I Made a Mistake

by Jane Corry

  ‘I thought you ought to see this,’ she says quietly. ‘I’ve just discovered it in your mother-in-law’s creative writing folio. She said I could show you. Betty confirms that Matthew tripped – just as the tourist video shows. Of course, a written account can’t be used as evidence. But it does confirm that she is now telling the truth.’

  ‘Why did you lie about pushing him?’ both Stuart and I say when Betty enters the visits room and sits down. She was still waiting for the Prison Service to agree to her release.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ says my mother-in-law lifting up her face. ‘It was because of Jane. All this was her idea.’

  42

  Betty

  ‘Just tell the truth,’ the barrister told me. So at first I did. But the prosecution made mincemeat of poor Poppy. It was like they were trying to incriminate her, even though I was the one on trial. It seemed obvious that they wanted me to say Poppy had told me to push Matthew Gordon.

  I hadn’t realized, until Poppy gave evidence, how evil that man really was. My poor daughter-in-law! Her life had such startling similarities to mine. When it was my turn to speak in court, Jane’s voice came to me, right there. ‘Tell them it was you,’ she suggested in a smooth, silky voice. ‘It will pay for what you did to me. It can be your penance.’

  And then I saw Poppy watching me from the spectators’ gallery. I was scared that in some way she might be blamed for what had happened because they knew Poppy had said she wanted to kill Matthew. My head was in a real mess by that point. So I thought I’d follow Jane’s advice and take the blame.

  ‘I did it,’ I said suddenly. ‘I pushed Matthew Gordon in front of that train.’

  The jury then convicted me. It was a no-brainer, as my grandchildren might have said. I had admitted responsibility. Besides, there had already been one witness (that girl with the cello) who’d claimed we were ‘tussling’ and that she was ‘pretty sure’ I’d pushed Matthew. Of course, she was wrong but the truth was that there were so many people, all pressed up against each other, that no one could really see what had happened. I wasn’t to know that the Japanese tourist’s camera with its sophisticated equipment had caught a brief clear shot.

  This was the chance I’d been waiting over forty years for to atone for Jane’s death.

  But she hasn’t kept her part of the bargain. She is still tormenting my dreams. ‘Did you honestly think I would let you go free?’ she laughs, night after night in my cell. ‘You will never have peace, Betty. Ever.’

  43

  Poppy

  Stuart cried when the psychologist showed us Betty’s letters to me. So did I, but I was surprised by my husband. I’d never seen tears on his face before. ‘I didn’t realize their marriage had been like that,’ he said. ‘I knew Dad could be tough but some of that stuff …’

  He spread out his hands in an ‘I can hardly believe it’ way.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. I’d hoped he might grasp it, or give me some sign that I could approach him. He didn’t.

  But my mother-in-law is the bigger issue right now. When we finally get her home, Betty’s going to need a lot of help. The prison psychologist only has a limited amount of time. There are so many others for her to deal with. I’ve read about prison cutbacks of course, like everyone. Yet this is my first experience of how it truly affects staff and prisoners.

  We’re going to visit Betty again next week. With any luck, we’ll be able to talk to her then about how to move forward. Perhaps we’ll be able to make her see that she deserves forgiveness.

  At some point I will need to address the problems in my marriage. I really ought to confront Stuart with my fears about Janine. Yet I’m too scared to have a frank conversation in case it breaks us up completely. It’s like treading on eggshells.

  How on earth are we going to function as a family, even when Betty is released? Stuart’s declaration that we just have to carry on for the sake of the children will be a life sentence of misery if he is going to continue this stony wall of near-silence towards me.

  There’s also work to think about …

  Something has to happen.

  Then, a few days later, it does.

  ‘You know,’ says Dad when I phone to see how he is, ‘I’ve been thinking. Let’s do a bit of tidying up in the spare room. You could come down this weekend if you’re able to.’

  I’ve been trying to get him to clear his rubbish for ages. I suspect he’s trying to distract me from my troubles. Dad’s been amazingly supportive of me, given that my own mother had had an affair. ‘No one is perfect, love,’ he’d said to me after the trial.

  ‘Why now?’ I ask in reply to his ‘tidying up’ suggestion.

  He shrugs. ‘Just felt it might be time. That’s all.’

  So I drive down that weekend. When I survey the task ahead of us, my stomach sinks. This is going to take more than a weekend. Dad has kept everything! My old school reports, programmes from plays he and my mother had taken me to at the local theatre, photographs of me as a little girl on a beach somewhere, flanked by my parents. Then some of me as a teenager with Mum. We look more alike than I remember, apart from the hair.

  ‘Blimey,’ says Dad sheepishly after more than an hour of us sifting through it all. ‘There’s enough stuff there. I’d forgotten how much.’

  Everything smells stale with age. ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ says Dad. ‘Why don’t you leave that lot and tackle that pile there?’

  I look to where he’s pointing. In the corner are a stack of battered cardboard boxes, sealed with heavy brown tape I usually save for Christmas parcels.

  ‘We should probably finish this lot first,’ I say. ‘It’ll be chaos otherwise.’

  ‘Just look at those boxes, will you,’ he says in a tight voice. ‘I’m going out for a bit. We’ll talk about their contents when I come back.’

  What’s got into him, I wonder. Then again, he was shocked like the rest of us by Matthew’s death. It’s changed all of us.

  Once he leaves, it takes me ages to peel off all the tape, partly because it’s stuck down so well and also because I am so scared of what I’m going to find. I can’t help feeling it’s something to do with my mother. Letters from her lover, perhaps? Photographs of them together? Evidence of years of infidelity?

  Eventually I get the tape off and open up the cardboard flaps, choking on the swirl of dust. I was right. It does contain letters.

  But they’re addressed to me.

  Stacks of them.

  Unopened.

  The letter on the top of the pile shows it was posted the day after Mum had left, when I’d just started drama school. Heart pounding, I slot a thumb under the seal and unfold the piece of paper inside.

  Dear Poppy,

  I can only imagine how hurt and angry you are with me right now. But I am hoping that when you are older, you will understand.

  I married your father because he was there. That might sound crazy but things were different then. Some girls, like me, were worried that no one would ask us and that we’d end up on the shelf. In those days, you couldn’t just live together like you all do. Besides, I wanted a baby. How we both adored you! We’d have liked another but it wasn’t to be. Not because I couldn’t have one – as we told you – but because I had, by then, fallen out of love with your father. In truth, I’d never been in love with him at all. He wasn’t unkind to me. He was a good man. But there was no passion. He was also older than me. I still wanted to explore life. And, yes, I know that sounds selfish. But I’m being truthful.

  Then, one day, I met a man. He was on holiday here with his wife and child. They were playing on the beach. You were with me, Poppy. You were eight. We began chatting and … what can I say? It was instant. Like a bolt of lightning. Of course, we couldn’t tell anyone. Oh, how we felt guilty. We would see each other when we could, although it was hard because he lived so far away. Time after time, we broke it off because we didn’t want
to hurt our families. Time after time, one of us then called the other.

  So we made a pact. We decided that when our girls – his was the same age as you, Poppy – got to eighteen and went to college, we would start our lives again with each other. I hoped, desperately, that you would be old enough to understand.

  I do pray that you do, darling. Tony and I are renting a little house in the Isle of Wight. Here’s a picture. I’d always wanted to draw before but there wasn’t time. Now there’s too much.

  There’s a little sketch below of a bay with hills rising above it. I hadn’t realized Mum was so artistic. Was that where Daisy got it from?

  Please come and stay with us when you come back from drama school at Christmas. We want you to meet Tony’s daughter too. She understands.

  I can’t read any more. I want to rip the letter into shreds. But what if Daisy or Melissa were reading a letter from me in twenty-odd years’ time? Wouldn’t I want them to carry on?

  The other letters continue in a similar vein. They ask how I am doing; express her disappointment that I haven’t replied but say that she ‘understands’.

  I’m not sure if you know this, Poppy, but I wrote several times to you at your college address. You didn’t reply. Perhaps you are still angry with me – I get that – so I left it a bit, hoping you’d change your mind. Then I wondered if you’d actually moved out of hall. I rang your department and found I was right!

  So again I waited and sent them to the house instead. Perhaps your father didn’t pass them on. Or maybe you still don’t want anything to do with me. I only hope you receive this one. If you do, please try to see my side, Poppy. Just in case you didn’t read my earlier letters, your dad and I simply weren’t suited. I hung on for as long as I could with your father. But when you left for college, I couldn’t cope any more.

  I stop for a minute, unable to believe the words in front of me. I have a sudden memory of how my father would always be first to the door to gather the post when I came back for holidays. In those days, he was far more organized. Obsessive, almost, in keeping everything as neat as a pin. Yet how could he have kept this from me?

  The letters get shorter after that but more desperate.

  I almost wish I had never left now, Poppy. I miss you so much. Tony wants us to move to Australia. He says that if you won’t have anything to do with us, it will be better to make a clean break. Please write back and tell me you don’t want that.

  There are also birthday cards. One for every year of my life since she left. Each has a little watercolour painting inside with her signature underneath. Some were posted on the same years that she’d sent envelopes to the PO Box address on my website. Envelopes that I had put in the bin unopened, not knowing about the earlier letters, thinking that these ‘new ones’ were too late. Clearly, she’d sent duplicates to try and persuade me to get in touch. I don’t know exactly at what point I started to cry, but there are tears streaming down my face now. My breathing comes in racked sobs.

  ‘You’ve read them, then.’ Dad’s voice is soft.

  His voice from the door startles me. I hadn’t heard him come back.

  ‘Yes.’ I stand up slowly and wipe my eyes on my sleeve.

  ‘Are you angry with me, love?’

  I don’t say anything. I don’t know what I feel right now.

  ‘I was scared you might leave me and go and live with her, you see.’

  Dad’s voice sounds clearer and surer than it has for months. I still can’t bring myself to look at him.

  ‘And you never asked about her,’ he continues, a note of fear in his voice. ‘Not once. You didn’t question where she was or how you could get in touch with her. So I told myself you wouldn’t have cared anyway.’

  He’s right. But I hadn’t talked about Mum because I didn’t want to upset Dad. I was also angry with her. I wasn’t ready to understand. Not until Matthew had walked back into my life at the Christmas party last year.

  ‘When you got older,’ he says, rubbing his chin in the way he sometimes does when upset, ‘I knew I should tell you. But I was terrified you wouldn’t want anything to do with me when you found out about the letters.’

  He reaches across and takes my hand. ‘I’m sorry, Poppy.’ I still can’t quite face him but I can tell from his voice that he’s crying too. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I think,’ I say, looking round the room, ‘that we ought to get someone in and take all this stuff to the tip. Don’t you? Then maybe we could put up a proper bed so I can come and stay.’

  He holds out his arms and draws me to him. ‘I’d like that, love. But shouldn’t you go home now? You’ve got a husband waiting for you.’

  ‘Stuart doesn’t care,’ I say quietly. ‘Perhaps I should start again on my own somewhere. It will be easier for them without me.’

  ‘No,’ says Dad firmly. ‘It won’t. You’ve got to go back and give it time. That’s the only way. The cuts won’t heal overnight. But after a bit, they’ll get better. You’ve got to learn from our mistakes. Families can still be fixed. It won’t be easy. But you can do it.’

  Just then my mobile goes. It’s Stuart.

  ‘Poppy?’ There’s an energy to his voice that I haven’t heard in ages. A determination. My heart sinks. Is he calling to say he’s leaving me? Is he running away with Janine? Just as my mother had run off with another man?

  ‘Poppy,’ he repeats. ‘The lawyer called. The application to quash the conviction has been officially accepted. Mum’s being released tomorrow.’

  44

  Betty

  Even though I’m in my own bed after all these months, I wake up early at the usual prison time of 6.30 a.m. and wonder why my cellmate isn’t sleeping on the other side of the room, curled up in her habitual foetal position because, as she told me, ‘When my old man’s around, I never know when he’s going to clock me one.’ I wait for the electronic bell. The queue for the crowded loos. The spitefulness of some women (‘Don’t mind if I eat your bread, do you?’ my cellmate used to say at mealtimes and I didn’t dare make a fuss in case she chewed my toothbrush like she had with my predecessor). The kindness of others (‘Here, share mine,’ said someone else).

  It’s still hard to accept that I’m free.

  ‘We understand why you said you did it, Betty,’ Poppy had said when they told me about my release. ‘The prison psychologist told us. And we’re so sorry you had to go through all that with Jock.’

  But coming home was a shock. The atmosphere in this house is now almost as bad as it was in those early years with my husband. It’s not until you ‘try again’ after an infidelity that you realize how tough it is. I’d forgotten until now how almost everything on television seems to be about someone having an affair. It makes it almost impossible to watch. Time and time again, I see either my son or daughter-in-law getting up and walking out of the room to ‘make a cup of coffee’ at an inconvenient moment on screen. I also suspect that Poppy was sleeping in my room when I was away because I keep finding small things like the odd hairband, which she always wears at night. Separate beds aren’t good for a marriage in my opinion.

  Yet there are also moments when I see her and Stuart talking to each other in a kinder voice than before. The other day they actually took the girls out bowling – just the four of them. But then Stuart went and ruined it all by having two ‘late meetings’ on successive nights for his ‘research’ with that woman I’ve heard him speak to on the phone. He even uses her name out loud – ‘Oh, hi, Janine’ – as if he doesn’t care who hears. Can’t he see what he’s doing, silly boy? If he’s playing tit for tat, it won’t get him anywhere. Or does he really care for this other woman? Either way, he won’t discuss her with me.

  Still, the girls compensate for almost everything. ‘I’m so glad you’re back, Gran,’ Daisy will say, snuggling up to me on the sofa. ‘We missed you terribly. And Mum and Dad aren’t arguing as much.’

  Melissa says nothing but she holds my hand as though she is a little
girl again, even though she acts all grown up when her parents are around.

  Meanwhile, I’ve been getting help from the lady who used to run my meditation course. Poppy and Stuart wanted me to see a psychologist but I said that if I was going to go to anyone, it would be Brigid. She’s a natural health therapist as well as a meditation coach. We’re working through my guilt in all sorts of different ways, involving energy fields, herbs and chakras.

  Jane still speaks to me, but now I am able to challenge her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to her the other day. ‘But you can’t change the past. You can only live with it.’

  It’s something Brigid has taught me.

  Jane didn’t have an answer for that one.

  Brigid has also encouraged me to face the physical evidence of the past too. So I got out the old photograph albums. ‘Are you sure you can’t remember who that beautiful lady is with the little girl?’ asked Daisy, leaning over my shoulder one day as I leafed through the pages.

  This time I tell the truth. ‘Her name was Jane,’ I said. ‘She was my best friend.’ I swallowed the lump in my throat. ‘But she died.’

  Daisy’s face fell. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘What happened to the little girl?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s grown up now, I expect. So is her sister.’

  Then I gave her a big cuddle. ‘But I’m a very lucky person. I’ve got you two.’

  ‘Think of the positives.’ That’s what Brigid keeps telling me. ‘Every day, when you wake up, say “thank you” for everything. Forgive everyone, including Matthew Gordon. Forgive yourself.’ That’s the toughest one.

  I want to ask the girls if they forgive their mother, but it’s too delicate right now. Maybe it will work out. Maybe not. Only time will tell.

  The solicitor called again yesterday. It appears that there was something else that the Japanese tourist’s camera picked up on. Matthew Gordon was extremely unsteady on his feet. I remembered noticing that at the time, but thought he had been drinking. It all fits in with the autopsy results, which had picked up excessive amounts of Valium in his blood. He had been prescribed it by his doctor for anxiety but must have taken too much. This, in turn, might have made him more likely to trip.