The Widow(16)

She just smiles and whispers, “This way, no one will find you. They’ll be looking for us.” I wonder who Elizabeth Turner really is and what she’s doing this afternoon. I bet she’s going through the racks at T.J.Maxx, not hiding from the press.

“Any bags?” the woman asks, and Kate says they’re in the car and we’ll get them out later. In the lift, I look at her and raise my eyebrows. She smiles back. We don’t speak because there’s a porter with us. Daft really, because there’s nothing to carry, but he wants to show us our rooms. And get a tip, I suppose. Room 142 is mine, next door to Kate in 144. The porter makes a big show of opening the door and ushering me in. I stand and look. It’s lovely. Huge and bright with a chandelier for a light. There’s a sofa and a coffee table and lamps and more apples. They must have some sort of deal with Sainsbury’s to have so much fruit around.

“Is this all right?” Kate asks.

“Oh yes,” I say, and sit down on the sofa to look at it all again.

Our honeymoon hotel wasn’t as posh as this. It was a family-run place in Spain. Still, that was lovely, too. We had such a laugh. When we got there, I still had bits of confetti in my hair, and the staff made a big fuss over us. There was a bottle of champagne waiting—Spanish stuff, which was a bit sickly—and the waitresses kept coming up and kissing us.

We spent our days lying by the pool, looking at each other. Loving each other. Such a long time ago.

Kate says there’s a pool here. And a spa. I haven’t got a swimsuit—or anything, really—but she asks my size and sets off to get me “some things.”

“The paper will pay,” she says.

She books me a massage for while she’s out.

“To relax you,” she says. “It’ll be lovely. They use essential oils—jasmine, lavender, that sort of thing—and you can go to sleep on the table. You need a bit of pampering, Jean.”

I’m not sure, but I go along with it. I haven’t asked how long they’re keeping me here. The subject hasn’t come up, and they seem to be treating it like a weekend break.

An hour later, I’m lying on the bed in a hotel dressing gown, floating just above the covers, I feel so relaxed. Glen would’ve said I smell like a “tart’s boudoir,” but I love it. I smell expensive. Then Kate knocks and I’m back where I started. Back to reality.

She comes through the door with loads of shopping bags.

“Here you go, Jean,” she says. “Try these on to see if they fit.”

Funny how she keeps using my name. Like a nurse. Or a con man.

She has chosen lovely things. A pale blue cashmere jumper I could never have afforded, a smart white shirt, a floaty skirt, a pair of tailored gray trousers, knickers, shoes, a swimsuit, luxury bubble bath, and a beautiful long nightie. I unpack it while she watches.

“I love that color. Don’t you, Jean?” she says, picking up the jumper. “Duck-egg blue.”

She knows I love it, too, but I try not to show too much.

“Thank you,” I say. “I really don’t need all this. I’m only here overnight. Perhaps you can take some of it back.”

She doesn’t reply, just gathers up the empty bags and smiles.

It’s well past lunchtime, and they decide to have something to eat in Kate’s room. All I want is a sandwich, but Mick orders steak and a bottle of wine. I look afterward, and the wine was thirty-two pounds. You could get eight bottles of Chardonnay for that at the supermarket. He said it was “Effing delicious.” He uses the F word a lot, but Kate doesn’t seem to notice. Her attention is all on me.

When the plates are put outside the door to be collected, Mick goes off to his room to sort out his cameras and Kate settles back in an armchair and starts chatting. Just normal chat, the sort of thing I would say to a client while I was shampooing her hair. But I know it can’t last.

“You must have been under a terrible strain since Glen’s death,” she begins.

I nod and look strained. I can’t tell her I haven’t. The truth is that the relief has been wonderful.

“How have you coped, Jean?”

“It’s been terrible,” I say with a catch in my voice and switch back to being Jeanie, the woman I used to be when I first got married.

Jeanie saved me. She bumbled on with her life, cooking tea, washing customers’ hair, sweeping the floor, and making the beds. She knew that Glen was a victim of a police plot. She stood by the man she married. The man she chose.

At first Jeanie reappeared only when family or the police asked questions, but as more bad stuff began to leak under the door, Jeanie moved back into the house so Glen and I could carry on our life together.

“It was a terrible shock,” I tell Kate. “He fell under the bus right there in front of me. I didn’t even have time to call out. He was gone. Then all these people came running up and kind of took over. I was too shocked to move, and they took me to the hospital to make sure I was all right. Everyone was so kind.”

Until they found out who he was.

You see, the police said Glen had taken Bella.

When they said her name, when they came to our house, all I could think of was her picture, that little face, those little round glasses and the plaster over one eye. She looked like a baby pirate. So sweet, I could’ve eaten her. No one had been able to talk about anything else for months—in the salon, in the shops, on the bus. Little Bella. She was playing in the garden outside her house in Southampton and someone just walked in and took her.