Chapter 26
Bella’s new therapist was called Adele. She lived in Belsize Park, in a lovely flat in a Victorian building that was much nicer than Bella’s.
The hallway in Bella’s building was grubby and smelled of cabbage and occasionally of cannabis, and the paintwork on all the front doors was chipped and peeling.
Adele’s block, on the other hand, was pristine, the staircase carpeted and clean, her front room bright and welcoming.
Everything looked expensive: the soft cream carpet, the cream sofa and chairs, the solid oak furniture, the blue and white abstract seascape paintings.
Over the years, Bella had had a few courses of therapy from various different providers (with a child psychologist at the hospital soon after her mother died, once through college as a teenager, a couple of times through the NHS), however there had only ever been a finite number of sessions on offer and she hadn’t been able to afford to pay privately.
But recently the school she worked at had introduced an ‘employee assistance scheme’, one that included free counselling to help with ‘any problems, big or small’, as the head had cheerfully phrased his announcement at the weekly staff meeting.
Bella had wondered what constituted a ‘big’ problem and whether having come down for breakfast one morning to find her mother lifeless and semi-naked on the kitchen floor might be ‘too big’.
She had often worried about this and had got used to pre-empting any awkwardness about the shadow in her past, which Bella had sensed was ‘too big’ for most people she met. The conversation would go something like this:
‘What about you, Bella? Where do your parents live?’
‘Dad’s in Streatham. Mum died a while back.’
‘I’m sorry. How old were you?’
‘Seven.’
‘God, I’m sorry. How did she die?’
‘Oh. Um, actually she was murdered.’
‘God. What happened?’
‘Erm, actually, she was raped and killed in our kitchen at home.’
‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Did they catch him?’
‘Yes. He’s in prison.’
‘So, who found her?’
‘Oh. Erm. Me, actually.’
‘Oh my God. How terrible.’
The End.
She would immediately be classified as ‘damaged’ – how could she not be?
– and nobody wanted a damaged friend, except other people who were damaged or people like Justin who wanted to help people who were damaged.
So she would reassure them. ‘Oh, it’s OK,’ she would say dismissively when the inevitable discomfort registered on their faces, and then she would make a joke to demonstrate how OK she actually was.
But with Justin’s encouragement, she had finally put herself forward for the programme at work and had been referred to Adele, who she liked way better than all of her previous therapists, and now here she was, in her fifth session.
Bella had emerged from the previous four feeling churned up inside, but in a good way, a way that made her feel in touch with herself, and in touch with her mother.
Each time, she had needed to lie down and cry afterwards and had then felt drained and sleepy for the rest of the day, but she liked the feeling better than the feeling of being empty, which wasn’t complete emptiness anyway – it was emptiness tinged with guilt.
‘Guilt is a useless emotion,’ her previous counsellor – the one she’d had in college – always used to say.
Or, ‘You were seven. You couldn’t have done things any differently.
’ Or, ‘You can’t change the past.’ But no matter how many times Bella had repeated these affirmations to herself, it hadn’t changed the way she felt.
She had concluded that her problem was ‘too big’, and this had been confirmed to her when her ten sessions were up: she could see the relief on the counsellor’s face.
Adele, on the other hand, didn’t seem fazed by anything Bella said. ‘That’s interesting,’ she would say, resting her chin on her fingers. ‘Tell me more about that.’
So Bella had. She had told Adele pretty much everything, including the worst and most awful parts about finding her mother, and Adele hadn’t once looked shocked or tried to steer her away.
And so, now, Bella was able to talk about Jamie Clarke.
‘What would happen if you saw him?’ Adele asked her.
‘I don’t know,’ Bella admitted.
‘What would you like to say to him?’
‘Apart from, “Did you kill my mother?”’
This was said with Bella’s usual pre-emptive smile, but Adele’s face remained solemn.
‘I wouldn’t know where to begin, actually,’ Bella said. ‘There’s so much I’d like to say to him.’
‘Like …?’
‘Like, do you hate me?’
Bella blurted this out and Adele allowed a short pause for it to register with them both.
‘You think he hates you?’
‘He might do,’ Bella said, in a small voice.
‘Why would he hate you?’
‘Because … it was my evidence that sent him to jail. And I’m now beginning to wonder, what if it wasn’t him? What if I got it wrong?’
Adele nodded slowly. ‘I wonder …’ she began, fingertips to chin, head to one side in the way she did whenever she was about to ask anything challenging. ‘I wonder how it would feel if you had got it wrong?’
‘You think I might have?’ Bella froze. This was a first. Everyone else she knew was quick to dismiss the idea out of hand. Nobody had ever acknowledged that it might be a possibility.
‘Maybe. Maybe not. I have no idea. But how would it feel if you had?’
Bella shook her head, her stomach sinking. ‘It would be unbearable. To know that a man had spent twenty years in prison because of me.’
A raising of the eyebrows. ‘Just you?’
‘No. There were other people who said it was him.’
‘So, what is it that’s causing you to question it?’
‘Him, I suppose,’ Bella said. ‘The fact that he has never admitted it. The fact that he could have been out a lot sooner if he had.’
‘Is that the only thing?’
Bella thought hard about this. ‘No. I mean, lots of rapists and murderers say they didn’t do it.’
‘Almost all of them, I should think.’
Bella nodded. ‘I suppose it’s because of what he said at the trial.
I wasn’t allowed to go, and for years, my dad wouldn’t let me have a phone or a laptop because he didn’t want me to read about it, so I didn’t find out until much later that he hadn’t just put his hands up to it.
Everyone talked as though it was a foregone conclusion that it was him, and they kept telling me how brave I’d been and how I’d done the right thing – the police, the victim support people, everyone.
And our neighbours. They acted like I was some kind of hero. ’
‘That would have been very powerful.’
‘It was. They lined the streets. I’ve never forgotten it.
I had to leave the house for good that same day, while the police were still there.
It was before they had even taken my mother away, I remember, because I didn’t want to leave her.
As I came down the path with my teddy and my little suitcase and got into my dad’s car, they were all standing outside their houses.
When we drove away, it was like a military parade.
And for weeks after that, they would turn up at my dad’s and congratulate me on being the one who caught him. ’
Adele frowned. ‘That’s a huge responsibility to place on a seven-year-old.’
‘I think they thought it was a good thing, but it wasn’t.’
Adele frowned and shook her head in agreement.
‘But I was part of it,’ Bella said. ‘I played my part, and I can’t help but wonder, did I pick him out because he was the person I saw – the man in the kitchen kissing my mother – or did I pick him out because, when I saw the line-up, his was the only face I knew?
That’s what he said when he appealed to the court, and I’ve been wondering ever since I found that out.
I don’t think I’ve ever been sure about it.
I said I was at the time because that seemed to be the right thing to say.
They asked me, “One hundred per cent?” and I said yes, and my statement was read out to the jury with those words – “one hundred per cent” – but lately I’ve been thinking that I don’t remember being one hundred per cent sure about anything.
It was all so confusing. And yet, I definitely saw the man who killed my mother.
I saw him come in, and I saw him grab her and start to kiss her, and if it wasn’t Jamie Clarke, then who else could it have been? ’
Adele waited.
‘What I can’t understand,’ Bella continued, picking at a scab on her finger and turning to look out of Adele’s big bay window, ‘is why I went to bed. I saw the man throw Mum’s phone across the room, so I must have known something bad was about to happen.’
‘What do you think you should have done?’
‘I should have run next door to Mrs Barlow. If I’d done that, then she’d have called the police straight away.’
‘And why didn’t you?’
Bella froze for a second time. She had never been asked this question before either.
This was the part where she normally snapped an elastic band against her wrist or told herself that she had just been a kid and hadn’t known any better or that she couldn’t change the past. She felt the usual stress symptoms rising inside her: the sweaty palms, the knot in her stomach, the dry mouth, the racing heart.
But Adele wasn’t judging her, she knew.
‘Because of my mum’s eyes,’ Bella said, remembering. ‘She lifted her eyes towards the ceiling.’
‘Her eyes,’ Adele said, nodding. ‘She spoke with her eyes.’
‘I know it sounds weird, but I was a good kid,’ Bella said. ‘She only had to look at me. I mean, I don’t remember now how she looked at me, but that’s what I said in my statement to the police. I would have done what I was told. But maybe I misread her expression. Maybe I got it wrong?’
‘Let’s just assume for a moment that you got it right. OK?’
Bella nodded, her stomach unknotting, her heart rate slowing. She wiped her palms on her jeans.
‘So, why might she have sent you to bed instead of next door to the neighbour?’
‘Because …’ Bella paused. ‘Because she wanted to protect me and pretend that everything was fine.’
‘That sounds about right. I might do the same thing in her position. I might want to shield my daughter from what was happening, pretend to her that it was consensual and report him later.’
‘But then he tied her up and killed her,’ Bella said, her eyes glistening.
‘And she wasn’t expecting that.’
‘She can’t have been,’ Bella said. ‘Otherwise she wouldn’t have sent me upstairs. And I wouldn’t have gone.’
‘So there’s your answer,’ Adele said, gently. ‘That’s why she sent you to bed.’
‘With her eyes,’ Bella said, suggesting again that she’d misread her mother’s expression.
‘With her eyes,’ Adele said firmly. ‘Like this, perhaps.’ She turned her expression into a hard one and glared at Bella, raising her eyes to the ceiling and frowning.
Bella burst into tears, feeling the weight of the stare. ‘Oh my God. Yes. That was it exactly.’
‘But then you came down again,’ Adele offered. ‘Because you heard the noises and knew your mum was in trouble.’
‘Do you think so?’ Bella asked, wiping her cheeks.
‘I do think so,’ Adele said. ‘And I think you’ve been trying to tell yourself the truth about this for a very long time.’
‘But everyone says I couldn’t have done. They said it doesn’t fit with what I told the police, but maybe I just didn’t remember it until later? Maybe I just thought it was a bad dream.’
‘Maybe the thought that you came face to face with your mother’s killer was too horrific for you to acknowledge until now,’ Adele suggested.
Bella felt a wrenching in her gut that threatened to knock her over. ‘But why didn’t he kill me too?’
‘Perhaps because he knew he could convince you that everything was fine and that your mother was asleep. Maybe because he knew you were a good little girl who would do as she was told and go back to bed. Maybe because he was someone who hated grown women, but didn’t have anything against little girls. ’
Bella nodded. ‘You know, I never see his face in the dreams, but when I see him in my head, I see him as someone frightening but at the same time someone you would trust, someone in authority. Someone you would believe.’
The minute the words left her mouth, Bella was smacked with the most intense, gut-wrenching confusion, but also the certainty that this felt right.
She swallowed. ‘I think I came downstairs in the night because I heard noises and the police were already there, and they told me to go back to bed because they had already found my mother and didn’t want me to see her like that …
but …’ She hesitated. ‘But how could that be right? I was the one who found her in the morning and nobody argued with that. How could the police have come in the night and found my mum, then gone away again?’