Chapter 36
She thought about the underlying atmosphere that had pervaded the dream, one of both regret at not having found the man on the stairs and fear about what might happen if she did.
She knew the reason. Until now, her brain hadn’t allowed her to pick her dream apart, but as she thought back to the rest of the conversation she’d had with Jamie Clarke, it was all beginning to add up.
She’d told him about her nightmare, about being woken by the sound of her mother being attacked, about the man on the stairs and how she had a strong feeling that this man was someone in authority.
And now, as Jamie Clarke’s words came back to her – ‘You think it was a policeman who killed your mother?’ – she realised that this was the explanation that made the most sense.
The thought was terrifying, not least of all because she felt sure that she had seen the car with the blacked-out windows again as she left Oxford on Friday.
It had been behind her more than once as she looked in her rear-view mirror on the motorway.
She had stayed indoors all of yesterday, too scared to go out, too scared to call anyone.
She had wanted to warn Jamie, but if it was the police who had been watching her, they could be tapping his phone, or hers, or both.
She could be paranoid, but Adele had once told her that paranoia was just heightened awareness, and this new awareness was all the more terrifying because the police were who you trusted, who you ran to. Who could she run to now?
Jamie had asked her if she would speak to his lawyer. ‘She’ll know the names of everyone involved in the investigation,’ he had told her. ‘She might be able to find out who took your statement.’
But if she gave a statement to his lawyer, would this make her a witness in his appeal case?
What would her VLO say? What would her dad say?
And what if the press got wind of it? Even if it was true that she had made a mistake when she’d identified Jamie as her mother’s killer, was she ready to announce that to the world?
She got out of bed, made tea and sat by the living-room window for a while, gazing out at the single tree – an oak – that stood, bordered by railings, on a scrap of grass in the middle of the estate.
For twenty years, she had been a victim and the police had been her allies.
How could she now go flinging around accusations against them?
And what evidence did she have except for a bad dream and a flimsy memory that had resurfaced during a therapy session?
She sat for a moment longer, her fingers wrapped around the mug on the table in front of her, then got up, showered and dressed and fetched her car keys. She needed to talk to her dad again.
‘I haven’t got you an Easter egg,’ her dad said, unapologetically, when she arrived.
‘I haven’t got you one either.’ She sat down on the sofa.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
She hesitated. ‘OK. Thanks.’
Jenny, who was standing in the doorway, let out a small sigh, then disappeared into the kitchen.
Her dad eyed her over his glasses. ‘So, go on, then. Spit it out.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I came to talk about Mum.’
Her dad sighed and turned his eyes towards the TV.
‘Can you turn that off, Dad,’ she said crossly. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Here we go again,’ he murmured.
‘This is important,’ Bella said, exasperated. ‘Why won’t you ever just listen to me?’
‘I’m always listening to this.’
‘But never hearing.’
Her dad picked up the remote and pointed it at the telly. ‘Right,’ he said, after the football snapped off and the room fell silent. ‘What is it now?’
Bella took a deep breath, reminding herself not to jump straight into her questions about the police. ‘I want to know where her things are,’ she began. ‘I want to know what happened to her clothes and books and—’
‘What are you on about?’ His brow knitted irritably. ‘You’ve got everything. You or your grandparents. They got the house. You know that. Why are you asking about this now?’
‘Because there are things I don’t have. Things I’ve remembered.
She wrote books. Stories. And she must have had diaries and photos and …
clothes. She must have had whole rooms full of stuff.
Things I made her. Things she made me. Things I should have had, and I don’t believe Granny and Grandpa have them because if they did, they would have given them to me. ’
‘The police were all over the place,’ her dad said, sniffing. ‘They probably took most of it.’
‘What for?’
‘For evidence.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But it isn’t here.’
‘Not even in the loft?’
‘There’s nothing of hers up there,’ he said.
She licked her lips. ‘So who was it who took her things?’
He frowned. ‘Who was what?’
‘The police,’ she said. ‘What were their names?’
‘Their names?’ He looked at her as if she was mad. ‘What on earth are you asking that for? They were just police.’
‘So you didn’t take down their names?’
He shook his head, looking bewildered.
‘Who took my statement?’ she asked him.
He frowned. ‘Who did what?’
‘I want to know which police officer took a statement from me about what happened. It was a man. He came here.’ Bella glanced around the living room, her eyes landing on the chair next to her father’s. ‘I was sitting over there.’ She pointed. ‘Next to you. On that chair.’
He gave the chair a sideways look. ‘That’s Jenny’s chair, so you couldn’t have been.’
Bella sighed. ‘It was nobody’s chair at the time, Dad, because Jenny didn’t exist.’
‘Didn’t exist!’ Her dad snorted.
‘You weren’t together yet,’ Bella said, trying to be patient. ‘There was only me. You and me. And that’s where I was sitting when the policeman came to talk to me.’
Her dad stiffened. ‘You can’t remember that!’
‘I do,’ she countered. ‘I remember a man with a notebook. He was sitting right next to me on that pouffe you used to have.’
Her dad shook his head in disbelief. ‘This is rubbish. Utter rubbish.’
‘Well, someone took a statement from me. They had to have done, because I made one.’
‘You had to go into the police station,’ said Jenny’s voice from the doorway. ‘You gave your statement there.’
They both turned to look at her.
‘Not being rude, Jenny,’ Bella said, ‘but how do you know that? You weren’t here.’
‘Because that’s what happens. My friend is in the police. When it’s a child, they have to do it properly, in a room, with specially trained officers. It has to be recorded.’
‘There.’ Bella’s dad slapped his knee.
‘So, you actually remember that?’ Bella asked, turning back to him.
‘I do.’
Bella paused. ‘So why do I remember talking to a policeman here, in this house?’
‘It’s that thing, isn’t it?’ her dad said. ‘That false memory thing.’
Bella jumped up abruptly and walked over to the chair.
‘A man came here. A detective. He showed me a photo.’ She sat down and looked at the empty space next to her.
‘He was just there, next to me, on the pouffe. He showed me a photo. And you looked at it too.’ She paused, staring at her father.
‘I know you remember this, Dad. I can see by your face.’
Her dad swallowed. ‘Well, yes. I mean … I saw the photo. And it was definitely of him. The man who killed your mother. Jamie Clarke.’
Bella blinked. ‘But why would anyone show me a picture of him?’
‘I don’t know. To remind you, I suppose.’
‘And this was before I went to the police station? Before I identified him on the ID parade?’
‘I … think so. Yeah.’ He looked at Bella uncomprehendingly.
‘Oh my God,’ Bella said. ‘Do you realise what you’re saying?’
‘No. What?’
‘They’re not supposed to do that, Dad!’
‘Do what?’
‘The police are not supposed to show you a photo prior to any form of identification!’
‘Why not? They got him, didn’t they? You picked the right one, so why does it matter?’
‘It matters because that would have influenced me. I was supposed to go into that ID parade blind and look at a bunch of men in a line-up and not know which one I was looking for.’
‘Well, I don’t see what difference it makes,’ her dad said. ‘You knew what he looked like anyway. You’d seen him before.’
Bella’s mouth was dry. She had met Jamie, but she still shouldn’t have been shown a photo, she knew that much. ‘What was his name, Dad?’ she murmured.
‘Whose name?’
‘The detective. The policeman who came here.’
Her dad’s jaw slackened and for a brief moment Bella thought he was going to tell her. Then he shook his head crossly. ‘It was twenty years ago. How on earth am I supposed to remember that?’
Bella took a deep breath. ‘You wouldn’t have written it down?’
‘Why would I have done that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bella said. ‘Maybe because it was important?’
Her dad shot her an exasperated look and then gave her the usual line when he wanted the conversation to be over. ‘You told the police it was him. You made a statement. You can’t go changing it now.’
‘Who says, Dad?’ Bella argued. ‘You’re always saying that, but why can’t I?’
‘Because it’s …’ He shrugged. ‘Perjury?’
‘What? No, it’s not! It’s just me remembering something I had forgotten.’
‘Well, I don’t see why it matters. It’s all in the past, isn’t it?’
‘Not for Jamie Clarke,’ Bella said. ‘And not for me, either.’
Her dad eyed her suspiciously. ‘I don’t know why you have to keep dragging it up.’
‘Because of … all of it, Dad! Losing Mum, losing my home, not being able to remember anything about my life when I was with her. And you … refusing to talk about her, or to say anything good about her. Can’t you see what it’s done to me? I’m your daughter! Why don’t you care?’
Her father looked more uncomfortable than she’d ever seen him, and then he said, abruptly, ‘I think you’ve outstayed your welcome.’
Bella felt the rebuke land hard against her chest. Apprehension rose inside her.
Her father was all she had. For seventeen years, he had been all she had, but the truth was that their connection had always been fragile and superficial.
She could never reach the real person behind the wall he had put up, and she saw with sudden clarity that this was never going to change.
She had often wondered what Jenny saw in her father, how she got any kind of fulfilment from being with someone so shallow, but she realised now that he was shielding himself from her.
Her father didn’t want any kind of relationship with her.
He never would. He had never really forgiven her for looking like her mother, for being like her mother.
Bella had never felt more alone.