The Guilty Mother

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The Guilty Mother Page 24

by Diane Jeffrey


  The corner of Simon’s mouth twitches suddenly, but he recovers his poker face so quickly that I think I may have imagined it. In the eighteen months or so following Melissa’s imprisonment. What a strange thing to say. What does Slade being arrested have to do with his ex-wife – no, she would have still been his wife at the time – going to jail?

  I’d be willing to bet Goodman tried to pin something on Slade but couldn’t make anything stick. Or perhaps he merely wanted to get at him. I already know he can show clemency to those he considers worthy; does he mete out punishments to those he deems unworthy? The thought sends a shiver down my spine. Better stay on the right side of him, Jon.

  ‘You’re sure Slade’s harmless?’

  ‘Well, I can’t be one hundred per cent certain, but we’ve got nothing on him. He was charged, a couple of times, but the charges were flimsy.’ When I don’t comment, Simon continues, ‘The speeding near the school, it was at midnight. And as for the underage prostitute thing, the women were in their twenties and they weren’t soliciting. In fact, they weren’t even prostitutes. They were out on a hen night, smoking outside a pub. He got lost, pulled over and asked them for directions. That was his story. The fact his poncey red Merc, as you call it, has a satnav is irrelevant. He wasn’t breaking the law.’

  He’s telling me all this to reassure me about Kelly’s safety, but he has also just reinforced my suspicions. Despite the positive connotations in his name, Goodman can be rather devious. There’s no doubt in my mind that Simon had Michael Slade arrested deliberately. Simon had to drop his trumped-up charges as quickly as he’d dreamt them up, but now I’ve supplied him with ammunition. There’s nothing flimsy about an allegation of abuse. No wonder he has a malicious glint in his eye.

  The din around us seems to increase a notch and jolts me out of my thoughts. I notice Simon’s glass is empty, so I drain mine, and we get up and leave. When we reach my car, Goodman shakes my hand.

  ‘Leave this with me,’ he says. ‘I’ll look into what that bastard Slade did to his daughter.’

  That wasn’t why I’d told him about it and I pull my coat around me, my blood running cold all of a sudden.

  ‘I very much doubt he’s dangerous,’ Simon adds, ‘but keep Kelly away from him. Just to be on the safe side.’

  Watching Simon in the wing mirror as he walks down the road towards his flat, my thoughts turn to Holly. I should never have taken her laptop. I wish I could un-see what I saw on it and un-know what I’ve just found out. I wish I could go back in time. I wanted to know if I could trust Holly. Now I know I can’t. How can I when she is capable of such deceit? I feel angry, hurt and betrayed, although what Holly did has nothing to do with me personally. Looking down at her laptop on the passenger seat, I decide to confront her.

  I call home to say goodnight to the boys and tell my mother I’ll be later than I thought. Then I turn the key in the ignition and head for Holly’s place in Cotham. As I drive, I become ablaze with indignation. Holly has done something very wrong.

  It occurs to me that her colleague was wrong, too. Not necessarily in his post-mortem findings, although possibly there too, but in his treatment of Holly. He bullied her. Her reaction, her fabrication of evidence against him, may free an innocent woman in a couple of weeks. Be careful, Jon. You’re starting to reason like Simon Goodman. Two wrongs don’t make a right and all that. Although, in this case, they just might.

  When I get to Saint Michael’s Hill and Holly opens the door, the sight of her takes my breath away. She has showered and is in pyjamas, her wet hair combed back from her make-up free face. She has a small bump showing now, but she looks petite and frail. I’m overwhelmed with the desire to wrap her in my arms, breathe in the clean smell of her and protect her. Any trace of a fight I had left in me hightails it out of my system. I wanted answers, but suddenly I can’t think of the questions.

  ‘My parents are with the boys, so I thought I’d return your laptop,’ I say. Holly gives me her killer smile and I know that was the right move. ‘In case you need it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She offers me a beer, which I decline, but I accept her invitation to come in for a while. I make us a cup of tea and when I come out of her kitchen into the living room with the mugs, she’s sitting on the sofa, hunched over her computer, which she has booted up.

  ‘Just needed to send a quick email,’ she says by way of an explanation, but it sounds hollow. Snapping down the lid, she smiles again, but this time it doesn’t reach her eyes. She has seen the document has been deleted. She knows I know.

  Putting the mugs on the coffee table, I sit next to her and put my arm around her. She’s shaking and I rub her shoulder.

  ‘Do you still want me to come this weekend?’ she says in a voice that tugs at my heartstrings.

  I kiss her and hope that answers her question.

  Chapter 32

  Kelly

  October 2018

  ‘Say that again,’ Jon says. He sounds as shocked as I was when I heard it. ‘Slowly.’

  He gestures for me to sit down in the chair opposite him at his desk, but I can’t stand still. I certainly wouldn’t be able to sit still. So I stay standing, hopping from one foot to the other.

  ‘Bella said Amber died of cot death but Ellie was killed,’ I repeat. ‘Deliberately.’

  ‘That was the jury’s verdict,’ Jon points out. ‘Are you sure Bella’s not just repeating the outcome of the court case?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. She said she knows who killed Ellie. And so does her father. I’ve already told you all this. I left a message on your phone last night.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t listen to it. I got in late. Carry on.’

  ‘She didn’t actually say that her father didn’t murder Ellie. She just said Melissa didn’t do it. And that her father knew who did.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing. She wouldn’t say any more. She, like, totally clammed up.’

  ‘Kelly, sit down!’ Jon orders. His voice is stern, but I can tell from his expression he’s amused.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Alfie used to do that when he needed the toilet.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Jump around like you’re doing.’ His face falls. ‘Mel called it his “wee” dance.’ He does the air quotes to make sure I get the pun.

  I would laugh if he didn’t look so sad at the memory of his wife. I do as I’m told and take a seat. I wonder if everything is all right between him and Holly, but I don’t want to pry. ‘Will you come with me to see Michael Slade?’ I ask.

  ‘No! Simon said to stay away from him.’

  ‘What else did Superintendent Goodman say?’

  ‘Nothing. Just that.’

  I don’t believe him. He knows more than he’s letting on. ‘Does he think Slade’s dangerous?’

  ‘He doesn’t know,’ Jon says. ‘Why don’t I come with you to Bella’s?’

  ‘She won’t tell me any more.’

  ‘She might, if I’m there. It’s worth a shot.’

  Jon’s right. He has a way of making me feel secure and I bet he’s protective of Holly, too. If Bella feels comfortable in his presence, she might open up.

  ‘OK. Let’s go.’

  ‘We’ll take my car.’

  I think we’d be quicker walking, but I keep quiet and follow Jon out of the building to his car.

  When we get to St Paul’s, Jon parks on the street in front of the block of flats. I lead the way to the staircase, turning around once to catch him wrinkling his nose at the smell.

  Bella’s in, and she doesn’t look surprised to see me.

  ‘Hello, Bella, this is Jon.’

  ‘Hi,’ Jon says. ‘I’m Kelly’s colleague. Do you mind if we come in for a few minutes?’

  It shows on Bella’s face that she does mind, but she steps back and lets us in. In the living area, she pushes the cat off the sofa and motions for us to sit down.

  ‘Bella, Kelly and I hav
e been doing some investigative journalism,’ Jon begins. ‘We’ve been trying to find out if Melissa has been a victim of a miscarriage of justice. There’s fresh evidence … to suggest that she was wrongfully imprisoned …’ Jon breaks off. I look from him to Bella. She’s staring at him, waiting for him to continue, but he seems to have lost his own thread mid-sentence. Either that or his mind has wandered off somewhere.

  ‘The new evidence – a toxicology report – suggests Ellie died of cot death,’ I say, coming to Jon’s aid. ‘Just like her sister Amber. And so we’re intrigued as to why you seemed so sure the other day that Ellie’s death was deliberate.’

  Bella shakes her head, but I think she’s refusing to talk rather than changing her story.

  ‘You say someone killed Ellie,’ I say. Bella nods. ‘And you know who that person is.’ She hesitates for a few seconds, then nods again.

  ‘Are you scared of what might happen to you if you tell us, Bella?’ Jon asks.

  ‘Yes.’ It’s the first word she has spoken since we entered the flat.

  Jon leans forwards, closer to Bella. ‘Are you worried that the person who killed Ellie might harm you if they find out you’ve told us?’

  She doesn’t answer. We’ve lost her again. She sucks her bottom lip. Then she asks in a small voice, ‘Will this new evidence be enough to get Melissa out of prison?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ I say.

  ‘Her appeal is in a few weeks’ time,’ Jon adds. ‘She may have to go through a retrial or she may get to walk out of the main entrance.’

  ‘What are her chances?’ Bella asks.

  ‘Hard to say,’ Jon says.

  Bella bursts into tears, leaning forward and hiding her face in her hands. Jon and I exchange a perplexed glance over her head. Jon shifts awkwardly on the sofa. I remember crying in front of him one day after Saunders had just ripped into me. He was uncomfortable then, too.

  Putting an arm around Bella’s shoulder, I gesture at Jon with my other hand to make a cup of tea. He looks relieved at the opportunity to get away for a moment, even if it’s only as far as the kitchenette. Bella has calmed down by the time Jon comes back, juggling three steaming mugs, a teaspoon and some sachets of sugar I think Bella might have taken from the restaurant where she works. Jon puts the mugs on the plastic coffee table and perches on the edge of the sofa.

  ‘Don’t you want Melissa to be released, Bella?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course,’ she says, sniffing loudly. ‘She’s innocent.’

  I don’t think we’re getting anywhere. In fact, we’ve gone round in circles without getting any more information out of Bella than she gave me yesterday. I look at Jon, hoping he’ll take over, but his attention is on his tea as he pours sugar from the sachet into his mug.

  It’s Bella who breaks the silence. ‘He called them his little darlings.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My father.’ Her voice is so quiet that I have to strain to hear. ‘He used to call me his little darling. I knew they’d be in danger when they got older. He calls it love, but it’s not the right kind. It’s twisted and deformed. No father should love his daughters that way.’

  For a second or two she says nothing, sitting as still as a statue apart from picking unconsciously at the skin around her thumb with her forefinger. As she wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve, I sip my tea and try to come up with something to say. Jon gets there before me.

  ‘How old were you when it started, Bella? How old were you when your father started to abuse you?’

  ‘It was my seventh birthday.’ She looks at Jon, eyes filled with a mixture of sadness and hatred as she is forced to remember her past.

  ‘And you never told anyone what your father was doing to you?’

  ‘My father made me promise not to tell anyone. I was too young to know any better. I told my mother when I was a bit older – twelve or thirteen, maybe. But nothing changed. At the time, she said she’d leave my father, but she didn’t. Then she said she didn’t believe me. I think she did. She just didn’t want to. In the end, he was the one who left her. For Melissa.’

  Bella breaks into sobs and Jon hands her a cotton hanky. I remember him giving me a handkerchief the day I got upset. Bella attempts a grateful smile and blows her nose loudly into it.

  ‘It stopped for a while when my father met Melissa. I think he lost interest in me. But then after the babies were born … I tried to make sure I was never alone with him … but … he wouldn’t let me leave. He kept me there … in that house, so he could … abuse me. He said he wouldn’t pay for my studies if I left. He said if I tried to get a job without qualifications I would always be dependent on him. He threatened me with all sorts of things. I felt trapped.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Melissa what was going on?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know … I wanted to tell her. But I thought if my mother hadn’t wanted to believe me, there was no way Melissa would. I wanted to do what was best for the twins. But I was confused. I thought they’d be all right, Amber and Ellie. As long as there were two of them. I thought Melissa might believe them if it happened to them. I thought maybe he would leave them alone because there were two of them.’

  ‘Two against one,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. But then Amber died.’ Bella starts to cry again.

  ‘Go on,’ I say, setting down my mug and putting my arm around her again.

  ‘I wanted to save Ellie.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ I hear Jon’s murmur above Bella’s sobs.

  ‘I didn’t want her to have to go through the same thing as me. I thought she would be better off with her twin. She was sleeping. She looked so p … peaceful.’

  Her whole body is racked with sobs now. It’s getting hard to make out what she’s saying. ‘So I let her go. I thought it was the right thing to do. I thought she wouldn’t suffer that way. I held her in my arms first so that she’d know she was loved. Then I lay her in the cot and I held … I held the cushion from the rocking chair over her face.’

  For a long time, no one speaks. I can’t seem to move. I can’t even move my hand on Bella’s shoulder. The only sound is Bella’s weeping. It’s like I’m in a film and someone has pressed pause but it hasn’t muted the sound.

  I run through the whole conversation again in my head. I had a gut feeling there was a link between Slade abusing Bella and the twins dying. But I got it completely wrong. Slade didn’t kill his daughter. Bella killed her sister. I can’t get my head round that. She was messed up, although that doesn’t excuse what she did. But at the same time, I can’t quite condemn her for it. She’s not blameless, far from it. She wanted to protect her little sister. She did that by smothering her. It’s majorly fucked up, all this. And terribly sad.

  When I start to recover from the shock, I say to Jon, ‘We need to go to the police.’

  Jon nods. I feel Bella stiffen beside me. She has stopped crying now. Turning to her, I say, ‘Bella, an innocent woman is in jail. You have to tell the police what you told us. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes.’ It’s almost a whisper.

  ‘We’ll take you to the police station and help you explain. Won’t we, Jon?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m sure everyone will understand that there were mitigating circumstances,’ I continue.

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Bella says. ‘I want to do the right thing. For Melissa.’

  I get up, my hand under Bella’s arm to pull her to her feet, too.

  ‘Sit down,’ Jon says. ‘Sit down, both of you.’

  We do as we’re told. I throw him a puzzled look.

  ‘I’ll ring Simon,’ he says.

  ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea? He’s too involved in all this. Ellie was Melissa’s daughter.’

  ‘Yes, but she wasn’t his daughter. He’ll know what to do.’

  I don’t think this is a good idea, but I say nothing as Jon extracts his mobile from the back pocket of his jeans, taps the screen a few times and then holds his
phone to his ear. ‘Simon? I’m with Kelly at Bella Slade’s flat. I think you need to come round. It’s urgent … Yes, that’s right, the address I gave you last night … Thanks.’ He turns to me, sliding forwards on the sofa to push his mobile back into his jeans pocket. ‘He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.’

  It’s a long fifteen minutes. Bella starts to cry again. Jon gets up and paces the room. He has picked up a pen from somewhere and he’s holding it between his fingers. He keeps bringing it up to his lips absent-mindedly and then looking at it like he has just realised it’s a pen, not a cigarette. I know he’s a non-smoker, but he looks like he needs a fag.

  We’re expecting Superintendent Goodman to arrive any minute, but the gentle knock at the door makes us all jump.

  Jon lets Goodman into the flat. Goodman sits down the other side of Bella on the sofa and Jon remains standing. Putting the pencil down, he rakes his fingers through his hair.

  The superintendent stays composed as we go over Bella’s story, and even though it’s mainly Jon and I who retell it, he never takes his cool blue eyes off her.

  When we’ve finished, the silence stretches out, enveloping us all.

  ‘Have you told anyone else any of this, Bella?’

  ‘No,’ she whispers. ‘No one. Nothing.’

  ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘Only my father.’

  ‘Could he have told anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because of what he did to me. He doesn’t want that to get out.’

  ‘How did your father find out about what you did to your sister?’ Goodman asks. I notice he’s choosing his words carefully.

  ‘He saw me come out of the nursery.’

  There’s another long silence. Bella is no longer crying and it’s so quiet that a weird stillness starts to descend on the room. After several minutes, I hear a dog bark faintly from outside. This seems to give Jon his cue.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  I think we’re all asking ourselves the same thing. Superintendent Goodman looks a question right back at Jon, but I’m not sure how to interpret it.

 

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