Page 26 of Beautiful Ugly
I nod.
But it did.
“I meant to ask you earlier, but I forgot,” I say. “When is the next ferry back to the mainland?”
Sandy frowns. “Not leaving so soon are you? I thought you said you liked it here—”
“Oh I do, very much so. It’s just... there are some things I left in my car that I need.”
“Well, give me the keys and I can get them for you next time I’m on the mainland. No sense in you losing precious writing time.”
“That’s very kind, but I would like to know when the next sailing is. Just in case I need to get back anytime soon.”
She stares at me. “Hard to say with the weather. But I’ll be sure to let you know.”
I might have had too much to drink but her behavior seems a little strange to me.
After Sandy leaves, I pour myself another glass of whiskey. Then I stare at the empty space beneath the floorboards, in case the bones might have reappeared. They haven’t. But there is something in the cabin that wasn’t here before. Something I quickly picked up beforeSandy saw it. An envelope with the wordsRead Mewritten on it was slipped under the door while I was out this evening.
I open it and am shocked by what I see.
23rdMarch 2017The TimesPage 5
WOMAN FREED AFTER THIRTY YEARS IN PRISON
A Wrongful Conviction and a Broken Justice System
Abby Goldman
Thirty years ago, on a cold October afternoon, Coraline Thatcher’s daughter did not come home from school. Late that night, after reporting her missing and making several calls, she suspected that her fifteen-year-old child was at a party at a friend’s house. The friend’s parents were not home. On arrival, it was clear that the party had got out of hand. The house was filled with young people, loud music, and the smell of drugs. Coraline eventually found her teenaged daughter in a bedroom, unconscious, and being raped by a twenty-one-year-old man.
Coraline reached for a bottle of Jack Daniels that was on the bedside table and smashed it over the man’s head. She was still holding the broken bottleneck when he climbed off her daughter, grabbed Coraline by the throat, and pushed her up against a wall. He was six feet tall and weighed fourteen stone. Witnesses concur he spat in her face and threatened to “end her.”
Coraline’s lawyer claimed that sticking that broken bottle into the man’s throat and severing an artery in his neck was self-defense. But a jury, which astoundingly included a cousin of the rapist, found her guilty of murder and she was sent to prison. For life.
The courts have now ruled, thirty years later, that Coraline Thatcher should never have been convicted. The man she killed hadbeen arrested numerous times, before he raped her daughter, for violent sexual assault and stalking. He was known to the police but he was never charged. A woman is killed by a man every three minutes in the UK, and yet when a woman tries to defend herself she is the one who loses her freedom. Our justice system is broken. Coraline did what she did to protect herself from a man the police failed to protect her from, and she lost everything as a result.
Her daughter was put into care and Coraline was not allowed to see her. She lost her home and her business. Her mother died while she was in prison. Her daughter, now forty-five, the same age Coraline was when convicted, refuses to speak to her, and she has grandchildren she has never met. Coraline now lives in a halfway house in London and is dependent on charity to get by.
I met with her in the hope of an exclusive interview. But she met with me only to tell me why she wouldn’t give one. “There’s nothing anyone can do to give me my life back,” she said. “All I wanted was to run a little shop and take care of my daughter.” Coraline was dressed in green and looked older than her years. The dead man’s family also had no comment, and threatened me and this newspaper with legal action. “Justice is only for those who can afford it,” Coraline told me. Freedom, it seems, also comes with a price.
INNOCENT CRIMINAL
There is no note. No explanation. Just a crumpled old newspaper article written by my wife several years ago. I remember the story and how much it upset Abby at the time. My wife was an amazing journalist. She found out all kinds of things about the dead man’s wealthy family—things the legal team at the newspaper refused to let her print—including that they bribed Coraline Thatcher’s defense lawyer to do a shoddy job and make sure she was convicted. But Abby always had to do the right thing, and she kept digging until she uncovered enough truth to get some justice for that poor woman. The creepy-looking antique doll I found in her car the night she disappeared had been sent to her at the newspaper. Her editor watched her open the box and was convinced that the doll with its mouth sewn up was a warning. The police tested the doll for fingerprints but found only Abby’s.
I don’t understand why someone is sending me this old article now. Or why they couldn’t tell me to my face. Unless it is a clue about what happened to Abby? What else could it be?
Maybe Ididn’timagine seeing my missing wife on the island.
I read the newspaper clipping again. The words seem to blurand twist and move on the page, but I put on my reading glasses, and try to focus. Abby’s article says that Coraline Thatcher was dressed all in green when they met. Like Cora at the corner shop. One of Cora’s many badges said she was at least eighty years old, and the woman in the article would have been seventy-five seven years ago, so the age fits. Could Cora Christie be Coraline Thatcher? Even if she is, what is the connection to my wife if they barely met? Did Abby dig too deep into the rapist’s family? Were they responsible for the threats she had been receiving before she disappeared? Did they send the doll? And who was the one-handed dead man who washed up on the beach last year around the same time Abby vanished?
If someone is trying to tell me something then I don’t understand who or what or why. But someone knows something, and they came to the cabin to try to tell me. And it was someone on the island, which means there can be only twenty-five suspects.
It’s late, it’s been a long time since I got any real rest, and I’m so tired I feel as though I could fall asleep standing up. Columbo is already snoring at the foot of the bed and I think he has the right idea. Maybe this will all make more sense in the morning, though I doubt it. I replace the floorboards and the rug and pour myself another small glass of whiskey—just a little something to help me sleep.
It doesn’t work.
It rarely does.