House of Correction
with Stuart. One of them—Andy—had said she had tried to stop him from going into the yard where Stuart’s body lay. Every finger was pointing at her.Tabitha put her head on the table. After her mother had died and left her enough money to put down a deposit on a house, she had come back to Okeham on a reckless kind of whim. Now she found it hard to comprehend her decision. She hadn’t been happy there as a child or a teenager, although probably she wouldn’t have been happy anywhere. She had been a shy, stubborn and angry little girl with no siblings; an awkward, introverted, abrupt teenager who liked math and nature, who wasn’t pretty or sporty, had developed late and had had no interest in boys or fashion, more a dread of both. She hadn’t known how to get on with people; she still didn’t. Her father had died when she was barely a teenager. She’d been horribly bullied from the age of seven till thirteen or fourteen; after that, she had been largely ignored. Except by Stuart, of course. Except by Stuart. And yet she had returned to the place of her unhappiness. Why?
She had told herself it was because of the house, and certainly that was part of it. Something about its ramshackle, worn-out, low-lying charm spoke to her; it had been neglected for decades, left to sink back into the landscape, and she had wanted to rescue it. And maybe she had hoped the village would accept her as an adult and that would somehow make her childhood less sore. Since coming back, she had believed that at least she was a neutral presence—if not liked and welcomed, at least tolerated or ignored. Now, reading through all the statements, she understood that of course the village still didn’t want her. She was an outsider and an object of suspicion, even derision. She wore strange clothes and ate strange food and didn’t brush her hair or wear makeup and she swam in the sea in winter and was sometimes so sad she couldn’t talk in proper sentences. What was there to like?
Tabitha sat up and stacked all the papers together again. Her anger had gone and she felt heavy with foreboding.
Twenty-Three
When she got back to her cell, the only sign of a new occupant was a pile of clothes on Michaela’s old table. She looked around. Up on the top bunk was what looked like a bundle of blankets. Tabitha realized it was a person. She had a sudden memory of going to the zoo as a little girl. She would put her nose against the glass to see some exotic rodent and all that was visible was a slightly raised pile of straw in a corner.
“Hey,” said Tabitha.
No response.
With some trepidation, she nudged the bundle. Perhaps it was dangerous.
“I’m Tabitha. We’re sharing a cell. We’re going to have to talk sometime.”
There was a movement in the pile. The blanket was pushed back and a tiny face, bordered with curly dark hair, emerged. Tabitha almost gasped. She thought there must be some mistake. It looked like the face of a little child. The dark eyes were bloodshot. She must have been crying. Tabitha reached out toward her and then stopped.
“My name is Tabitha Hardy. What’s your name?”
“Dana.” She spoke in the voice of a small girl.
Tabitha didn’t know what she should say next. Was she meant to play the role of the experienced protector? She’d only been in Crow Grange for a few weeks. Was she meant to pass on what she remembered of Ingrid’s rules?
“Are you OK?” she said. The words sounded stupid as soon as she said them.
Dana shook her head slowly.
“I know,” said Tabitha. “I know it’s strange and horrible when you first get here. You can’t believe it. It doesn’t seem real.”
“I can’t,” said Dana, almost in a whisper. “I can’t.”
“What can’t you do?”
“I can’t be here. I just can’t.”
“How long are you here for?”
“A year.” A single violent sob shook her frame. “Why did I do it?”
Tabitha stared at the girl. Her head was pounding. “A year,” she repeated. “If you don’t get into trouble, that’s only six months.” She bit her lip, gathering her strength, pushing away her own feeling of fear like it was something solid that she must resist. “And that’s about the same amount of time that I will be here. My trial is in June.”
“What did you do?” the girl whispered and Tabitha almost smiled.
“You’re not supposed to ask,” she said, “but it’s fine. I didn’t do anything. So we will have six months together in this cell. And we will both survive. Do you hear me?”
She was speaking to herself, of course; instructing herself. Dana nodded, her child’s face swollen with weeping.
“All right,” she said. “Yes.”
Twenty-Four
Tabitha couldn’t quite believe it but there she was, sitting across from her in the visitors’ room as straight as a ramrod.
Laura Rees looked like she was dressed for church or for a cocktail party. She was wearing a white blouse with an amber woolen cardigan and an oval brooch at her throat. Her hair looked grayer. Her face was an unyielding square of set jaw and thin mouth and cold glaring eyes.
For several seconds neither of them spoke. Not a flicker of expression disturbed the granite stiffness of Laura Rees’s face.
Tabitha coughed unnecessarily. “I’m sorry about your husband.”
“How dare you?” Her voice was harsh.
“What?”
“How dare you pretend to be sorry? The nerve of it.”
“I didn’t do it,” said Tabitha.
“Is that why you wanted to see me—to protest your innocence? I should get up and walk out right now.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“I needed to look at you.”
And Laura did look at her and Tabitha looked right back, in a way that felt rare, neither one glancing away.
“I’m not going to try to persuade you,” said Tabitha. “And I’m not going to apologize.”
“You’re not going to apologize. Not for anything?”
Tabitha felt herself flush. “I was