ELEVEN

The curtains in the bedroom were drawn, but they were thin and badly fitted, and what was left of the day was bleeding through the fabric or creeping around the edges. Helen nudged one back and peeked to see what was happening outside. Almost immediately, a camera flashed and she quickly drew her head back. The fading light and poor weather had driven all but the most determined of the locals away and now, thankfully, the journalists were outnumbered by police officers, the more experienced among them having left to secure prime positions for the forthcoming press statement.

Helen saw a woman pointing up at the window, so she let the curtain fall back and stepped away. She walked across to the bed and bent to lay a hand on Linda’s arm.

‘Linda.’ She waited a few seconds, then said it again, rubbing gently at skin that felt rough and cold. If Linda had pulled the duvet up to cover herself, it had fallen from her as she’d moved in her sleep. She was wearing a grey T-shirt and knickers. The rest of her clothes – shoes, jeans, sweatshirt – lay in a heap by the side of the bed. A black bra strap was visible, twisted across her pale shoulder.

Linda turned over slowly. Her eyes flickered for a few seconds then opened suddenly and she shifted away towards the wall. She closed her eyes again and groaned.

‘Sorry. Forgot where I was for a minute.’ Her voice was quiet and cracked.

‘Don’t worry,’ Helen said.

‘What was happening.’

Helen put a hand on her arm again. ‘You want me to get you some water or something?’

‘Jesus.’ Linda leaned to turn on a lamp next to the bed. She raised herself up and looked around the room. A plain white wardrobe and matching chest of drawers. Linda’s suitcases and several bin-bags stuffed full of clothes lay next to the door. ‘And I thought we lived in a shithole.’

Helen laughed and when she stopped she became aware of voices in the next room. Charli and Danny. The conversation was just audible, a word or two, so Helen spoke quickly, suddenly worried that it might not be something she or Linda would want to hear.

‘They’re making a statement in five minutes. Thought you’d want to come down for it.’

‘Is there much point?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’

‘What do you think the chances are they’ll say, “Sorry, we cocked this one up and we’ve arrested the wrong man”?’ Mercifully for Helen, Linda did not let the silence that followed become too awkward. ‘No chance, right?’

‘They’ll probably spend ten minutes saying precisely sod all,’ Helen said. ‘Enquiries are ongoing, grateful for the co-operation of the public, blah blah blah. Basically, they’ve got to give the press something.’

‘The press have got us,’ Linda said. She pointed at the window, at those she knew were gathered outside the house. ‘We’re the fresh meat.’

‘I know it feels like that.’ Helen was not sure if by ‘us’, Linda was including her husband or not. ‘It’s not for ever, trust me.’

Linda looked at her, and Helen could see how much the woman wanted to believe it, but ultimately could not. ‘Christ, I’m tired. I’d happily knock myself out, try and sleep through all of it.’

Helen glanced at the bedside table but could see no sign of the tablets Carson had mentioned.

‘I can’t though, can I? I need to keep everything together for them two.’ She nodded at the wall. ‘God only knows what it’s like for them.’

‘Not easy.’

‘What they’re thinking.’

‘They’ll be worried about you, course they will.’

‘They’ll be worried about their dad,’ Linda said quickly. ‘That’s how they both think of him and they’ll be wanting to know when he’s coming home.’

It was obvious that Charli and Danny were able to hear that their mother was awake, because the music began again. A low drone, then something that hissed like an amplified aerosol; a few angry squirts before the drums kicked in.

‘All that teenage stuff,’ Linda said. ‘Tantrums and drugs and the rest of it. I can deal with that, but this shit . . . ’

Helen laughed again and so did Linda, and, just for a moment or two, Helen saw the teenage girl she had known twenty years before: badgering her to pass the cider bottle; nodding out to Pearl Jam and Nirvana. ‘Thank God I’ve got a while before all that starts.’

‘It’ll come quicker than you think.’

‘Don’t.’

Linda swung her legs off the bed. She rubbed some warmth into her thighs, then leaned down to pick her jeans up. Helen bent to help her, got to them first and passed them over.

‘You do cases like this, right?’ Linda looked at her. ‘Murders and rapes, I mean. Serious stuff.’

‘I have done,’ Helen said.

‘They get it wrong, don’t they? Sometimes, they just make a mistake and I mean we probably don’t get to hear about most of them because nobody likes to look bad, do they? It happens though, right? Somebody just gets something wrong. Not their fault, they just get some duff information, whatever. All I’m saying, they make mistakes, don’t they?’

Helen was not surprised at straws such as this being so desperately clutched at. Even with what little she had heard about the case against Stephen Bates, it was all they could realistically be.

She took a breath. ‘Linda—’

Linda stood up quickly and stepped into her jeans. The volume of the music had gone up a notch and, without saying anything, she snatched up her sweatshirt and marched out of the room. Helen heard her open the door to the bedroom her kids were in and ask them to turn the music down. She didn’t shout. She said ‘please’.

A few seconds later, Linda appeared in the doorway shaking her head. She cranked up a smile that faltered a little at first, then set itself. The effort necessary to keep it in place, to hold the tears or the scream at bay, was obvious enough.

‘Yes, we make mistakes,’ Helen said. It was a simple truth. It did not change her belief that this time they had almost certainly got it right. ‘We make lots of mistakes.’