The Vow - Debbie Howells Page 0,64

up from behind a desk.

‘I’m Jess Reid. You have my mother here – Amy Reid. I want to see her.’

He nods towards a few chairs set in a corner by a window. ‘Can you take a seat over there?’

As Cath and I do as he says, she looks at me anxiously. ‘You OK, Jess?’

‘Yes.’ There’s no point in saying I’m anything else. But how can I be, when I’m here instead of in Falmouth, with my mother being held on suspicion of committing a crime. It’s nothing other than a living nightmare.

Only a few minutes pass before a policewoman walks over to us. Instantly, I recognise her. ‘Hello, Jess. I’m PC Page. We spoke before, at your house.’ Questioningly, she turns to Cath.

‘I’m Cath Bowers. We spoke on the phone.’

A flicker of recognition crosses the policewoman’s face. ‘Yes, of course.’ She turns back to me. ‘Before you talk to your mother, do you think you and I could have a chat?’ She glances around as if looking for somewhere.

Not sure I have a choice, I shrug. ‘OK.’

‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Beside me, Cath sounds uncertain.

I shake my head. ‘I’ll be OK.’

‘Right. Shall we find somewhere quieter?’ As PC Page starts to walk along a corridor, I follow behind, then she shows me into a small room, with white painted walls and a small window. ‘We shouldn’t get disturbed in here. Have a seat, Jess.’

The plastic chairs remind me of uni classrooms. Pulling one out across a table, I sit down opposite her. After organising the papers she’s holding, she gets out a pen, then looks at me. ‘I know we talked before, just after Mr Roche disappeared, but I wanted to ask you more about his relationship with your mother. Can you describe how they were together? From the beginning?’

I try to cast my mind back to a time when my views were untainted, to when Matt was new in our lives. When my mother was the same as she’d always been – before I’d noticed things change. ‘They seemed happy together, to start with. He used to pick her up and take her out for dinner. But after he moved in, I missed quite a lot of what went on because I started uni. She never said anything to me, but when I came back that first Christmas, things seemed different.’

‘In what way?’

I try to work out how best to explain it. ‘Her excitement had definitely gone. It was like they’d skipped a couple of decades and had turned into a middle-aged couple who sniped at each other. Except …’

‘Go on,’ she says quietly.

‘It was always Matt who did the sniping, like she irritated him. It was like he looked for reasons to criticise her. It didn’t make sense, because they were still planning to get married. My mother almost seemed blind to it. She was convinced he loved her. She was always saying love was about compromise.’ I pause, knowing I should have seen how bad things had got, how warped her perception had become.

‘This is difficult to ask …’ PC Page hesitates. ‘Your mother seems fragile. In the circumstances, it’s understandable – the events since his disappearance have clearly caused her immense distress, let alone anything else. I didn’t know if she’d had problems in the past?’

I hesitate, not wanting to say the wrong thing. ‘I know she suffered from depression – a long time ago. But she did tell me she’d recently been seeing her therapist again.’

PC Page’s pen hovers above her notebook. ‘Do you happen to know her name?’

‘Sonia.’ I stare at her as she starts writing it down. ‘Sonia Richardson.’ Adding more urgently, ‘Will you talk to her? She’ll be able to vouch for the kind of person Mum really is.’

For a moment, PC Page doesn’t reply. ‘Was it depression that led your mother to start seeing her the first time?’

I shake my head. ‘I’m not sure. It was when I was quite a bit younger. It may have been, but Sonia would be able to tell you. I think it was after my dad left her.’ I watch as she makes another note.

A frown appears on her face. ‘There’s another thing I wanted to ask you about your mother, because I’m not sure Mr Roche hasn’t been playing mind games with her.’

‘That’s exactly what he does,’ I say angrily, feeling my hands curl into fists, relieved she understands. ‘We’ve been studying psychopathic behaviour at uni. He ticks all the