anything other than the details of the appeal case?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, that’s fine.’ Natalie lays her phone down on the coffee table, next to the tape recorder.
I flip to a clean page in my notebook, wondering where I should begin … at the start, when she and Lucas met, or cut straight to the drama and work backwards? Some interviewees need warming up, others have short attention spans.
‘There she is!’ Natalie squeals girlishly, suggesting she might be the latter sort, craning to look out of the window. ‘My friend Bridie, she’s just got back off holiday and I need to talk to her about her cat … sorry, do you mind?’
‘No, no,’ I say. ‘Go ahead.’
I watch Natalie hurtle down the front path and ambush the scatty-haired, sizeable Bridie. She’s practically ovoid, clad in a black jumper, and looks a likely customer for Jonathan Cainer’s daily zodiac forecasts.
Natalie starts gesticulating, presumably about the moggy, and I think how impressive it is to care about your neighbour’s pet when your other half is in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. I turn away and try to concentrate on the telly, which is now running adverts. Ambulance chasers and loan sharks that can save you from all the other loan sharks in one affordable monthly payment, and something that makes child’s play of slicing vegetables with its multi-function blade.
If I really give this exclusive some welly, I think, and add enough thoughtful flourishes, I might get a press award. Then Natalie can be proud to know that her trauma has sent me to an industry back-slap jolly in Birmingham or London where I can neck warm white wine from Paris goblets, get a round of reluctant applause and fight off unwanted attention from pissed-up sports desk nominees.
Natalie’s still talking ten to the dozen. A text message beeps on her clamshell phone, the circular window lighting up electric blue.
A wicked thought occurs, so wicked it surprises me. Read the text. Here you are, alone with her phone – why not? Most reporters I know wouldn’t hesitate. We use enough backroom bargaining and wiles and wheedling to get into homes in the first place that outrageous nosiness once inside doesn’t rate as that big a crime. Some reporters would think it was bad journalism not to read the text. Am I one of them?
My mind starts racing. I’d have to delete it, obviously, or she’d realise I’ve read it. What if it contains urgent information, and I can’t relay it without revealing what I’ve done? Or what if the person who sent it wants to know why she didn’t reply, mentions when they sent it, and they work out the timing …?
Oh, stop being such a banana, Rachel, I think. Most texts are about as important as Rhys’s regular ones from the pub, sent covertly under the table during quizzes: ‘What is year Dirty Dancing came out. Quick.’ Or as much fun as my mum’s: ‘Have you had smear test yet this year. Wendy at work has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.’ Cancer, that’s something to worry about, not reading a text that’s not intended for you.
I put my hand out and then pull it back sharply. What am I thinking? Where are my principles? I look out of the window, where Natalie’s still talking. The seconds tick on.
A further thought, the clincher: it’s from Simon, asking how it’s going. Bound to be. Will he say anything slighting about me? This is someone I’m contemplating dating. Seeing the proof that he can be pitiless could save me a lot of angst. Sod it, I think. One slight slip of the standards and I’ll be discreet about whatever the text contains. Natalie need never know. Responsible snooping. Checking she’s still at a safe distance and absorbed by her neighbour’s feline kerfuffle, I flip her phone open and click on the message. A stranger’s words sit in my sweaty palm.
‘How are you today, N? I miss you so much. Can’t stop thinking about the other night. Xxx PS What are you wearing?’
Eyes wide, I look out of the window, back to the text, out the window again, trying to make sense of it. Her phone doesn’t recognise the sender as a name from her phonebook, only a number.
It’s from her husband, I reason, snapping the phone shut and replacing it on the table. Obviously. He must have access to a mobile. Don’t some cons smuggle them into jail, hidden in unholy places? Yes, that’s right. That’s it.
But – it mentions ‘the other night’. Lucas hasn’t had a ‘other night’ with his wife since last year. Ah – wrong number! Yes, it’s a wrong number. No. That can’t be it. The message calls her ‘N’.
I glance out of the window again. Natalie’s still talking. Panic hits me: I forgot to delete the message. She’ll know I read it. I pick up the phone again, open it, hesitate, scribble down the number. One check against Simon’s number, then I’ll get rid of it. I delete the message and replace the phone on the coffee table, careful to turn it back so it’s pointing towards where Natalie was sitting. I gulp down a huge swig of tea, as if she’s going to walk back in, inspect the volume in my cup and say: ‘That’s two millilitres too full.’
I wait, heart beating a pitter-patter, thoughts tumbling over themselves.
‘Sorry about that, her cat did a runner while I was feeding him. Total nightmare,’ Natalie says, flopping back on the sofa. She checks her phone. My heart goes kathunk-kathunk-kathunk.
She switches on the Dictaphone and checks it’s running.
‘Where do you want to start?’
I clear my throat.
‘When the jury read out their guilty verdict, how did you feel?’
34
Natalie’s fragile physical appearance belies her steely resolve, the kind required to raise two young children alone and coordinate her husband’s campaign for justice, and above all, keep the faith that he is coming home soon. Can she still believe in a system that has, she believes, wrongly convicted her husband? Her reply shows how a former optician’s assistant from Bury has had a crash course in the judicial process and the power of positive thinking.
‘The courts can make mistakes. The appeal system wouldn’t exist otherwise,’ she says, ‘and Lucas’s legal team are confident that the fresh evidence will be enough to get the verdict quashed, and they won’t order a retrial.’
In her visits to Lucas, she says, they never discuss the possibility his appeal will fail. ‘We talk about the girls, whether I’ve paid the bills. Boring stuff, but Lucas says it keeps him sane.’
While other family and friends collapsed and openly wept when Lucas’s sentence was delivered, Natalie remained composed. What was going through her mind, in those terrible moments? ‘I knew I had to be strong for my husband,’ she explains. ‘He’s innocent, that’s all that matters, and the truth will come out. If I broke down, how would that help him? He looks to me for support. He depends on me.’
I glance up from my notes, feeling light-headed, as if I can’t quite get the ground underneath me to lie flat.
If this is the way it looks, and Natalie is having a fling, I wonder if it pre-dates her husband being locked up. Once upon a time, I’d have been appalled at this. But really: only two people really know what’s going on in a relationship. And sometimes, not even that many, a voice
