by Paula Daly
‘Now would be a good time to find that knife he came at your mother with,’ she says to Mia as she straightens. And Mia is nodding. Tess tosses her a tea towel. ‘Use that to pick it up.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes, now.’
Her strength of tone makes Mia flinch and she springs into action. With the baby on her hip, Mia grabs a knife from the knife block and deposits it by her father’s hand.
‘Now give that back to me,’ Tess says, meaning the towel.
Mia tosses it to Tess who stuffs it inside her handbag. There follows a moment of silence when all three women regard one another.
‘Ready?’ asks Tess.
‘Ready,’ they say in unison.
‘Well, you’d better hold your nerve, ladies,’ she says, and she dials. ‘Yes,’ she says when the call connects, ‘Police … Hang on,’ and she looks to Carrie: ‘What’s the exact address here? They need the house number.’
Twenty minutes later and a black coroner’s van is parked in the driveway. Tess takes a bottle of water from her handbag, removes the cap and drinks it down fast. The detective in front of her is keen to do things correctly. He’s young. He’s nervous. And Tess is thankful for small mercies. A more seasoned pro would watch Tess a little more closely. They might linger a while longer, watch her walk to her car, see if she can keep going with the I’m-rather-shook-up routine. This guy has asked Tess the same question twice already, and she knows he’s too focused on his own performance, too eager to come off as someone who is capable of the role he has been allocated, to doubt the information she is feeding him.
‘Perhaps if we’d all got here a few minutes earlier, this tragedy could’ve been prevented,’ Tess is saying, adjusting her face into a mask of solemnity, and the young DC bites down on his lower lip. Is she blaming the police for this? he’s thinking and, not sure of the protocol with such an accusation, his instinct is to try to wrap things up and take advice from someone in seniority. He tells her he thinks he’s got everything he needs for now, but would she be willing to pop into the station at some point to give a full written statement?
‘Absolutely,’ she says.
Epilogue
TESS JOINS THE morning traffic and is heading to Manchester. It’s early. A new day. Tess has her notes in order and is ready to present her findings of her current case to the panel. Back in Morecambe, Pete Kamara’s body is still the property of the coroner. There will be no funeral yet, not for some time, and Tess wonders who would attend even if there was, now that the word is out.
‘Pete Kamara murdered Ella Muir?’ people are asking one another, aghast.
Followed by: ‘His poor wife. His poor, poor wife. Going to prison for all that time. For something she just didn’t do.’
Tess flicks through the channels on the car’s digital radio as she battles through the Swinton Interchange. She settles on BBC Radio 3. She’s not really a fan of classical music but the Today Programme is not what it once was, and the loud, faux-upbeat manner of the DJs on the other stations has started to set her teeth on edge. She can’t seem to do ‘happy’ today. Scrap that, she can’t do happy at all right now – she is listless, unmoored, and she doesn’t know what to do about it.
Tess has done her job. She has done her job well. Carrie, the innocent, incarcerated client, is now free. And Tess is ready and prepared to move on to the next person requiring their help. Trouble is, she’s not sure if she wants to help right now. Not sure she can. She can’t say exactly why that is, she just knows that what once got her excited, what once got her out of bed in the morning, suddenly doesn’t.
She arrives at Innocence UK. She’s pleased to see her peers and they are pleased to see her. She receives congratulations; they’re in a celebratory mood, they’ve bought flowers, they want to buy her lunch, they want to know what was the thing, what was the magical moment, that led to Tess requesting a retest of Carrie’s blood? ‘How did you make that leap?’ they ask, eager to pick her brain.
‘I don’t know,’ she answers truthfully, and they are deflated. They try not to show it, but they want to know: Why aren’t you jubilant?
Yes, Tess. Why aren’t you jubilant?
It was a defining moment in her career, the kind of moment she dreamt of, and yet it all feels a bit flat somehow. Meaningless.
Perhaps her feelings of apathy towards her job are merely the beginnings of a midlife crisis. Perhaps she’s longing for something that doesn’t exist and she simply needs to have an unsuitable affair … colour her hair pink … get a tattoo … have her forehead Botoxed.
‘Tess?’
Clive is saying her name.
‘Tess, love, are you OK?’
Is she OK?
Gradually, she becomes aware of her surroundings and realizes they are expecting her to speak. All eyes are upon her as she stands, laser pen in hand, the new client’s name and main points of his case summarized and projected from her laptop on to the large screen over to her left.
‘I’m not sure,’ she answers.
‘Would you like a glass of water?’ asks Avril.
And Tess tells her she wouldn’t.
‘How about a whisky?’ says Clive, and she tells him she doesn’t want that either.
‘I think,’ she says, feeling unsteady, feeling unsure all of a sudden, ‘I think I really need to go,’ and she picks up her laptop, packs up her case notes, and she walks out of the door.
When she gets to the lift, Tess hears Clive calling out her name from behind. ‘Tess!’ He is running along the corridor. It’s rather comical. Tess hasn’t witnessed Clive sprint before and he has a unique style: knees brought up high, arms flailing across his body. He arrives at her side, his breathing laboured, saying, ‘Christ, I’m unfit. Where’re you off to? Aren’t you well?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘So why the big exit?’
‘I just felt like I had to get out of there.’
Clive’s breathing steadies and he regards her, his face full of concern. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing’s going on.’
‘Is it what happened with Pete Kamara? I heard it was a proper bloodbath in there. Maybe you’re traumatized.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Clive leans his weight against the wall. ‘I heard they’re still trying to find a way to charge Carrie.’
‘Yeah. I heard that too,’ replies Tess.
‘I don’t reckon she’ll do any more time inside though.’
‘No?’
‘Her lawyers are claiming self-defence. That’s correct, isn’t it?’ And Clive looks at her, one eyebrow raised.
‘Well, he has killed before, Clive. Remember?’
‘That’s what I thought you’d say.’ Clive is smiling as though to indicate he is sceptical about the official reported version of events. ‘I doubt they’ll put her away again,’ he is saying. ‘She’s done, what? Three? Four years? Plus the year she did on remand before that for a crime she didn’t do. I think she’ll walk …’ and Tess is nodding. ‘But then I think you already knew that, didn’t you, Tess?’
She looks at him a little guiltily.
‘So, what now?’ he asks.
‘I need to go.’
‘Go where?’
‘There’s something I need to do.’
‘Will you be back?’
‘I should think so. I just need to sort something out.’
The lift arrives and the doors open. Tess steps inside and turns around to face Clive.
He seems sad. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve time for a quick fuck …?’ he asks hopefully. ‘For old times’ sake?’
And Tess smiles. She hasn’t.
The following day, Tess reflects on her decision to back up Carrie’s story of self-defence. As she waits, she wonders: would she make the same call given the chance again?
Pete wouldn’t be any less dead, no matter what Tess told the police, and so the real question is: does Carrie Kamara deserve to return to priso
n on a murder charge?
Some days Tess thinks yes, but more often than not she thinks no.
Tess does wonder, however, what was it exactly that made her compromise her own integrity in that way? Up until now, Tess has always sought and reported the truth, no matter how damaging for the client.
Why did she help Carrie and Mia construct a credible crime scene? Why not simply walk out of there and leave them to deal with the mess on their own? As she sits on this bench, her gaze resting on the café opposite, Tess can come up with only two plausible explanations: her drive to reunite mother and daughter was stronger than her urge to tell the whole truth, and, in this instance, her own sense of justice was less important than the truth. Tess wonders if this will continue. Will she continue to be swayed by her emotions or was it a one-off?
She glances at her watch. It’s close to four and she has been waiting here for a couple of hours, but she doesn’t mind. The weather is still balmy, there is a gentle breeze coming off the sea, and the pedestrians who pass by are genial. They smile at Tess. They nod. Hello, they say. Good afternoon. I wonder when this weather will finally break?
Tess continues to wait. She can wait here all day. She has nothing at all to do except to be here.
Tess did consider setting her thoughts down on paper. She even went so far as to buy a fountain pen and a stack of thick, creamy, luxurious paper. Her plan was to lay it all down for Steph to read: how Tess knew she didn’t deserve to be a part of Steph’s life after the way she’d treated her; how not revealing her identity was both ridiculous and gutless; how Tess ran from her daughter for all these years because allowing her in, letting that particular door swing open, might unleash a tidal wave of emotion in Tess that she wasn’t prepared, or equipped, to deal with.
In the letter, Tess would also explain what she’d learned from all of this: that she is not the principled, honourable person she thought she was. That she’d built a life around the importance of those traits, but she’d never been put to the test, and it was only when Steph appeared that she realized she was just as fallible, just as reluctant to face up to her own weaknesses, as the next person.
Yes, Tess thought, she would transcribe these discoveries, commit them to paper, and Steph would have a letter, something she could return to again and again when she needed questions answering about her mother. Her birth mother.
But then Tess became cognizant of the fact that writing a letter was, in itself, an act of extreme cowardice, and so she decided she must travel to Morecambe in person instead.
On her way here, she’d allowed herself to indulge in one small fantasy. The itch was there again, the itch to move address – that was nothing new – and she knew it was almost time for another relocation, only this time the itch felt different. It wasn’t compelling her to flee, to leave, run, run away, it was propelling her towards something. Towards someone.
Could she relocate to Morecambe? Could she come home, back to the place of her birth? Perhaps Morecambe itself might be too close for comfort for both parties – but Lancaster? Heysham? Grange-over-Sands? Tess fingers the details of the five cottages to rent inside her handbag that she picked up from the letting agency earlier. She could easily commute to Manchester from any of them. Each is available to rent from the beginning of next month, and she will look at them more closely this evening – depending on what happens next.
At four twenty, the door to the café opens and Steph comes out. She has a long-handled broom in one hand and from the back pocket of her jeans she withdraws a packet of cigarettes. She pauses to light one, and then leans her weight against the stone brickwork of the building, inhaling deeply. She seems tired. As though it’s been a long day. She angles her face up towards the sun and closes her eyes.
Tess feels a deep longing inside her chest to approach, but for now stays where she is. She doesn’t want to spook her daughter. Or would it be more accurate to say she is too nervous to approach? Tess’s heart flutters like the wings of a trapped bird and just when she thinks this might not have been such a good idea after all, Steph’s eyes fly open, as if she’s heard a phone ring, or has remembered something she must attend to.
Steph catches sight of Tess. And there’s a pause, a moment of confusion as if she’s trying to place the forty-something woman opposite, but Tess knows that can’t really be it. And so the frown on Steph’s face makes Tess’s heart beat more wildly, and she wonders if she should abort, if she should walk away now, before any more damage can be done.
Steph walks towards her.
‘I knew you’d be back,’ she says.
Tess is mildly stunned. ‘You did?’ She’s thinking: How could you know when I didn’t know myself?
And Steph smiles. ‘I tend to have that effect on people.’
Tess looks up at Steph and is struck by her daughter’s strength, her playfulness, her faith in herself. She’s struck by her lack of judgement.
‘Come on,’ Steph says, ‘I’ll get you a coffee. You look kind of thirsty.’
Author’s Note
I have mostly stayed faithful to the geography of Morecambe, Lancashire, but to make the story work, on occasion, I had to invent things. I’m afraid the Eagle and Child pub, for now, only exists in my imagination. Also, in the interests of telling a compelling story, I was forced to simplify the appeals procedure considerably.
Acknowledgements
Thank you, Frankie Gray. Thank you, Jane Gregory.
Thank you, Stephanie Glencross, Amy Hundley, Tash Barsby, Richenda Todd, Vivien Thompson, Hayley Barnes, Ella Horne, Richard Shailer.
I am also immensely grateful to my wonderful family and friends who supported me throughout the writing process.
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Paula Daly 2019
Paula Daly has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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