Chapter Thirty
‘Hi,’ James says, wearing an awful yellow and green uniform with ‘HM PRISON’ printed across the back. He looks terrible.
‘Hi,’ I respond, looking at his hands laid out in front of him on the cold, metal table.
He’s still wearing his wedding ring, and that surprises me.
I look down at it, glinting under the harsh light.
Shouldn’t he have been asked to remove that when he arrived?
I wouldn’t know. I notice him glancing down at my own wedding finger, where my bands still sit too.
Is that going to give him the wrong idea?
Make him think everything is going to be okay? Is it?
The hall we’re in is being supervised, guards watching us closely as we speak.
He’s in a Category A prison at the moment for concealing Robin’s disappearance.
The security is top notch. You’d think he’d committed murder for the lengths they’d gone through to search me before getting to sit down across from him today.
And the way they look at us while we’re talking?
I’d be surprised if you got away with anything in here.
‘Skyla?’ he asks, our one-word dialogue new and jarring to me.
I lick my lips, wanting to change it. ‘Dropped her off at uni yesterday.’ I try to hide the wobble in my voice as I respond.
‘Which one?’ His eyes gleam proudly, though the sadness in them hits me too. He’s had no information given to him about us for a while. He has no idea what is happening in the life of the girl he raised as his own, or the life of his wife. Future ex-wife, probably.
‘Oxford,’ I say, a smile escaping before I can stop it, but I’m proud, so why hide it?
His grin splits. ‘Amazing,’ he says — and I wish, in an alternate universe or timeline, that this happiness, this pride in our daughter is something we could share together.
I think about how differently the first night without Skyla would have gone had James been there, had he not done what he’d done.
‘And you?’ he asks, leaning forward as though he wants to touch me but we both know he can’t.
‘Me what?’ I scoff.
‘How are you?’
I stare back at him, at the way his mouth hangs in a way it never used to. He’s miserable, but I wasn’t the one to cause this, and I can’t fix this for him. He’s asked a stupid question, and we both know it.
‘I’m fine,’ I sigh, as if my husband isn’t in prison serving a sentence that seems never ending, as though I didn’t just lay our daughter to rest after all these years.
‘I just can’t believe you knew this whole time, and you never told me.
’ I huff, turning to go. I can’t be around him any more; it’s too hard.
‘Please, Bella. Wait.’
‘What?’ I snap.
‘I know you don’t understand — but I did everything I possibly could to keep you and Skyla safe.’
‘And what about Robin? Where was her safety?’ I hiss.
‘That isn’t fair.’
‘Don’t talk to me about fair, James. You took her from her cot in the middle of the night while I was at a work function. You gave her up.’
‘To her birth mother!’ he cries.
‘And she ended up dead!’ I yell, turning heads in every direction. ‘I don’t care if you gave her up to the fucking pope, James. You took her from me.’
I glare at him. What I think he’s struggling to understand is that the second Robin came into our care, I became her mother for all intents and purposes.
It didn’t matter that we weren’t tied by blood.
When she was taken, it hit me just as hard as if she was my own.
I don’t think any part of me will ever be able to forgive James for what he’s done.
The more I think about it, the angrier I seem to become.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. Two words he’s said more than I can count by now, and at some point in time they lost their meaning.
I don’t acknowledge his apology. I’ve been swept up and I need to come back down to earth.
There’s a ticking clock and our time is almost up.
I still need to understand why Gary Quinn is messaging Raven, and why we moved to the Cotswolds, to a house so close to where Robin’s remains were buried.
That is what is most important. Everything else can wait.
We have eight years to sit across from each other here in this hall and talk about how sorry he is.
All around us there’s a low hum of conversation between other inmates and their visitors. The guards shift, not taking their eyes off us.
‘There’s something else I don’t understand,’ I say, glancing at the clock. ‘Yesterday I noticed something on Raven’s phone.’
‘Raven’s phone? She’s still hanging around?’ He looks shocked.
I don’t answer him, don’t feel the need to justify myself. James looks up at the clock, too, watching the hand tick our time away.
‘Is she . . . okay?’ he asks, grimacing with the question.
Fury breathes down my neck. I straighten in my seat, drawing out a long breath.
‘Bella, I know you’re upset. But she is my daughter — and now she’s in the foster system, right?’ He pauses, eyebrows furrowing. ‘Or has she been placed with you?’
I shake my head. ‘No, she hasn’t. She and Skyla are building a relationship though.’
‘Is she being nice to you now?’ He leans back in his seat, stretching his legs.
‘Not really,’ I admit. ‘But she’s Skyla’s sister — I can’t really keep them apart.’
‘That’s really good of you.’ He smiles sadly, his eyes wet as he looks at me from across the table. ‘I don’t think she’s a bad kid, y’know.’
‘Sure.’ I cross my arms, wishing I could believe him, but I don’t. I don’t think I ever will.
‘Not everyone is out to get you, Bella.’
That does it. I rise from the chair, glaring down at him, and as I do the siren sounds, ending the visitation hour.
‘So why the hell is DCI Gary Quinn messaging her?’ I ask, but there’s no time for him to respond. He’s cuffed and pushed back through the door separating guests from prisoners, gone before he could even say goodbye.
* * *
I set up a fake Facebook account. It can’t be too random.
It needs to be for someone Gary Quinn knows.
He’s not stupid enough to accept a friend request from just anyone, not even me.
It takes a bit of digging through old paperwork from Robin’s case, but eventually I find a signature from someone other than Gary, someone who worked on the investigation alongside him.
Daphne Higgins. My only hope is that they’re not already friends on Facebook.
I can only find one photo of her from a Google search.
It’s blurry and she’s in uniform, but it’ll have to do.
I spend a few hours plumping up her profile, nothing too extravagant, just enough to make it look authentic.
I only need him to press accept so I can trawl through his page a bit until he cottons on and deletes me.
I set my phone to loud after hitting Add Friend.
His profile is locked, the words: Add Gary as a friend to see the details that they share on their profile below the Details section.
There’s nothing I can do but wait. He’s either going to reject the request, think it’s spam or an old colleague he doesn’t want to connect with — or he’ll accept.
I can only hope he’ll choose the latter.
Pushing in my AirPods, I take Alfie for a walk through the meadow to kill some time. It’s just gone four o’clock and it’s already getting dark, the clouds forming above in deep dark swirls.
I look back towards home, wishing I’d left a light on. Wishing I wasn’t going back to a quiet, empty house. I have the infertility support group tomorrow night, and dinner with Carol the night after — but tonight, I’m alone. It isn’t something I’m used to yet, though I don’t think I ever will be.
Watching Alfie with his nose pressed to the earth, his fur covered in burrs and thorns, I allow a despondent smile.
At least I have him. If I didn’t, I don’t think I could cope.
I’m learning to be alone for the first time in my life.
I’ve always been something to someone. A wife, a mother.
I’ve never not had someone relying on me — so Alfie is my rock now more than ever and I am so grateful he’s made a full recovery.
He’s definitely slower and more wary of people, but he’s his old silly self and as he pants at me out in the long grass, my heart warms.
A notification chimes in my ears, and in my haste, I pull out my phone, opening the message before I can stop myself.
Gary Quinn: Daphne! Long time. How have you been?
I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I hadn’t clicked on it.
Gary will be able to see I’ve read his message now.
Is he sitting there with our new message box open in front of him, waiting for me to respond?
If I don’t, will that seem suspicious? Is he checking out my flimsy profile now?
What if he realises it’s a fake account?
Nervously, I start to type, but questioning myself, I delete every word.
Facebook is over twenty years old, so there’s a lot of stuff to sift through, photos he’s been tagged in mainly.
Gary himself has only a handful of albums, but back at home I open up each one as a new window on my laptop, ready to comb through every detail of his life.
I don’t know what it is I’m looking for exactly, but I know somewhere there has to be something.
Something incriminating, something linking him to Raven.
I start with all of the most recent posts, scrolling through mindless updates, football score predictions, movie trailers he’s shared, the odd photo he’s uploaded.
He’s a simple man. Everything he’s written on his page is so stripped back, unvarnished.
There’s no fluff to his updates — and there’s a certain refreshing honesty about that. He’s not trying to impress anyone.
I scroll back, going back so many years I start to lose hope, because Raven wouldn’t have had Facebook all these years ago. But then, just as my eyes are starting to burn from staring at the screen for so long, I spot something.
There’s a photo of him sitting on a lumpy sky-blue sofa, and beside him is a very heavily pregnant Gabby. Holy shit.
I read the caption, my mouth dropping open.
Tomorrow, these two become parents! How exciting!
I don’t know if it’s the caption that astounds me more, or who posted it. A face I know well is grinning at me on the screen. Harper’s face.