. There should be a word for it. If I’d lost a husband, I would be a widow. But what is a woman who loses a baby? There is no word.

The only room in the house that was pristine was the nursery. I sat on the nursing chair and gazed at the cot, cuddling the ‘suitable from birth’ teddy bear I’d bought in the posh shop, and cried. It was the most painful place to be, but the only place I wanted to be. I could remember putting up the too-long curtains, choosing the cherry wood cot. I gazed at the Burberry pram, and touched the handle, rocking it slightly.

After my caesarean the surgeon patched me up as best he could, but he couldn’t save my womb. I’d lost a baby and any chance of having another.

And so I sat until the clock approached six when I knew you’d be home. I got dressed. I should have showered first, but didn’t want to see myself naked. The scar on my abdomen reminded me that my body had betrayed my son. I pulled a jumper over the pyjama top and replaced the bottoms with maternity leggings. Too loose around my thin waist. Still, it was a step forward.

When you arrived home with the usual brown paper bag of Chinese takeaway you were delighted with me and kissed me on the mouth, taking me in your arms. “You look better.”

“I went to the doctor,” I said, pulling away. “She gave me some pills.” It was a white lie, to make you happy. I sat with you while you ate, pushing the rice and chicken around my plate. You didn’t mention me seeing a psychiatrist again.

The next morning I knew how a marathon runner must feel the day after a race. I was exhausted, but you didn’t see that. You were still pleased, still sure that my recovery had begun. I couldn’t disillusion you, so when you put my dressing gown on the bed I’d no choice but to put it on and follow downstairs.

“Why don’t you go out today? You could go for a walk. Get some fresh air. Why not treat yourself to some new clothes?” You eyed my baggy nightwear.

Don’t push me too fast, I thought. My stomach was a knotted rope at the prospect of going out and facing people whose lives carried on. But I had to force myself to do it if I was to keep you happy.

To keep you.

I drove to a large supermarket in Ipswich, where I’d never been before, so I wouldn’t see anyone I’d recognise. But I did see someone. Or rather, she saw me. I was concentrating on buying food, dropping apples into a bag, reaching for vegetables. I’d already put some clothes in the trolley, picked on the basis of simplicity: indigo jeans, black leggings, a selection of T-shirts. Just as I was about to move into the next aisle I turned and saw her.

Emma.

I hardly recognised her, she looked so different. Tired and scruffy, her hair scraped back in a rough knot.And in the trolley, snug in his portable car seat, was Luke.

“Rose!”

Oh, Jason, you can’t imagine how it felt to see Luke again. He was your son and my first thought was to grab him and run home. It was just too much, seeing him, dressed in a blue babysuit and hat, fast asleep. I felt dizzy, was hardly aware of what was going on.