The Widow(26)

Today is playing over and over in my head on a loop, and I feel dizzy and out of control, like I’m a bit drunk.

I sit up, to stop the room spinning, and see myself reflected in the window.

It looks like someone else. Some other woman who’s let herself be taken away by strangers. Strangers who, until today, were probably banging on my door and writing lies about me. I rub my face and so does the woman in the window. Because it is me.

I stare back at myself.

I can’t believe I’m here.

I can’t believe I let myself agree to come. After everything the press has done to us. After all the warnings Glen gave.

I want to tell him that I don’t actually remember agreeing, but he’d say I must have done or I wouldn’t have got in the van with them.

Well, he’s not here anymore to say anything. I’m on my own now.

Then I hear Kate and Mick talking on the balcony next door.

“Poor thing,” Kate says. “She must be exhausted, and he died less than a month ago. We’ll do it in the morning.”

Whatever “it” is. The interview, I suppose.

I feel dizzy again. Sick inside because I know what is coming next. There’ll be no more massages and treats tomorrow. No more chat about what color the kitchen cupboards are. She will want to know about Glen. And Bella.

I go into the bathroom and throw up the chicken I’ve just eaten. I sit on the floor and think about the first interview I gave—the one to the police, while Glen was in custody. It was Easter when they came. We’d planned to walk up to Greenwich Park the next day to see the Easter egg hunt. We went every year—that and Bonfire Night were my favorite times of the year. Funny the things you remember. I loved it. All those excited little faces looking for eggs or under their woolly hats, writing their names with sparklers. I’d stand close to them, pretend they were mine for a moment.

Instead, that Easter Sunday, I sat on my sofa while two police officers went through my things and Bob Sparkes questioned me.

He wanted to know if Glen and I had a normal sex life. He called it something else, but that’s what he meant.

I didn’t know what to say. It was so horrible being asked that by a stranger. He was looking at me and thinking about my sex life and I couldn’t stop him.

“Of course,” I said.

They wouldn’t answer my questions, just kept asking theirs. Questions about the day Bella disappeared. Why was I at home at four, instead of at work? What time did Glen come in the door? How did I know it was four o’clock? What else happened that day? Checking everything and going over the same things again and again. They wanted me to make a mistake, but I didn’t. I stuck to the story. I didn’t want to make any trouble for Glen.

And I knew he’d never do anything like that. My Glen.

“Do you ever use the computer we took away from your husband’s study, Mrs. Taylor?” Inspector Sparkes suddenly asks.

They’d taken it the day before, after they’d searched upstairs.

“No,” I say. It comes out as a squeak. My throat betraying me and my fear.

They’d taken me up there yesterday, and one of them sat down at the keyboard to try to start it. The screen lit up, but then nothing happened and they asked me for the password. I told them I didn’t even know there was a password. We tried my name and birthdays and Arsenal, Glen’s team, but in the end they unplugged it and took it away to crack it open.

From the window, I’d watched them leave. I knew they’d find something, but I didn’t know what. I tried not to imagine. In the end, I couldn’t have imagined what they found. DI Sparkes tells me when he comes back the next day to ask more questions. Tells me there are pictures. Terrible pictures of children on there. I tell him Glen couldn’t have put them there.

I think it must’ve been the police who let Glen’s name out of the bag, because the morning after he finally got home from the police station, the press came knocking.

He’d looked so tired and dirty when he’d walked in the door the night before, and I’d made toast and pulled my chair close to his so I could put my arms around him.

“It was awful, Jeanie. They wouldn’t listen to me. Kept going on and on at me.”

I started crying. I couldn’t help myself. He sounded so broken by it.

“Oh, love, don’t cry. It will be all right,” he said, wiping my tears with his thumb. “We know I wouldn’t harm a hair on a child’s head.”

I knew it was true, but I felt so relieved hearing him say it out loud that I hugged him again and got butter on my sleeve.

“I know you wouldn’t. And I didn’t let you down about coming home late, Glen,” I said. “I told the police you were home by four.” And he looked at me sideways.

He’d asked me to tell the lie. We were sitting having our tea the night after the news came out that police were looking for the driver of a blue van. I said maybe he ought to ring in and say he’d been in a blue van in Hampshire on the day Bella went missing so they could rule him out.

Glen had looked at me for a long time. “It would just be inviting trouble, Jeanie.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, I did a little private job while I was out—a delivery I took on for a friend to make a bit of extra money—and if the boss finds out, he’ll sack me.”