Clear My Name

by Paula Daly

  Mia sits up straighter in her seat. ‘I do, but she’s not guilty.’

  Tess smiles the well-meaning smile she reserves for these occasions. ‘But are you prepared to deal with the fact that she might be?’

  ‘She’s not!’

  Avril shoots Tess a worried look as if to say she might want to go a little easier on Mia, just as Mia turns her head away and begins to cry quietly.

  ‘I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,’ Mia is saying, reaching inside her sleeve for a tissue. ‘I promised myself I’d hold it together. It’s the pregnancy, I think. I’m already emotional, but it makes me cry more easily.’

  ‘Have you ever asked your mum about what happened?’ Tess asks. ‘Have you ever actually asked her straight out if she did murder Ella Muir?’ and Mia shakes her head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It never came up?’ Tess presses. ‘Not even once?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  Tess always finds this a little hard to believe. Surely it would be one of the first things out of your mouth? It would certainly be the first thing out of Tess’s mouth, but maybe that’s just her. ‘Look,’ Tess says, softer now, ‘people have a hard time admitting their guilt. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t need a judicial system. So I’m not saying your mum is odd in any way, I’m simply suggesting that this lady, who naturally loves you a great deal, might find it hard to tell you what she did, because she couldn’t stand the thought of you knowing she has this other side to her.’

  ‘She doesn’t have another side to her.’

  ‘Everyone has a side that they don’t show the world. Even parents.’

  ‘But she’s not capable of doing it,’ Mia stresses. ‘And she had no reason to do it. That’s what nobody seems to understand.’ She says this through her tears, and Tess thinks that of course nobody will understand, because, well, why should they? It’s hardly proof, is it?

  Claiming your mother is innocent because she isn’t capable of murdering your father’s lover is all very well in theory, but how does anyone know what another person is capable of? We don’t. We have no idea. And therein lies the problem.

  ‘My dad’d had affairs before,’ Mia says.

  ‘OK,’ replies Tess.

  ‘Ella Muir wasn’t the first woman he’d been with. And no, my mum didn’t like it, but she accepted it.’

  This gets Tess’s attention. ‘Accepted?’

  ‘Yes. Accepted.’

  Tess considers this. An unusual arrangement, for sure. After a moment, she says, ‘Do you think your mum loved your dad?’

  ‘Oh no. Not at the end anyway. Her priority was me … that’s why I’m sure she didn’t do it. She wouldn’t leave me. Not on my own.’ Mia holds on to the sides of her belly with both her hands, supporting her bump firmly. ‘I miss her,’ she says. ‘I miss her every single day.’ And if Tess hadn’t been through this before, many, many times, she might have found herself more affected by Mia’s words, by her situation. But crying about your incarcerated mother won’t get her out of prison, so Tess hands Mia another tissue from her bag, as the one the girl is wringing in her hands has all but disintegrated, and she rechecks her notes.

  ‘It says here you’re not in contact with your dad.’

  ‘I’ve not seen him since the trial,’ replies Mia, blowing her nose noisily. ‘He deserted Mum, so …’ And she shrugs as though she had no other choice.

  Tess makes a note of this and when she lifts her head, she sees Mia is examining her, as though trying to figure out what Tess might be thinking.

  Mia surely has to be aware that her own words here today count. If Tess doesn’t believe Mia’s version of the events, then this investigation will stop right now. If Tess gets a whiff of being played, even slightly, she will put on her coat, pick up her bag, and tell Mia she’s sorry but she believes this case to be a non-starter, and she’s not able to help her. Mia probably knows this. There are online forums covering Innocence UK’s work after all: chat rooms populated by the prison community and their relatives, where Tess’s name often comes up. She’s read a few entries and wasn’t surprised to find herself described as intimidating, nobody’s fool, sometimes even a hostile bitch.

  ‘Nobody knows what this is like, you know?’ Mia says quietly, holding Tess’s gaze. ‘Nobody understands that having your mum convicted affects every single aspect of your life. And I’ve done all that I can do. I’ve written to councillors, to my MP, to every newspaper that I can think of, but they all say the same thing: they can’t help. The papers are not interested in running a story about injustice because this story doesn’t have a happy ending for its readers.’ She looks at Tess, her eyes imploring, now brimming with tears again, and says, ‘Can you help us?’

  And Tess tells Mia she will continue to investigate her mother’s case and will get back to her when she has a firm decision from Innocence UK as to whether they will be proceeding.

  She promises Mia nothing except this: ‘I will do my very best to uncover the truth.’

  As they head away from Mia’s house, towards the promenade, Avril appears slightly shell-shocked by the whole thing. ‘You don’t exactly sugar-coat it for them, do you?’

  Tess pulls a right, driving on to the prom. The tide is out. She sees a man throwing a ball for an Irish setter, sees two toddlers bundled up against the November weather in their coats and hats, squatting with sticks, poking hard at the grey shingle. She sees the Lake District fells rising as if directly from the sea, out across the bay, their peaks capped with snow.

  ‘How do you know if they’re innocent?’ Avril asks. ‘The defendants, I mean. How do you know if they’re lying?’

  ‘I assume they’re all lying,’ replies Tess. ‘And then I take it from there.’

  Four Years Ago

  CARRIE MOVES AROUND the kitchen smoothly, silently, as if on wheels. Pete will be home soon and she will remain calm, she will present her best self.

  Carrie picked Mia up from school at the later time of four thirty today because it’s Wednesday and on Wednesdays Mia stays for an extra hour. Mia’s biology teacher is a greying, bearded gentleman, who cycles to school with his lunch, Thermos and student homework contained in an olive-green pannier strapped to the back of the bicycle. Each Wednesday, he very generously makes himself available to those students finding themselves struggling, and who would benefit from some one-on-one tuition. It is because of this, and the many other small sacrifices those around Mia have been willing to make, that she’s been able to get through this year unscathed and is now upstairs memorizing the function of the human kidney. Carrie is immensely grateful to Mia’s teacher because A level Biology has been a constant struggle, and Carrie will be glad when it’s all finally over.

  After her lunch with Helen, Carrie went back to work. She is employed at a small accounting firm on Central Drive, opposite the library. For three days each week Carrie sorts through boxes of discarded receipts from Morecambe’s many sole traders – electricians, hairdressers, window cleaners, pest controllers – and tries to get them into some sort of order in the hope that the Inland Revenue won’t send out a letter with those scariest of words: ‘Full Audit Pending’.

  Carrie enjoys her work. It’s mindless and repetitive. But it gives a structure to her days and when she leaves, at three fifteen on the dot to collect Mia, she feels a sense of pride that she has used her time productively and has contributed to the weekly household expenses in her own small way. Her employer, Eddie, keeps asking Carrie to increase her hours but she flat out refuses. ‘What do you want, more money?’ he says, exasperated. ‘If you want more money, I can arrange more money.’ But it’s not the money. Carrie is happy with what she earns. She tells Eddie that the hours suit her and she’d like to leave it at that, thank you, and this is when Eddie – who is the gentlest of men and the last one to make a person feel uncomfortable about their life choices – will ask Carrie if she doesn’t think Mia is old enough to make her own way home by now?

  ‘I like to c
ollect her,’ Carrie will say simply in response, smiling, brushing it aside, and Eddie will want to say more on the matter, because Mia is eighteen after all, but he will stop himself because he knows it won’t get him anywhere even if he does.

  Collecting Mia from school is just one of the things Carrie must do to keep Mia ‘on track’. She doesn’t mind. It is a small price to pay.

  Mia pokes her head around the door. ‘What time are we eating?’

  Carrie glances at the clock. ‘Six fifteen-ish. We’re having enchiladas, are you hungry?’

  ‘Not massively. Just give me a bit?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘And don’t put a ton of cheese on mine.’

  Carrie tells her she knows how she likes them and so she’ll keep the cheese to a minimum.

  It’s a perfectly normal exchange. The likes of which Carrie has become quite the master of. Even on a day such as today, when her own inner emotions are in danger of derailing all that she holds dear, she can converse with her daughter. She can do it whilst removing items from the fridge, whilst chopping, sautéing, stirring, tasting; she can continue the conversation whilst pulling a balanced, nutritious meal together. And Mia will chat along and have no clue that what is going on behind her mother’s eyes, her smile, is anything other than orderly.

  ‘I’ll shout when they’re ready,’ she says, and Mia plucks three large green grapes from the bunch inside the fruit bowl before disappearing upstairs to continue with her work. She’s a fragile girl, both in looks and in temperament, certainly not the robust child Carrie expected would come from the combination of Pete and herself. But she has an elegance that both she and Pete lack: her neck is swanlike, her limbs thin and long, and when she walks into a room people take notice.

  Carrie opens the oven and turns the tray of enchiladas one-eighty, so that the back of the tray is front and vice versa. Her oven is a little temperamental and tends to burn that which is nearest to the door. She removes her oven glove and rests her back against the worktop. As she does this she hears Pete’s BMW reversing into the driveway. She hears the extra rev he likes to do just before cutting the engine. She hates this extra rev.

  In the time it takes for Pete to climb out of his car and let himself in through the front door Carrie thinks of the other things she currently hates. There are too many to list but sometimes she makes a game out of starting at the top of Pete’s head and working all the way down to the tips of his toes. Each time she does this the list grows longer. Yesterday, she added a new thing, a new habit: Pete was trimming his toenails in front of the TV and when he thought she wasn’t looking he took the large, curved sliver of nail from his big toe and surreptitiously slid it inside his mouth. He then proceeded to clean between his back teeth with it. A substitute toothpick, so to speak.

  He walks in. Glances at her. Takes a second look. ‘I see you’ve got a face on you again,’ he says. ‘What a nice fucking change that makes.’ He begins sorting through the mail she has left out for him on the kitchen table.

  The swearing washes right off her. It used to snag. Catch her in the area right around her sternum, but not any more.

  ‘I had lunch with Helen Carter today,’ she says and Pete lifts his head. Gives her a look as if to say, And? ‘And she said you were seeing someone. Someone new.’

  Pete doesn’t reply.

  ‘Well, are you?’ she asks.

  ‘Helen Carter’s an idiot.’

  ‘I thought you liked her.’

  ‘I like Rob. I tolerate Helen for his sake … What are we eating?’

  ‘Enchiladas.’

  He frowns. They’re not his favourite. Which is why they feature on the menu at least once a fortnight. ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘There’s not.’

  Carrie used to look at Pete and like who he was. They met in ’96 and Pete was the first boy from Morecambe she knew who didn’t switch off subtitled films and had ambitions beyond owning a red Toyota Celica. He was close to six feet tall, with dark hair, dark eyes and a thick, dense, pleasing musculature that was the result of good genes rather than steroid use and the occasional gym session.

  Carrie opens the oven door and removes the enchiladas. She sets the baking tray down on the extra piece of granite she had cut specifically for this purpose – to protect the work surface from hot pans, plates, etc. – and she slides a spatula around the edges of the tray to loosen each breaded envelope.

  ‘I might go out,’ Pete says.

  She collects the plates from the cupboard and puts them into the oven to warm through. ‘I’m sure Mia would appreciate it if you stayed,’ she replies casually. She has her back to him and she suppresses a small smile. She hears him sigh, long and hard. She can picture him running his hand through his hair, conflicted. She hears footsteps as he crosses the floor. He is walking to the fridge, grabbing himself a can. Then she hears the clunk–hiss sound of him opening his beer and she smiles to herself again.

  Tonight, she has won. It’s a small victory. But she collects her small victories, nurtures them.

  Some days they’re all she needs to keep her going.

  Now

  TESS AND AVRIL stand side by side in Greggs bakery behind at least nine of Morecambe’s unhealthiest citizens. Avril is peering around the queue in front to get a glimpse of the produce. There is only one person serving behind the counter: a slow-moving millennial who’s made a poor attempt at Kardashian hair and make-up, and now there is a woman at the front of the queue who is putting in an inordinately large order for herself and, one must assume, her co-workers. Avril is beginning to get twitchy.

  ‘There’d better be something left for the rest of us,’ she whisper-shouts, glaring at the back of the woman’s head.

  Behind Tess, a man is on his phone. He is mid-sixties, nattily dressed, and must be some sort of property developer as his conversation is about the removal of storage heaters from a block of flats near to Happy Mount Park. Tess turns and sees he has the phone plugged to his ear but is unaware he has it set to speakerphone, so the entire shop can hear the other side of the conversation. A few customers turn to look at him too but he continues, oblivious, and Tess is grateful for small mercies: he could be talking to a mistress who is telling him what colour knickers she is wearing. Tess is thinking this just as her own phone begins to vibrate inside her pocket and she withdraws it, looks at the screen, before pressing ‘decline’.

  Tess weighs up her options. She can either continue to wait here, the odours of the warm pastry and Avril’s sickly floral scent combining to provoke an olfactory catastrophe inside her nostrils, or she can deal with her caller. ‘Listen,’ she says, turning to Avril and rummaging in her handbag for the keys, ‘can we meet back at the car? Say, twenty minutes? There’s something I could do with taking care of while I’m here. Two birds and so forth,’ and Avril tells her no worries.

  As she’s handing the keys over, Avril asks, ‘What should I get for you?’

  Tess takes a couple of pound coins from her purse. ‘You choose. Winter vegetable soup or something.’

  Tess leaves the shop and makes her way through town. She keeps her head down, mostly avoiding eye contact with those that she passes. Every so often she checks her reflection in shop windows, makes like she’s fixing her hair, whereas really she’s on the lookout. She’s checking she’s not being followed. Not being watched. She does all this without thinking, of course. It’s part of who she is. Part of what makes Tess Tess.

  When she sees the dry cleaner’s her heart stutters inside her chest, and she’s not altogether sure she has the resolve to go through with her plan after all. Next to the dry cleaner’s is a red door and next to that door is a seafood shop. The seafood shop advertises fresh, ‘the freshest’, cockles, mussels, whelks and, naturally, Morecambe Bay potted shrimps. The flavours of Tess’s childhood come back to her in a rush when she sees the sign for the shrimps: butter, mace, a hint of cayenne. The small pinky-brown crustaceans had to be pulled from the ramekin wi
th a long-handled spoon and eaten with thinly sliced brown bread, according to Tess’s mother. To serve them any other way was considered sacrilegious.

  Tess heads for the red door. On the adjacent brickwork is a small steel plaque with the words ‘William Menzies Solicitor’ engraved on it.

  She opens the door and mounts the stairs. At the top, she hears voices and almost turns on her heel before recollecting that he likes to have the radio on in the background. Radio 4, if she remembers correctly. She sees his receptionist is not at her desk – perhaps she’s out to lunch? – and then she catches sight of Bill Menzies. He’s in the adjoining office, standing at the open window, surveying the street below, eating fish and chips from the paper wrapping with a plastic fork.

  ‘Hello, Bill,’ she says.

  It takes him a moment.

  He stares at Tess and she knows it’s not that he can’t place her straight away, not that he doesn’t recognize her after all these years, but rather he simply never expected to see her again. Not here, anyway.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he says. ‘I just called you.’

  ‘Sorry to turn up unannounced.’ He is dumping his fish and chips in the bin, wiping his hands on his trousers. ‘No, Bill,’ she says, ‘finish your lunch …’

  But Bill is shaking his head. ‘My cholesterol’s through the roof. Maggie’d kill me if she knew. Sit. Sit down, for God’s sake. How are you? I’ve been calling you. I just called you. Well, I’ve been calling a number. Not sure if it’s still yours?’

  Tess sits in one of the chairs meant for clients. ‘I got the calls.’

  ‘I’ve sent a couple of letters too,’ he adds, but Tess doesn’t tell him she got the letters. ‘Are you still moving around a lot?’ Tess tells him that she is. And it’s then that Bill stops blustering for a second and looks at her. He really looks at her and smiles sadly.