Precious Thing (12 page)

He slammed the receiver down, his fat hands shaking from excitement, and turned to me.

‘Haven’t you got any work to do?’ His face was deep red, chest heaving. I noticed a spot of yellow on his green polo shirt, a leftover from his fried-egg breakfast.

‘I need to speak to you,’ I said and it was there, a flash across his face. Anger, sympathy, I couldn’t work it out.

‘Let’s go to the meeting room,’ he said, hauling himself out of his chair.

The meeting room was a rectangle with no windows, a large white table, twelve chairs, a flip chart in the corner and too-bright lighting. Despite the name it was clearly designed to discourage long meetings, or meetings of any kind at all, because sitting there it was often possible to experience the physical sensation of your soul escaping you.

I pulled out a chair and looked up at the flip chart. Someone had written in red marker pen
BANNED WORDS
and underlined it three times as if to press the point home. Under the headline were the words:

STRIKE ACTION
=
STRIKES

FLORAL TRIBUTES
–
who the hell sends these?

And in capitals:

HOSPITALISED – POLICE SPEAK DO NOT USE.

Robbie wheezed as he sat down, wedging himself into the chair. He rested his arms across his beer belly.

‘Jake tells me you know this missing woman.’

‘She’s a friend,’ I said. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head.

‘The press conference was on Monday and it’s …’ He paused and in an overdramatic gesture lifted his wrist up to read the date on his watch. ‘Today is Wednesday.’

‘I did try. I mean I tried before I went on air but …’ I stopped. My excuses sounded so hollow. ‘I was in shock’, such a clichéd phrase, such a get-out-of-jail card, I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. Robbie wasn’t listening anyway. He was looking out of the door, eyes fixed on something beyond the meeting room with a glassy concentration like an animal sizing up its prey. He shook his head and then turned back to me.

‘See, I’m thinking, Rachel, that I’ve had a fucking correspondent talking about an investigation on the bloody news one moment then helping police the next. I’m thinking newspapers, stories, front pages. I’m thinking how much they’d love it,’ he said, wiping a film of sweat from his brow.

I stifled a smile, pretending to yawn instead. With anyone else I would have been subjected to a lecture on professional ethics, on conflict of interest and not becoming the story. But Robbie was a creature of the gutter, an old-time hack who would do anything for a story if he thought he could get away with it. I knew what was coming next.

‘You’re off the story,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell anyone why, it’s none of their business.’

I knew there was no way round it. I couldn’t front a story when I was one of the characters in it. But still, I hated the thought of Robbie wresting control from my hands, of another reporter talking as if they knew you and Jonny, telling the world about your character, your past. I wanted to make Robbie realise what he was losing. I wanted him to sweat his decision a bit more.

I sat back in my chair and nodded. ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘especially now that the police are telling me things in confidence, I can’t be seen to be close to the story, no matter how frustrating that is for me.’ My face settled into a weak smile and I waited.

A beat, a flash in his eyes and then it was gone. He screwed up his face in an attempt at sympathy which made him look like he was trying to pass wind.

‘Rachel, I want you to know I am really sorry to hear she’s a friend. I hope they find her,’ he said. I knew he hadn’t finished. ‘And uh … the police, they saying much to you?’

‘A bit,’ I said in a whisper and I leant so close to him I could smell the stale coffee on his breath, ‘quite a bit.’

He smiled, salivating like a dog who’d eyed a treat.

‘So …’ the word whistled through his teeth, ‘any leads?’

I paused to choose my words and nodded my head slowly. ‘They’ve got a few really interesting ones,’ I said and saw his mouth hanging open, waiting for me to hand it to him. I leant closer still. ‘But like you say, Robbie, I need to keep my distance.’

N
ATIONAL NEWS NETWORK
claimed to be ‘first with the news’ – a motto its team of journalists, to Robbie’s fury, managed to prove wrong time and time again. But when it came to disseminating gossip my colleagues were unsurpassed. A rough calculation told me I had about five minutes from leaving Robbie in the meeting room until the place was buzzing with talk of me and you.

As a rule newsrooms don’t do pity or sympathy particularly well – the last thing I wanted were awkward hugs from Jenny in accounts, or sympathy strokes from the lecherous Ian in charge of the early bulletin. But I knew they would be chewing me over along with their lunchtime chilli jackets and tuna wraps and making sly jokes about me in the Duke of Cambridge after work. The whispers, the stares, becoming the story; I couldn’t sit around and wait for that. Instead I went back to my desk and pulled up my list of running stories on the computer, searching through it for something to do. That’s when I came to Ann Carvello’s name. She had said no to so many people. She had already said no to me but I’d never let that stop me before.

‘If anyone asks,’ I said to Jake as I grabbed my bag, ‘tell them I’m meeting a contact. And I’m taking a crew.’ I ran out of the newsroom before he could ask any questions.

The blue sky that promised so much earlier in the day had been consumed by clouds. They grew thicker and thicker as I drove out of London until there was nothing left but grey. By the time I reached the A10 gobstoppers of hail started to fall, shattering like pieces of glass on the windscreen. A trail of white spray fell off the car in front. I pinched my eyes in an effort to see the road, to find a way through.

I twisted my neck one way and the other and tried to loosen the tension that seemed to have calcified my bones. Tiredness was bleeding into my head.

What was I doing, out there, driving into the middle of nowhere (or Leigh-on-Sea, which was the same thing)? Ostensibly I was taking a punt on a story, but don’t think I had forgotten about you and Jonny. You were the real reason, Clara. I’d run out of places to look for you. I was too close to the search, so tight up against it, I couldn’t see a thing. I needed clarity and perspective and without space I knew I would never achieve them.

Entering Leigh-on-Sea the road opened up to reveal the water, thrashing and black and desolate. I didn’t see a soul on the approach to the town, no figures out walking, wrapped up against the elements; the benches were empty, the trees bare of leaves. The place was bleak, abandoned; even the fish and chip shops were boarded up.

I’d approached Ann Carvello the week before, just after the verdict. I had been standing by our live point blown about by the wind which tunnels down the Old Bailey, when I caught a flash of her white hair out of the corner of my eye. Turning round I saw her scurrying away from the court, head bent down so far her scarf almost swallowed her up. She couldn’t run, not at her age, and anyway it would have attracted too much attention. She wanted to slip by unnoticed and she very nearly did because no one else saw her except for me. I ripped out my earpiece and walked as fast as I could. By the end of the street I’d caught up with her.

‘Mrs Carvello?’ I said as if I wasn’t sure it was her. I’d stopped right in front of her and she almost walked into me. She lifted her head and looked at me with her bloodshot eyes.

‘I don’t think so, love,’ she said through her trademark red-lipsticked lips. ‘There’s nothing I can say.’ She nodded and went on her way, a woman with nothing left in her life except a story that everyone wanted to hear.

I found her house a few streets back from the beach. A largish semi with a neatly tended garden. On either side of her painted green door empty hanging baskets swung in the wind. Appearances, I thought, must have mattered a lot to Ann Carvello.

I knocked and waited, pulling my cagoule around me to hide my workwear. Behind the door I could hear footsteps, padding through the hall, then a face mottled through the glass.

‘Who is it?’ she asked gently.

‘It’s Rachel, I hope you don’t mind, I was passing by.’ I imagined her thinking of a Rachel she knew – it helps having a common name – a niece, a friend, and not wanting to offend them by following up with a ‘Rachel who?’

I heard her unhook the chain and open the door slowly, her white hair appearing through it first, then her face, red lipstick even at home. She was dressed in a pale blue cardigan and a tweed skirt. Immaculate.

She stared for a moment, sizing me up, and then I saw the recognition creep across her face. The door began to shut again. I moved my foot quickly to stop it.

‘I thought you might like to talk to me,’ I said.

‘I have nothing to say.’ She pushed the door harder against my foot.

‘I don’t think you knew anything about it, did you? All those interviews your so-called friends have given, your neighbour in the
Sun
today, your old schoolfriend in the
Mail on Sunday
at the weekend. They believe it but I don’t.’

There were footsteps on the pavement, the sound of the gate opening. A man delivering a free newspaper was coming down her garden path. She shifted uncomfortably and shook her head in his direction and he went on his way. I raised my voice against the rain, loud enough for him to hear.

‘They don’t understand that you could live with someone for so long and not know. But I know people are good at hiding things when they really want to.’

‘The rain,’ she said, ‘sometimes I think it’s never going to stop.’

‘I understand.’ It was dripping down me now, running off my nose and soaking through my hair.

She peered out of the doorway and turned her head from side to side to see if anyone was looking. Then she said; ‘Five minutes, that’s it, and I won’t be quoted, do you understand.’

‘Of course.’

A woman pushing a pram walked past her gate craning her neck to see who Ann was talking to.

‘Quickly,’ she said, ushering me in, ‘before I change my mind.’

The living room smelt of polish and Shake n’ Vac and the trail lines of the Hoover on the carpet suggested it had been recently vacuumed. On the windowsill a neat arrangement of china, figures of a girl in a petticoat and hat with a lamb, another of a dog. A little basket of potpourri gave off a sickly sweet smell. School-uniformed children smiled out from photo frames on the mantelpiece, and couples kissed in wedding photographs. A young man in a graduation picture. A timeline of happy family events. Not one of Ann though. None of her husband.

She plumped a green velvet cushion unnecessarily and motioned for me to sit down. Then she left me and went into the kitchen; the sound of a kettle boiling and cups arranged, and a few moments later she reappeared carrying a tray with cups and saucers, a teapot and a plate of garibaldi biscuits. These little things mattered to her, perhaps even more so now.

She sat down in the chair opposite me and pulled her skirt down around her, flicking an imaginary crumb from her lap.

‘You’re probably wondering how I could have been so stupid?’ Her voice was stretched and thin.

‘That has never crossed my mind,’ I said.

‘My friends,’ and she gave a weak laugh, ‘those who still come near, they say they believe me but it’s in their eyes. The doubt, it’s there all the time. Not that I blame them, I wonder how I could have lived with him all that time and never suspected a thing.’ She looked away from me and lifted the cup to her lips, her hands shaking, and took the smallest sip before placing it back on the saucer.

‘He was your husband,’ I said as softly as I could.

‘I had five children to look after, he worked all hours, he’d come in at night and I’d have his tea on the table. That was the way it was then. There was none of this “sharing roles”. He’d go out to the pub a few times a week like most men. I never questioned it. He always provided for us, never so much as raised a hand to me or the children. It was all so … so … ordinary.’

‘When you’re not looking it’s hard to find something,’ I said. I noticed how green her eyes were, watered down now through age but still striking.

Ann nodded and fixed me with a stare as if she was sizing me up. ‘You seem sharper than the others,’ she said. ‘When you’re too close to something everything is out of focus, it’s only when you step back and see it through a different lens that it all begins to make sense.’ She reached for her cup and saucer again and let her hand hover over them as if she was making a decision. ‘When I look back now,’ she said, ‘I can see my whole life was a lie.’

Her confession startled me, the way it came so easily, how it was still so raw on her. Throughout the trial she’d been silent, supportive. She must have seen my surprise.

‘Oh I never believed he did it, not for a moment,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want it to be true, every ounce of me, everything, I wanted it to be shown as the awful, cruel lie that it was. He kept on saying that I had to believe him, that I was the only one left who did. And I did. I told him over and over again that I did.’

‘Sometimes it’s easier that way,’ I said, reaching for a garibaldi.

She closed her eyes as if to summon up the memory. ‘One day in court, I remember so clearly, I heard him telling the prosecutor why he went out driving late at night. He said he was an insomniac, he couldn’t sleep so he’d take the car and go for a drive.’ She paused and I saw her lips wobble, something catching in her voice. ‘But the thing is, he fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. Always. Not once in all the years we were together had I known him to have trouble falling asleep.’ She clicked her fingers. Snap. ‘It was only a little lie but I knew then that he’d lied about everything. That’s when it all came crashing down. All those years of marriage, the children, everything just imploded.’ She pulled a handkerchief from the inside of her sleeve and wiped her eyes. ‘It’s the little things that give people away, that’s how they can hide for so long because those things are so little we often miss them. But if you look carefully enough you’ll find them.’ She paused and in a whisper said: ‘I was married to him for thirty-one years and I hope he rots in hell for what he did to those women.’