One For Sorrow

by Sarah A. Denzil

  “You don’t need to do much,” he said. “Just hang back and make sure neither of them exchange anything. All gifts go through security, but Owen knows that. They can hug but not for too long.”

  “How long is too long?” I asked.

  “Until you start to feel uncomfortable,” Chi said with a smile.

  The visitor’s area was a glass-panelled room with tables and chairs set out in rows. The chairs were fabric armchairs, not the rigid school chairs you see in TV dramas set in prisons. I walked Isabel to the room, noting the way she fumbled with the sleeve of her hoody, visibly nervous about the visit. Her face was paler than usual, but she had made more of an effort, washing and drying her hair, and wearing a blue-coloured top that suited her much better than the grey outfits she usually wore.

  “Since he turned eighteen he’s come every week,” she said. “But Mum and Dad stopped coming a long while ago.”

  I didn’t reply. It wasn’t my place to comment on her family dynamic. If we’d had more time I might have asked her if that was upsetting, or if she was okay with it, but we were close to the room, and, anyway, I wasn’t her psychologist.

  There were a few visitors in the room that day, but Owen sat closest to the door, with shirt sleeves rolled up, and his elbows on his knees. The fact that he was one year older than Tom gave me a jolt when I saw him. He was a boy, and I hadn’t prepared myself for that. Isabel was three years older than the boy sitting on a green fabric armchair in a high-security hospital, and Maisie Earnshaw had been six years old when she was murdered.

  To my surprise, Owen stood and shook my hand.

  “You must be Leah,” he said.

  I was taken aback, but I smiled and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Owen.”

  “If you’re confused, Isabel and I talk on the phone every Thursday. She mentioned that she had a new nurse.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I hope Isabel has told you nice things.”

  “Of course,” Isabel said. “She’s my dove. And for you, little brother, a magpie.” Isabel handed him the black and white watercolour.

  “Unpredictable and deceitful. Are you trying to tell me something, big sis?”

  “They’re survivors,” Isabel said. “Just like you.”

  I took Chi’s advice and stayed at the back of the room during the visit, watching as Isabel leaned towards her brother, talking quietly. I’d witnessed a few visitations at Whitmore, and they were usually either uninteresting or heart-breaking. The family visitations were the worst, when you saw young children acclimatised to visiting high-security buildings, whether in a hospital or a prison. Some patients often flit between the two, staying in the hospital for a few years, then going into prison for a while, and coming back when they decided to hurt themselves in prison. On and on went the cycle, and all the while their sons and daughters were growing up around it all.

  But I tried not to judge. I tried.

  As I leaned against the wall, I heard very little of their conversation. Isabel asked about their parents and Owen answered but changed the subject quickly. He told her about his nights out, about drinking too much and suffering hangovers. He was rarely animated or showed much emotion, whereas Isabel was the one leaning in, touching him on the arm or hand, smiling warmly. Owen almost seemed disinterested.

  For a brief moment I closed my eyes, and a headline popped into my head: Child Killer Covered in Blood as Young Brother Watched. What must Owen have been through that day? Had he forgiven his sister? Why did he visit her? Out of duty, or another reason? I closed my mind to the thoughts rattling through it. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to dwell on them. But I was sure I wasn’t the first of Isabel’s nurses to think the very same thing.

  At the end of the day, it wasn’t my business. I was there to monitor, nothing else.

  As the visit was wrapping up, I gave the security guard Isabel’s watercolour of the magpie so that he could return it to Owen after it had been checked. There’s not much you can hide in a piece of paper with a bird painted on it, but Chi had told me to put it through security, and I knew how important these rules were. As he was leaving, Owen gave Isabel a brief hug before saying goodbye to me and walking out. He had a stiff gait with a straight back, not at all like the slouching way Tom walked around. Owen was the antithesis of Tom: tall, slim, handsome, and confident. All the things I would wish for my little brother. But I would not have Tom change places with Owen Fielding, not for anything.

  After the visit I ducked outside for a quick cigarette break, only to be joined by Alfie again. He leaned casually against the bricks with one foot on the wall, smoking his cigarette with his hand cupped, as though ready to hide his habit should he need to. I’d noticed many men over the age of fifty smoking in the same way, influenced by the way James Dean and Marlon Brando would sneak a cigarette around the disapproving older generation in their coming-of-age films. Alfie had that air to him, as though he was from a different time. I was beginning to find his presence a comfort, even though his stories about Crowmont left me reeling.

  “Here’s another one—the Monster of York. Ever heard of him?”

  I shook my head.

  “It was 1892 when it started. There was a workhouse in York full of little orphan kids with no home or money, living hand to hand and plate to plate. No one noticed when they started to go missing, but one day, a little boy from a wealthy family was taken and the police started a search. What they found was a foot. And later on, they found a finger. Then they started finding more body parts, all of them small, all of them from children. All of them from different children.”

  I felt a tingle of nerves work its way down my arms, anticipating the horror that would unfurl during the story. I sucked on my cigarette to calm myself, wondering whether to ask him to stop telling me these tales of murder. Then I realised I didn’t want to tell him to stop. I wanted to know more.

  “It was a butcher’s son,” Alfie continued. “Twenty, he was. The boy wasn’t of sound mind, but his father had always thought he was a gentle simpleton. I guess you could say he was the village idiot in them days—not PC to say it now, though, is it? The police found him leaning over a teddy bear he’d taken from one of the children, whispering how God had made him do it. The children were unworthy and had to be a sacrifice. Unworthy children, can you imagine?”

  I shook my head, shivering, skin prickling.

  “What I want to know is: Who was God in this sorry tale? That boy had a father, right? What if God wasn’t God, what if it was his father?” Alfie grinned.

  I’d had enough for the day. I ground my cigarette into the wall and went back to work.

  True Crime Junkie

  Who is Owen Fielding?

  By James Gorden

  A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about Isabel Fielding and whether she really did murder Maisie Earnshaw. It got more hits than all of my other posts put together. Some of you even left some insightful comments. Some of you left some frankly disturbing comments, but let’s pretend that didn’t happen, shall we? I know I will.

  Owen Fielding is now eighteen years old and still lives with his parents. He is studying his A-levels at Sheffield College, apparently. According to my sources he’s studying business studies, maths, and French. Sounds like he’s being prepped to take over Daddy’s business.

  Now, in my last blog post I mentioned that Owen Fielding was a gifted young lad who stood out among his peers. Well, these days I have a secret source, someone close to Owen who shall remain nameless. This person tells me that Owen isn’t acing his A-levels. Not even close. He’s getting Cs and Ds. That’s not what we expect from a child genius, is it? Could it be the trauma of watching his sister kill a kid without even shouting out for help? Or could it be another reason? Maybe Owen doesn’t want to be the best in the school anymore. Maybe he wants to be middle-of-the-road like his darling sister. One thing we do know is that Owen visits Isabel in Crowmont Hospital regularly. Isn’t that an odd thing to do? She is a convicted murder
er, after all.

  Either Owen is a pretty forgiving fella, or he doesn’t care about what Isabel did when she was fourteen. Perhaps he’s a young lad falling apart at the seams, going out drinking instead of studying, self-medicating his guilt away. Perhaps there’s something more to all this. Perhaps he idolises his sister for what she did. Perhaps… Perhaps…

  COMMENTS:

  TrueCrimeLover: You’re bang on, James. Owen is suspicious AF. Why didn’t he scream? Why didn’t he stop his sister? Why was there blood on his clothes? He’s not the innocent little kid people think he is.

  OhioMom: James Gorden you should be ashamed. Leave the boy alone.

  James Gorden: What do you even care? This didn’t happen in America. It happened here.

  OhioMom: We heard about the case here too. It’s horrible what you’re doing.

  James Gorden: What? Trying to uncover the truth?

  RedRose: It’s a conspiracy. All the adults were in on it. Don’t you know about the paedophile ring the Fieldings were running? Check the missing person’s reports. They have a satanic basement for ritual killings, I guarantee it. The Fieldings were playing a sick game getting the children to commit murder. They framed their own kids!!

  Chapter Seven

  Outside of work, my focus was on the new house. At the weekend, Tom and I went into Hutton and bought a couple of cans of white paint. We painted over some of the dark mould that had crept around the windows in my room. We bought a cheap clothes rail and hung our belongings on it, pretending we were cool and arty, not poor. It was Scandi-chic and minimalist, not because we couldn’t afford wardrobes. I made batches of chili con carne to heat up in the week, and a large pasta bake to get us through to Monday. We weeded some of the garden, and I untangled the lawn chair from the weeds so I could move it around at night. I stocked up on tins in the kitchen and bought a cheap box of wine for the week.

  We were almost out of the meagre amount of money our parents had left us. But I had a couple of weeks until my first month’s pay at Crowmont, and I knew we could make it last as long as we were sensible.

  Tom only ever asked me about work when I asked him about school. I think it was to prove a point. He was as terse as ever when it came to opening up about school, and I wasn’t much better about my job. I would often come home exhausted, especially if I’d been asked to help with a difficult patient. There were times when I was needed to help restrain someone, and that was never easy.

  My little brother was withdrawn and quiet, even more than usual. Weekday evenings were mostly spent apart, with him disappearing into his room, and me occasionally attempting to bribe him with cups of tea to get him to let me in. Every now and then he did, and I sat on the edge of his bed with my tea, dunking a chocolate digestive into the light brown liquid as I watched him play some online game about orcs and elves.

  I’d been a teenager once, not all that long ago, and yet I failed to find the words to reach him. At least during the weekends he was more open. We painted the walls together, we weeded together, we walked the farm fields together, and went to the Braithwaite’s farm-shop to buy fresh eggs and milk. All the time I found myself growing accustomed to this new rural life. There was air here, and it fed the soul. There was space, an abundance of space, that made me feel insignificant, and yet larger somehow. Even after a mere few weeks I felt more strength in my arms and legs than I had for a while. All the weeding, walking, and painting had paid off, and I was leaner and happier than I had been for a while.

  But there was an itch deep down that I couldn’t scratch with long walks in the countryside, or fresh air, or time with my little brother. It festered deep within my intestines, like a tapeworm, nibbling at my insides. I wanted to scratch it so bad, and I had hoped with all my heart that this change of location would have dealt with this pesky sense of unease. But the feeling persisted, despite my attempts to ignore it.

  The temperature dropped again that weekend, and the heating in the house gave up. While we were waiting for one of the Braithwaites to come and fix the problem, we had a couple of cold nights in the cottage. I wore long johns and long-sleeved t-shirts to bed, but I found myself awake at night, listening to the owls. Later in the night, the owl calls gave out to the slow patter of rain on the window, leaving tracks down the dirty pane of glass. I turned on my lamp and watched the tracks as they travelled down the panelled windows. As I watched, my eyes began to droop, and I thought for a moment that the rain was running up the window instead of down. I blinked, and it went away.

  And then I fell asleep.

  I woke up to Tom placing a mug next to my head.

  “You’re going to be late,” he remarked.

  When I opened my eyes, I realised I wasn’t in my bedroom because the sunlight was coming from the wrong direction. My face was resting on a hard surface—the kitchen table—which I was slumped over as though I’d passed out. My laptop was a few inches away from my head, still open but now sleeping. I lifted my body and wiggled my finger across the mousepad to wake it and check the time. It was almost seven.

  “How did I end up down here?” I mumbled, my mouth dry and my jaw stiff from the long sleep on such a hard surface.

  “God knows. Were you drinking wine again?”

  I didn’t remember drinking any wine.

  “What were you researching? The Monster of York? Sounds, well, creepy.”

  I barely glanced at the screen before closing down the laptop and getting to my feet. “I need to shower.”

  “Take your tea,” Tom called after me.

  I spun back and picked it up.

  *

  On the way to Crowmont I couldn’t stop thinking about my strange night-time behaviour. This was the second time I’d woken up on the kitchen table instead of where I’d drifted to sleep. Was there something wrong with me? Why would I start sleepwalking now of all times?

  I remained distracted as Ian let me through the gates and into the compound of the hospital. I parked up, grabbed my pass, and let myself into Morton Ward. With my phone and other items dumped into my locker, I started my shift.

  There was group therapy on throughout the day, so I ended up spending a lot of time watching Isabel as she worked on her art in her room. We’d talked a little over the last week, mainly about Pepsi and how he was learning to “talk” on command, and how she could call his name from the door leading into the garden and he’d swoop over to find her shoulder. We’d talked a little about how her visits from her brother brightened her week, but we’d not mentioned her parents. Today we discussed her art therapy sessions and about the other patients. I had a headache, and I was quieter than usual, which Isabel noticed immediately.

  “You didn’t sleep,” she said. I found it odd that she came out with a statement rather than a question. Most people would ask if I hadn’t slept, but not Isabel. She knew. She paused, looked up from her art, and smiled. “Don’t look so surprised. Of all the people you know in this world, am I not the most likely to have sleepless nights?”

  It was the first time she’d referenced her crime, however abstractly, since we’d walked in the garden and she’d showed me Pepsi for the first time.

  “Is there something wrong?” she asked.

  “No, not at all. I’m adjusting to a new place and a new house, that’s all it is.” I ignored the persistent itch that said otherwise.

  “Your eyes can’t stay still,” she remarked. “It’s very peculiar.”

  I hadn’t realised I was letting my gaze roam around the room. Perhaps it was because my mind felt fractured, or maybe I was drawn to the vibrant colours. “Your art can be quite distracting sometimes.”

  “I find it distracting,” she said. “It’s a distraction from being in here. Give me another distraction. Tell me about your new house.”

  “Well,” I said, proceeding with caution. “It’s an old cottage that needs a bit of love and care. We… I recently repainted some of the rooms to get rid of the mould—”

  “We? You liv
e with a boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  Isabel placed her pencil down on the desk and straightened her spine. “You have a housemate?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a moment of silence as the lie hung in the air. Isabel’s gaze never moved from mine. Could she tell that I was lying? Was she sitting there wondering why I was lying to her? I couldn’t be sure, but she seemed to let the subject drop.

  “Do you have a garden?”

  “Yes, but it’s very overgrown with weeds. I’ve been weeding it recently, trying to get it in order, but the grass is very high and there’s a feral cat living in the bush—”

  Her eyes lit up. “A cat, how exciting! I asked Chi for a kitten once, but he said no. In fact, I think he said ‘Hell, no!’” She pouted in a comical fashion before picking up her pencil. “What have you called the cat?”

  “Nothing yet. He’s wild, so…”

  “Call him…” She lifted her chin as though contemplating names. “Pye. P-Y-E.”

  “Where did you come up with that?”

  “It’s another name for a magpie. That way we both have a pet magpie.”

  “All right then, the feral cat shall now be known as Pye.”

  She nodded and returned to her work. “And there you are, living in your cottage with your housemate and Pye the cat. What could be more wonderful?”

  I nodded in agreement, feeling much better, with my headache finally beginning to fade.

  But then I heard her say, “And here I am trapped like a bug under a jam jar, a human being treated like an animal in the zoo, dosed up on drugs and isolated from the world. They should kill me. They should put me out of my misery.”

  “Isabel, don’t say that!”

  Her head jerked up. “Say what? That your life is wonderful? I think it is.”