Chapter 19
Bella drove south to King’s Cross, through Clerkenwell and across Waterloo Bridge towards Streatham.
She needed to talk to her dad about her nightmares, and about Jamie Clarke.
It was a warm day, the sun already high in the sky, softened by a gentle breeze that lifted the sparkle from the Thames into her eyeline.
She wound down the car windows – all four of them.
It felt encouraging, as if the wind and the spray from the water were carrying her forward, but still she felt uneasy at the thought of the impending conversation.
For all her fights with her dad over clothes and make-up and friends and curfew times, she had never tugged too hard at the loose threads of the narrative of her life before she came to live with him.
He had made it clear that she couldn’t possibly remember things differently, and it was true that the trauma of the final few hours had pushed everything that came before it into the shadows.
Her father’s neighbourhood was empty and quiet, his house still.
Her stepmum, Jenny, let her in, her surprised look suffused with an undercurrent of dismay that told Bella she expected trouble.
Her dad was in his favourite armchair in the living room, sleeping off his lunch with one eye on the football.
He pulled himself into an upright position when he saw her, his expression wary.
‘We weren’t expecting you,’ he said, looking confused, as if he had perhaps forgotten she was coming.
His thin grey hair was matted to his head, and his glasses had slipped down his nose.
He looked older and more tired than the last time Bella had seen him, and she was momentarily moved by this, but then he pulled his usual mocking face. ‘To what do we owe this pleasure?’
‘Do I need a reason to visit you?’
He shrugged. ‘No Justin today?’
‘He’s got Robbie. They’re going to the zoo.’
‘You should have gone with them.’
‘Instead of visiting you?’
‘He’s a good bloke, that Justin. He’s good for you.’
‘Like a vitamin pill?’ Bella asked him.
Her dad huffed and absorbed himself in his newspaper.
‘Or maybe a Valium. Or a zopiclone?’
There was no answer.
She sighed. ‘I spoke to Kathy earlier.’
‘Kathy?’ he said, still reading, or pretending to.
‘My VLO.’
‘Oh yeah? What about?’
‘About Jamie Clarke.’
Her dad looked up. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s been released from the hostel. He’s now free to live where he wants. Within reason.’
Her dad looked back down at his newspaper.
‘How do you feel about that, Bella?’ she mimicked. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’
‘There’s no need for sarcasm,’ he muttered.
‘Well, then … chuck the ball back, Dad,’ she said, frustrated.
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘That I don’t need to worry. That he’s not going to hurt me.’
‘Of course he’s not going to hurt you.’
‘How do you know that?’ Bella argued. ‘I was the star witness. I got him banged up for twenty years. He’s not exactly going to be happy with me, is he?’
‘You didn’t do much. You didn’t even go to court.’
‘Yeah. And why was that?’ Bella asked. She had often wondered exactly how it had come about that she had never been cross-examined by Jamie Clarke’s defence team.
‘Because you were too young to go on the stand.’
She hesitated. ‘Maybe I was too young to know what I saw?’
‘For God’s sake, Bella,’ her dad said irritably. ‘Why have you brought this up again? You told the police you were a hundred per cent certain that it was Clarke.’
‘I’ve seen the transcript of my interview with the police, Dad. I don’t think that’s what I meant.’
Her dad looked uncomfortable.
‘I think what I meant,’ she continued, ‘was that I was a hundred per cent certain that I’d seen him before, which I would have done if he came to the house. If he was her boyfriend.’
‘He wasn’t her boyfriend.’
‘You don’t know that.’
Her dad straightened up in his chair. ‘Seriously? You’re sticking up for that piece of shit?’
‘No, Dad. I’m sticking up for the truth.’
‘The truth is that Jamie Clarke is a rapist and a murdering scumbag and your mum was too—’ He broke off.
‘Go on, say it!’
Her dad looked down at his paper again. Bella could see Jenny hovering in the doorway, unsure whether to intervene.
‘She should never have let him in,’ her dad said finally. ‘She was too much of a …’
‘What?’ Bella insisted. ‘Go on. What was she?’
‘She was just a bit too trusting,’ Jenny said, from the doorway. ‘That’s all he means.’
Bella felt a burst of rage. ‘You don’t know what really happened, Dad,’ she said. ‘You weren’t there.’
The room fell silent.
‘Were you?’ Bella asked, the question suddenly entering her mind.
‘Of course I bloody wasn’t.’
‘Well, then, you don’t know. No one knows for sure – except me. And I don’t remember who I saw that night. I only remember what I saw the next morning.’
‘You told the police it was Jamie Clarke,’ her dad said stubbornly.
‘But I’m not sure any more. I’ve been having dreams, and there’s someone there in the house. For years, he’s been in the hallway, at the foot of the stairs, but now he’s started to come up. It’s like he’s coming for me, and … and it doesn’t feel like it’s Jamie Clarke.’
Bella paused as this realisation hit her. She hadn’t been able to put this thought into words until now, but as soon as she’d said it, she knew it was true.
‘For Christ’s sake, Bella, of course it was Clarke – and he’s done his time and he’s got conditions and he’s—’
‘I never see his face, Dad. The man on the stairs. I never see his face. And that’s what’s frightening me the most. I need to know who he is.’
Her dad flung down his paper. ‘It’s just a bad dream, Bella. For God’s sake, grow up!’
Bella felt stung by this, but she persevered. ‘I just need you to tell me,’ she said, keeping her voice steady, ‘if you can think of anyone else who could have been inside the house that night. Could one of the neighbours have come in, perhaps?’
Jenny stepped into the room. ‘If one of the neighbours had come in, they would have found your mother. They would have seen her immediately and called the police.’
‘Unless it was one of them who killed her,’ Bella suggested.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ her dad said.
‘That is ridiculous, Bella,’ Jenny agreed. ‘I met every single one of those neighbours. They really cared about your mum. They did everything they could to help put that man away.’
Bella thought about the neighbours. There was that woman, Carly Benfield, from up the road, and Mr Norris from across the way, and Mrs Barlow, who had held her hand until her dad had arrived.
A voice came to her. It was one of those neighbours.
Which one? She didn’t know, but she could picture her, sitting here on the sofa where Bella was now.
‘You remembered right, love,’ she had said.
‘It was his eyes, wasn’t it? You couldn’t forget those eyes. ’
Bella had seen Jamie Clarke’s eyes. She had seen the scores of online articles describing them as ‘chilling’ or ‘evil’. ‘THE EYES OF A MONSTER!’ the headlines had screamed out.
But twenty years on, these images were now all mixed up in her mind, and she could no longer say for sure which ones were memories and which were photographs.