The Widow (3 page)

Jean was staring into space, her teeth working on her thumb.

‘That's better,' Kate said, plonking herself down. ‘Sorry about that. Now, where were we?'

She had to admit, she was beginning to worry. She'd spent nearly an hour with Jean Taylor and had a notebook full of bits and pieces about her childhood and early married life. But that was all. Every time she edged a bit closer to the story, Jean would change the subject to something safe. They'd had a long discussion at one point about the challenges of bringing up kids, and then there had been a brief interlude when Kate had finally taken one of the insistent calls from the office.

Terry was beside himself when he heard where Kate was. ‘Brilliant!' he yelled down the phone. ‘Well done. What's she saying? When can you file?'

Under Jean Taylor's watchful eyes, Kate muttered, ‘Hang on a minute, Terry. The reception isn't very good here,' and slipped into the back garden, signalling mock irritation to Jean with a weary shake of her head.

‘For God's sake, Terry, I was sitting next to her. I can't talk now,' she hissed. ‘It's a bit slow, to be honest, but I think she's beginning to trust me. Let me get on with it.'

‘Have you got her under contract yet?' Terry asked. ‘Get her under contract and then we can take our time getting the full works.'

‘I don't want to scare her off by pushing things, Terry. I'll do my level best. Speak later.'

Kate pressed the Off button on the phone with feeling and considered her next move. Maybe she just needed to mention the money straight away. She'd done the tea and sympathy and now she had to stop dancing round the edge.

After all, Jean might be hard up now her husband was dead.

He wasn't there to provide for her any more. Or to stop her talking.

S
HE'S STILL HERE
, an hour later. Before today, I'd have asked her to go. I've never had a problem before telling the press people to get lost when they knock. Easy when they are so rude. ‘Hello,' they say, then they're straight into their questions. Horrible, intrusive questions. Kate Waters hasn't asked anything hard. Yet.

We've talked about all sorts of things: when Glen and I bought, the price of property round here, what we've done to the house, the price of paint, the neighbourhood, where I grew up and where I went to school, that sort of thing. She chimes in with everything I say. ‘Oh, I went to a school like that. I hated the teachers, didn't you?' That kind of thing. Makes me feel I'm chatting to a friend. That she's just like me. Clever really, but maybe it's what she does every time she does an interview.

She's not so bad really. I think I could quite like her. She's funny and seems kind, but maybe it's all an act. She's telling me about her husband – her ‘old man' as she calls him – and how she must give him a ring later to let him know she might be late home. Not sure why she'll be late – it isn't even lunchtime yet and she only lives thirty minutes round the South Circular – but I tell her she needs to ring straight away or he'll worry. Glen would've worried. He'd have given me hell if I stayed out without telling him. ‘It's not fair on me, Jeanie,' he'd have said. But I don't tell her that.

Kate is laughing and says her old man is used to it now, but will complain because he'll have to deal with the kids. She's got teenagers, she tells me, Jake and Freddie, with no manners and no respect.

‘He'll have to cook dinner,' she says. ‘But I bet he orders a pizza. The boys'll love that.'

The boys are driving her and the old man mad, apparently, because they won't clear up their bedrooms.

‘They're living in a pigsty, Jean,' she says. ‘You won't believe how many cereal bowls I found in Jake's room. Practically a dinner service. And they lose socks every week. Our house is like the Bermuda Triangle of footwear.' And she laughs again because she loves them, pigsty or not.

All I can think is: Jake and Freddie, what lovely names. I stash them away for later, for my collection, and I'm nodding like I understand how she feels. But I don't, do I? I'd have loved her problems. I'd have loved to have a teenager to nag.

Anyway, I find myself saying, ‘Glen could be a bit difficult when I let the house get in a mess,' out loud. I just wanted to show her I had my own fair share of problems, that I was just like her. Stupid, really. How could I ever be just like her? Or anybody? Me.

Glen always said I was different. When we were going out, he'd show me off, telling his mates that I was special. I couldn't figure it out really. I worked in a salon called Hair Today – Lesley, the owner's, little joke – and spent all my time shampooing and making cups of coffee for menopausal women. I thought hairdressing was going to be fun – glamorous even. Thought I'd be cutting hair and creating new styles, but at seventeen I was bottom of the ladder.

‘Jean,' Lesley would call across to me, ‘can you shampoo my lady and then sweep up round the chairs.' No please or thank you. The customers were all right. They liked telling me all their news and problems because I listened and didn't try and give them advice, like Lesley. I nodded and smiled and daydreamed while they rabbited on about their grandson and his glue sniffing or the neighbour who was throwing her dog mess over the fence. Whole days would go past without me giving an opinion beyond ‘That's nice' or making up holiday plans to keep the conversation going. But I stuck at it. I did the courses, learning how to cut and colour, and started getting my own clients. It wasn't very well paid but I wasn't really fit for anything else. Didn't work at school. Mum told people I was dyslexic, but the truth is I couldn't be bothered.

Then Glen showed up and I was suddenly ‘special'.

Nothing much changed at work. But I didn't socialize with the three other girls because Glen never liked me going out on my own. He said the other girls were single and out for sex and booze. He was probably right if their Monday-morning stories were anything to go by, but I just made excuses and in the end they stopped asking me.

I used to enjoy my work because I could drift off in my head and there was no stress. It made me feel safe – the smells of chemicals and straightened hair, the sounds of chatter and running water, hairdryers roaring and the predictability of it all. The appointment book, marked up in blunt pencil, ruled my day.

Everything was decided, even the uniform of black trousers and white top – apart from Saturday when we all had to wear jeans. ‘Demeaning on a woman of your experience. You're a stylist, not a junior, Jeanie,' Glen had said later. Anyway, it meant I didn't have to decide what to wear – or do – most days. No grief.

They all loved Glen. He'd come and pick me up on a Saturday and lean on the desk to talk to Lesley. He knew so much, my Glen. All about the business side of things. And he could make people laugh even when he was talking about serious stuff.

‘He's so clever, your husband,' Lesley would say. ‘And so good-looking. You're a lucky girl, Jean.'

I always understood that she couldn't believe Glen had chosen me. Sometimes, I couldn't either. He would laugh if I said it and pull me in to him. ‘You are everything I want,' he'd say. He helped me see things for what they were. He helped me grow up, I suppose.

I didn't know the first thing about money and running a home when we got married, so Glen gave me housekeeping each week and a notebook to write down everything I spent. Then we'd sit and he'd balance the figures. I learned so much from him.

Kate is talking again, but I've missed the start. It's something about an ‘arrangement' and she's talking about money.

‘Sorry,' I say, ‘I was miles away for a minute.'

She smiles patiently and leans forward again. ‘I know how difficult this is, Jean. Having the press on your doorstep, night and day. But honestly, the only way to get rid of them is to do an interview. Then they'll all lose interest and leave you alone.'

I nod to show I'm listening. but she gets all excited, thinks I'm agreeing to it. ‘Hang on,' I say in a bit of a panic. ‘I'm not saying yes or no. I need to think it through.'

‘We'd be happy to make a payment – to compensate you for your time and to help you at this difficult time,' she says quickly. Funny, isn't it, how they try and dress things up. Compensate! She means they'll pay me to spill the beans, but she doesn't want to risk offending me.

I've had lots of offers over time, the sort of money you win on the Lottery. You should see the letters that've been pushed through my letterbox by reporters. They'd make you blush, they're so false. Still, I suppose it's better than the hate mail that gets sent.

Sometimes people tear out an article from the papers about Glen and write MONSTER in block capitals with lots of underlining. Sometimes they underline it so hard their pen goes through the page.

Anyway, the reporters do the opposite. But they are just as sickening, really.

‘Dear Mrs Taylor,' – or just Jean sometimes – ‘I hope you won't mind me writing to you at this difficult time, blah, blah, blah. So much has been written about you, but we would like to give you the chance to tell your side of the story. Blah, blah, blah.'

Glen used to read them out in one of his funny voices and we'd laugh and I'd stick them in a drawer. But that was when he was still alive. There was no one to share this offer with.

I look back down at my tea. It's cold now and there's a bit of a skin on the top. It's that full-fat milk that Glen insists on. Insisted. I can get low-fat milk now. I smile.

Kate, who's doing her big sell on how sensitive and responsible her newspaper is and God knows what else, sees the smile as another positive signal. She's offering to take me to a hotel for a couple of nights, ‘To get away from the rest of the reporters and all that pressure,' she says. ‘To give you a break, Jean.'

I need a break, I think.

As if on cue, there's a ring on the front-door bell. Kate peeps through the net curtains and hisses, ‘Bloody hell, Jean, there's a bloke from the local TV station outside. Keep quiet and he'll go away.'

I do as I'm told. As usual. You see, she's taking over where Glen left off. In charge. Protecting me from the press outside. Except, of course, she's the press too. Oh God, I'm in here with the enemy.

I turn to say something but the bell goes again and the letterbox flap pings up. ‘Mrs Taylor?' a voice shouts into the empty hall. ‘Mrs Taylor? It's Jim Wilson from Capital TV. I only want a minute of your time. Just a quick word. Are you there?'

Kate and I sit looking at each other. She's very tense. It's strange to see someone else going through what I go through two or three times a day. I want to tell her that I've learned to just stay quiet. I even hold my breath sometimes so they won't know there's a living soul in the house. But Kate can't sit still. Then she gets her mobile out.

‘Are you going to phone a friend?' I ask, trying to break the tension, but of course the telly bloke hears me.

‘Mrs Taylor, I know you're there. Please come to the door. I promise I'll only take a moment. I just need to speak to you. We want to give you a platform—'

Kate suddenly shouts, ‘Fuck off!' and I stare at her. Glen would never have allowed a woman to say that word in his house. She looks at me and mouths, ‘Sorry,' and then puts her finger to her lips. And the telly man does fuck off.

‘Well, that obviously works,' I say.

‘Sorry, but it's the only language they understand,' she says and laughs. It is a nice laugh, sounds genuine, and I haven't heard much laughter lately. ‘Now then, let's sort out this hotel before another reporter comes.'

I just nod. The last time I went to a hotel was when Glen and I went to Whitstable for a weekend, a few years ago now. 2004. For our fifteenth anniversary.

‘A milestone, Jeanie,' he'd said. ‘It's longer than most armed robbers get.' He liked a joke.

Anyway, Whitstable was only an hour from home, but we stayed in a lovely place on the seafront and ate posh fish and chips and went walking along the stony beach. I picked up flat stones for Glen and he skimmed them through the waves and we counted the skips together. There was the clanging of sails on the masts of the little boats and the wind whipping my hair into a mess, but I think I was truly happy. Glen didn't say much. He just wanted to walk and I was happy to get some of his attention.

You see, Glen was disappearing from my life really. He was there but not there, if you know what I mean. The computer was more of a wife than I was. In all sorts of ways, as it turned out. He had a camera thing so people could see him and he could see them when they were talking. The lighting on those things makes everyone look like they are dead. Like zombies. I just left him to it. To his nonsense.

‘What do you do on there all evening?' I'd say, and he'd shrug and say, ‘Just talking to friends. Nothing much.' But he could spend hours doing whatever it was. Hours.

Sometimes I'd wake up in the night and he wouldn't be there, beside me in bed. I could hear the murmur of his voice from the spare room but I knew better than to disturb him. He didn't welcome my company when he was on the computer. When I used to take him a cup of coffee I had to knock before going in. He said I made him jump if I came into the room suddenly. So I'd knock and he'd turn off the screen and take the cup off me.

‘Thanks,' he'd say.

‘Anything interesting on the computer?' I'd ask.

‘No,' he'd answer. ‘Just the usual.' End of conversation.

I never used the computer. It was very much his department.

But I think I always knew there was something going on in there. That's when I started calling it his nonsense. Meant I could talk about it out loud. He didn't like it being called that, but he couldn't really say anything, could he? It was such a harmless word. Nonsense. Something and nothing. But it wasn't nothing. It was filth. Things that no one should see, let alone pay to look at.