CHAPTER 53
The next day I meet Alison outside the prison as promised.
It’s an hour’s train ride away and by the time I arrive I feel sick and stressed and I’m regretting agreeing to this.
I hardly slept last night worrying that the person who had smashed in the keypad was prowling around the garden, planning to break in.
The security firm have said they will try and come out this afternoon to replace the lock.
Alison squeezes my hand before we enter.
Everything about this place makes me want to run away.
We’re ushered through security and then we find ourselves in the waiting room that smells of too many bodies and stale food.
It’s too hot and the murmur of voices adds to my anxiety.
I try and block out the other inmates in my peripheral vision, clutching my tote to my chest like armour.
‘I never thought I’d come here again,’ says Alison. ‘But we need answers.’
‘Yes,’ I whisper. ‘I just don’t think he’s going to be able to give them to us.’
Our father is already sitting at the table. He looks unrecognizable and I’m so shocked that I can only stand, rooted to the spot, until Alison pulls my arm and guides me to one of the chairs facing him.
He doesn’t look like the same man. He’s shrunken and his skin has a yellow tinge to it.
He’s lost so much weight in his face that his nose looks hook-like and his cheeks sunken.
He’s wearing a navy sweatshirt with jeans, his eyes hooded and bloodshot, his once-dark hair now white and thin, revealing the shape of his skull.
It’s a shock to realize he’s no longer that big, hulking man from my memory.
The man who hit Mum, who screamed at us.
Despite everything, nestled within my hatred and loathing is a very tiny knot of sympathy.
He wasn’t always a drunk, I remind myself.
He looks like a benign old man. How many other men out there, now aged and frail, were once like him? How many of the old men I might have noticed and felt sorry for as they wobbled their way across the road with a cane were once abusers? It’s an unpleasant thought.
‘Ali. Immy.’ His eyes swim. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you today. Or ever again.’ His voice is thirty-cigarettes-a-day croaky.
‘I hear you’re dying,’ I say dispassionately.
He nods. I notice his wrists are stick-thin, the skin papery and marred by blotches of dark red and black. I look away, appalled.
‘I’m glad you’ve come to see me. There is so much I want to say.
Especially to you, Imogen. I’ve already apologized to Alison.
’ To my surprise his eyes film with tears.
‘I have so many regrets, so many. I have had therapy in here and I understand now why I was so angry, why I had all this rage and resentment that I took out on all of you, why I drank, and I wish – God, how I wish – I could go back and change it all. But I can’t.
I can never make it up to you, I can never make amends for what I did.
But all I can do now is be honest with you. ’
‘In that case, you need to tell us the truth about Mum. Did you kill her? I want to hear you say it. I want you to admit it, for once.’ My voice is getting shriller and Alison reaches over and lays a hand over my forearm.
‘I have no reason to lie to you now,’ he says. He flicks a glance at Alison. He must have said the same thing to her when she last visited him, and despite everything, I still feel that same kick to the guts that she did that without telling me.
‘I was a bad husband. I’m not going to deny that. I hit her. I won’t deny that either. But I didn’t kill her that night. I have no reason to lie to you about it. I. Did. Not. Kill. Her.’
I wish I could believe him. But how can I?
‘I wouldn’t have put you girls through a trial if I’d killed her. I like to think I’d have protected you from that at least. I was a drunk and I was violent and I hate myself for it. But I’m telling the truth about that night. This is why I wanted you to come and visit, what I needed to tell you.’
‘Will you tell us your version of what happened that night?’ Alison says gently.
Why is she being so kind to him? I jolt my arm away from her hand and clench my fists.
I want to punch him, and all the men like him.
A white-hot surge of rage floods through me.
But then I remember my doubts. The mask.
The brooch. I can’t allow my hatred of this man to overshadow the truth.
He closes his eyes. My ears are ringing, and my face feels flushed. I put a hand to my hot cheek. When he opens them again he fastens them on me and his gaze is so intense I have to look down at the table.
‘That night, the night of the Halloween party, we had rowed. It was the first row we’d had since we got back together.
I hadn’t been drinking that night. So, yes, I was angry, but I’d been off the drink for months.
It’s not an excuse, I know, but I was only violent when I was drunk. This was just a normal argument.’
‘Why did you row?’ I find myself asking, looking up at him.
‘Because I didn’t really like those women she had started hanging around with. Dorothea and the others. I felt they were trying to keep us apart. They didn’t like the fact that we’d got back together.’
‘Can you blame them?’
He hangs his head. ‘No, of course not. But it was how I felt. I’m trying to be honest.’
‘Go on,’ urges Alison.
‘Anyway, she went by herself. I didn’t like what she was wearing.
It was a vampire costume and it was very figure-hugging.
I was jealous. I thought her friends would try and set her up with another man.
So I waited until she’d dropped the car back home after taking you to your friend’s house.
She wanted to walk. It wasn’t far. I sat at home, brooding, imagining all sorts.
I was supposed to go with her to the party but during the argument I said I’d stay at home.
But then I changed my mind and realized that’s what I needed to do, to keep an eye on her.
So I put on the skeleton costume she’d bought for me and jumped in the car. ’
I think of Josh and his cameras.
‘When I arrived at the party I tried to persuade her to come home with me, but she was having none of it. She was spurred on, I think, by those women.’
I bite my tongue.
‘One of the women, Rosemary, I think, told me to leave. And Ruth just let me go. She let her friends throw me out. I got in my car but I didn’t want to go home, so I decided to park up, near Rosemary’s house, and wait until Ruth left.’
‘The road where you were caught on CCTV?’
‘Yes. The main road. When I saw your mum walk by – it wasn’t very late, not even ten-thirty – I jumped out the car and tried to persuade her to get in.
But she was furious with me, started shouting.
I pulled her arm and she scratched me on my wrist. I could feel the row escalating but I stepped away … ’
I can’t help it. I make a pah sound.
‘When did you ever step away?’
‘I was stone-cold sober. I had control. So I stepped away and got back in the car. I was spotted on CCTV getting back in the car.’
‘Yes, but then you knew there was no CCTV by the towpath. So what did you do, take the car home so it looked like you were there and then lie in wait?’
‘No. I didn’t. I went home to cool off and I stayed there, waiting for her to get back. I promised myself that when she got home we would talk about it.’
I find this hard to believe.
‘What about the mask? It was found near Mum.’
‘I never left with the mask. I left it at Rosemary’s house. I told the police at the time, and it was used in my defence, but I couldn’t prove it and the jury didn’t believe me. There was too much other evidence. My past mistakes, the scratch to my arm, us arguing on CCTV.’
I sit back in my chair and watch his expression carefully. He sounds so sincere but he might be lying …Why would he lie now though?
Did he leave the mask at Rosemary’s?
He looks up at us, his eyes beseeching. ‘I have no reason to lie. I’ve lost everything. Do you think I killed her? Honestly?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘No,’ says Alison at the same time.
I turn to her with a raised eyebrow.
‘Please, listen to me, girls. Please.’
His face looks so earnest that it’s hard not to believe him.
‘I want you to know this because I’m going to die. I’m going to die and the person who murdered your mother is still out there.’