I give her the story about me being too shocked to speak and still standing in the hall an hour after the police left, like a statue.
“Did you have any doubts about him being involved, Jean?” she asks. I swallow a mouthful of coffee and shake my head. I was waiting for her to ask this—it was what the police asked me over and over again—and I’d prepared my answer. “How could I believe he would be involved in something as awful as that?” I say. “He loved children. We both did.”
But not in the same way, it turned out.
Kate is looking at me, and I suppose I’ve gone quiet again. “Jean,” she says, “what are you thinking?” I want to say I’m thinking about when Glen told me he had seen Bella, but I can’t tell her that. That’s too big to say.
“Just about things,” I say. And then I add: “About Glen and whether I knew him at all.”
“How do you mean, Jean?” she asks, and I tell her about Glen’s face that day he was arrested.
“His face went blank,” I say. “I didn’t recognize him for a few seconds. It frightened me.”
She writes it down, glancing up to nod and look me in the eye. She lets me talk as the stuff about the porn spills out. She sits, writing quickly in her notebook but never taking her eyes off me. Nodding, egging me on with her eyes, all sympathy and understanding. For years I accepted the blame for what Glen did, telling myself it was my sick obsession with having a baby that made him do terrible things, but today he’s not here to give me that look. I can be angry and hurt by what he did in our spare room. While I was lying in bed just across the way, he invited that filth into our house.
“What kind of man looks at pictures like that, Kate?” I ask her. She shrugs helplessly. Her old man doesn’t look at toddlers being abused. Lucky her.
“He told me it wasn’t real. That it was women dressed up as children, but it wasn’t. Not all of it, anyway. The police said it was real. Glen said it was an addiction. He couldn’t help himself. It started with ‘normal porn,’ he said. I’m not sure what normal is. Are you?”
She shakes her head again. “No, Jean, I’m not sure. Naked women, I suppose.”
I nod; that’s what I thought. The sort of stuff you get in magazines or in adult-rated films.
“But this wasn’t normal. He said he kept on finding new things to look at; he couldn’t help himself. He said he found stuff by accident, but that isn’t possible, is it?”
She shrugs, then shakes her head.
“You have to pay,” I tell her. “You have to put your credit card number in, your name and address. Everything. You can’t just stumble onto one of these websites. It’s a deliberate act, which takes time and concentration—that’s what the police witness said at his trial. And my Glen did that night after night, searching for worse and worse things. New pictures and videos, hundreds of them, the police said. Hundreds! You wouldn’t think there were that many to look at. He told me he hated looking at them, but something in him made him look for more. He said it was a sickness. He couldn’t help himself. And he blamed me.”
Kate looks at me, willing me to go on, and I can’t stop now. “He said I drove him to it. But he betrayed me. He pretended to be a normal man, going to work, having a beer with his mates, and helping with the washing up, but he turned into a monster in our spare room each night. He wasn’t Glen anymore. He was sick, not me. If he could do that, I believe he was capable of anything.”
I stop, shocked by the sound of my own voice. And she looks at me. She stops writing, leans forward, and puts one hand on mine. It is warm and dry, and I turn my hand over to hold it.
“I know how hard this must be, Jean,” she says, and looks like she means it. I want to stop, but she squeezes my hand again.
“It’s such a relief to be able to say these things,” I say, and tears start. She produces a tissue, and I blow my nose hard. I keep talking as I sob. “I didn’t know he was doing it. I really didn’t know. I would’ve walked out if I had. I wouldn’t stay with a monster like that.”
“But you stayed when you found out, Jean.”
“I had to. He explained it all so I couldn’t see what was right anymore. He made me feel guilty for thinking that he’d done these things. Everything was concocted by the police or the bank or the Internet companies. And then he blamed me. He made me see it was my fault. He was so convincing when he told me things. He made me believe him,” I say. And he did. But he’s not here anymore to make me.
“And Bella?” Kate asks, as I knew she would. “What about Bella? Did he take her, Jean?”
I have gone too far to stop now. “Yes,” I say. “I think he did.”
The room goes quiet, and I close my eyes. “Did he tell you he had taken her? What do you think he did with her, Jean?” she asks. “Where did he put her?”
Her questions are battering me, coming so fast. I can’t think anymore. I mustn’t say anything else or I will lose everything.
“I don’t know, Kate,” I say. The effort of stopping myself from saying any more makes me feel shaky and cold, so I wrap my arms around myself. Kate gets out of her seat, sits on the arm of my chair, and puts her arm around me. It is lovely to be held, and I feel like I did when my mum used to gather me up when I was upset. “Don’t cry, chick,” she’d say, and hold me so I felt safe. Nothing could touch me. ’Course it’s different now. Kate Waters can’t protect me from what’s to come, but I sit there, with my head resting on her for a while.
She starts again, quietly: “Did Glen tell you anything about Bella, Jean? Before he died?”
“No,” I breathe.
Then there’s a knock at the door. The secret signal. It must be Mick. She mutters under her breath, and I can feel she’s struggling to decide whether to shout “Fuck off!” or let him in. She eases her arm out and raises her eyebrows to indicate “bloody photographers” and goes to the door. The conversation between them is in fierce whispers. I catch the words “not now,” but Mick isn’t going away. He says that he’s got to get some photos “in the can” because the picture editor is “going crazy.” I get to my feet and go into the bathroom to pull myself together before he comes in.
In the mirror I see my face, red with my eyes swollen and puffy.
“Whatever do I look like?” I say out loud. It’s something I often say—pretty much every time I look in the mirror lately. I look dreadful, and nothing is going to help, so I run a bath. I can’t hear what’s happening in the other room until I turn off the tap. Kate is shouting; Mick is shouting. “Where is she?” he yells.
“In the bloody bathroom. Where do you think? You fuckwit. We were just getting going and you had to barge in.”
I lie in the hotel bubbles, swishing the water around me, and think. I decide I’ve said as much as I’m going to. I’ll sit and have my picture taken because I promised I would, but I’m going home straight afterward. A decision all on my own. There, Glen. Fuck off! And I smile.
Fifteen minutes later I come out, all pink from the heat of the bath and hair frizzy from the steam. Kate and Mick are sitting there, not looking at each other and not speaking. “Jean,” Kate says, getting up quickly. “Are you okay? I was worried. Didn’t you hear me calling you through the door?” I feel quite sorry for her, really. I must be driving her mad, but I must think of myself.
Mick attempts a friendly smile. “Jean, you look great,” he lies. “Would you mind if I took some pics while the light is right?” I nod and look for my hairbrush. Kate comes over to help me and whispers, “Sorry. But it’s got to be done. Promise it won’t be too painful.” And she squeezes my arm.