The Nurse by J. Corrigan (list of ebook readers txt) 📕

click-clacking down the corridor. I slump back into my chair, listen to the digital clock on the wall and wait for the officer to rescue me and take me to meet Bella Bliss.

5

I’m disconcerted after DI Alison Greenwood’s short interview and the mention of an establishment in Nottingham of which I’ve never heard. I use the half an hour it takes the officer to return to gather myself. By the time he opens the door to accompany me to the visits hall, I’ve calmed down.

He leads me to the table where Bella is sitting. She has her back to me. She has very sleek dark brown hair and is wearing a sweat top with her university logo on the back. I shouldn’t have agreed to this. Cathy said so too.

As I approach, she turns. She recognises me, and a pink tinge appears on her sweetheart-shaped face. She has alabaster skin, and her eyes, a striking violet, sparkle with vivacity, although she’s clearly very nervous. I decide I’m going to make it easy for her, although I don’t know what she wants from me. I will wait to see. She has an A4 notepad in front of her on the table and a neat list of questions.

‘Bella,’ I say as I sit down. ‘So sorry you’ve had to wait. Busy afternoon.’ I grin. ‘Which is a little ironic given my situation.’ I want to break the ice. She really does look terrified.

‘Thanks for agreeing to see me, Mrs Marlowe.’ I can almost hear her exhale with relief. ‘I didn’t think you would.’

I give her what I hope is a proper smile. She’s about the same age as I was when I met Daniel Deane. So young. I scrutinise her features. ‘It’s no problem, but I’m not sure how much help I’m going to be.’

The pink is now swallowing up her cheeks.

‘It’s okay,’ I carry on. ‘I will try to help.’ She looks down at her list. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you just ask what comes into your head to start? Make it less formal?’

She looks at me full on. ‘Mrs Marlowe—’

‘Call me Rose, please.’

‘Rose… I’m not here for my dissertation.’

‘Oh.’ And oh. Maybe she is a nutcase. I glance upwards and catch a custody officer’s eye, but he ignores me. ‘What are you here for, Bella?’

She shuffles uncomfortably. ‘Something else, but I didn’t want to write it in a letter.’ She appears to be in a horrible torment, and I feel for her, regardless of why she is here. She continues, ‘It’s about my brother. He’s in a relationship with someone who I think you might have known when you were younger.’

Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t this. ‘Who is your brother in a relationship with?’

‘Ed Madden.’

My heart drops like a boulder, and I’m sure that if I look down I will see it beating on the electric-blue tiling of the visits hall’s floor. It destabilises me still, the effect his name has, even this many years later. I don’t answer. Can’t answer.

‘He told my brother… something. And it’s killing him keeping it to himself. It’s why he told me.’ She stares at her notebook. ‘I wish he hadn’t.’ Tears mist her honest eyes. ‘But I wanted you to know.’

‘What is it you want me to know?’ A terrible anticipation is rolling through me.

Bella fidgets again. She drags her chair backwards.

‘Don’t go. Please,’ I plead. Leaning over the table, I touch her notebook. ‘I appreciate that you came. It must be important, what your brother has told you—’

‘I shouldn’t have come.’

‘But I need to know… It will stay between us, I promise.’

Bella closes her notebook and puts it in her rucksack. But then she pulls her chair closer to the table and lays her arms where the notebook was sitting. Her voice is so low I can barely hear her. ‘Your mum—’ She stops abruptly and takes a breath. ‘I’m so sorry, but I can’t say any more.’

‘Please,’ I say.

She gets up, a mixture of resoluteness and anger crossing her features. ‘What you did was terrible. But you should know… what was done…’ She’s turning around, leaving.

Coming here has cost her dear. I don’t want her to get into trouble, and it will not be because of me if she does.

She continues, ‘Tell who you want. I don’t care any more. My brother and I will deal with it.’

‘I won’t say anything to anyone.’ I pause, find her eyes. She’s not going to tell me, but she’s told me enough. ‘My mother knows something?’

She pulls her bag onto her shoulders. ‘I think so.’

The same feeling I had on the last day of Abe’s life returns, and my stomach contracts as if it’s wrapping around itself.

I’ve managed to get out of the meeting with my therapist, saying I have a migraine, which I do. Bella’s visit, and Alison Greenwood’s, has unsettled me.

Before seeing Bella, I’d replied to Theo Hazel saying I wouldn’t be accepting his request to talk with me, but back in my cell, I write to him again.

I try to focus on how I will compose this second letter. Before becoming a writer, he was a journalist, and a good one from what I can glean, his journalistic tenacity evident in the non-fiction books he’s written. Brilliantly researched and executed, according to the reviews. He’s discovered things about long-ago characters from history, some guilty of their crimes, others who’ve turned out not to be. I’m worried I might have missed my chance with him, though, and I have to make sure he visits me, because I think he can help me. I stare at the wall, lean back in my chair and touch my right breast, and for the first time in years a trace of purpose twists through me.

It even crosses my mind to make an appointment to see the prison doctor.

How can I entice Theo Hazel? He wants a story. He wants to kick-start his career. This is all I know about him really.

I