Chapter 29
Four days later, on Wednesday evening, he called her. Bella was in the kitchen when an unknown number came up on her phone. She snatched it up. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s Jamie,’ he said simply. ‘Jamie Clarke.’
Bella walked into the living room and sat down at a table by the window that looked onto the estate.
All these years, she’d thought about him, imagined talking to him, imagined what his voice would sound like.
In her head, she’d had hundreds of conversations with him, but now that he was here, on the other end of the phone, she didn’t know what to say.
‘You wanted to talk to me,’ he reminded her.
‘Yes. Yes, I did. I do.’ Her voice sounded high-pitched and reedy. ‘Thank you for calling.’
‘I’m not supposed to,’ he said.
‘I know.’ Bella swallowed, pulling herself together. ‘And this isn’t a trap. I promise you.’
‘I could go back to prison if anyone found out.’
‘They won’t.’ She cleared her throat. ‘They won’t. I swear to God. I just … I just want to talk to you about my mum. I want to know the truth about what happened to her.’
A pause. ‘I didn’t do it. That’s the truth. It wasn’t me.’
Bella felt her heart flutter.
‘I’m so sorry it happened,’ he continued.
‘I’m so sorry that you lost your mum in that …
that awful way. I’ve wanted to say that to you for years, and I’m glad I can because it was such a horrible, despicable thing for you to have gone through …
’ His voice was thick with emotion. ‘I can’t begin to imagine what your life has been like because of it, but someone else did that to her, not me.
I would never have hurt her. I could never do something like that. ’
Bella closed her eyes, trying to make sense of what she was hearing from this stranger, this man with a South London accent just like her dad’s, who sounded so very …
normal. He was telling her that she had made a mistake when she identified him.
But unlike in all the conversations she had imagined, there was no judgement of her in his tone.
‘I thought the world of your mum,’ he told her.
‘Prove it,’ she blurted back.
‘How?’
‘Tell me about her.’
He paused. ‘What do you want to know?’
Bella felt her throat tighten. ‘You said you were dating her. You said that to the court in your defence. So what was she like?’
Another pause. ‘She was beautiful. She was funny. I mean, really funny. She had a great sense of humour. Do you remember that?’
‘Sort of,’ Bella said, tears springing to her eyes.
‘And she was curious – interested in people. In philosophy. In the world. In everything. That’s one of the things that drew me to her. She was inspiring to talk to. And she loved books. She loved stories.’
A flash to her mother teaching her to read. The word cards. The alphabet rhymes. The Jacqueline Wilson books she adored, which her mother would insist on reading first, to make sure they weren’t too racy for her.
‘She wanted to be a writer,’ he continued. ‘Do you remember that? She wanted to write children’s books.’
‘No,’ Bella said, stunned. ‘No one told me that.’ Another flash to her mother making up stories on the way to school.
One about a rabbit with a broken paw who became a world-class tennis player.
A kangaroo who couldn’t hop but then realised there were other things to be happy for.
The disempowered overcoming life’s challenges: this was what her mother cared about.
She wiped her cheeks with her wrist. ‘I want to meet you. I want to see you.’
‘I can’t,’ he said, at last. ‘The police. They’re watching me. I can’t.’
‘We can meet somewhere.’
‘They’ll follow me.’
Bella thought about how she, too, sometimes felt she was being watched. Could it be the police? But she needed to see him. She needed to watch his face while he talked about her mother. She needed to look into his eyes.
‘I’ll come to you,’ she said. ‘I’ll come in disguise. I’ll think of a way so that even if they’re watching, they won’t know it’s me.’
‘They’ll tell my probation officer anyway. And it could be grounds for putting me back in prison.’
‘I don’t know if I picked the right person,’ Bella burst out.
The phone went silent. She could hear him breathing. Thinking.
‘The identity parade,’ she said. ‘It was … confusing. I don’t know if I made a mistake. So, if we could just meet, maybe I will remember. Maybe I will then be certain of who I really did see that day.’
Eventually, he spoke. ‘I really want to. It’s just that—’
‘I’ll check every car in the street and if there is anyone outside your house, I’ll knock on someone else’s door.’
He hesitated. She could tell he wasn’t convinced, and why would he be? Why would he trust her?
‘I will be so, so careful,’ she said. ‘I’ll think it all through and I’ll make a plan, and then I’ll call you and make sure you’re happy with it. Can I do that? Will you at least let me do that?’
‘OK,’ he said, at last.