Clear My Name

by Paula Daly

  ‘You mean like you did with Steph?’ asks Avril.

  Tess glares at her, shocked.

  ‘What?’ Avril says. ‘You think I didn’t work it out? That guy in Wetherspoon’s gushing over you two finding each other again …? And the girl looks just like you, Tess.’

  Tess swallows.

  ‘She even talks like you and walks like you,’ Avril goes on, ‘which is pretty remarkable when you think about it. It just goes to show that the whole nature-versus-nurture debate is—’

  ‘Stop talking.’

  Not one person in Tess’s everyday life knows that Steph is her daughter. It’s her secret. Hers alone. Tess is suddenly filled with a fear that’s as close to terror as she’s ever felt. She never wanted this aspect of her life exposed. Certainly not for someone like Avril to be allowed to speculate upon.

  ‘Has she been trying to contact you?’ Avril asks. ‘Has she been trying to track you down, is that it? Is that why you moved away from Morecambe? Is that why you’re always moving house? Why you don’t tell anyone your address? In case she turns up on your doorstep?’

  Tess keeps her eyes fixed directly ahead. The glare from the headlights on the other side of the carriageway is aggravating her already sore eyes but she doesn’t blink. She dips her foot on the accelerator and the needle moves from eighty to eighty-five, ninety.

  ‘Why didn’t you want to see her?’ Avril presses.

  ‘I just didn’t.’

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘Am I interrogating you about your life? Am I asking you why you felt the need to invent a whole fucking person? A mother-in-law? I made a mistake and I didn’t want to think about it again. And yes, maybe I didn’t want her turning up at my door, mad at me, holding me accountable, wanting answers … And I sure as hell didn’t go telling you about it so you could bring it up every five seconds.’

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t want everyone to know what happened.’

  ‘So? Perhaps I didn’t want everyone to know. So what? Who walks around saying, “Oh, yeah, me too … I gave a baby away when I was younger.” No one does that! We move on and we keep it to ourselves … Don’t go making out like there’s something wrong with me. I’m not the first woman to make that choice and then bury it. That’s how people get though life, Avril.’

  Avril is quiet.

  They drive on for a time. Tess thinks maybe she might have screamed at her a little too hard. She glances sideways and sees Avril is taking a boiled sweet from her handbag. She unwraps it carefully before popping it inside her mouth. ‘Well, why change things now?’ Avril says quietly. ‘When it’s all working out so well for you.’

  Now

  IN FRONT OF the bathroom mirror, Tess tentatively eases the edges of the dressing away from her skin. Beneath, the wound from the blowtorch is raw, open and weeping. An orange-yellow liquid seeps down her cheek, a liquid that doesn’t appear entirely of human origin. Tess winces and hurriedly presses the dressing back into place, smoothing down the edges of the surgical tape. Now she wishes she’d not looked.

  She heats a cup of milk in the microwave and carries it up to the home office. She is unable to sleep. She tells herself this is because of the burn – no longer is it simply painful, it’s now starting to itch and throb, which is why she’d decided to see what was going on under there. She yawns. Checks her watch. It’s 1.43 a.m. She really needs to sleep. But she can’t sleep. She tells herself it’s because of the case. Tells herself it is definitely not Avril getting inside her head about Steph. About the choices Tess has made. The way she’s lived her life.

  Before going to bed, Tess had received a text from Melanie Phelps – the woman who, like Carrie, owned a white limited-edition Honda CR-V at the time of Ella’s death, the woman they were hoping could have been driving past the CCTV cameras on the night of the murder. Melanie had told them it couldn’t have been her driving because she was on holiday. And having no other options left, this had prompted Tess to arrange a second meeting with Steph, which led to the discovery of Greg Lancashire’s involvement with Ella, which led to her daughter fleeing Tess’s presence in the pub when she discovered her mother’s true identity, and which also led to the burn on Tess’s face.

  Tess read the text.

  You won’t believe this but the friend who was dog sitting while I was in Spain says she used my car a couple of times! Wish she’d told me sooner! It could have been her on CCTV? Hope this hasn’t put you out much?

  ‘No, it’s hardly put me out at all,’ she’d said after flinging her phone across the room.

  She sips her hot milk now, surrounded by papers, files, maps, photographs. She has all of this great evidence, evidence that should cast doubt on Carrie’s conviction, but is it enough? She had been hoping for so much more. She sifts through the crime scene photographs and reminds herself that it’s not her job to find out who did this to Ella. They might never know who did this to Ella. All she needs to do is present enough new evidence to convince the appellate court to retry the case. So she’ll stay inside this room till she finds it. She tells herself that the reason sleep is evading her right now is because she’s so dedicated to her job that she really won’t rest until Carrie Kamara is released from prison.

  Is it working? she thinks. Is it possible to pull the wool over your own eyes?

  Tess picks up her phone. She needs to keep busy. She goes to dial before considering the time. It’s now 1.54 a.m., not really the hour for business calls, so she puts the phone down. It will have to wait until tomorrow. But tomorrow she’s presenting her findings to the Innocence UK panel, so she picks up the phone again and dials.

  It’s answered by a sleepy-but-trying-to-force-himself-awake Clive. ‘What’s happened?’ he asks.

  This is typical Clive. Years of working as a detective have made him feel indispensable and he is assuming that the only reason she is calling after midnight is because she has an intruder and/or she requires assistance because her safety is compromised. She can picture him, hastily shoving one leg into a pair of jeans, hopping around the room with his phone to his ear, swiping the change from the bedside cabinet, striving not to wake Rebecca.

  ‘You know you said Greg Lancashire has a criminal record?’ she says. ‘Well, do you think you can get access to his police file and bring it with you to tomorrow’s meeting?’

  There is a long pause. ‘It’s two o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Can you get it or not?’

  Clive sighs. ‘Probably.’

  She cuts the call and strikes through the third item on her to-do list, which she’s noted as: ‘Greg’s previous’. Numbers one and two have already been dealt with and number four is not exactly pressing: ‘Update social media’.

  Tess is responsible for the social media accounts of Innocence UK and though she can see the very real need to keep people updated and aware of their services, the progress of particular cases, she resents the drain on her time. She opens her Twitter account and scrolls through her timeline. A couple of years ago, Tom employed the services of a young digital media strategist to advise them on their social media platform. Tess had been dead against it. ‘We can’t get through the correspondence we already get,’ she’d argued, but she’d been overruled. This was a way, Tom said, to get information out there in one easy click. ‘You can reach thousands of prisoners instead of replying to each one individually. Honestly, Tess, this will free up so much of our time, you won’t believe you ever doubted it.’ Tess can believe she doubted it because she still does. She doesn’t believe she reaches the people who need reaching this way, and instead her notifications are cluttered with true-crime fans looking for their next project, as well as random lonely people from all four corners of the earth, looking to interact with someone, anyone, who is willing to listen.

  Tess runs down her notifications – there are over a hundred – and clicks on the heart icon of each message to indicate she ‘likes’ what they’ve written. Then she goes back to her timeline. There are othe
r charities besides Innocence UK who investigate wrongful convictions and they are far more present on social media than Tess is. Tess follows them and feels a general irritation every time they post success stories or promotional material to make their companies look good. She can’t bring herself to unfollow them, though, because that would mean denying herself a certain masochistic pleasure that comes from reading about what these people she doesn’t actually like get up to. One company – which is essentially a group of solicitors touting for business, masquerading as do-gooders who work tirelessly on behalf of victims of miscarriages of justice – are at a charity function in their best clobber. Tess rolls her eyes at the pictures. These are her competitors and just look at them. All red faces and pulled-in guts. Holding champagne flutes aloft, celebrating the release of – when Tess looks into it – someone who is clearly guilty but they’ve managed to get off on a technicality. She huffs at the screen and closes the page. She’s being uncharitable. She knows this. These people are just trying to do a job, as is she. So why does she find them all so very annoying?

  Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t like herself so much right now. Perhaps faffing about on social media when you’re trying to avoid feeling the one thing you can’t avoid feeling will make you uncharitable and mean. Perhaps she should simply look in the mirror and acknowledge that luring your daughter to a Wetherspoon’s pub while neglecting to tell her that you are the person who abandoned her, you are the person who let her down most in her life, is not the way any decent human being should behave.

  Now

  THEORETICALLY, MIA COULD visit Carrie every week if she wanted to. Visits need only be pre-booked in advance by telephone and it is not difficult to arrange. In an ideal world that’s what would happen. Weekly visits would keep Carrie going. She could cope with prison life if she knew she had them to look forward to. But weekly visits are now impossible. The journey from Morecambe to Styal Prison takes only one and a quarter hours by car. But Mia doesn’t have a car right now. And the journey from Morecambe to Styal using public transport can take as much as three and a half hours each way – something that Mia was accustomed to doing before she had the baby, but not something she can do so easily now.

  Today, a friend of Mia’s has kindly brought mother and baby to Styal. A friend who, during their visit, plans to hit the charity shops of nearby Wilmslow, where, she says, the rich mothers and footballers’ wives of south Manchester donate their children’s designer outfits. Two weeks ago, she found a Dior christening gown for twenty-eight pounds, which she promptly sold on eBay for eighty.

  Carrie starts to cry when she sees Phoebe. It is the first time she’s seen her granddaughter in the flesh.

  ‘She’s put on point two five kilos,’ Mia tells Carrie proudly.

  Carrie doesn’t know how this translates into pounds and ounces but cradles Phoebe in her arms and kisses the top of the baby’s head. Carrie inhales her scent. She wants to absorb the child. Never wants to let her go.

  Mercifully, Mia has been blessed with a ‘good’ baby. Phoebe rarely cries, she sleeps for six hours at a time, and when she is awake she is remarkably amenable. Carrie shudders to think what the alternative would have spelled for Mia. What could have been. Carrie had lain awake many nights during Mia’s pregnancy, worrying about Mia, worrying about her emotional state, worrying what would happen should she be dealt a baby that needed so much more from her than she was able to give. Particularly because Mia is on her own.

  Mia made the decision not to tell her baby’s father about the pregnancy, which was not something Carrie condoned, but something she had had to stay quiet about to keep on good terms with Mia. Mia was adamant she wanted to do it all by herself. ‘Why make life so hard?’ Carrie had asked. She was thinking about the financial implications as much as anything else, but Mia had argued the boy in question was ‘a slut’, ‘not to be relied upon’, and she certainly didn’t want to have him in her life for the next however long if she had the choice to keep him out of it.

  ‘I passed by Ella Muir’s house yesterday,’ remarks Mia now, brightly. She is rooting around inside the nappy bag, looking for a bib. She pulls out a packet of baby wipes instead and uses one to wipe Phoebe’s chin.

  ‘What took you over to that part of town?’ asks Carrie, trying to keep her voice level, trying not to show the alarm she’s feeling inside.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I was taking Phoebe for a walk and she was sound asleep, so I just kept walking. I had my music on and the sun was out. I found myself there by accident.’

  ‘By accident,’ Carrie repeats back, flatly. She looks over her shoulder to check if any of the prison officers are within earshot.

  ‘Well, maybe not entirely by accident,’ Mia says impishly. ‘I knew where I was going. I think I kind of wanted to see the place again? See what it’s like during the daytime? It’s not changed that much,’ she says. She puts the baby wipes away. ‘You know what, it’s actually not a bad little street. I got chatting to another mum pushing a buggy there and the rents are really reasonable – what with it being over that side of town. For another hundred a month more than I’m paying now, I could afford a two-bedroom terraced. I might see if I can go on the housing list.’

  Carrie surveys her daughter. She seems perfectly calm. Perfectly together. Perfectly reasonable.

  ‘Perhaps that’s not such a good idea,’ Carrie suggests gently.

  ‘No?’

  ‘It might look a little … odd.’

  ‘Odd? Really? D’you think so?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ Mia says, not at all put out. ‘It was just an idea. I’m thinking ahead really, to when Phoebe gets older. We’re fine sharing one bedroom for now, but I can’t stay there for ever. We’re going to need our own space. Especially when you come home,’ she adds, smiling. ‘We’re definitely going to need more space when that happens.’

  Carrie tries her best to smile back. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘We will.’

  Now

  TESS STANDS NEXT to the whiteboard. On it she has written a list of Greg Lancashire’s previous crimes and alleged crimes:

  Handling of stolen goods

  Battery

  Detention of woman against her will for unlawful sexual intercourse

  Possessing a controlled drug

  ‘He was charged with numbers one, two and four on the list. Not enough evidence for number three …’ She lets the words hang. The panel jots down Greg’s criminal record. And Tess wishes she had more to give them. She goes on to say she’s been trying to make contact with the woman who could have been driving Melanie Phelps’s car on the night of the murder, but as yet has had no luck. Her calls have remained unanswered.

  ‘Is it enough?’ asks Tom, gesturing to the whiteboard.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tess replies.

  Addressing the panel, Tom says, ‘So, thoughts? Do we take more time? Go at this again, or do we hedge our bets and present Carrie’s case to the Court of Appeal now?’ Tess looks around the table. They’re undecided. They’re aware that they’re lacking the one good piece of evidence that would swing this for them. But they’re also cognizant of the fact that they can’t throw unlimited resources at this. There comes a time when they have to make the leap and go with what they’ve got, so that the case can be moved forward, or so they can put their resources into helping the next victim of an alleged miscarriage of justice, rather than continue flogging a dead horse.

  Dr Fran Adler asks Tess if she sees any advantage in going through the evidence again. Would there be any merit in exploring avenues she may have missed? Fran asks, and resignedly, Tess tells her that this is all she has. She can try for more but she’s not hopeful. ‘The blood’s still a problem,’ Fran says, biting down on her lower lip.

  Tess moves away from the whiteboard and retakes her seat.

  ‘I don’t want to retest the blood,’ says Tom firmly. ‘Let’s keep it as low-key as possible, to be on the safe side. We’ll put it down to
an anomaly, and if they argue the point, we’ll go with the “mistreatment of forensic materials” angle. Who knows, the fact that they lost the fibre test results might highlight the incompetence of the investigation and it could go in our favour.’ Tom looks around the room. ‘I vote we present to the appellate court now.’

  Tess looks around the room.

  ‘Show of hands?’ Tom says. ‘Those in agreement …?’

  He gets the vote.

  As Tess is packing up her belongings, she feels her phone vibrating inside her trouser pocket. She takes it out and looks at the screen. ‘Stephanie Reynolds’ is the caller. Steph.

  After taking off from the pub, her daughter now wants to speak to her?

  Tess’s mouth goes dry as her thumb hovers over ‘accept’. She looks up. There are still three or four people in the room. They’re discussing Carrie’s chances, wondering if this will be an Innocence UK success story or one of their few failures. Clive catches her eye. He lifts his finger to his face. ‘You OK?’ he mouths, referencing the burn on her cheek.

  Tess nods.

  He motions taking a drink. ‘Time for a quick one?’ he mouths and she thinks, yes, she’ll have a drink, but that is all.

  ‘Two minutes,’ she mouths back and Clive nods before shrugging on his coat.

  The phone feels red-hot in Tess’s hand. She never expected Steph to try to make contact. Not now. Not after watching her flee after discovering Tess’s real identity.

  A few years ago, a young woman on probation for drugs offences confided to Tess about her baby’s acid reflux. Her baby would not stop crying and the mother described herself as ‘not coping’. She described feeling powerless, sleep-deprived; she talked about feeling so desperate, so on the edge, she worried she might hurt her child. Tess went home and immediately googled the condition and what she read stunned her. She realized she might have given her own baby away because of this self-same illness, an illness that had gone undiagnosed, an illness that was often considered a precursor to shaken baby syndrome, such is the despair experienced by the parent. If Tess had had her own mother there, perhaps she’d have got through it. Some moral support might have changed the outcome completely.