Ann Cleeves - The Moth Catcher

Rose worked in the kitchen and was already getting dressed. Lizzie lay in bed and watched. Not in a voyeuristic way. Rose always turned her back to the others and scrabbled into her underwear to maintain an illusion of privacy. Lizzie never bothered with that stuff. She didn’t mind the others seeing her body. She knew she was fit. She’d never had kids, didn’t have stretch-marks or flabby tits. Before she headed out to work, Rose bent and kissed Lizzie on the cheek. The gesture was so unexpected that Lizzie sat up, startled.

‘I won’t see you again before you leave.’ Rose was whispering. The cousins were still sleeping. Nothing woke them.

‘I’ll be at breakfast.’

‘But everyone’s there. It’s not the same.’

Lizzie climbed out of bed and they hugged. Lizzie wasn’t usually into casual physical contact, felt it like insects crawling over her skin, but Rose had looked after her inside. Taken care of her when the first few days had been a nightmare. Lizzie could see how she’d have been gentle with the old folk in the home, thought it was a shame Rose would never get to do that sort of work again.

In the canteen everyone wanted to come and say goodbye. Queuing at the counter for breakfast, Lizzie found herself almost in tears. Wondering what was making her so upset about leaving, she decided it was because people weren’t on her case all the time here. If you followed the rules they let you get on with things. There was none of that prodding and prying she’d got from her mother. The meddling with her head. The wringing of the hands. How are you, Lizzie? How can we help? What did we do wrong? Perhaps things would have been different if there’d been other kids for her mother to mither over. If her mother had been younger when Lizzie had been born. If her mother had been more careless in living her own life. More selfish. That would have been easier to handle.

When breakfast was over, one of the officers came to find her. There was a procedure for getting out of here. More rules. In her room she got into her own clothes and put her other few belongings into a black bag. Then she went to the governor’s office for the exit interview.

The governor was a very tall woman with a long neck that seemed to curve like a swan’s. She always wore blue. Today it was a blue mid-calf skirt in soft wool and a cashmere sweater that was almost grey. A string of pearls round her neck. She could have belonged to the place when it was a grand house.

‘So, Elizabeth, you’re on your way. I hope you’ve learned something from your stay here.’ She had a very deep voice with an accent that Lizzie had never been able to place. Scottish? Irish?

‘Yes, thank you.’ This was what the woman expected, but Lizzie thought it was true.

‘These days we do our best, you know.’ The woman stared out of the window. A cloud of rooks was blown by a sudden gusty breeze. ‘We hope all our women take something from the experience of being at Sittingwell.’ Then she was on her feet and holding out her hand for Lizzie to shake it. She might have been the headmistress of an exclusive private school. ‘Good luck.’

Lizzie picked up the bin bag and left the room. At the end of the corridor she saw that her mother was looking out for her.

Annie Redhead had sat in her car outside the prison waiting for her daughter to be released. She’d arrived early. For a while she listened to the news on the radio, then there was an item about the killings in Gilswick and she switched it off. She couldn’t bear to hear about that. The police had stopped reporters coming all the way up the valley, but they were camping out in the village, bothering anyone who went into the shop or the pub. When she’d driven past the church they’d been there too, waiting for parishioners who were starting to make their way inside. Janet said she’d bumped into a journalist on the hill when she’d been out walking Dipper and Wren, but he was frightened of dogs and had run away when they started barking at him.

‘They’re just cowards,’ Janet had said, her bright eyes like sparks because she was so angry. ‘Parasites feeding off other people’s grief.’

Annie had asked Sam if he’d like to come with her to Sittingwell, but he’d decided against it. ‘Best not to crowd her right at the start. She won’t want a welcome party or a lot of fuss.’ Annie had almost said, ‘I’d like you there. I don’t want to face her on my own. Please come with me.’ But she’d never been very good at making demands of Sam. She was too passive. Perhaps that was a mistake and he’d realize more that she loved him, and depended on him, if she asked more of him.

At last it was time to go inside. A cheerful officer said Lizzie was just with the governor and wouldn’t be long. ‘How are you planning to celebrate? A big Sunday lunch?’

Annie smiled and said her husband would be in the kitchen now, preparing something special. Then she thought of the woman Lizzie had scarred with the bottle in the bar in Kimmerston. She hadn’t appeared in court, because Lizzie had pleaded guilty. Annie didn’t suppose that woman would be celebrating today, if she’d been told that Lizzie was being released. Her family wouldn’t be sitting down to a celebratory Sunday meal.

Then suddenly Lizzie appeared, as if from nowhere, walking down the corridor towards Annie and it was just as she’d imagined. Except that, as she got closer, Lizzie’s face didn’t light up. It was closed and blank, as it had always been. She just nodded at Annie, called goodbye to the officer at the desk and walked out of the big arched door ahead of her mother.

The weather had changed overnight, and when they emerged into the garden there was a sudden rainstorm that caught them unawares and sent them running for the car. Annie found herself giggling – the result of tension, and because she thought they must look ridiculous. She was still dressed for the heatwave in a light chiffon frock and sandals. She imagined the women watching from the long windows. Lizzie joined in with the laughter and for a moment they stood together on the gravel, their faces turned to the rain, not moving. Then Annie found her keys and they tumbled into the car, both of them drenched.

Annie drove for a while without speaking. She knew she made Lizzie feel hemmed in; it would probably be best to stay cool and keep an emotional distance. She wished she could ask Lizzie what she wanted from her mother, but Lizzie hated those in-depth conversations. They’d tried family therapy once, and Lizzie had taken the piss throughout. So Annie drove out of the gate into the road without a word. Lizzie glanced back at the prison as they pulled away and then stared in front of her.

Another burst of rain spattered the windscreen.

‘Have they found the killer yet?’ The question from Lizzie came suddenly, but Annie had the impression it had been on her mind from the moment she left the prison.

‘No.’ Annie paused. ‘There’s been another death in the valley. Did you hear about that?’ She thought there must have been rumours. Shirley Hewarth would have been a regular visitor at the prison. Surely the officers would have talked.

‘No.’ Lizzie turned to face her mother. They were stopped at traffic lights and Annie glanced back. Her daughter looked very pale in the strange thundery light. ‘Who?’

‘Shirley Hewarth, the woman who came to visit you.’

A silence, broken by the swish of windscreen wipers, regular as a metronome.

No response from Lizzie. Her face was quite blank and closed again.

‘She seemed a lovely woman,’ Annie said. Then: ‘I was there when Janet O’Kane found her body. She screamed. We were in the Lucas house, and we all ran out to look.’