Chapter 17
They were in a bedroom on the first floor – wide, white-walled, high-ceilinged.
Opposite was a box bay window with four vertical glass panes, each with its own rucked linen blind.
A pair of heavy curtains hung each side of the bay, almost ceiling to floor, and a chest of drawers stood in front.
At the foot of the bed was a chaise longue with a series of cushions, and on either side of the room, a clutter of furniture: wingback chairs, a heavy oak wardrobe. A writing desk.
Eve couldn’t believe what they had just done. She’d thought about it, but that had just been a fantasy, one which had come to an abrupt end when DI Carver had turned up on her doorstep. What had just happened, on the other hand, had been startlingly real.
But nice. So very nice.
Yet wild. Reckless. No condom. Not that that side of it mattered any more, but …
She felt herself flush as she thought about the frantic way they’d begun to take off each other’s clothes right there in the kitchen, in full view of the back-door window – in full view of all the windows.
She thought about the way Joe had kissed her, his tongue finding hers, and how he’d then leaned down and kissed her breasts.
Her stomach lilted as she remembered him finding his way into her knickers and putting his fingers inside her, then taking her hand and pulling her towards the door to the hallway and up the stairs.
She glanced across at Joe. ‘Is this your bedroom?’ she asked, realising that it might not be.
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s not where Chas sleeps either.’
‘Would he mind us being in here?’
‘Honestly, I don’t think so. It’s just a spare room.’
Eve smiled. ‘“Spare Oom”,’ she said.
Joe gave her a quizzical frown.
‘Sorry,’ she laughed. ‘It’s just that’s what Mr Tumnus says in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and it reminded me.
In fact, this whole house reminds me of the one in the story.
From the outside, as well – it’s just how I imagined it.
’ She grinned and eye-pointed to the wardrobe across the room to her right.
‘Is there a magical world in there, by any chance?’
‘Maybe.’ Joe shot her a smile. ‘You’ll have to step inside and find out.’ His smile faded. ‘I … I didn’t mean that,’ he said. ‘That sounded creepy.’
‘No. It was funny,’ Eve reassured him, then continued swiftly: ‘It was my favourite book as a child, probably because everyone in Narnia kept calling the two girls “Daughters of Eve”. It reminded me that I had the same name as the very first woman on earth. It made me feel kind of important.’
‘You’re Eve, Daughter of Eve,’ Joe mused.
‘“From the far land of Spare Oom”,’ Eve quoted, ‘“where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe”.’
Joe eyed her. ‘That’s the faun, right? The one who asks her to come to his house for a cup of tea?’
‘Yes!’ Eve glanced at him, pleased he knew the story, but also now thinking about the parallels between Joe and the troubled Mr Tumnus, who had, of course, lured a female to his home for tea before turning her over to the forces of evil.
‘Well, I suppose I’ve already done that,’ Joe said, reading her mind. ‘And quite a bit more besides,’ he added, and they looked at each other at the same time and smiled.
‘Are you glad?’ she asked, after a beat.
He nodded. Pink patches appeared on his cheeks as he asked, ‘Are you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Maybe a little surprised at myself – at us – if I’m honest. It was a bit unexpected … well, very unexpected, and I wouldn’t normally have …’ She trailed off a little. ‘But … yes, I—Ouch!’
She was cut off abruptly as Joe shifted onto one elbow to face her. As he did so, the hard plastic of his electronic tag collided with the bony part of her own ankle, making her gasp out in pain.
‘Oh my God,’ he said, looking distraught, his blue-grey eyes seeking out hers. ‘I’m so, so sorry! Are you OK?’
‘It’s fine,’ she reassured him, taking a deep breath. Then, seeing the extent of his discomfort, she added, ‘Really, Joe. It’s fine. This …’ she flipped her gaze between the two of them, side by side in bed together, ‘… it’s all fine.’
Joe nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, then he sank back down onto his side of the bed.
Eve reached out and took his hand. He gripped hers tightly, then brought it to his lips and kissed her fingers.
He closed his eyes, still clutching her fist and holding it against his shoulder.
She could feel him trembling and gazed at him, realising that whatever this was – whatever this might be, or could be – it was going to be way more complicated than she could ever have imagined.
She rolled towards him and put her spare hand on his cheek.
He opened his eyes and looked into hers.
‘I was worried you’d been recalled to prison,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad you weren’t.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘Well, it wasn’t really thanks to me, was it? I was the one who got you into trouble in the first place, turning up like that last Sunday.’
‘No. It was my fault. I should have told you.’
‘I get why you didn’t.’
He let out a shaky breath. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For … this.’
They fell silent. Joe squeezed the hand he was still holding, then placed it on the bedcovers, letting go. ‘Most women would have run a mile by now,’ he said, shooting her a look that she couldn’t decipher. ‘But you’re not most women, are you?’
‘I don’t know what I am,’ Eve confessed. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here, if I’m honest. I just knew I had to see you.’
‘I’m glad.’ Joe swallowed. ‘And grateful. And if you’re here for answers, you can ask me,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’
Eve turned her head to meet his eyes. She had so many questions.
‘The song,’ she began, tentatively. ‘“Everybody’s Changing”.
You said that both times it was released, something monumental had just happened in your life.
You said you froze in time and the world moved on without you.
Was that what you were talking about – getting arrested? Then going to prison?’
‘Yes.’
She waited.
‘The first time it was released was the twelfth of May 2003. I’d just been remanded to Pentonville.
’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘The second time was the day I was convicted,’ he continued.
‘The third of May 2004. They took me back to prison and it was playing in the canteen, in the common room. Everywhere.’
‘It was re-released the same day they found you guilty?’
He nodded. ‘Do you remember the first couple of lines – about wanting to wander your own land and not being able to?’
She nodded.
‘Well, that was the day I knew for sure that I wasn’t coming out of prison again for a very long time. Three weeks later, I was sentenced. The judge gave me life with a minimum of fifteen years.’
‘But you did twenty,’ Eve pointed out.
He shrugged. ‘I had to admit I’d done it and I couldn’t do that, because I hadn’t.’
‘So, what happened?’
‘At the trial?’
‘Yes, but … not just that.’ She paused, hating herself for asking. ‘I meant, what happened to Christy, the night she died?’ She looked into his eyes and could see the hurt there.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t there.’
‘I know,’ Eve said, although she didn’t, and they both knew that. ‘I just meant, why did they think it was you?’
‘I was seeing her.’
‘As in … dating?’
‘Kind of. It was early days. It was a bit like …’
‘Us?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Except that we hadn’t … I didn’t have sex with her,’ he said. ‘I’d only known her for around six weeks.’
There was a pause as they both realised he’d known Eve half that time.
‘So, how did you meet?’ she asked.
‘I was working in Streatham Hill, a few streets away from where she lived,’ he said.
‘There was a 7-Eleven, or whatever those corner shops used to be called, and I was there buying a cold drink and a newspaper. She was doing a bit of shopping and … well, I fancied her straight away.’ He paused again and glanced at Eve, as if to check whether she minded him talking about another woman like this at the same time he was naked in bed with her.
‘I mean, she was just … beautiful,’ he explained.
‘She had long dark hair and big brown eyes, and …’ He paused. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Eve said.
‘She was funny. Like you,’ Joe added, glancing at Eve. ‘I told her I was a carpenter and she said …’ He paused and smiled, and his eyes glinted. ‘She said, “So was Jesus, and they say he was a good ’un.”’
Eve smiled too.
‘And then we got chatting and she told me her back door needed fixing and I said I’d come round after work and take a look if she liked, so she told me where she lived.’
Eve remembered reading about this. It was the prosecution’s case that this was how he had gained access to Christy’s house on the night she died.
‘And then what happened?’
‘I fixed the door – it was just sticking. I planed a bit off, and then she made me a cup of tea and we chatted for a bit, but then she said her daughter was going to be home from her dad’s soon and that she needed to get the tea, so I went home. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, though.’
‘And so you went back?’
He nodded. ‘A few times, after I finished work. We didn’t swap numbers or anything – that’s one of the things the police zoomed in on.
I didn’t have her phone number. But she always seemed pleased to see me.
She always invited me in, and we got into a bit of a routine.
I’d pop round after work a couple of times a week – one night during the week, usually, when her daughter was at her dad’s house, and sometimes on a Saturday, when it was his weekend. ’
‘So you didn’t meet her daughter?’ Eve asked, surprised.
‘No. I did.’ Joe nodded. ‘Once or twice. But Christy was a good mum. She wouldn’t have wanted the girl …’ He paused.
‘Bella.’
‘Yes. Bella. She wouldn’t have wanted her to know she had a boyfriend, not until she was sure that’s what I was.’
‘But she identified you,’ Eve said. ‘Bella. She said you were there the night Christy died?’
‘She got that wrong.’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘I wasn’t there. Not then. Not that night. I’d been there earlier that afternoon, but …’
‘So she got the time wrong?’
‘I don’t know, but she was mistaken. She didn’t see me that evening. She couldn’t have done.’
Eve braced herself as she asked the next question. ‘So, who do you think did it?’
Joe frowned. ‘If I knew the answer to that question, then I wouldn’t have spent the last twenty years in prison.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Eve said. ‘I just meant, was there anyone else on the scene? Another man who liked her, perhaps?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But three days after I met her there was a burglary in the street, and they never caught the person that did it.
Everyone thought it was me. I saw the way people were looking at me.
At first, I thought it was because I was a builder.
It was a nice street and I thought they were just looking down their noses at me because of the way I was dressed.
But then, after what happened …’ He hesitated, his eyes misting.
‘As soon as I got there, as soon as I got to the street, I knew. Not that it was Christy,’ he corrected himself.
‘But I knew it was something very, very bad. I walked up the road towards her house and there were people standing around outside, and then I saw the police cars, and then I got closer and saw the cordon across the front of her house, but before it even had time to register, I noticed the way everyone was looking at me, and I knew straight away that they were going to have me for it. I knew that what had happened to Christy was the very worst thing that could happen to a woman, and I knew they were going to blame me.’
He looked up at the ceiling again and Eve felt the mattress move underneath her as a shudder went through him. ‘They just took me,’ he said, looking bewildered. ‘They just grabbed me and that was my life gone. My life and Christy’s. Two lives destroyed.’
Eve reached out a hand and closed her fingers around his. ‘Joe,’ she said. ‘Do you want to stop?’
He glanced at her gratefully, his chest rising and falling. ‘Maybe we should get dressed?’
Eve nodded, realising how inappropriate it suddenly felt to be lying in bed naked, talking about what had happened to Christy.
But then, as Joe got out of bed and went off to use the bathroom, she realised he had probably told her more here, like this, than he might otherwise have done.
And the evidence was there in his body, she realised; she had felt it.
He had been devastated by the terrible thing that had happened to Christy, and by the monumental thing that had then happened to him.
‘Fragile’ was not a strong enough word to describe him.
She glanced across at the empty space in the bed beside her and then at the bedroom door through which Joe had just left.
Nobody could be that hurt – that harmed – surely, she thought to herself, not if they’d really done something so vile and hateful to another human being?
They’d have to be the best actor in the world, or have spent a long time studying human behaviour and learning how not to be a psychopath.