She gives evidence, of course. Her big moment. She wears a black dress and a “Find Bella” badge. I try to avoid her stare, but she’s determined, and in the end our eyes meet. I feel hot, and the flush rises up my face, so I look away. It doesn’t happen again. She keeps staring at Glen, but he’s wise to her game and looks straight ahead.
I find my attention wandering as she tells the story I’ve read and heard a hundred times since she lost her baby—a nap, then playtime while she cooks tea, Bella laughing as she chases Timmy the cat out the front door and into the garden, then realizing she can’t hear her anymore. The silence.
The court goes completely quiet, too. We can all hear that silence. The moment when Bella vanished.
Then she sobs and has to sit down with a glass of water. Very effective. The jury looks worried, and one or two of the older women look like they might cry as well. It’s all going wrong. They must see this is all her fault. That’s what Glen and I think. She let her baby out of her sight. She didn’t care enough.
Glen sits quietly and lets it all wash over him, like it’s happening to someone else. When the mum is ready, the judge lets her stay sitting down to finish her evidence, and Glen cocks his head to listen to her story of running to neighbors, ringing the police, and waiting for news as the hunt went on.
The prosecutor uses this special tone of voice with her, treating her like she’s made of glass. “Thank you very much, Miss Elliott. You’ve been very brave.”
I want to shout, You’ve been a very bad mother. But I know I can’t, not here.
Our barrister, a scary old bloke who had shaken my hand firmly at each meeting but gave no other sign that he knew who I was, finally gets his turn.
The mother begins sobbing when the questions get hard, but our barrister doesn’t put on the understanding voice.
Dawn Elliott keeps saying her little girl was out of her sight for only a few minutes. But we all know now that she wasn’t.
The jury is beginning to look at her a bit harder now. About time.
“You believe that Bella is still alive, don’t you?” the barrister asks.
There is a rustle in the court, and the mum starts sniffling again. He points out that she’s been selling her story to the press and she looks really angry and says the money is for her campaign.
One of the reporters gets up and goes out quickly, clutching his notebook. “He’s going to file that line to his news desk,” Tom whispers, and winks.
It’s a goal for us, he means.
When it’s all over, when the police have been told off for tricking Glen and he’s been freed, I feel completely numb. My turn to feel like this is happening to someone else.
Tom Payne finally lets go of my arm when we get into one of the witness rooms and we stand, catching our breath. Neither of us speaks for a moment. “Can he come home now?” I ask him, my voice sounding strange and flat after all that noise in the courtroom. Tom nods and busies himself with his briefcase. Then he takes me downstairs to the cells to see Glen. My Glen.
“I always said the truth would come out,” he says triumphantly when he spots me. “We’ve done it, Jean. We’ve bloody well done it.”
I hug him when I get to him. It’s been a long time since I’ve held him, and it means I don’t have to say anything, because I don’t know what to say to him. He’s so happy—like a little boy. Pink and laughing. A bit out of control. All I keep thinking is that I’ve got to go home with him. Be on my own with him. What will it be like when we shut the door? I know too much about this other man I’m married to for it to be like before.
He tries to pick me up and whirl me round like he used to when we were younger, but there are too many people in the room: the lawyers, the barristers, the prison officers. They’re all around me, and I can’t breathe. Tom notices and takes me out into a cool hall and sits me down with a glass of water.
“It’s a lot to take in, Jean,” he says kindly. “All a bit sudden, but it’s what we all hoped would happen, isn’t it? You’ve waited a long time for this moment.”
I raise my head, but he doesn’t look me in the eye. We don’t speak again.
I keep thinking about that poor young officer, pretending to be a woman to try to get to the truth. I’d thought he’d acted like a prostitute when Tom told us about the evidence, but when I watched him in the witness box with everyone laughing at his act, I felt sorry for him. He would’ve done anything to find Bella.
When Glen comes out, Tom goes to him and shakes his hand again. Then we leave. On the pavement, Dawn Elliott is weeping for the cameras. “She’ll have to be careful what she says,” Tom says as we hover by the doors at the back of the mob. She’s bathed in light from the TV cameras, and the reporters are tripping over power cables, trying to get near her. She’s saying she’ll never give up looking for her little girl, that she’s out there somewhere and she’ll find out the truth about what happened to her. When she finishes, she’s led away by friends to a waiting car and is gone.
Then it’s our turn. Glen’s decided to let Tom read his statement. Well, Tom advised it. He wrote it. We step into the spotlight, and there’s a noise that physically shakes me. The noise of a hundred voices shouting at once, firing questions without waiting for answers, demanding attention. “Over here, Jean,” a voice near me hollers. I turn to find out who it is, and the flash goes off in my face. “Give him a hug,” another says. I recognize some of them from the pavement in front of the house. I go to smile, then realize they’re not friends. They’re something else. They’re the press.
Tom is all serious and quiets everything down. “I’m going to read Mr. Taylor’s statement. He’s not going to be answering any questions.” A forest of tape recorders rises above heads.
“I am an innocent man who has been hounded by police and deprived of my liberty for a crime I never committed. I’m very grateful to the court for their decision. But today I’m not celebrating my acquittal. Bella Elliott is still missing, and the person who took her is still out there. I hope the police will now get back to finding the guilty person. I would like to thank my family for standing by me, and I would like to pay a special tribute to my wonderful wife, Jeanie.
“Thank you for listening. I would ask you to respect our privacy now as we try to rebuild our lives.”
I look at my shoes throughout, filling in the gaps in my head. Wonderful wife. This is my role now. The wonderful wife who stood by her husband.
There’s a single silent beat, and then the noise is deafening again. “Who do you think took Bella?” “What do you think of the police tactics, Glen?” Then a passerby shouts: “Well done, mate!” and Glen grins in response. It is the picture everyone uses the next day.
An arm snakes through the cameramen and hands me a card. It has Congratulations on it and a picture of a bottle of champagne with a cork popping. I try to see who the arm belongs to, but it’s been swallowed up, so I slide the card in my bag and am guided forward with Glen and Tom and some of the security people. The press comes, too. It’s like a swarm of bees moving in a cartoon.
That journey home is a taste of what is to come. The reporters and photographers block the way to the taxi Tom has got waiting for us, and we can’t move forward. People are pushing one another and us, shouting their stupid questions into our faces, shoving their cameras everywhere. Glen has my hand, and he suddenly makes a break for it, dragging me behind him. Tom has the door of the taxi open, and we throw ourselves into the backseat.
Cameras are slammed against the windows, flashing and banging, metal on glass. And we just sit there, like fish in an aquarium. The driver is sweating, but you can see he’s enjoying it. “Bloody hell,” he says. “What a circus!”
The journalists are still shouting: “What does it feel like to be a free man, Glen?” “What do you want to say to Bella’s mother?” “Do you blame the police?”
Of course he does blame them. He stews over it, the humiliation and the baby-doll pajamas. Funny how he can think about that when he’s been accused of killing a little girl, but getting even with the police becomes his new addiction.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The Widow
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 2008