Chapter 22
Jamie’s parents live on the outskirts of Sheffield in a house with winter jasmine around the front porch and a brass knocker glinting from the centre of a wreath of holly and red velvet ribbons.
Nadeeka rings the bell, and as the cheery bing bong!
rings out, her stomach hollows with grief.
She and Jamie were going to come here after Christmas.
They would have dropped the girls at Scott’s and driven up together, Nadeeka nervous but excited to meet Jamie’s parents.
She’d bought a tin of shortbread for Penny and a bottle of Glenmorangie for Frank.
Nadeeka had imagined helping Penny in the kitchen while Jamie caught up with his dad; Penny sharing stories from Jamie’s childhood.
She hears footsteps. A shadow fills the frosted glass at the side of the door and Nadeeka’s breath catches.
It wasn’t meant to be like this.
‘You found us all right, then?’ It’s Frank. Managing a smile, even though his eyes don’t quite catch up. He looks just like his photos: round and ruddy, with whiskery sideburns and a bald head.
‘Your directions were perfect.’ Nadeeka doesn’t know what to say.
Frank hesitates, then he steps back and gestures for her to come in.
She follows him down a narrow hall and into a lounge with pale green walls, where Penny is sitting on a cream sofa.
She jumps up, and before Nadeeka can find the right words she has enveloped Nadeeka in a tight embrace.
‘My boy,’ Penny whispers, her voice cracking, and Nadeeka can’t answer; all she can do is cling to the only other woman who loved Jamie as much as she did.
She thinks again about how they’d planned to visit at Christmas, and how she’d imagined conspiring with Penny to find the perfect birthday gift for Jamie.
You know how he always claims he doesn’t want anything, she would have said, and they would have rolled their eyes good-naturedly at this unmaterialistic man of theirs.
Nadeeka pulls herself gently away, and Penny exhales, short and sharp.
She holds Nadeeka’s hands and gives them both a little shake.
‘Onwards!’ she says. A suburban battle cry of grief.
‘That’s what he would have wanted.’ She has the same colouring as Jamie – the same scattering of freckles across her cheekbones – and recognizing it gives Nadeeka a sudden pain in her chest, like indigestion.
‘Is there any news on when the funeral will be?’ Frank speaks brusquely, like a man afraid he might cry. Nadeeka wishes she and Jamie had come to see his parents sooner, that she wasn’t a stranger to them. She wonders if Frank has cried for his son yet, or if he’s keeping it bottled inside.
‘The police can’t release the body until after the inquest,’ Nadeeka says, as gently as she can.
At Penny’s invitation, Nadeeka sits on the cream sofa, and she’s about to tell them what Lauren said yesterday when she sees the silver frame on the coffee table. She puts a hand to her mouth.
Penny follows her gaze. ‘Such a lovely photo. I was delighted when Jamie sent it. Maya and Nish look so much like you, don’t they?
’ It’s the picture of the four of them: Nadeeka, Jamie and the girls on Blackpool pier.
Penny looks at it fondly. ‘You know, he said you three were the best thing to ever happen to him.’
Nadeeka starts crying then. Slowly, she tells Penny and Frank everything that’s happened, from the moment she met DI Burton to when Lauren and DI Stratman dropped the bombshell that they believed Jamie was a far-right extremist.
‘I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life!
’ Frank puts down his coffee cup with such force the contents slosh on to the table.
‘Who was that pretty girl he was seeing at university?’ He clicks his fingers in the air, staring at Penny as though the answer is written on her forehead. ‘The Indian one.’
‘You’re thinking of Effia,’ Penny says, ‘and she was -Ghanaian.’ She gives Nadeeka an apologetic look. ‘The point my husband is rather clumsily making is that Jamie didn’t have a racist bone in his body.’
‘One of the police’s theories is that Jamie targeted me in order to pass information to New Dawn,’ Nadeeka says, ‘but I just don’t believe it.’
‘Of course you don’t,’ Penny says briskly, ‘because it isn’t true. I knew my son, and I could tell when he was truly happy. And he was happy with you, darling girl.’
Nadeeka’s heart tightens.
‘Wasn’t he, Frank?’
‘Well, he moved halfway across the country, didn’t he?’
‘The police said maybe he never planned to stay,’ Nadeeka says numbly. ‘That moving in with so few possessions suggested a lack of commitment. I told them Jamie didn’t have much, but—’
‘Didn’t have much!’ Frank chortles. ‘Come with me.’ He beckons his finger and Nadeeka follows him through the house, Penny close behind them.
The smell of furniture polish drifts from a wooden dresser in the kitchen, the open shelves displaying gilt-edged tureens from a dinner service kept for best.
The utility room is as tidy as the rest of the house. Frank pushes open a door and flicks a light switch, then stands back to let Nadeeka see.
Beyond the door is an integrated double garage full to the rafters with furniture.
There’s a sofa and two double beds; hanging rails with clothes encased in plastic wrap; boxes marked Kitchen glassware – very fragile!
Nadeeka spots a pile of boxes next to a vast shelving unit, and tips her head to see what’s written on the side of them.
Paperbacks, reads the first label. Authors A to C.
Nadeeka feels a rush of blood to her head. ‘Is this all Jamie’s?’ She wants to touch it. She wants to open all the boxes and gorge on their contents. She wants to wear his clothes and read his books and feel – for a short time at least – that he’s still with her.
‘When he split up with Katie and they sold the house . . .’ Penny pauses and Nadeeka nods for her to continue; she and Jamie had swapped back stories soon after they met. ‘He moved into a rental near work, but it was fully furnished, so we offered him our garage for storage.’
Nadeeka’s heart sank. Jamie had told her he’d sold everything. ‘I guess the police were right,’ she says bitterly. ‘Jamie wasn’t planning on sticking around long enough to need his own things.’
‘Oh, no, no, darling girl!’ Penny puts an arm around Nadeeka. ‘Quite the opposite. He didn’t want to upset your daughters by bringing in new furniture. It’s a big enough change for them to have me move in, he told me. Everything else needs to stay the same.’
‘But why didn’t he say that to me? He told me he’d sold it all,’ Nadeeka says, staring at the boxes in the garage.
‘And what would you have done if he’d told you the truth?’ Penny raises a teasing brow.
Nadeeka gives a half-laugh. ‘I’d have insisted he bring some of his furniture.’
‘Well, then.’ She squeezes Nadeeka’s hand.
‘You and the girls were more important to him than any of this.’ Penny walks towards a hanging rail and pulls back the dust sheet covering it.
A dozen hangers hold a couple of smart jackets, a walking coat, a few pairs of trousers.
Penny puts her hand on a chocolate-brown bomber jacket and a tremor of emotion crosses her face.
‘He’s had this for years.’ She laughs, tears shining in her eyes. ‘I always thought it was horrible.’
Nadeeka moves to put an arm around Penny. ‘I’ve been wearing one of his coats,’ she says. ‘The police seized everything else, but I’d worn his coat to work and left it in the car that day. I must look ridiculous in it, but it’s comforting, you know?’
Penny nods. ‘I come in here sometimes, just to be close to him.’
Hanging next to the bomber jacket is a knitted jumper. Nothing special: a round-neck tweedy mix of heathery blues and greens. Nadeeka touches it. ‘He wore this on one of our first video calls. I remember looking at it and thinking how safe it was, and how safe was exactly what I was looking for.’
‘Take it.’ Penny slips it off the hanger.
‘Oh, no, I couldn’t—’
‘Please. Take whatever you want. It’s important he . . .’ Penny falters. She swallows hard. ‘Important he lives on. For all of us.’
Sadness twists in Nadeeka’s throat. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers.
She loops the sweater around her shoulders.
As she does, the woollen fibres release the faintest trace of Jamie’s aftershave, and Nadeeka knows right away that she’ll never wear this jumper.
She will keep it in a box; she will try to preserve the memory of him for as long as it will last. It’s all she has left.
Beside the clothes rail is an open box of books. Nadeeka crouches beside it. She looks at Penny. ‘May I?’
‘Of course.’
Nadeeka takes out a stack of paperbacks. The Exchange, by John Grisham; Trust, by Hernan Diaz; Open Water, by Caleb Azumah Nelson.
‘He always did love reading,’ Penny says. ‘And don’t think he was missing out by not having his books at your house – I know he was using the library, because he was there when I called him one time.’
Nadeeka remembers the library card she found in the desk on the landing.
She’d thought nothing of it at the time, but it occurs to her now that she’d never seen Jamie bring a library book home.
The book on Jamie’s nightstand had been one from Nadeeka’s own eclectic shelves.
He’d never even mentioned using the library.
Could Jamie have been looking at newspaper archives or local history records?
Had he uncovered something that had put him in danger?
Meeting Jamie’s parents has reinforced Nadeeka’s belief that the police are mistaken about Jamie’s involvement with the far right, but she still has nothing concrete with which to convince them.
How do you prove something didn’t happen?
How do you prove who someone really was?