Authors: Cath Staincliffe
“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news,” I told Susan Reeve.
“Oh, no,” she put her mug down, clasped her hands together. “What’s wrong? What’s he done? What’s happened?”
“It’s not about Adam.”
“But ...” She stopped, her face slack with incomprehension.
“It’s about your husband.”
“Ken?”
There was no easy way to tell her. No helpful euphemism. I plunged on.
“The address in York, your husband lives there.”
“What?” she said crossly, as though I’d got it all wrong. Trying to slow down the impending blow.
“He’s married to someone else, Susan, he’s a bigamist.”
“No,” she said sharply. “No.” She half rose from her seat.
“No,” she flung her arms wide, shoving the cup beside her which smashed against the cabinet and broke splashing coffee on the floor and the cabinet door.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
I waited for some sign that she was ready for me to continue but she spoke next, her hands grabbing the table’s edge, her face mottled with emotion.
“You said there were children?”
“Two.”
“No ... no ... no,” her yells rose in pitch and volume and she pulled at the table. I moved back quickly, my drink spilt on my legs. She heaved it onto its side, the papers and tray of bits and bobs scattered across the floor. She flung her chair aside too. Then she began to cry, her hands over her large glasses. I left her for a minute then went and righted the chair, put it behind her. Placed my hands on her shoulders. “Sit down.”
I set the table upright. I looked around for a kitchen towel roll but couldn’t see anything. She was crying almost soundlessly, her face wet with tears and mucus.
“Have you any tissues?”
“Toilet roll - upstairs.”
I brought it for her. I found a small dustpan and brush under the sink and cleared the shards of pottery. Wiped the cabinet and floor down and made fresh drinks. She wept all the while.
“Thank you,” she blew her nose. “I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve been in an accident or something. I was in a car crash once and it felt just like this.”
“The shock.”
“There’s no chance ... it couldn’t be a mistake?”
“No. I’ve checked the electoral roll. It’s him.”
“You’re sure, absolutely certain?”
“Yes.”
“How on earth did Adam know?”
“It was a complete fluke. He went to York with his friend Colin in the summer.”
“Colin’s birthday!”
“Adam saw Ken and his ... wife. They were giving delivery details in a shop. He overheard the address.”
“Oh, Adam.”
“He asked me not to tell you. Last night when I brought him home. I realised then, you see. The car, it was the same car I’d seen in York. I told Adam then that I’d worked out why he was in York. He begged me not to say anything. I told him it had to come out in the open. That I’d see you today. He was in quite a state last night,” shivering at the edge of the platform, “he was worried about you.”
“Oh,” she stifled her cry with one hand, rubbed at her face. “You never imagine ... How could he do that to us? Working away, staying in B&Bs and all the time he’s there. All this time poor Adam ... And the house? We’re going to lose this house ... I can’t take this in. The bastard, the rotten, bloody bastard.” She wiped her face again. “Do you think she knows, the other one?”
“I doubt it.”
“How long?” Her face was hard, prepared for another slap.
“The couple have been living there for ten years.”
Her face fell apart. “Oh, God,” she covered her nose and mouth with her hand; her eyes were wounded. “Since Penny was born, before the twins. I won’t have him back in this house. How could he? And the children ...”
Daddy one day, Judas the next. Would they share her sense of betrayal?
“I just feel so angry,” she said. “I want to get all his things and tear them up and throw them in the street and smash the car up and humiliate him ... but the children ... I can’t do those things because I care so much about ...” she broke down. “That’s the difference, isn’t it?” she said eventually. “That’s how he can do this and live with himself, because he doesn’t really care?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know.
“I feel such a fool,” she said. “It all makes sense now. Times when he had special sales exhibitions on, nights when the traffic was bad. Things he missed, Penny in the concert at the Royal Northern College, “her eyes shone with a harsh conviction, “and the time Rachel was knocked down. I was in MRI with her and he was working, or so he said. He’d probably got his feet up ... I blamed the job. I never once thought ... not even an affair.”
She thought for a moment. “We’ve been struggling; the bills, I can’t keep Adam in shoes and trousers, everything has to be the cheapest, discounts, second hand. We haven’t had a holiday in years. No bloody wonder is it? He’d be paying out for two families ...” She choked on the thought.
“How can you be so wrong about someone? When I met Ken he’d just been promoted. I thought he was Mr Wonderful. He had a great sense of humour ...”
She talked on recalling their courtship and marriage, the ups and downs, what had attracted her to him, how he was with the children when they were babies. The sort of reminiscence people do when someone has died, trying to capture a sense of the person as they were. Or in this case as they were before they were unmasked. Her account was coloured by a bitter irony that bled into everything. As she talked, the past was being rewritten in the light of his betrayal. Memories tainted; the picture skewing like water bleaching old photographs. Every so often she’d interrupt herself, taken aback anew by the magnitude of his wrongdoing and its implications. “What do I tell the children?” she’d say, and “all those lies,” but most of all, “how could he?” and “the bastard.”
“You need some legal advice,” I told her. “Do you know anyone?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll give you a number. It’s likely he’ll be prosecuted. Bigamy is a criminal offence. Sentences vary but he could go to prison.”
“Good,” she said bitterly. “I hope he rots there. How could he? I just can’t understand it. I can’t. It doesn’t make any sense.”
She talked on, an endless litany of moments of betrayal and expressions of shock.
At half past two I heard the sound of someone coming in the front door. I turned in my chair.
“Adam,” she said. “He finishes early on Fridays.”
He came into the kitchen, his face strained with apprehension. “Mum?”
“It’s all right Adam,” she kept her voice steady. “I know. I know everything. Big shock, eh? Your dad’ll be leaving.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“Not yet. I’ve got the name of a solicitor.” Relying on the practical to make her way through this. “I’m going to ring them in a few minutes, find out what we have to do. I might need your help, okay? We got to stick together now.” I could see tears standing in her eyes but she held them there determined to be strong for him.
“Mum,” he wobbled a bit.
“Be for the best in the long run,” she said. “Come here.”
She hugged him briefly, fiercely. “It’s going to be okay, yeah?” She let him go.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely.
“Put the kettle on then, will you? And get me a couple of Paracetamol. And put the heating on as well, eh? Warm this place up a bit.”
Self-defence was gruelling. It was the last thing on earth I wanted to do, but I dragged myself down there and knuckled under.
“Had a hold-up on Tuesday at the shop,” Brian, the security guard, told me. “Kids with bloody great guns.”
“Oh, Brian.”
“Shitting myself, I was. Did all the right stuff, no one got hurt. Still makes you think. Not much of a job is it? Only so long you put up with that sort of thing. Fourth time this year.” He shook his head.
“What else would you do?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. You like your work, don’t you?”
“Depends when you ask me.”
“Not had a good week?”
Bigamy, sexual abuse, deceit and betrayal, lives falling apart.
“There’ve been better.”
“Oi, you two,” Ursula yelled, “stop nattering and get on with it.”
I couldn’t settle that evening. I wrote half-a-dozen Christmas cards which would arrive too late no matter when I posted them and I drank too much wine. Easy drinking it said on the label and it was. Absolutely no problem at all.
The phone rang late. Rachel, my social worker friend. I explained to her that I’d got embroiled in a case of suspected sexual abuse but there was no clear cut evidence at this stage.
“Children?”
“No, vulnerable women. Well, woman singular at this stage. It’s all at a place for people with mental health problems or low self-esteem; some have learning difficulties. It’s all very circumstantial, no proof like I say. I need someone to talk to who’s experience of this, knows the ropes.”
“Probably Geraldine Crane ... it is Manchester?”
“Yes.”
“Let me check. If not, there’s a new guy, Toby Smith. I’ll find out. There is an emergency service if someone needs getting to a place of safety immediately.”
“No, it’s not like that.”
“I’ll get back to you first thing after Christmas and you can talk to Geraldine or Toby then.”
I thanked her and we exchanged some brief news about ourselves before ending the call.
What would I tell them? Everything I suppose; the facts like Eddie Cliff forging references for his job, the rumours, the unsubstantiated claims from the clients at Horizons, my meeting with Melody. They would know what, if any, action could be taken. Maybe they could start a covert enquiry; it happened in cases like this didn’t it? Get the help of other agencies and invite people to talk to them about incidents from the past. If Bryony Walker was right there would be a trail of victims from Eddie Cliff’s life. Whether any of them would have the courage to testify was another matter. When I got the information from Harry it could be a starting point for further enquiries; a route map of his career. And if one person spoke out, that chink could be like a break in a dam. Others might come forward and there would then be no way to hide it all again.
Meanwhile Saturday awaited and my appearance at the Whitworth Centre Christmas Fair loomed. I had to go and behave as naturally as possible. Anything to reassure him that I was no threat, that I had accepted his explanation of being seen collecting Miriam on another day. But it would be hard to stomach, now I knew what had happened with Melody. Now I knew how he operated. When my every instinct was to have him seized and see him stand trial. However the detective in me was also aware that there could be opportunities for picking up some more information now I had a different perspective on events.
“We’ve put you on table decorations,” Eddie grinned. Nice as pie. What was really going on behind those crinkly eyes? “That’s your table. Sharon’s got some red paper for cloths, once that’s on you can put out this box. And if you sell out there’s spares in there.” He pointed. “Someone will be bringing round a float. Everything’s a pound so no worry with change. Leave you to it?” Brisk and breezy.
I nodded, smiled, hoped it didn’t look as false as it felt.
“Charles,” he called. “Give us a hand with the Grotto.”
Sharon arrived with a roll of red paper edged with holly motif. Together we unrolled it and cut it to fit.
She moved onto the next table and I lifted up the box and brought out the contents; candle holders, table and tree decorations, concoctions of fir cones, berries, glitter and tinsel, silver and gold spray. A woman gave me a saucer and £20 in coins and notes.
“Okay everybody, we’re opening the doors.” He had changed. Cowboy to Santa Claus. Ho ho ho. I felt sick.
A steady stream of people came in and the next hour passed in a blur of chatter and sales. I finally got relieved by another volunteer.
I ran into Jane in the toilets. She had a ring of tinsel on her head, her hair was just right for the Christmas fairy but her face looked red and angry from the eczema.
“Hello,” she remembered me. “I’ve nearly spent up.” She held aloft a bulging carrier bag.
“I bet you made half of them, didn’t you?”
This tickled her. “Yes, I made half of them and now I’ve bought them. And I made half of them.” She laughed.
“Jane, you know the day you got burnt?”
She pursed her lips and frowned. “It hurt, that, really hurt.”
“How did it happen?”
“It was hot, the wax in the little pan. I was stirring it and it tipped onto me. I was screaming and they said ‘oh, get Eddie, get Eddie.’“
“Eddie wasn’t there?”
“He was in his office, he had to get a letter for Melody to fill in. Miriam ran to get him and you know what he said? Only a little burn. I was on fire, it felt like. Really hurt. I said take me to the hospital.”
“Where was Melody when you got burnt?”
“In the office,” she laughed as if I was stupid, “getting the form.”
I nodded.
“You said she was upset?”
“She was crying in here. After they put the dressing on me I saw her. Miriam was looking after her. She had a row at home.”
Two women came into the washroom. I changed the subject. “Are you going to buy anything else?” I asked Jane.
“I’m going to see Father Christmas.” She shrieked with laughter. “Have you seen him? It’s Eddie dressed up. Last year I got nail varnish and some stickers.”
I went out with her into the melee and had a look round some of the stalls. I bought two trinkets for our tree. Sharon, sporting a holly head-dress was at the entrance in conversation with a tall, smartly dressed Afro-Carribean woman.
“This is Mrs Wood,” Sharon said. “Chair of our Management Committee. Sal’s been helping us out.”
“Thank you,” Mrs Wood said.
“Sal’s a private eye,” Sharon said.
“Really?” Her eyebrows rose and fell. “That sounds intriguing.”
“Can be. This is very successful,” I nodded to the hall.
“Yes. The whole project has done extremely well. Immense amount of work though, not just today but week in week out. Sharon,” she turned to her. “I’ll stay here for a while, you go see to Chantelle.”
“Great.” Sharon left us.