The Innocent Wife Read online

  The nights are drawing in here. This is when it used to be hardest, being alone, but now I don’t feel so lonely any more, knowing you’re there, waiting for your letters. It’s so good to have someone I can be honest with. When I’m teaching I have to fake this strength all the time or the kids just go feral, it’s exhausting. I don’t really get along with the other teachers. They’re all married with kids, they look at me like there’s something wrong with me because I’m not like them. I couldn’t tell them about writing to you, they wouldn’t understand that either. I saw one of them reading that book about your case the other day – When the River Runs Red, by Eileen Turner, and I almost said to them, ‘I know Dennis Danson! We write to each other like every week!’ but I knew it would end up being gossip. Besides, there’s something nice about people not knowing.

  Love,

  Samantha

  10.25

  Samantha,

  Your ex sounds like an idiot. You are beautiful. If I were your boyfriend I wouldn’t be stupid enough to let you go. I’ve put your picture on the wall. You have such a beautiful smile, when I look at you I can’t help smiling back.

  I’ve read When the River Runs Red. Eileen still writes me. It was weird to read about myself like that. I haven’t seen Framing the Truth but from what Carrie tells me it’s comprehensive, whereas Eileen’s book is more sensational. Sometimes I didn’t recognise myself. It made me sound weird.

  Yes, it’s frustrating about the new series, but Carrie tells me it’s for the best. There are legal hurdles to jump before filming starts and I’ve had meetings with my new lawyers that give me some hope that a retrial will take place in the next twelve months. Everything moves so slowly. Each day here is like a week. I didn’t get my outside recreation today because of rain and my head is hurting again. I’ve read your letters many times and when I read them I am less lonely, as if you are here.

  I admit I’m starting to like you as more than a friend, Samantha. I can’t help it. I look forward to your letters, too. Every week I search for yours in the bundle that is delivered to me and when I find it my heart beats faster. I’m almost sure I shouldn’t tell you this. I worry that I’m only going to be a burden to you, Samantha. That the commitment of writing to me each week is too much. That our friendship makes you more solitary or secretive. But I’m too selfish to stop. You make everything more bearable. I can’t promise you anything. You deserve better. I’m worried you will figure this out soon and forget me.

  Love,

  Dennis

  13th January

  Dennis,

  Don’t talk like that. Ever. I love you. You’re all I want. It doesn’t matter to me that we’re far apart right now. I’m happy. But I’ve been thinking and I want to visit, if you’ll have me. I still have a lot of the money my grandmother left me and there’s not much keeping me here. I was saving the money for something special and I can’t think of anything that would mean more to me. It’s time for me to stop wasting my whole life wishing for things and actually do them.

  I know you’ll say no but I don’t accept that. I know what’s best for me. I’ve made up my mind. I could leave as early as next month. Just say the word.

  All my love,

  Your Samantha

  1.24

  Samantha,

  The idea of seeing you here has lit me up, too. I can’t stop moving. Pacing. In the yard I ran circles and the ground threw dust up my legs. The guards laughed and they all said you must be something special. No one ever sees me like this.

  I hope you don’t mind but I gave Carrie your name and address. She will be filming in and around Red River starting in April and I would like it if you could meet. At least I know she can look after you, even if I can’t.

  Of course I will love you when I see you. I worry you won’t love me. I’ve changed. Gone slack. But I’m working on it, for you. I’m older. I think people forget this. Some men still write to the eighteen-year-old I was. Love letters. I’m sure you can imagine. And I don’t want you to be shocked when you see me in chains. They make us wear them when we leave our cells. They say it’s for safety but, well, it’s humiliating.

  I won’t give you the word. Come when you’re ready. Come when Carrie is here. But come. I need you, too. I love you.

  All my love, always,

  Your Dennis

  Subject: Dennis!!

  Sam!

  This is Carrie, Dennis’s friend. He gave me your address but I figured it was easier to track you down online. Nice nudes! I’m just kidding, I didn’t find anything weird. Anyway, Dennis talks about you A LOT. I’m kind of sick of hearing about you! Nah, honestly, I haven’t seen him like this in years. With you and the new series he’s like a new man right now.

  He tells me you’re coming out here to visit and he wants ME to be your guide! I’d be super honored to entertain you while you’re around. I’ll be filming most days but I thought you could come along, if you’re into it. We’ll be going around Red River shooting some interviews, following some leads we have, witnesses, that kind of thing. Heard you’re a big fan of the doc (thanks!) so maybe you’d like to get involved.

  Let me know. Any friend of Dennis is a friend of mine. If you need any advice on where to stay/eat/avoid like the fucking plague then I’m your guy.

  See ya soon!

  Carrie

  She booked the flights before she could change her mind. When she left, no one even seemed to notice she was gone.

  Altoona

  One

  The prison was a vast, grey concrete monstrosity, surrounded by a razor-wire-topped chain-link fence. On the way in Sam passed a plaque embedded in a large stone that read ‘Department of Corrections, Altoona Prison’. Then under a Disneyesque archway there was a sign, with big, plastic capital letters, ‘ALTOONA PRISON’. The few palm trees scattered around the edges of the compound made it look even more surreal, like a film set.

  The hot moist air smothered her skin and steamed up her sunglasses as she threw open the door of her rental SUV and vomited on to the gravel. It was like drowning every time she left the crisp air-conditioned interior of her car and her hair stuck to her skin, curling around her neck like tentacles.

  There wasn’t much in her. She hadn’t eaten since she flew in from Heathrow the day before, apart from a granola bar she bought from the motel vending machine in the middle of a sleepless night when her stomach clenched and gnawed. What came up now were stringy bits of stomach bile and coffee. She had mints, which rattled in the travel tin as she held them. She checked the mirror again. She thought, Maybe I’m one of those people who think they’re ugly but really they’re beautiful and they can’t see it. She flipped the visor back up and said to herself, Body dysmorphia. You wish. Then shook her head quickly to get rid of the negativity.

  She parked the car and walked towards the guarded entrance. She paused, thought about turning back. Over the past twenty-four hours she’d changed her mind a million times. None of it had seemed real until she’d walked into the wall of heat outside the airport doors. This was a mistake, she told herself, an expensive and terrible mistake. Their letters had been a kind of shared madness, just two people wishing so hard for something better that they manufactured it themselves.

  Inside she handed over her visitor’s pass and identification, watched her handbag roll through an X-ray machine as she walked alongside it through a metal detector. They were briefly reunited on the other side before a man took it away and gave her a numbered ticket in return, as if she were checking her coat at the theatre. One female guard patted her down; another stuck a numbered sticker to her chest. People gently pushed her in the right directions, saying no more than one or two words, until she arrived in a long mint-green room, stiflingly hot, a small rattling fan in a corner. There were green plastic chairs bolted to the floor; Sam sat in the first available one. In front of her was a thick plastic window with holes around the level of her lips, a small shelf like a desk, and privacy screens to each side. Non
e of the visitors – almost exclusively female – spoke or looked at one another. Sam peered through the plastic window; the opposite side of the room was empty, apart from one guard standing against the back wall staring at his shoes.

  There was a door on the far right with a light above it, framed in a cage. For a second she wondered why and then it hit her, the reality of the place she was in, the violence. Men so dangerous they had to cage the lights, screw down the chairs, bulletproof the glass.

  When a buzzer sounded the light came on, red, and the guard’s head snapped up; he caught Sam’s eye and she smiled; he did not smile back. A memory, when she was a teenager, at a Take That concert. She’d leaned towards her friend and they’d clutched hands; We’re breathing the same air as Robbie! The air fizzed with Dennis’s presence, somewhere out of sight.

  Inmates shuffled in, their ankles and wrists in the cuffs Dennis had described in his letter. Fingers crept over Sam’s spine; her stomach felt as though it was floating away from her. She thought about running, looking back at the heavy metal door through which she’d come in: locked. She realised she was trapped, that the only way out of this was to get through it. It’d be over soon, she reassured herself as the men filed in.

  And then there he was. Different from the others, softer somehow. He’d put on weight, she noted, which made her feel better for a second before he turned his head and she saw his profile, all contours and cheekbones. He was wearing a pair of fake-gold framed glasses, the lenses tinted brown so she couldn’t make out his eyes with the way light reflected from them. When he saw her, he smiled and she waved in a way she regretted, loose-wristed and undignified.

  She tucked her hands between her knees. His ankles were chained and he took only small steps, like ones taken in the dark. At the window he stopped, shrugged.

  ‘Humiliating,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I didn’t hear what you said,’ Sam said, pushing her hair away from her face.

  ‘I said this is humiliating,’ he repeated, sitting, the chains clanking against the table in front of him. ‘Chains, like a junkyard dog.’

  ‘Oh. No, don’t. I can’t believe this is actually …’

  ‘I know.’

  They sat, quiet.

  ‘Weird, isn’t it?’ Sam tried.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She looked at him and it was as if he were a stranger. Sam felt cold and exposed, wanted to turn and leave. But the sensation passed, leaving her head ringing as if she’d been slapped. He smiled; she covered her mouth as she smiled back and cleared her throat.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t date much,’ he said.

  Sam laughed appreciatively. ‘Actually, me neither.’

  ‘When did you land?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ she said, thinking of the first mouthful of Florida air as she left the airport, the moment it all became too real.

  ‘Good flight?’

  ‘It was OK. They feed you all the time, to stop you getting bored.’

  ‘Like here.’

  It was gone. All the warmth of the letters. Sam blamed herself.

  ‘When are you meeting Carrie?’ he asked.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Sam said, thinking of how insistent Carrie had been that she join the crew while they filmed the new series. She didn’t want to feel she was in the way but when Carrie had probed and asked her how else she would spend her free time here, Sam hadn’t been able to answer.

  ‘You’ll love her.’

  Sam felt a twist of jealousy and knew it was all still there, that she still loved him. ‘She seems so great.’ She pulled her lips into a smile that didn’t reveal her teeth, which were too small, or her gums, too big.

  ‘She really is. You know, I don’t really get many visitors. Carrie tries, but she lives so far away and …’ Dennis let the unfinished sentence hang between them and they sat in silence for a moment before Sam felt words tumbling out of her mouth.

  ‘It’s my fault, I’m shy and my mind has gone completely blank and I don’t know what to talk about because everything seems so insignificant, you know? I just feel like a complete idiot. It’s so hot in here and I’m jetlagged and it’s not you, it’s all me, I’m sorry.’

  Dennis looked at her, face slack, surprised. ‘You’re not an idiot,’ he said. ‘And, you know. I love you, you know.’

  It was as if something broke inside her.

  ‘I love you. Too.’

  ‘You have something,’ he said, pointing to his right cheek, ‘there.’ She pulled a strand of hair away from her face and relaxed.

  ‘Thank you.’

  It got a little easier then. He spoke excitedly of the extra visits he’d received lately, of new lawyers with bespoke suits and tailored strategies. Of the new series, A Boy from Red River, and Netflix, which he understood only abstractly. Of new director Jackson Anderson, fresh off the back of a trilogy of blockbusters, who spoke with complete certainty of Dennis’s release, as if it was an inevitability. He told her about Carrie, how he knew she wanted the best for the film but how he could tell, after all these years, that she hated playing second fiddle to a man. She’d always been the one in charge, no question. Dennis laughed.

  ‘She’s pissed but also she knows Jackson can take this further than before. It’s a money thing, she knows that. She’ll still be doing most of the legwork.’

  Jackson had brought an increased level of publicity to the new series. Celebrities tweeted their support, their fans downloading the first film, interest snowballing. Suddenly the message boards had been overrun by new names. Angelina Jolie wore a T-shirt with Dennis’s mugshot on it, and underneath: #FreeDennisDanson. He was trending on Twitter. He wouldn’t have known any of it but for the influx of new letters, more than he’d ever received, too many to read.

  ‘I’m starting to think this is it,’ he said to Sam, ‘this could be it.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘The whole world knows now. Everyone is on your side.’ She wondered: How could one judge fight off the whole world? There’d have to be a new trial.

  There was a buzz; the people around her leaned in to say goodbyes. Some pushed their lips against the dirty window, breathed to their loved one on the other side. Guards turned their heads.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Next week?’

  ‘Of course. Den, I love you.’

  ‘I love you too, Samantha.’

  As he left she blinked away tears, feeling a burst of pleasure from his voice, and the pain of seeing him go. She pulled her dress straight. As she allowed the row of people to filter past her so she could join the back of the exit line, a woman behind her spoke, close enough to her ear that she felt breath tickle her neck. ‘You like child killers, huh?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Sam turned, smiling, sure she’d misheard.

  ‘Got a thing for guys who kill little girls. I saw who you were talking to.’

  The woman had curly red hair that looked crispy with hairspray and a T-shirt that hung off one shoulder exposing her bra strap. Sam looked around for the guard but the guards at either end of the room were occupied.

  ‘I got family from Red River and they all know what he did, they know who he is, they know more than some movie can tell you.’ The woman spoke so softly no one paid them any attention at all.

  ‘I’m not arguing with you, OK? I just want to leave.’ There was a shake to Sam’s voice that she couldn’t control.

  ‘He tell you where the bodies are? That’s all we want to know. Let those girls rest in peace, let the families rest.’

  They were the only two in the room now.

  ‘Do you get off on it? Is that it?’

  ‘Let’s go, time’s up.’ The officer placed a hand on the small of Sam’s back and pushed her gently.

  ‘Bitch,’ the woman said finally. The guard moved his hand away from Sam and took hold of the woman’s wris
t, a smirk on his face as he walked them both out.

  Two

  Extract from When the River Runs Red by Eileen Turner

  The Danson family lived on the outskirts of the county, where the last remnants of civilisation gave way to the backwoods, miles of land unsuitable for development. It was the type of land that got sucked into itself after storms, swamps that led to mangrove coastlines, tangled roots in water so black you couldn’t see anything under the surface. The family lived two miles from town, down a dirt road that became inaccessible after periods of heavy rain, and as a boy Dennis had walked over a mile each day to reach the school bus, often muddy and soaked through by the time he arrived.

  Even by the standards of Red River, Dennis was considered poor, and his neglect was recognised early on by his teachers. Though intelligent, he was often tired in class and his clothes were dirty, or his schoolbooks went missing. Child protective services were called and the house inspected. It was described by the social workers as ‘unfit for human habitation’fn1 and Dennis was sent to live with a foster family while his mother and father were given time to clean and renovate the property. His father, Lionel Danson, was advised to begin a twelve-step program for his drinking, while his mother, Kim, was medicated for depression. Dennis returned six months later under the supervision of a social worker, who would visit twice weekly for inspection. The visits lasted a few months before tailing off. The caseworker assigned to the Dansons later admitted he believed the family were coping and decided phone calls would be sufficient to check on their progress, as it was time-consuming to drive all the way out there each week.fn2

  It wasn’t long before the house returned to its former squalor and his father returned to his usual drinking patterns. By then the upheaval seemed to have caused a shift in Dennis’s behaviour; formerly quiet and shy, he started to act out in class, was prone to sudden outbursts of noise and violence, to standing up abruptly and flipping the desk or screaming in the middle of a test as if he found the silence and stillness of the room unbearable. Teachers who had once wanted to protect him, who’d found his blond-haired, blue-eyed shyness appealing, now pushed him away, suspending him, sending him to stand in the hallway or outside the principal’s office, while they focused on the children that could be helped.