by Paula Daly
This city-centre swanky bar is Tom’s choice. Tess doesn’t mind coming here as it’s a short stroll from where they’re based, and she enjoys the opportunity to look upon Manchester’s well-heeled in their lunch hour. The place is all glass and chrome and the patrons seem impossibly young in their slim-legged suits and thick-rimmed spectacles.
Tom returns from the loos and takes his seat next to Avril, just as Clive is wending between tables, balancing the drinks on a small circular tray, trying not to spill any of his pint.
‘One Peroni,’ Clive says to Tom, setting it down in front of him with a flourish.
‘Very generous of you, Clive.’
‘Not at all,’ he says, and he winks at Tess.
Five minutes later and Tess is becoming quite animated as she explains to Avril the ins and outs of, and very real need for, Innocence UK. It’s been a while since she’s been questioned about the charity’s purpose, its mission, and whenever this happens, it’s as if a kind of dam releases within her. The words come rushing out, not always in the right order, or the way that she intends, and she’s sometimes left feeling mildly shocked by what has just occurred. ‘It’s a shitty combination of factors,’ she’s saying. ‘There’ve been significant cuts to the legal-aid budgets, which means there’s no one looking out for the interests of the defendant … Cases are built from the perspective of the prosecution, but who looks out for the innocent? No one. And the defence has no money to test their own theories, so even if they know the client is innocent, they can’t go out and prove it. I mean, who’s going to be interested in gathering evidence which does not support the prosecution’s hypothesis? Certainly not the police.’
‘Tess thinks most coppers are crooks,’ Clive says.
‘No, Clive, I think most coppers are stupid. But if I’m being generous, then I’d say the police have a difficult job to do, and they’re at the mercy of budget cuts just like everyone else. So, are they going to go out of their way to gather evidence that could exonerate a suspect, if they already have enough evidence to charge that suspect? Of course not. Particularly if they have DNA.’
‘Juries love DNA,’ Tom says.
‘Yes,’ agrees Tess, ‘they do. Even if all the other evidence is to the contrary, even if the suspect couldn’t possibly have committed the crime, if the DNA says the suspect did it, juries will ignore every other piece of evidence and convict.’
‘Which is exactly why I felt so strongly about taking on Carrie’s case,’ Tom declares, and Tess has to cast him a sidelong glance because they all know exactly why he was so keen to take on Carrie Kamara’s case, and it wasn’t to do with that. The fact is they’d be named and shamed if they didn’t. Twenty-three wrongful-conviction investigations, and not one of them on behalf of a female prisoner? Diabolical. Even if she says so herself.
‘But isn’t DNA indisputable?’ asks Avril.
Tom’s shaking his head. ‘Perhaps it used to be,’ he says. ‘But there’ve been a whole series of fuck-ups since the collection and storage of forensics has been managed by private companies.’
Avril is openly shocked by this. And Tess can’t help but wonder why she doesn’t know at least a little about this issue. Just what did Tom ask her during her interview process?
‘So how does a prisoner get you to take on their case?’ Avril asks Tom.
‘They write a letter.’
‘And how many letters do you get?’
‘About four thousand a year.’
At one o’clock they get ready to leave, all slightly jollier than they were when they arrived. Avril is clearly not a daytime drinker and gets tangled up in her scarf and handbag when trying to put on her coat. Tom has to step in to prevent serious injury from occurring. In fact, Avril is still fairly giddy as they exit on to the street, where the blast of cold air makes Tess’s eyes water; Avril tries to tag along with Tess and Clive, asking them what they’re doing for lunch, telling them she knows of a great authentic tapas bar not far from here, and again, Tom has to step in and gently shepherd Avril away in the opposite direction, allowing Tess and Clive to proceed unaccompanied.
Though it has never been formally discussed, Tom, along with the other members of Innocence UK, are aware that Tess and Clive have an understanding. An agreement, so to speak. No one has ever voiced disapproval or condemned what goes down after each meeting – they’re all too professional for that. And they seem to understand that sometimes, a lot of the time perhaps, people have complicated personal lives. Lives that don’t always make sense. Lives that might be viewed by others as chaotic. Improper. Amiss.
Clive is married to another woman. Rebecca is her name. But no one at Innocence UK speaks about Rebecca. Not to Tess anyway.
Now
CLIVE PULLS TESS into the hotel room before turning around and pressing her up against the wall. As he kisses her neck, and then her mouth, Tess is aware of the soft thud the door makes as it closes itself, of the maid’s trolley clattering along the hallway outside.
She tries to ease him away from her body so that she can get to his belt, but Clive steps away. ‘Let me,’ he says, and within the blink of an eye he’s stripped himself fully naked, his clothes lying in a pool around his feet.
Tess laughs. She’s still got her coat on.
Clive looks good without his clothes, as she had always known he would. There’s something about the way a man carries himself, a confidence, she supposes, that meant Tess was not surprised by what she found under there.
Clive slides his hands beneath her skirt and hikes it up above her waist. She feels his fingers inside the elastic of her tights, working them down. Then he’s on one knee, struggling with the zip of her boots, and she catches sight of herself in the bathroom mirror opposite. She’ll have to move from here, she decides. She can’t watch them fucking. It’s off-putting. Too ridiculous to observe.
Quickly, she unbuttons her shirt, takes off her bra and steps out of her knickers, while Clive pulls the covers from the bed in a frenzied fashion, making her laugh again.
If Clive hadn’t made his intentions clear to her, back when he did, she might have made the first move herself – eventually. She’d thought he’d know his way around a woman’s body better than most, and it turned out he did. Clive clambers on the bed and holds out his hand. She takes it and lies down next to him. They’re face to face. Eyes open. Breathing each other’s breath. He wriggles towards her even more, so that the entire length of his body is now pressed upon hers, skin on skin, and he runs his hand over her hip, her belly, her waist. Tess closes her eyes and exhales.
They’ve been doing this every few weeks for the past eighteen months and the sex is always good. But it’s not what Tess would call an affair. They don’t have a second life together or anything like that, whereby they go to the cinema or take off for the beach when the weather is good. They don’t write each other letters or texts filled with longing. They don’t make plans for their future. Tess is not exactly sure what it is that they do have but, simply put, she likes Clive. She likes having sex with Clive. And she enjoys having him in her life. He’s a good fit. He fills up a small but essential part of her and she is content with what they do here together.
Clive, however, does not always see things this way. And afterwards, as he lies prone across the foot of the bed, watching Tess as she steps into her tights, as she rebuttons her shirt, he says, ‘Don’t go.’
‘I have to.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I need to, and besides, you’ll not make the school run if you don’t get a move on.’ Since his back injury and subsequent police pension, Clive acts as chief caregiver to two children under the age of six. Clive tells her that Rebecca is picking the kids up today. ‘How’d you manage that?’ she asks, averting her eyes. She always feels a stab of guilt whenever Clive mentions Rebecca.
‘I told her the case meeting was at two and I expected it to run on.’
‘She didn’t mind?’
‘Course she m
inds. She always minds. But I told her those poor bastards in jail really need my expertise, and that giving back to society provides much-needed nourishment for my soul.’
Tess smiles. Clive’s Yorkshire accent is as broad as they come.
Tess checks her reflection in the mirror. Her hair is in a state, so she takes a comb from her handbag and pulls it through the ends. When she’s done, there’s no great improvement, but Tess has never had what the advertisers like to call soft, manageable hair. She steps into her boots and it’s when she is straightening up that she notices Clive’s expression has changed for the worse and she knows what’s about to come next. Her heart sinks a little.
‘Why won’t you let me leave her?’ he asks.
‘You don’t want to leave her.’
‘I do. Every day, I do.’
‘Well, if you really want to leave, leave.’
‘Just don’t include you in my plans, eh?’ he says sadly and Tess shrugs helplessly.
Picking up Clive’s underwear from the floor, she throws it softly towards him on the bed. He ignores it.
‘I don’t want it to be like this every time,’ he tells her. ‘I want you in my own bed. I want you in my own house. Our house.’
‘What?’ She laughs gently. ‘So I can be a mother to those kids of yours?’
‘You’d be a great mother.’
Tess drops her gaze. ‘I’d be a shitty mother.’
Clive now has the expression of a whipped pup and Tess thinks, as she has done before on occasion, that she might be doing more harm than good in allowing things to continue as they are. She walks over and sits down beside him, kissing the top of his head. ‘You OK?’
He nods. ‘I just miss you, that’s all. When I’m not with you, I want to be with you. I want to be with you all the time. I want more. I want more than this.’
‘I know.’
‘And?’
‘And – what?’
‘And – can you see things ever changing? Do you think there’ll come a time when—’
She puts her hand on top of his. ‘Don’t.’
‘I can’t help it.’
‘I know.’
‘I want to look after you,’ he says, and he looks up at her, eyes searching, needing an answer.
Tess sighs. She doesn’t have an answer. None that would satisfy him anyhow.
A little later, they leave the hotel together, embracing cautiously before heading off in separate directions. And if Tess’s head hadn’t been full of thoughts about the trip north to Morecambe the following morning (the trip that she’s dreading to the point that she can now feel the beginnings of a migraine about to take hold), if she hadn’t been feeling bad about Clive’s longing for them to set up home together, if she hadn’t been ignoring a call on her mobile from a caller whom she doesn’t want to speak to, then maybe she might have been aware of the car in the side street opposite.
She might have been aware of the driver of the dark-green Subaru Forester watching her carefully, and of that driver pulling out and following Tess at a discreet distance as she makes her way back to her own car, alone.
Now
TESS AND AVRIL are somewhere around Preston when Avril finally pauses for breath. They’re heading north on the M6, towards Morecambe, and the road is a filthy black. Every time Tess passes a heavy goods vehicle she has to clear her windscreen; she’s just hoping there’s enough screen wash to make it all the way there or they’ll be driving blind. Tess can’t remember the last time she refilled the screen wash; in fact, now that she thinks about it, she’s not sure she ever has. ‘But he really doesn’t mind sharing the domestic duties,’ Avril begins – but it occurs to Tess that Avril hadn’t actually stopped talking at all. Rather, Tess’s mind wandered, and so she heard silence instead of Avril’s chatter. ‘William’s so good like that,’ Avril continues, oblivious to the fact that Tess is not partaking in this one-sided conversation, ‘even though he works really, really long hours, he’s totally committed … He puts more into his work than most of his colleagues, but he’s still happy to share the cooking when he gets home, which is an absolute godsend; it makes life so much easier. I don’t know what I’d do if I had one of those men who didn’t know how to boil an egg, I think I’d have to—’
Silence again … and Tess realizes she’s getting quite good at this. She’s vaguely aware of Avril’s lips moving, her hands gesticulating, but it’s as if there is nothing coming out of her mouth. By the time they reach Morecambe Tess thinks she’ll be able to do this magic trick at will, and silence Avril whenever she likes.
They pass the exit for Blackpool and the traffic thins out – as it always does – and Tess can almost feel the other drivers breathing a collective sigh of relief. The nitwits tend to head off towards Blackpool. The people (men) who think eighty-five is unreasonably slow for the middle lane, who insist on undertaking on the inside just to prove a point. Tess has a way of dealing with such drivers. She watches them moving along on her inside and, just as they disappear into the blind spot of her wing mirror, she’ll flick on her indicator and begin drifting across into their lane as if she has no idea that they’re there. They don’t like it when she does this. Sometimes they can get rather cross.
Another ten minutes and the sign for Morecambe looms ahead. Tess observes her heart and is unsurprised to find it now palpitating wildly. She has not been back to Morecambe for twenty-six years and she supposes her heart will remain on its most rapid setting for the entire length of time she’s there. Morecambe’s a small town. Families have lived there for generations. When Tess was young, she couldn’t walk for four hundred yards without bumping into someone she knew. She wonders if that’s still the case. She hopes not.
They exit the motorway and, after a couple of minutes, rural Lancashire gives way to an A road lined with 1930s semi-detached houses, and shortly after that, Tess gets her first faint whiff of the sea. ‘And what’s weird,’ Avril is now saying, ‘is I’ve never really got along with mothers-in-law in the past per se. There’s always been, like, a conflict of interest? But William’s mum’s different. It’s as if she sees that he’s happy, so, naturally, because he’s happy, that makes her—’ Avril pauses, noticing the change in landscape. ‘You used to live here?’
Tess nods.
Avril looks around, first out of the passenger side window, and then almost swivelling in her seat to the right to observe the view from Tess’s window.
They’re close to the promenade now and Avril takes in the faded grandeur of this old seaside town. Perhaps she’s thinking, What a shithole. Tess has no idea what she’s thinking, because for the first time in the last fifty minutes, Avril really has stopped talking.
‘Do you get back here much?’ Avril says eventually.
‘Never,’ replies Tess.
Tess gets out and the salt tang in the air settles on her tongue. She’s parked on a street which runs parallel to the promenade, or, to give the prom its proper name, Marine Road. Tess can’t remember if she’s been on this particular street before. She must have, she decides as she looks first left and then right, but all of these streets look alike. There are runs of four-storey terraced houses, the brickwork painted white or cream or pale grey, built, Tess supposes, to cater for Morecambe’s holidaymakers of yesteryear, back when the place was thriving. Now they’re no longer guesthouses. There are no signs offering bed and breakfast, or family rooms with a shared bathroom, and looking at the lines of doorbells next to each front door, Tess assumes each house has been split into individual units.
‘It’s quite nice here, isn’t it?’ Avril says, surprised. And Tess has to agree that it is. The pavements are clean, the homes tidy, the air has a freshness to it that feels good inside her lungs. She thinks what a shame it is that no one comes here any more. Back in its heyday, Morecambe drew people from all over the north: millworkers, coal miners, foundrymen. Folk whose chests were full of dust and purulent secretions, folk who believed that a week spent in the restorati
ve sea air could save their ruined lungs.
‘It’s this one,’ Tess says, gesturing to the flat in front, number 78A, and she ascends the steps. She presses the doorbell. As they wait for Mia to answer, Tess watches a large crow strutting about on the pavement, immensely proud of the empty crisp packet he holds in his beak. She considers taking it away. His plastic trophy is no use to him, after all. But then she wonders: When is a trophy of any use? And decides to leave the bird to enjoy himself.
Inside, Mia’s flat is modest – third-hand furniture, woodchip walls – but it’s spotlessly clean. Tess and Avril sit drinking strong tea from hefty mugs, given to them by a very pregnant Mia Kamara. Mia herself is tiny. She’s perhaps twenty-two and, apart from her fantastically rounded tummy, she has the body of a teenage boy: arms like broom handles, legs not much thicker. She is delicate, breakable.
‘Is this your first baby?’ Tess asks.
Mia nods repeatedly. ‘Do you have kids?’ she asks, and Tess tells her she doesn’t. ‘Do you?’ Mia says to Avril, and Avril kind of snorts before answering.
‘I can barely look after myself,’ Avril replies. ‘I’m only twenty-five. I couldn’t even think of having kids until I’m at least—’ But then she shuts up. She swallows, realizing her gaffe, because the woman in front of her is of course younger than that.
‘Shall we start?’ says Tess brightly. ‘If it’s OK with you, Mia, Avril will record our conversation to make sure we don’t miss anything.’
Mia agrees and Avril sheepishly starts the recording.
‘OK,’ begins Tess, ‘it’s probably best that I be upfront from the off. It’s not our job to prove your mother’s innocence. If we do take on the case, and I must stress that at this stage it’s still an if, we’ll follow the trail of evidence wherever it leads. Do you understand what I’m saying?’