Guilty

by Jane Bidder

  But he’d been responsible for the death of a beautiful woman in the prime of her life. How could he possibly atone for that by going to chapel?

  ‘Thanks for the compliment,’ gushed Joanna ‘ but I still think you’re wrong. Oooh look. Here comes the Vic. I have to say that for a man of the cloth, he’s incredibly sexy. Wouldn’t mind having my time again with that one! ’

  The Vic, as he was known round the camp, was indeed striding up the stairs. He was a youngish man in his mid thirties, a wedding band on his left hand and a slight Scottish lilt to his voice. ‘I hear you’re off, Simon,’ he said outstretching his hand. ‘Good of you to make time to say goodbye.’

  That was another thing about prison. Although communication could be hopeless when you were trying to find something out, everyone else seemed to know if something had happened to you. He wouldn’t be surprised if the Vic was aware of the letter from Lydia which he carried everywhere but still hadn’t replied to.

  ‘Sorry I haven’t been here, much,’ Simon ventured.

  The Vic motioned to one of the wooden seats at the back of the chapel. ‘Want a chat now you’re here?’

  Reluctantly, Simon sat down. ‘I used to have some sort of belief before.’ He stopped, recalling the services at school which he’d attended, unquestioningly. ‘But after … after killing someone, I don’t feel anyone can help me.’

  The Vic looked solemn. ‘You didn’t do it on purpose, Simon. You told me about the mobile but there were mitigating factors. The car which was parked where it shouldn’t have been; the possibility that your passenger might have touched the wheel…’

  ‘I’m wondering now if that might have been in my head,’ said Simon quickly. ‘I hear things, you see. Often, I hear Joanna – she was the passenger who died – doing a sort of running commentary in my brain.’

  ‘Really?’ The slight note of alarm in the Vic’s voice instantly made Simon wish he hadn’t mentioned this. ‘Have you spoken to the medical centre about this?’

  Simon stood up. ‘No. Please don’t say anything or they might stop me getting out of here.’

  As the Vic stood up, his body obliterated some of the light from the stained glass window behind him, framing him in red and blue streaks. ‘Everything you say in here, Simon, is confidential. However, it would be a good idea to see someone when you’re Out. Don’t you think?’

  He nodded. ‘Actually, there’s something else. Well, two things actually.’

  Even as he said the words, he regretted them. It was too long ago now. Nothing anyone said could put it right. Alice was part of his past. A nightmare that could never be unravelled. As for Lydia, he couldn’t explain that, until he knew more himself.

  ‘Yes?’

  The Vic’s face was open. Ready. Waiting.

  ‘It’s OK.’ Simon made a dismissive gesture. ‘It’s nothing really.’

  It seemed only fair to pay his respects to the Multi-Faith Room too. This was much starker – just a white-walled room although Simon noticed that there was a copy here, as there had been in the chapel of a slim book called The Book of Uncommon Prayer: a collection apparently of prayers which a writer in residence had asked inmates to write several years earlier.

  There was a group of young boys here now, not much older than Ben, who glared at the interruption. They were chanting something that sounded vaguely familiar and, making his apologies, Simon went straight out back again.

  On, past the gym where he needed to stop off to collect his sweat shirt which he’d left behind last week. Right now, there were only a couple of men running on the treadmill. One was the Coin Man! ‘See you for dinner if it’s heads,’ he called out.

  Simon did a thumbs-up but failed to find his shirt.

  ‘No surprises there,’ trilled Joanna. ‘It will be stashed in someone else’s cell by now.’

  There was only one more place to visit.

  Sam, as they called the Samaritan who was their new team leader, had arranged to meet him in the Listeners’ Hut. To give the man his due, he hadn’t been surprised when Simon had said he needed to talk about a personal matter.

  The inside of the Listeners’ Hut was far more Spartan than the chapel, with its unpainted concrete walls and floorboards, but somehow Simon felt much more relaxed. ‘Want to sit down and talk about it?’ suggested Sam.

  ‘Actually,’ said Simon, looking out of the window and onto the education hut where he had optimistically thought he could do another degree when he first arrived. ‘I’d rather stand.’

  He stopped for a minute, wondering what Claire would say if she was in the room right now. Even Joanna was being uncharacteristically silent as though she understood the enormity of the situation. ‘I’d like to tell you about someone called Lydia,’ he said quietly. And then he began.

  Simon woke up the following morning, knowing something was different. It took a few seconds for it to register. And then it did. In precisely one hour and forty minutes, he was going to pick up the black holdall containing his few possessions and bid goodbye to Spencer and Jason with whom he’d already exchanged contact details.

  And then he was going to be Out.

  ‘My watch.’ Simon was going through the contents of the see-through plastic bag that the officer had given him. ‘Where is it?’

  The officer handed him a form. Everything he had taken into the prison was listed here: his wallet, his driving licence, his credit cards. Everything except his father’s watch and his mobile phone. He wasn’t too upset about the phone, which was easily replaceable. But the watch had sentimental value.

  The officer gave him the sort of look that he’d seen staff give men who were trying it on. ‘Then you couldn’t have brought it with you, sir.’

  Don’t sir me, Simon wanted to scream. But if he did, they might stop him from leaving. He’d heard of men who behaved badly on the last day and got an extra month for their pains.

  ‘It was my father’s,’ he said softly. Something in the officer’s eyes flickered.

  ‘You can fill in this form and I’ll see what I can do.’

  Shaking with anger and frustration, he did so. Then, picking up his bag, he marched out of the Portakabin where he had signed in nine months ago.

  ‘I’ll be waiting outside the Visitors’ Car Park,’ he had told Claire on the pay phone.

  As he made his way there, walking past hedges and roses which were coming out in full bloom, he could see a couple of men from G Hut, getting into a newish Volvo to go to work. What an extraordinary place. How could you have murderers going to work from prison every day, promising to be back by curfew?

  It was a tribute to the system, surely, that it worked. Well, more or less.

  ‘Good luck, Mills!’ one of them called out.

  He waved his hand in greeting and looked down the drive. All those months in prison had taught him to know exactly what the time was, without a watch. Claire was late.

  A hard knot of fear formed in his stomach.

  Maybe she wasn’t coming.

  OUT

  Chapter Forty-six

  She was late. After a year of waiting for this day, she was late. Claire could scarcely believe her own stupidity. It wasn’t as though she had overslept. Anyone lying next to her would have known that she’d hardly got a wink of sleep tossing and turning in a drowsy sea of apprehension and excitement.

  ‘Please be on time,’ he had said on the pay phone yesterday.

  ‘Want me to come too?’ Ben was standing at the doorway of his bedroom, his tall, lanky lean frame every inch his father’s.

  ‘No thanks.’ She tried to find the right words to express gratitude for the offer, while, at the same time, explaining it would be better if she went alone.

  ‘But what should I say?’ Her son frowned anxiously. ‘You know, when he comes home?’

  ‘Just be yourself,’ she said, giving him a quick hug.

  If only, thought Claire, picking up her car keys, she could take her own advice. It wasn’t a long driv
e to the prison from the new house. An hour and a half if she went slowly, which is what she always did now; out through the city fringes and then weaving her way through the villages with their brick and flint stone. Through flat farm land and then a sharp right into what looked like a council estate but which was apparently where the prison officers lived.

  The other month she had seen a child coming out of one of the houses in school uniform. It seemed incongruous that normal life went on here.

  He’d be in the Visitors’ Car Park, he’d said. Waiting. She’d seen men hovering there before with their regulation see-through bag of possessions but now she could hardly imagine her own husband doing the same.

  She rounded the corner. Her heart lurched. He was there. Erect. Standing almost as though to attention. He’d had a haircut since her last visit. It was too short. The new brown cords she’d sent in were hanging off his waist, showing how much weight he had lost. And when he approached the car, there was something empty in his startlingly blue eyes that suggested he’d come from another world. She steeled herself, as he got in, waiting for his mouth to brush her cheek, but it didn’t happen.

  Claire felt a mixture of relief and hurt.

  ‘You’re late,’ he said. Then he added. ‘Get me out of this place. Now. Please.’

  Simon looked out of the window, observing the hedges rush past in a blur. How he wished he hadn’t said that bit about being late. But it had been so horrible, waiting in the car park, attempting to look nonchalant while panicking that Claire had bailed out on him.

  It had happened to yet another bloke from B hut last month; the poor geezer had had to borrow money for his fare home. God knows what kind of welcome he’d had when he got there.

  Bloody hell, she was going fast. Simon gripped the handle of the car door as Claire took a corner. The speedometer had to be wrong. It couldn’t possibly be just 30. Mind you, everything seemed faster; especially the last week of getting everything together.

  And now here he was, on his way ‘home’. Not Beech Cottage but a two–bedroom house which he had never seen before, near a place where he had once done a case. (Ironically, he’d got off a drunk driver, claiming the other driver was more at fault.)

  Everything was different, including Claire. Why hadn’t she asked him before cutting her beautiful long auburn hair? Yet somehow that elfin style suited her; accentuating her amazing cheekbones and those wonderful green eyes which had greeted him with pity. Anger he could deal with. But not the ‘p’ word.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Claire glanced at him quickly.

  ‘Don’t,’ he wanted to say because it meant taking her eyes off the road. Only a few seconds was enough to change a life. He should know. Simon nodded, not wanting to speak because if he did, he might just cry. Spencer had warmed him about that. ‘Getting out is a big thing, man,’ he had warned. ‘Don’t be surprised if you get choked, like.’

  He almost wished Spencer was here now so he could ask if it was right for his chest to be pounding with apprehension rather than happiness or why the car radio, which Claire had just switched on, sounded so loud. To explain what ex-cons did when they got home. Put on the kettle? Head for the shops, which was what they used to do on a Saturday morning?

  ‘What do you want to do when we get home?’ Claire asked, looking straight ahead now.

  It was as though she’d read his mind. Or maybe she was as nervous as he was. Simon shrugged, aware that he hadn’t so much as kissed her yet; not even a brush on the cheek. He couldn’t even begin to think about what would happen when they went to bed that night. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ve got chicken casserole in the oven.’

  Hadn’t she listened, during Visits? ‘I don’t eat meat any more. Remember?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Her voice was low. Repentant. ‘How stupid of me.’

  There was a silence. He tried again. ‘Is Ben at school now?’

  ‘It’s half-term.’

  If he’d been a real dad, he’d have known that. Would the boy be all right with him, like he was on the last visit? Or would he be back to his usual unfriendly self, shooting him hostile looks. Simon couldn’t blame him if he did. The kid had a reason to do so now.

  ‘It will be fine, you know.’ Claire’s hand reached out and touched his arm briefly. He could smell her scent. It was still the same. That was something.

  ‘It’s not,’ she added soothingly as though comforting a small child, ‘as though you haven’t been out before.’

  Simon wanted to say that it was different during the ‘town visits’ when you had to go back. He wanted to say too, that Claire was wrong. Nothing would ever be all right again. He might be a free man in the eyes of the law but he could never forget the night of the dinner party.

  ‘I wish we could turn the clock back,’ he began.

  Claire nodded tightly. ‘Me too.’

  Suddenly, there was a ringing in his head. A tinkling that he’d hoped, desperately, had been left behind along with his green joggers and identity tag. ‘What about me?’ laughed Joanna gaily. ‘Don’t I have a say in this conversation?’

  Simon froze. ‘Did you hear something?’

  Claire was fiddling with the tuner. ‘It’s just the radio. Do try to relax. We’ll be back soon.’

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Claire watched her husband’s eyes dart around like a frightened animal, as she pulled up outside the row of modern plastic-windowed terraces and parked in the bay marked 16A in faded yellow paint. A small child, racing down the pavement on her bike without an adult in sight, nearly scraped the car’s bonnet. A woman sat on a doorstep opposite, smoking. Her next-door neighbour was weeding his garden. She’d taken care not to talk too much to any of them.

  ‘It was all I could afford,’ she said, defiantly, unlocking the boot and heaving out his black holdall.

  ‘I?’ he questioned, taking the holdall from her. ‘Don’t you mean ‘we’?’

  Of course she did, just like she hadn’t meant to get the case out instead of leaving it to him. But she was used to doing things for herself and that included working out how much money they had – or didn’t have.

  ‘The rent was much lower than London which means I’ve been able to put the rest from Beech House into a savings account.’ She turned the key in the lock, not wanting to meet Simon’s eyes. ‘At least living here means that no one knows us.’

  Simon gave a dry laugh although she wasn’t sure if that was because of what she’d just said or because he was horrified by the way the front door led into a hall so narrow that if he stood in the middle and stretched out his arms, he could touch both walls. ‘There is that, I suppose.’

  Claire saw him taking in the glass door that led to the sitting room or as the estate agents’ blurb had described it, ‘the lounge’. His hand rested on the plastic doorknob, so different from the antique-style round knobs on their old Victorian pine doors in Beech Cottage. ‘What happened to my desk?’

  ‘There wasn’t room for it.’

  It had been impossible to squeeze everything in. Ben’s piano had had to go too. ‘My father gave it to me,’ he said quietly, running his hand along the back of the chesterfield as if getting re-acquainted.

  ‘I would have asked if you’d been there.’ Too late, she realised that had come out as a criticism instead of a statement.

  ‘Where did it go?’ he asked, moving back out past her and into the kitchen.

  ‘I sold it.’ Regretfully, she thought of the elegant oak desk and its inlaid leather writing pad. ‘Sorry. I should have mentioned it but there was so much to sort out.’

  He was standing now, looking out through the kitchen window and on to the small patio, weeds sprouting up through the cracks. She’d meant to have done a spot of gardening before Simon got home but what with college, the book, Ben, and the dog, there just hadn’t been time.

  Wordlessly, he went upstairs but Claire found herself unable to follow. Instead, she put on the kettle and wondered if he’d notic
e that her own dressing table, which she’d had since her twenties, was missing because there hadn’t been room for that either.

  Meanwhile, Slasher’s empty basket, which just about fitted in the gap under the stairs, suggested that Ben had taken him out for a walk. Good. She needed this time alone with Simon although it would have been nice if he’d asked where Ben was.

  Overhead, she could hear footsteps starting and stopping followed by the flush of the only loo in the house. By the time her husband came down, she had made a pot of tea and pulled out the two bar stools by the breakfast bar which she’d found in a charity shop. ‘I’ll get you a new dressing table when we can buy a place of our own,’ he said, looking out at the pale wooden fence that separated their narrow garden from next door. ‘I’ll sort out those weeds too.’

  She felt his arm reaching out for her and pulling her to him. A great gush of relief washed through her as she leaned against his sweatshirt, trying not to breathe in the whiff of BO. The old Simon would never have worn a sweatshirt or smelt like that.

  ‘You’re right. It is going to be OK,’ he said, his lips brushing her forehead lightly. ‘I promise.’

  They spent the day covering practicalities, with Claire sitting next to Simon on the sofa. There was the financial side for a start although something prevented Claire from telling Simon about the book deal just in case it didn’t come off. When it was signed, she would surprise him with the cheque.

  Simon had told her about ‘Job Club’, which had put out feelers for him with local legal firms. He couldn’t work as a lawyer of course but he had hoped he might be able to do something. ‘No luck so far,’ he had said in an offhand way, ‘but it’s early days.’ She wondered about telling him that Rosemarie’s husband had offered to do the same but decided against it. Nothing had come of that, so far, either.

  They’d talked of her new teaching post at the same sixth-form college that Ben had got into. ‘They’re training me on the job,’ she explained. ‘I’m doing a City and Guilds on Tuesday nights but, in the meantime, they’ve let me loose. Apparently the fact that I am a published artist makes a difference.’