Guilty

by Jane Bidder

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Her ex-husband’s voice hit her as soon as she got out of the car at Mrs Johnson’s. He was standing, next to his own car, arms folded; ready for her. ‘Can you imagine how I felt when I went to the house and found it all boarded up? I thought something dreadful had happened.’

  ‘It has.’ She looked around, wondering where they could talk privately without having to take him into her bedroom inside.

  ‘I know now.’ Charlie’s eyes softened for a minute and he ran his hand through his hair; a familiar gesture. It wasn’t quite as thick and blond as it used to be but the realisation that she still found him attractive gave her a jolt. ‘I got hold of Ben, thank God, and he told me. That’s why I’m here.’

  She felt a rush of relief. ‘I’ve been trying to contact him since this morning. Where is he?’

  ‘At a friend’s. He said he’d be back by dinner.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Some girl called Peony or something. He’s giving her a guitar lesson. Don’t worry.’

  Charlie never worried about something unless it was in Charlie world.

  ‘What I want to know is why you didn’t tell me that you’d left the house and moved into two rooms without so much as an email.’

  He was getting cross now. That little tell-tale vein on his forehead was standing out the way it always used to. ‘I thought you were in the States,’ she began.

  ‘We can get emails there, you know.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’ To her horror, her eyes began to fill with tears. ‘You were too far away to help and besides, why should I ask you to bail me out because my new husband had been put in prison for dangerous driving. It’s up to me to sort out and …’

  ‘What did you say?’

  He clutched at her arm and then, as though realising what he was doing, dropped it.

  ‘I said it’s up to me to sort out …’

  ‘Before that.’

  ‘Are you trying to punish me for leaving you?’ She glared at him. ‘OK. I’ll say it again. My new husband has been jailed for death by dangerous driving. Ben must have told you.’

  ‘No.’ Charlie’s face was very still. ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘And he didn’t mention the bricks?’

  ‘What bricks?’ Something dawned in his eyes. ‘Is that why the windows were boarded up? Someone put a brick through your window?’

  ‘Simon was driving some friends home.’ Her voice was low. ‘He picked up a call from Ben when he shouldn’t have, and there was an accident. The woman in the car was killed.’

  ‘My God.’ Charlie’s face was white. ‘How awful.’

  She could see he was horrified. Just as she would be if the positions were reversed. For a minute, she felt a wave of relief that she could share this nightmare with someone who knew her. For heaven’s sake, they’d virtually grown up with each other. Bought their first house together. Had a baby together. Buried her mother together …

  She stopped at the sound of a door opening. From the car, Claire could see Mrs Johnson coming out and waving from the porch. ‘Who’s that?’ demanded Charlie ungraciously.

  ‘My landlady. Sshh.’ Briefly she nudged him. ‘She doesn’t know anything about it.’

  Mrs Johnson was walking towards them now, a pleasant smile on her face and her apron flapping slightly in the breeze. ‘I don’t want to interfere, dear, but you’re very welcome to bring your visitor in if you don’t want to talk in the street.’

  She beamed. ‘My name is Jean. Jean Johnson.’

  Charlie’s innate good manners took over. ‘Charlie Watson. Claire’s first husband. Good to meet you.’

  Mrs Johnson nodded as though she knew that already. ‘Why don’t you come in and talk in my sitting room. I need to go out anyway so you can have some privacy. I expect you’ve got quite a lot to talk about.’

  ‘So your landlady really doesn’t know?’ asked Charlie. They were both sitting rather awkwardly opposite each other on matching maroon sofas and fluffy cushions to match. The mantelpiece was laden with china figures and the curtains were the thick, heavy kind that blocked out the sunlight as though it might be dangerous.

  ‘No.’ Claire looked away at a table which bore photographs of a small freckled boy, smiling at her. ‘She thinks that Simon and I are temporarily separated.’

  Charlie snorted. ‘You could say that, I suppose. You won’t go back to him after this, will you?’

  ‘Why ever not?’ His audacity shocked her.

  ‘He’s a murderer, Claire. How can you live with someone who killed someone else?’

  Exactly what she had been asking herself since it happened. But now it all seemed clear. ‘Because I love him. And because despite everything, he’s a good, honest man who wouldn’t look at another woman.’

  He winced. Claire couldn’t help taking pleasure from that. Despite everything, she still found it hard to accept that he could have been unfaithful. She would have lined up all the men in the world for that kind of thing and put Charlie at the end. Still might have if it hadn’t been for his confession four years ago.

  ‘He’s restored my confidence,’ she continued. ‘And he tries to be a good stepfather to Ben …’

  ‘But they don’t get on, do they?’ He was bristling now. ‘Ben’s told me. Always criticising our son; telling him to do this and that.’

  Claire felt a need to defend her husband. ‘Being a step-parent isn’t easy.’

  ‘Nor is being an absent father.’

  ‘Then you should have thought about that before you had an affair!’

  As she spoke, Claire could hear her voice rising and, at the same time, the front door opening. If Mrs Johnson had had to go out, it hadn’t been for long.

  ‘Look.’ Charlie’s hands were reaching out towards her. ‘I didn’t come here for another argument. I was shocked, that’s all, when I couldn’t find you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she heard herself saying. ‘I should have said.’

  ‘You had a lot to cope with. Moving house, feeling threatened, it couldn’t have been easy.’ She’d forgotten how his voice could make her feel it was all right even when it wasn’t. ‘I just want to tell you that I’m here if you need me. OK?’ He looked around and his gaze settled on the china figures on the mantelpiece. ‘I could find you somewhere else to live, if you like.’

  ‘No.’ It came out sharper than she had meant. ‘Thank you. I’ve found a job to supplement our income.’ She felt almost proud saying it. ‘Teaching,’ she added. ‘I like it more than I thought possible.’

  He nodded. ‘Good for you, Claire.’ Before she could realise what he was doing, he was moving towards her, brushing her cheek with his. It had been the first time they had touched for years! ‘You know, I’ve always admired you, Claire, for your principles and although I don’t think you’re doing the right thing in standing by this man, I’m very moved. I only hope he realises how lucky he is.’

  After Charlie left, Claire couldn’t concentrate. Ignoring Mrs Johnson’s ‘you-can-tell-me-anything’ smile, she simply thanked her landlady for allowing her to use the sitting room and went up to her room. Sitting down at the dressing table which acted as an impromptu desk, she tried to sketch the outline for the final page of the children’s book she was working on but it wouldn’t come.

  Simon. Charlie. Charlie. Simon.

  What, Claire mused, would her mother have made of Simon? She’d liked Charlie, although she often wondered what her mother might have said about Charlie’s infidelity. Advised her to ‘patch things up’ perhaps? Her parents’ generation had been good at that kind of thing. Indeed, she had never seen her own so much as hold hands. Was that the result of a past indiscretion or perhaps they didn’t go in for showing affection either to each other or their daughter?

  Certainly, they wouldn’t have understood the all-engrossing passion that she and Simon had – something that had taken her by surprise from the moment that Simon’s lips had first met he
rs.

  Once, she had heard her father talk disparagingly about an older actor marrying a much younger actress. ‘You can see what she gives him,’ he had muttered. ‘Why don’t people realise that it’s emotional compatibility that matters? Not physical.’

  Was he right? Might she and Simon be weathering this storm more capably if their relationship had been founded on something more practical than pure and simple attraction? Quite possibly …

  Nor, she suspected, would her parents have approved of what her father had often referred to as ‘the cultural divide’. The irony was that Simon was almost more English than she was with his reverence towards the Royal Family and his correct public school manners.

  No, the division came from the fact that he didn’t have children. If anything, that was a far bigger chasm than a difference in nationality.

  Maybe she’d be better off walking outside and clearing her head along the front. Amazing how the sea cleared her head and made her feel that everything else was insignificant compared with the waves that were lashing on the pebbly beach. It was high tide although that didn’t stop holidaymakers sitting on the stones and pretending it was summer instead of autumn.

  She’d just have to get on like the waves which came in, smashed their heads on the beach, and went out again before returning for more. Get on. That’s all. And she would.

  Ben couldn’t concentrate on today’s guitar lesson. Poppy wasn’t a natural learner and it took every inch of his patience to go over the chords again and again. The effort was almost enough to distract him from being so close to her skin and smelling something that he couldn’t identify but which was fresh and exciting.

  People walking past in the park were beginning to stop by their bench and listen. He wished they would go away and leave them in peace but they couldn’t go anywhere else. His room was too small and Mum or Mrs Johnson would only ask nosey questions. And they could hardly go to her house; not after what Simon had done.

  ‘I talked to Dad about the bricks,’ Poppy had said when they were arranging today’s session. ‘He said it wasn’t him. But he went really red when I mentioned the phone calls. He seemed a bit surprised that you’d had to move too.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him where, did you?’ Ben had asked, panicking.

  ‘No, silly. I promised, didn’t I?’

  And then they’d met as agreed in the park and it had been great until his mobile had rung and it was Dad, wanting to know what the hell was going on because he’d come back from the States and turned up to take Ben out as a surprise and found the house boarded up.

  So he’d told him to ring Mum and since then, all through this practice session in the park, he’d been waiting for her to call him for telling him off for putting Dad in touch. It was all such a mess.

  But maybe, he thought as he gently put Poppy’s fingers into position over the strings, this might be the break he’d been waiting for. Perhaps Dad and Mum might get back together now and then Simon could get out of their lives for ever.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Before marrying Claire, Simon would throw himself into work if something troubled him in his personal life. He had done the same when his parents had died.

  Occasionally, there had been women who had hurt him. He had numbed the pain by arriving at the office at 6 a.m. and working steadily through the night if necessary. Such habits were not uncommon in London city practices so it did not attract a great deal of interest from his colleagues who frequently phoned home to get their wives to taxi over a clean shirt for the morning.

  So Simon wasn’t entirely surprised to find himself tidying up Stores long after his hours had finished in a bid to block out that strange taste of disappointment and unfulfillment after Claire’s visit.

  ‘What you doing here at this time, Mills?’ demanded one of the officers making a regular security check.

  ‘Tidying this lot up, sir.’ Too late, he realised that the officer was a woman so to hide his embarrassment, he made a flamboyant gesture at the shelves behind him, track suits heaped on them in random sizes and trainers parted from their partners in odd sizes.

  ‘Why?’ Suspicion was written all over the officer’s face. Simon often wondered what made a woman do this job. They weren’t all butch as one might expect; this one was thin and scrawny and had a face like a small bird’s.

  ‘I like to get things in order. I’m not trying to steal anything if that’s what you think.’

  The face tightened.

  ‘If you really want to know,’ Simon continued, ‘I’m trying to shut out other stuff in my mind. It helps me to do something simple and practical instead.’

  Softening slightly, she nodded. ‘OK. I won’t report you then but you have to leave now. No one’s allowed here after 4.30 p.m. and besides, it’s nearly roll-call.’

  Not for another fifteen minutes, he wanted to say but instead he nodded. ‘Obey the rules, mate, and you’ll be all right,’ Spencer had told him. And he was right. Besides, after dinner, he had promised to give the boy another lesson which would kill another hour or two before bed.

  ‘Kill?’ tinkled Joanna. ‘Rather poor choice of word, don’t you think?’

  ‘Shut up,’ muttered Simon as he marched back to his cell. ‘Go away and leave me in peace, will you?’

  Evenings, as Simon had already realised, were a strange, unreal time. The camp came to life when all the extra people streamed in at 5 p.m. off the white buses which had taken them to local community work in nearby towns. Some of the men were even permitted to use their own cars. However, they all had to be back by 5.30 pm for roll-call in the dining room.

  Simon found this freedom extraordinary. ‘Don’t some of them just stay out and never come back?’ he asked Spencer that evening when they were having a short break from discussing why ‘their’ meant something that belonged to a group of people and ‘there’ generally referred to a place.

  Spencer threw him an ‘are-you-stupid?’ look. ‘’Course, man. But they always get picked up or else they hand themselves in like that geezer the other night and then they have to go to a closed prison. ‘’Snot worth it.’

  Sometimes the brilliance of the prison system hit Simon with force. Making someone understand the importance of freedom like that was truly inspired. Indeed, he’d heard great things about governor number one even though he hadn’t met him. That was another thing that Simon had learned. From the few prison dramas he had seen on television, he had always thought that there was only one governor. Now he had learned that there was a top governor or ‘Guv’ as the men referred to him and two others below him.

  There was the sound of raucous laughter from the cell next door. The man who lived there – a weedy Mancunian, renowned for re-using other people’s cigarette butts from outside the hut – had just started work as a driver so was probably regaling tales of his day to a jealous audience. Rumour had it that the Mancunian was in for throwing an electric fire in his girlfriend’s bath some five years ago. He was now coming to the end of his sentence, most of which had been spent in Wandsworth.

  ‘Do employers know that these men are in prison?’ he asked Spencer.

  ‘’Course they do, mate. That’s why we have Job Club.’

  Simon had seen the sign but not realised what it meant.

  ‘It’s full of staff geezers who have contacts with places like charity shops and companies what need drivers,’ sniffed Spencer. ‘They get labour cheap and the geezers at this end get work. Then when they get out, they can say they’ve got experience like.’

  Amazing. Why had he never stopped to think before what would happen to his client when he came out of prison?

  ‘Can we do something else?’ Spencer was still scratching his head over the ‘theirs’ and ‘theres’. ‘What I’d really like to do is write me own name.’

  He couldn’t even do that? Simon swallowed. ‘Sure. If I write out a line of ‘W’s, you could copy them below. OK?

  He glanced at his wall clock and its Do Not Rem
ove! notice. If he was going to ring Claire, he ought to do so now before lock up but Spencer was now engrossed in his work. Besides, even if he did get through to Claire before curfew, what exactly would he say?

  The letter came on the same day that he received the internal note from Education.

  ‘So you see,’ ended Claire’s letter, ‘ it’s almost impossible to drive up every week. It means leaving Ben for a full twelve hours and I think I need to be there for him, don’t you? How about if I come up once a month instead? I was going to tell you this on the phone but you haven’t called for ages. I expect there’s a reason for it. ’

  He put down the letter which succeeded in gently reproaching him for not calling, while allowing him a get-out.

  ‘You don’t want to talk,’ tinkled Joanna, ‘ because you’re ashamed of what you’ve done. Now how about opening that other letter: the one through internal post. You never know, they might be releasing you early. Only joking! ’

  The letter was stamped Education at the top.

  ‘ Pleased to inform you … space now available … report to Education Admin … need to inform your work party that you will be moving … ’

  What did it mean about informing his work party?

  ‘You have to get permission, mate, from Steve what runs Stores,’ when he asked Spencer. ‘Dunno why you want to go to Education. Haven’t you had enough already?’

  Yes, but you could always improve yourself. He’d also seen a poster advertising Spanish classes. Maybe he could do a degree. It would certainly help him when he got out. Spanish was considered a useful language in law.

  The following morning he rose with a sense of something akin to excitement. He even found himself whistling in the shower. ‘’Sonly 6 o’clock, mate,’ Spencer had grumbled when he’d got back. ‘What’s up? I was having this great dream about making out with two sisters and you’ve gone and ruined it, like.’

  The image made Simon laugh out loud. He couldn’t wait to get through breakfast even though someone had taken all the milk before him and there wasn’t enough for his Rice Krispies (on his first day, he had requested muesli which had resulted in a scornful remark from the kitchen staff who were prisoners themselves).