Ann Cleeves - The Moth Catcher

Left alone in this part of the house, Annie looked around. This was by far the grandest home of the development. She wouldn’t want to live here. She thought Nigel had furnished to impress rather than because he liked each of the items. Another sign that he lacked confidence, she thought. He’d obviously been terrific at running a business because he was minted, but once he’d given that up he didn’t have anything to define him. A bit like Sam, who still baked bread in their tiny galley kitchen. She did love some of the paintings, though. There was a tiny one of a door leading through a wall into a garden. It held the promise of adventure. Once you walked through the door anything might happen. She’d stood up to get a closer look when Nigel came back with the coffee.

‘That’s one of Lorraine’s,’ he said. ‘I tell her she should sell them.’

‘I’d buy this!’

‘You can have it.’ Lorraine had been following and Annie hadn’t noticed. ‘As a present, of course.’

‘Oh no, I wasn’t hinting.’

But the watercolour was taken from the wall and Annie sat with it beside her, feeling awkward, but still delighted to have it in her grasp.

‘I’ve come to tell you that we won’t be having drinks at ours next Friday.’ Pause. Big breath. ‘Lizzie’s coming out of prison this weekend. We’ll want her to ourselves for a bit.’

Lorraine was still standing, holding a mug in both hands. ‘She’s coming to live with you?’

‘Of course she will be.’ This was Nigel, hearty and kind. ‘And of course we understand, don’t we, Lorrie? We wouldn’t want to intrude on your first couple of weeks together. It’ll be very special for you all. We’ve never had kiddies, but we can see how important it must be for you and Sam to be a family again.’

‘Thank you.’ Annie realized she was close to crying. She looked at Lorraine, expecting something more from her too. She’d thought that Lorraine, with her arty clothes and her easy laughter, would be the least fazed to hear that a convicted criminal would be moving in next door. But Lorraine said nothing. She drank her coffee with her eyes half-closed as if the taste and the smell of it were the most important things in the world. Annie wondered if her friend might once have been the victim of a crime. That might explain her wariness. She saw that it wouldn’t be so easy to forgive, if you were the person who’d been scarred after a drunken encounter in a bar. Annie had never heard what had happened to Lizzie’s victim and didn’t like to think about that.

The silence stretched and grew uneasy. At last Lorraine set her coffee mug on a slate coaster on the table. ‘Aren’t you a bit nervous? About Lizzie offending again? I mean, when she’s living with you.’

Annie remembered then that Lorraine had run art classes for people in trouble. Of course she wouldn’t necessarily have a rosy opinion of offenders. All the same, Lorraine seemed so upset that Annie wondered if she’d had a more personal encounter with crime.

‘We’ll get help.’ Annie realized her voice was a bit desperate. ‘She’ll have a probation officer and a woman from Hope North-East, a charity, will be visiting. We won’t have to do it all ourselves.’

‘I’m sure you’ll be fine.’ Lorraine seemed to have recovered her composure. She smiled. ‘With you and Sam to support her, what could possibly go wrong?’

Lizzie Redhead lay in bed. Her head was exploding with the prospect of leaving prison. The space beyond this place seemed to stretch forever. Scary, and dizzying with its possibilities. Plans fizzed and jolted like she was wired to a power supply. She knew she wouldn’t sleep at all. It was because she was so freaked out, and she was frightened of the dreams that seeped into her mind when she was half-awake. Sodding Jason Crow. You won’t leave me alone even here.

She shared her room with three other women. There was one set of bunks and two single beds. All with flowery duvets, as if pretty linen could turn them into civilized people, good wives and mothers. Lizzie had a bed, the one closest to the window, which was an odd shape because it had been cut in half when the grand house had been turned into an institution and extra partition walls had been built. Outside there was a big tree. When Lizzie had first come to Sittingwell it had been bare and when the wind blew the branches creaked, making her think of an old-fashioned ship in a storm. In moonlight the tree threw strange shapes on the ceiling. It was as if outside had come into the prison.

Now the women were all asking her what she’d do when she first got out. Two were recent arrivals and she hadn’t got to know them well, so she ignored their suggestions.

‘You’ll go into toon, man. A night on the lash. That club in the Bigg Market, where they do cocktails. A lass like you will pull a fit bloke in seconds.’ The two were cousins and had been charged together with a series of thefts from stores. After so many convictions the court had described prison as the only option left, even though they both had babies. The kids were being cared for by grandparents. Lizzie had seen them at visiting time.

The cousins went on to throw out a menu of drinks that they’d go for, when they got let out: lethal cocktails that got crazier and crazier. Lizzie thought she’d moved beyond that. There was more to life than getting pissed. Prison had given her a different perspective. Her world was bigger. She lay on her bed and pulled the curtain aside to see the stars. An owl called somewhere in the garden, and immediately Lizzie was back in the place where she’d lived as a child. The valley at Gilswick. Then it had seemed to her a community of old people. A strict social hierarchy, with the major in the Hall at the top. The only other kids had lived at the big house. Lizzie had been at school with them, until they’d been sent off to private prep schools. She hadn’t thought much of Catherine, who’d been dainty and girly, but she’d got on okay with Nicholas. He hadn’t boarded until he was older and she’d still played with him at weekends. They’d built dens in the woods and dammed the burn. It should have been idyllic, but it had never been enough for her. She’d still been bored.

The cousins saw that she wasn’t listening to their plans for a big night out and they shut up. The other room-mate was older. She had school-age kids. She’d worked in a care home and had started nicking things from the old people. Money and jewellery. In one room she’d found a credit card, the PIN jotted down on a scrap of paper in the same drawer. The man she’d stolen from had been dying. ‘He wasn’t going to use it, was he?’ Rose had said. ‘And his relatives never visited, and they only lived south of the river. Why did they have more right to his cash than me? I wiped his bum and washed his face. I made him smile.’

Lizzie hadn’t had an answer to that. She wondered whether she’d visit her parents if they didn’t recognize her any more.

The room fell quiet then, so she supposed the others were sleeping. She started thinking about Shirley Hewarth. When they’d first met, Lizzie had thought Shirley was as tough as her. There was something steely about her, a refusal to be conned. Lizzie had tried to lie about the offence and her relationship with Jason, and Shirley had tilted her head to one side and said, ‘Well, I don’t think that’s entirely true, is it?’ She’d peeled back Lizzie’s pretences until Lizzie felt raw, exposed. She’d found herself confiding in Shirley. Making herself vulnerable. She hadn’t even allowed herself that luxury with Jason.

Now Lizzie wasn’t sure that Shirley was as hard as she seemed. They might share the same secret, but they had different interests. The thought worried her. It was one of the reasons she was scared about leaving prison: that Shirley might land her in the shit, big time.