The Footballer's Wife (19 page)

‘I'm not involved in the police investigation.'

‘I didn't just mean the police, I meant the entire country.' Charly had caught a glimpse of a tabloid yesterday and hadn't realised how much attention Joel's murder had grabbed. She felt sick when she saw the picture of her dad on the front page.

‘Your father's been released. I think it would do you some good to see him.'

Charly shook her head. She wasn't ready to see him at the moment. She felt too confused by everything that was going on.

There was a gentle knock at the door and Terry came in. ‘Someone here to see you, Charly, and she's not taking no for an answer.' Charly looked confused. Standing out in the garden she could see someone straining their neck trying to look into the house. Charly felt her stomach lurch. The figure was older and chubbier, but there was no mistaking who it was: her mum Shirley. Charly put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God,' she said, almost to herself.

‘Everything OK?' Carol asked, looking round.

‘Shall I tell her to go away? She barged through the paps without a care in the world.'

‘No, let her in.' She felt sick.

Charly had imagined countless scenarios where she and her mother would be reunited over the
years. But as angry or relieved as she'd always pictured herself to be at such a meeting, she could never have imagined that the next time she saw her mother would be under such fraught circumstances.

Shirley walked into the room and looked at Charly. Charly stayed in her seat. Carol stood up, sensing that now was definitely a good time to leave. Terry looked at Charly. ‘If you need me, love, I'll be outside,' he said. Terry left and Carol followed, leaving Charly in a room with her mother for the first time in over a decade.

‘I didn't know if I'd find this place, but it was quite straightforward,' Shirley said, jamming her hands in her coat pockets.

Charly looked her mother up and down; she'd changed. She looked beaten down somehow.

‘That it?' Charly asked. There was no heat in her voice; she didn't have the energy. ‘Is that your opening gambit?'

‘There's so much to say that I don't know
what
to say, if I'm honest.'

‘What about the weather? Shall we have a little chat about that?'

Shirley moved towards her daughter, but Charly pulled her legs into her chest to ensure that she was sitting in an impenetrable ball. ‘I'm sorry,' Shirley
said, sitting down and inspecting the palms of her hands.

‘Really? Pick your moments, don't you,
Mum
?' Charly said, using the word to spear Shirley.

‘What does that mean?'

‘Mum? That's a word I wouldn't be slinging around in relation to you. What's the Shirley Metcalfe definition of the word?
Someone who fucks off when the going gets tough
?' Charly knew she was being a bitch but she didn't care. She wanted to lash out at someone and there wasn't a better person on this planet deserving of her anger as far as she was concerned. If Shirley had turned up prior to this weekend, Charly knew that she would have been far easier on her. That she would have been grateful, even after all this time, for her mum to have come home in order to see her family. But now she just wanted to know what her mum wanted and why she had done precisely what she pleased for the past ten years.

Shirley looked at Charly. ‘Things haven't been easy for me. I know you're not interested in hearing it, but they haven't. And I've wanted to come back loads of times but I've never had the bottle until now. I didn't intend for it to be the weekend that the world's press are camped on yours
and your dad's doorstep – it's just the way that things have turned out.'

‘And were you with him when you told the police you were?'

Shirley paused for what Charly thought was too long before nodding. ‘Yes.'

‘You weren't, were you? You're lying.'

‘I was; we were talking.'

‘At half four in the morning?' Charly wasn't stupid. She might not have seen Shirley for ten years but she knew when she was lying.

‘It's been a long time.'

‘You don't have to tell me that,' Charly shot back.

‘We had a lot to talk about. Your dad didn't kill Joel.' Shirley looked squarely at her daughter. ‘Although he would have been well within his rights to.'

‘What?' Charly asked, astonished. ‘Within his rights?'

‘The lad was beating you, according to your dad. What were you doing in hospital?'

Charly couldn't believe her mother's audacity. ‘I loved him!' she screamed. ‘He wasn't a bad person; we just rubbed each other up the wrong way, that's all. Not that it's any of your bloody business.'

‘Looks like he'd done more than rub you up the
wrong way. Look at your face. You're bruised. And, if what your dad says is true, you're lucky to have come out of it at all.'

‘Well, he would say that, wouldn't he, Dad? He didn't like him,' Charly said, blindly defending Joel. ‘Anyway, why are we sitting here slagging off someone who can't even defend himself? Let's get back to you, eh Mum? Tell me what you've been doing for the last ten years.'

‘I went to London, lived in Tooting.' Shirley paused as if she was about to say something but then pulled back. ‘I fell on hard times.'

‘The violin routine,' Charly said wearily. ‘And at no point did you think to ring, see how I was, see how Jimmy was. See how the twins were, even. Mind you, why you'd give a shit about them when you couldn't even be arsed with your own kids is a mystery. You just did your own thing down there and waited till now to reappear, is that it?'

‘It's not like that,' Shirley persisted. ‘I wanted to see you, I wanted to contact you.' She opened her mouth to say something else, but quickly fell silent as if she'd thought better of it again. This time Charly noticed.

‘What?'

‘Nothing.'

‘You were going to say something. Spit it out.'

‘I didn't think your dad wanted me. I wasn't thinking straight.'

‘Understatement of the century. So it's Dad's fault now, is it?'

‘I never said that.'

‘Do you have any idea what he went through when you left? Do you have any notion in that dyed blonde head of yours what it was like for him?'

‘Of course I do. It had been my life for long enough, hadn't it?'

‘I mean you leaving, not the day-to-day getting on with life with kids. What was so bad about us, Mum?' Charly asked. Her voice cracked. She didn't want it to, she hadn't wanted to show her mum any emotion, but there was little chance of that today.

‘Nothing was so bad about you. I loved you all. I still love you all.'

‘Why, then?'

Shirley shook her head. ‘I haven't got a decent answer.'

Charly glared at her mother for a minute. It was hard to find the words to respond to such an admission. ‘When I was fourteen I was leathered at school by some girl called Jenny Williams. Battered me up and down the playground for being “too
pretty”, which was nice of her. And I knew I could go to my dad or our Jimmy and get it sorted out, but dads and brothers don't sort things like that out, mums do. And you weren't there. I cried myself to sleep about that for days and it wasn't even because I was bothered about her battering me, it was because you weren't there to stick up for me.' Shirley hung her head. ‘Do you know what people used to say about you at school?' Shirley didn't look up. ‘They used to say that you were a prostitute and you'd run off with your pimp. Something else for them to laugh at me about.'

‘I'm so sorry.'

‘So you've said, but you don't know what it was like.' Charly looked at her mum. She wanted to hate her so much but there was a part of her that was glad she was there, even if she was using her as a battering ram. ‘And now all this has happened and you turn up . . .' Charly could feel the tears building up again; she tried to fight them, to swallow them back, but she couldn't. She began to cry. Shirley got up from the sofa and went over to the chair in which Charly was sitting. As she cried she felt her mum's hand on her knee. Then she felt her pull her forward to hug her, gently stroking her hair. Charly kept on sobbing and stopped
talking. She needed this, someone to hold her and listen to her cry. As she was sitting there she realised that, despite everything, her mum was the only person in the world that she wanted with her right now.

JODIE HADN'T DARED
to switch her phone on for the past four days. Journalists had somehow got hold of her number and had blocked up her voicemail with requests for comments on what she'd witnessed.

She was in the middle of a photo shoot on a blustery hilltop in the Yorkshire Dales. Jodie was feeling less like Cathy and more like a drowned rat. The photographer had promised her that the weather would make the pictures look windswept and moody, but the last thing that Jodie wanted to do – this week of all weeks – was stand around in a decidedly unsexy place having to look sexy. As she stood pressed against a rock, her head thrown back and her gossamer top ripped provocatively to the nipple, she could see two women heading up the limestone steps to where she was teetering. Jodie grabbed a towel; they'd been assured privacy for the
hour that they needed to get the right shot but these women were heading towards her and the photographer, bold as brass. One thing was for sure, they didn't look like ramblers who were stamping their feet about their right to the use of public footpaths at all times.

‘Jodie, can we have a word?' the first woman asked.

Jodie looked at her photographer.
What was going on?
‘Depends.'

‘We're from the
Globe
and . . .'

Jodie looked at the pair. She had to tread carefully. The
Globe
newspaper had given her her first break and was still a large contributing factor to her income. But she was damned if they were sneaking up on her like this. She smelled a rat. Her photographer had gone quiet. If he had known nothing about this he'd be telling them to take themselves back to where they came from as quickly as possible, but he was inspecting the lens on his camera as if this somehow negated all that was going on around him.

‘Did you tell them we were going to be here?' Jodie demanded. He looked guiltily at her and shrugged. Although he was freelance, he too got a lot of work through the
Globe
; he was probably only
doing what he thought was necessary to ensure future work. It didn't stop Jodie wanting to kill him though. ‘Right,' she said, pulling her jeans on and quickly slipping into the jumper and coat that she'd been fantasising about as she stood there sodden. ‘End of shoot. I'm not making any comment. If you want to talk to me then you need to go through my agency.'

‘Leanne told us you were here.'

Jodie faltered, but only for a split second. ‘Pull the other one.' She knew that Leanne would never do that without informing her first. No, it was definitely the photographer. She tramped away from the three, making her way down the five hundred or so steps that led to the bottom of the sheer cliff face and towards the car park. Jodie wasn't happy. The photographer, who had hastily packed his kit up, was hot on her heels, as were the journalists.

One of them was a step behind Jodie all the way down. ‘Can you tell us just a little bit about what it was like to see Joel dead in the hotel room?'

Jodie didn't answer. She didn't want to think about it: it had been horrific.

‘How do you feel about the fact that Charly probably stands to make a lot of money from this?
Weren't you and her good friends? Rumour has it that on the night she and Joel met you were there and that he spurned you for her.'

Jodie wanted to wheel around and shout at the woman to get her facts straight, but she knew that this was exactly what she wanted: a quote of any kind so that they could splash it across the front of the paper that they'd got an exclusive with her. Jodie faced forward and kept trudging down the steps, wishing to God the photo shoot had been in a studio.

‘What do you think to your brother's arrest?' the woman asked. Jodie stopped momentarily but didn't look around; she was putting all of her energies into not faltering on the steps, which were proving tricky to negotiate, and she wasn't about to give the woman the satisfaction of rising to the bait.
Poor Scott
, she thought. She had known it was probably only a matter of time before – as Charly's ex – he was hauled in for questioning. When Jodie didn't answer the journalist continued, ‘The police seem to think that Markie had some kind of relationship with Charly. Know anything about that?'

Markie?
Jodie thought, alarmed. They must have the wrong name. She certainly didn't know
anything about it. Not that she was about to tell these women anything.

‘He's been in overnight. The police don't keep you in for nothing, do they?'

They do where I come from,
Jodie thought. But again, she didn't say anything. Her mind was racing. Why had Markie been arrested? She was really struggling to keep her mouth shut and they were still about twenty minutes away from the car.

Jodie put her head down and pressed on. It might be the longest twenty minutes of her life, but there was no way these women were getting a word out of her.

*

Len was cleaning the optics and the lines for the beer. One good thing about working at the club was that all non-members had to be signed in and as people around here were a loyal bunch, no one was signing in anyone they didn't know. Too many journalists had tried their hand at getting in over the past few days and all of them received short shrift. Even the ones that did get through the door were swiftly escorted off the premises by Ron the security guard once their cover was blown. But that didn't
mean that he wasn't on his guard: every time the door opened he looked up and panicked, thinking that he was about to face another grilling that he could do without.