Ann Cleeves: Raven Black

There was no colour on her eyes this morning, though they were still lined with black, which looked smudged and dirty as if it had been there all night. At last he was forced to break the silence.

‘Won't you come in?' he asked. 'Take a dram with me to keep out the cold. Or some tea?'

He didn't for a minute think she would agree. She was a well brought-up child. That was obvious. She would have been taught not to go alone into the house of a stranger. She looked at him, weighing up the idea.

'It's a bit early for a dram,' she said.

'Tea then?' He felt his mouth spread into that daft grin which had always annoyed his mother. 'We'll have some tea and chocolate biscuits!

He started up the path to the house, quite confident, knowing she would follow.

He never locked his door, but he opened it for her and stood aside to let her in first. As he waited for her to stamp her boots on the mat he looked around him. Everything was quiet outside. No one was around to see. No one knew he had this beautiful creature to visit him. She was his treasure, the raven in his cage.

Fran Hunter had a car but she didn't like using it for short trips. She cared about global warming and wanted to do her bit. She had a bike with a seat on the back for Cassie, had brought it with her on the Northlink ferry when she moved. She prided herself on travelling light and it had been the only bulky item in her luggage. In this weather though a bike was no good.

Today she wrapped Cassie up in her dungarees and coat and the wellingtons with the green frogs on the front and pulled her to school on a sledge. It was January 5th, the first day of the new school term. When they set off it was hardly light. Fran knew Mrs Henry already disapproved of her and didn't want to be late. She didn't need more knowing looks and raised eyebrows, the other mothers talking about her behind her back. It was hard enough for Cassie to fit in.

Fran rented a small house just off the road into Lerwick. It stood next to a stern brick chapel, and was low and unassuming in comparison. There were three rooms, with a basic bathroom built more recently on the back. They lived in the kitchen, which was much as it had been since the house had been built. It had a range where they burned the coal brought every month in a lorry from the town. There was an electric cooker too, but Fran liked the idea of the range.

She was a romantic. The house had no land now, though once it must have been attached to a croft. In the season it became a holiday let and by Easter Fran would have to make a decision about her and Cassie's future. The landlord had hinted that he might be prepared to sell. She was already coming to think of it as home and a place to work. Her bedroom had two big skylights and a view to Raven Head. It would do as a studio.

In the grey dawn Cassie chattered and Fran responded automatically, but her thoughts were elsewhere..

As they rounded the bank near Hillhead, the sun was rising, throwing long shadows across the snow, and Fran stopped to look at the view. She could see across the water to the headland beyond. It had been right to come back, she thought. This was the best place to bring up a child. Until that moment she hadn't realized how unsure she had been about the decision. She was so good at playing the part of aggressive single mother that she'd almost come to believe it.

Cassie was five and as assertive as her mother. Fran had taught her to read before she started school and Mrs Henry had disapproved of that too. The child could be loud and opinionated and there were times when even Fran wondered, despising herself for the dreadful suspicion, if she had created a precocious monster.

'It would be nice; Mrs Henry said frostily at the first parents' evening, 'if occasionally Cassie did as she was told first time. Without needing a detailed explanation of why I'd asked her to do it: Fran, expecting to be told that her daughter was a genius, a delight to teach, had been mortified. She had hidden her disappointment with a spirited defence of her philosophy of child rearing. Children should have the confidence to make their own choices, to challenge authority, she'd said. The last thing she wanted was a child who was a meek conformer.

Mrs Henry had listened.

'It must be hard: she had said when Fran ran out of steam, 'to bring up a child on your own!

Now Cassie, perched on the sledge like a Russian princess, was beginning to get restive.

'What is it?' she demanded. 'Why have you stopped?'

Fran's attention had been caught by contrasting colours, the possibility for a painting, but she pulled the rope and continued. She, like the teacher, was at the whim of Cassie's imperious demands. At the top of the bank she stopped and climbed on to the back of the sledge. She wrapped her legs around her daughter's body and held a loop of rope firmly in each hand. Then she dug her heels into the snow and launched the sledge down the hill.

Cassie shrieked with fear and excitement. They bounced over the icy ruts and picked up speed as they reached the bottom. The cold and the sunlight burned Fran's face. She tugged on the left-hand rope to guide them into a soft snowdrift piled against the playground wall. Nothing, she thought, will compare with this. This is about as good as it gets.

For once they were early. Fran had remembered Cassie's library book, her packed lunch and a change of shoes. Fran took Cassie into the cloakroom, sat her on the bench and pulled off the wellingtons. Mrs Henry was in the classroom, sticking a series of numbers on to the wall. She was perched on her desk but still found it hard to reach.

She was wearing trousers of some man-made fibre, slightly shiny, puckered at the knees, and a cardigan, machine knitted, with a vaguely Norwegian pattern. Fran noticed clothes. She had worked as assistant fashion editor on a woman's magazine after leaving university. Mrs Henry was ripe for a makeover.

'Could I help you?' She felt ridiculously afraid of being rejected. She'd managed photographers who could make grown men cry, but Mrs Henry made her feel like a nervy six-year-old. Usually she arrived at school just before the bell. Mrs Henry was already surrounded by parents and seemed to be on personal terms with them all.

Mrs Henry turned round, seemed surprised to see her. 'Would you? That would be kind. Cassie, come and sit on the mat, find a book to look at and wait for the others!

Cassie, inexplicably, did just as she was told.

On the way back up the hill dragging the sledge behind her, Fran told herself it was pathetic to be so pleased. Was it such a big deal? She didn't even believe in learning by rote, for Christ's sake. If they'd stayed south she'd have considered Cassie for a Steiner school. Yet here she was, thrilled to bits because she'd stuck the two-times table on the classroom wall. And Margaret Henry had smiled at her and called her by her first name.

There was no sign of the old man who lived in Hillhead. Sometimes when they were going past he came out to greet them. He didn't often speak. Usually it was just a wave and once he'd thrust a sweetie in Cassie's hand. Fran didn't like Cassie having sweets – sugar was nothing but wasted calories and think of the tooth decay – but he'd seemed so shy and eager that she'd thanked him. Then Cassie had thrust the slightly dusty striped humbug into her mouth, knowing Fran wouldn't stop her in front of the old man and Fran could hardly ask her to spit it out after he'd gone back inside.

She stopped there to look down at the water again, hoping to recreate the image she'd seen on the way to the school.

It was the colours which had caught her attention. Often the colours on the islands were subtle, olive green, mud brown, sea grey and all softened by mist. In the full sunlight of early morning, this picture was stark and vibrant.