The Confession of Stella Moon

by Shelley Day

  Stella is shining the torch into the suitcase and rummaging about in the bottom. At least the hut’s still here. God knows what it’s like inside. Gareth should go back now, but he might as well have a look inside since he’s come all this way. It’s wild up here with the wind and the sea crashing. Gareth can hardly hear himself think. It must have been a bit like this on That Night.

  ‘The keys are here somewhere,’ Stella shouts against the sound of the wind.

  ‘Your life in a bag,’ Gareth says. He doesn’t know why he is making these inane remarks.

  Stella looks at him. ‘Actually, Gareth, I do have my whole life in this bag.’

  He shouldn’t be making fun of her. He didn’t mean it that way. It just came out. She takes things the wrong way.

  Stella starts rummaging again. She’s pulled some stuff out of the suitcase and is holding it under her chin. Gareth waits, looks out across the sea, can’t see much, just a vast expanse of black. The bright beam of a lighthouse scoops every now and then around the bay. Must be the one on the Farnes. Gareth’s eyes drift to the south end of the bay. He can’t help looking over there to where It happened. The ruin of Dunstanburgh Castle, visible in the moonlight like a rotten old tooth, the long high cliff where the ruin sits. He must be an idiot, bringing Stella here. How can he expect her to stay in this place by herself? How can he expect her to get better here?

  ‘Ah, at last,’ Stella says, fishing out the bunch of keys from the suitcase. ‘I knew I had them somewhere. Shine the light on the lock, will you, Gareth?’

  She hands him the torch, unlocks the door and it creaks wonkily open.

  ‘After you,’ Gareth says, shining the torch in front of her.

  ‘Can you go first?’ Stella stands aside.

  ‘Alright. I can go first. I don’t mind.’

  She’s making him do that man or mouse thing again. But Gareth’s got no problem with that, he’s just doing his job. He steps inside, Stella following with both hands clasping onto the back of his jacket. She’s almost breathing onto his neck like she did in the car. Gareth flashes the torchlight around the room. It looks just like she’d described it in the Statement: all mess and chaos – even the smell’s still there.

  ‘God, talk about a stink,’ Gareth says, taking a further step inside.

  Still holding onto his jacket, Stella wedges the door open with an old newspaper.

  ‘Nobody’s been here for…em…for seven years,’ Stella says, ‘or I don’t think they have. This is how it was, the last time.’

  Gareth wishes she’d stop hanging on to his jacket like that. It’s making him feel trapped. That, and the smell. Those stuffed creatures. Their goggly glass eyes dropped everywhere and rolling around on the filthy floor. Those nameless specimens in jars. No wonder the girl’s weird.

  ‘That smell’s in the rugs. Soaked into the floorboards. You’d think after all that time it’d be gone.’

  She’s got hold of Gareth’s sleeve now. She’s physical, this one, too physical. She keeps peering into his face. Gareth takes a step away from her so she has to let go of his arm.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ he says, ‘I’m just trying to take it all in. Place smells damp to me, like you’d expect a closed-up place to smell – damp, dust, cobwebs. And chemicals. I’d open the windows if I were you, if you’re gonna stay here. Can’t be good for you, breathing that stuff in.’

  ‘The paraffin lamps should be in the kitchen. Let’s get them. Have some light. Cheer the place up? Eh, Gareth?’

  She’s acting like a kid on a camping holiday. If she lights a match, the whole place will probably go up.

  Gareth shrugs. ‘If I were you, I’d air the place a bit first,’ he says. ‘Anyway, I’d better be off. I’ve got work tomorrow. Today, rather. It’s tomorrow already!’

  Gareth watches Stella stepping over broken glass, picking her way among the mess towards the kitchen. He stays put. But before long she’s shrieking, shouting for him to come. When he gets to the kitchen she is standing, staring at the middle of the kitchen floor.

  ‘What’s up?’ says Gareth, ‘What’s wrong?’

  Stella is shining the torch around on the floor.

  ‘Someone’s been here,’ she says. ‘There should be a hole there. In the kitchen floor. There was a hole there, the day Muriel died. It was there. Somebody’s been here and filled it all in.’

  Gareth doesn’t understand the significance of what she is saying. There was a hole in the kitchen floor. Someone’s filled it in. So what? It’s time Gareth was making tracks. He wants to get away from here. Stella Moon is giving him that claustrophobia thing again. Get back to Newcastle, Gareth. Get back to your nice normal flat. Get back to your nice normal life. Try to get a bit of kip in before you have to get up for work. This is not a normal place. Neither was the boarding house. Stella Moon is not a normal person.

  ‘Don’t go. Not just yet,’ Stella says in that silly little voice she can put on.

  She’s a killer, she’s a defenceless little waif. So skinny she could snap in two. She wants him to stay. He half wants to stay. She needs taking care of. He wants to take care of her. Knight in shining armour. Gareth to the rescue. He’s done his job already, done more than his job – way beyond already – way beyond the boundary, beyond the limits of duty.

  Now she’s confusing him more by changing her mind. ‘I’m sorry,’ she’s saying. ‘It’s getting light. You’d better be getting back. Sort your cases out.’

  ‘You’ll be alright by yourself?’ he asks. Stella nods. ‘No more repeats of last night’s antics?’

  ‘That’s hardly likely to happen here now, is it?’

  Gareth shrugs. ‘If you say so.’

  With Stella Moon, Gareth has no idea what’s likely to happen and what’s not likely to happen. She has a thick wall around her, this girl, harbouring hell knows what. It’s not Gareth’s place to pry. Here’s his chance to be free of her. Take it, Gareth, take it while you still can.

  ‘I’ll be alright,’ she says.

  He believes it. He wants to believe it. She will be alright. He has to believe it. She wants him to leave. He’ll go. She’s a client, not a friend.

  ‘Thanks, Gareth,’ Stella says. She kisses him lightly on the cheek at the door. Gareth feels the coarseness of her hair against his face, the musky smell of her, the warmth of her body close to his. She does mean for him to go. ‘I’m really grateful for what you’ve done.’

  She’s grateful, that’s it.

  ‘Just doing my job,’ Gareth smiles.

  ‘Sure you can you find your way back?’ Stella has already sat back down by the paraffin stove. She’s leaning forward towards it, warming her hands, talking over her shoulder to Gareth without turning round.

  Gareth nods. ‘I’ll find it. But I’d better have the torch.’

  ‘It’s there. By the door.’

  ‘You won’t need it?’

  ‘You take it.’

  ‘Bye, Stella.’

  ‘Bye, Gareth.’

  Chapter Thirty

  So that was the second time that Gareth had been itching to get away from Stella, and she could hardly blame him.

  Stella looks around at the terrible mess of the place and goes round, banging all the windows open, trying to get rid of the stink. She’s more glad than not glad that Gareth’s gone: he’s not a calming influence with the way he stands in judgement – probably saying the opposite of what’s going on in his head, and the annoying way he trots out platitudes. Marcia had warned Stella about social-work speak, which she knew from her own training. The difference with Marcia was she could see behind the slogans. Marcia, unlike Gareth seemingly, could see the person as separate from the crime. Anyway, Gareth’s gone now and Stella’s glad because she needs to think and she can’t think when he’s there. He takes up too much space.

  Nothing’s working out
like it was supposed to. Marcia did warn Stella about that also – the precariousness of plans. But, as with many bits of Marcia’s good advice, Stella has failed to take much notice. She’s never been very good at taking things in when terror blurs the edges.

  Learning curve, Stella. Blundering forth into the unknown is not a strategy that works in all, or even any, circumstances.

  Mistakes and challenges aside, Stella feels strangely light-hearted now she’s away from the Boarding House, now Gareth’s gone, now she’s alone in the Beach Hut. She feels strangely unburdened, even though it’s the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere and winter is setting in. Muriel and her weird obsessions with preserving things are more present than they ever were when she was alive, but Stella doesn’t even mind that: in fact, all that is an odd kind of comfort, even as Stella knows she is facing difficulties. Nothing can be as bad as those things she has already survived. She’s scarred, yes, but her spirit is not broken.

  That hole in the floor, and the fact that it’s been filled in – evidently recently, judging by the dampness of the sandy earth round the edges of the kitchen – what does all that mean? The hole was there the day Muriel died, Stella remembers it.

  The day Muriel died. Which was the last time Stella – or anyone? – was at the Beach Hut. Which means, not Grandma Willoughby, surely. She’d have found the climb up the dune path impossible now. So that only leaves Frank Fanshaw, with whatever agenda he’s pursuing. It’s Frank who must have been here and, for whatever reason, he’s filled the hole in. Which means, if he’s been here so recently, he could still be close by.

  Stella looks about for some sign of Frank, but sees nothing immediately. Certainly he hasn’t cleared up anything on the main room floor. Then Stella notices the newspapers, a small pile of them by the stove. She picks one up. And another. They are dated the day before. So he was here yesterday. So possibly still here today. The papers are all folded in such a way that the pictures of Stella are showing. For a moment her heart drops into the pit of her stomach, then it starts to thump with a hard, irregular thump. Stella feels heat and nausea spreading through her body.

  She sits down beside the paraffin lamp and tries to see what the papers are saying. There are various versions of her photograph and various versions of her story, all a bit different but all quoting the same source, the intrepid reporter, Daniel Macalinden.

  Macalinden. Yes, Stella remembers him. She remembers him trying to get to the bottom of the abduction of Baby Keating. Then it was him again, when Muriel died – he took up Muriel’s story. He knew nothing about Muriel, but he saw fit to write her story, like she was some unfortunate victim of a vicious, evil, devil daughter. Macalinden knew nothing about Stella, but he saw fit to comment on every aspect of her life. So all that was about to start again.

  Stella poured over the papers until the paraffin light flickered too dim to see anything. She didn’t know how long she’d sat there, trying to make sense of what she was reading, trying to remember, trying to fit the pieces together. And there, in the loneliness of the Beach Hut, as the orange ball of autumn sun appeared on the eastern horizon, the full horror of her situation began to dawn on Stella.

  The whole sad business that had been her life, the horrible reality of the killings, it all returns to Stella, it rises up and punches her in the gut.

  Stella has killed before.

  The baby. Hedy Keating’s baby.

  Stella killed Hedy Keating’s baby.

  Stella has killed not once, but twice.

  And Frank Fanshaw knows. And he knows the newspaper man is, right this moment, determined to dig out the truth. Macalinden must be searching right now for Stella, and for Frank, for Grandma Willoughby and Hedy Keating.

  Stella resolves there and then to turn herself in. She has no choice. She’d thought she’d paid her dues, she’d believed she could put the past behind her and restart her life. But no, she sees now, that’s not possible. Instead, a closely-guarded family secret has caught Stella up. What a fool she was to think all that was past and gone. It’s cracked open the world as Stella knew it, and revealed a reality, a darker and more horrible one than she ever could have thought possible. No wonder she’d buried the memory all this time.

  Stella will turn herself in. It’s the only way. She’ll face up once and for all to the crimes she has committed.

  But Frank won’t want her to do that, Stella realises. Because he buried the baby’s body. Which makes him an accessory. That’s why he wants to stop her. Self protection will be Frank Fanshaw’s priority, as it always was. Frank will stop at nothing. Stella is in danger. Frank could walk through that door at any moment, determined to silence her.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  He’d been a bit funny to start with but, in the end, Geoff had been alright about Gareth taking over the Moon file, said he trusted him and all that. Gareth hadn’t actually mentioned the Case Study plan. He would do that later, once he’s proved himself by getting Stella back on track. Gareth wants to present it – obviously – as a case study of success. He’s been thinking a successful MSc could lead on to a PhD and, in point of fact, he quite fancies his career taking an academic turn. He can’t see himself being forever fulfilled in probation. It’s nice to think that Stella’s going to have a place in helping Gareth with his career, a sort of payback for all he’s doing for her. And, to be honest, Geoff had said he was glad to be shot of the case: the psychological ones weren’t Geoff’s forte. Give him Benson any day, bad as he was. It wasn’t often, Geoff had added, clapping Gareth on the shoulder, that you found a good solid colleague like Gareth willing to help you out. Willing and more than able.

  Clara was perched at her desk, peering into the mirror of a powder compact and plucking out stray eyebrows. She only had the thinnest of lines as it was.

  ‘Can’t wait to start my new job,’ she was saying. ‘I’ll be so glad to get out of this place! All those weird people, locked away in that filing cabinet.’ She plucked at a few more hairs, ran her forefinger over her eyebrow and peered into the mirror again to examine her work. ‘Most of them have got a screw loose, if you ask me,’ she went on, still squinting at her face in the mirror. ‘They should be put away, the lot of them – not running loose and causing a menace to the public.’ She licked her finger and smoothed her eyebrows again. ‘Talking of which,’ she said, snapping her compact closed and dropping it into her handbag, ‘did you know Stella Moon was in the loony bin for two years, or maybe it was even three, before she even went to prison? That one must have spent half her life behind bars. Think of it. Half your entire life.’

  ‘For your information, Clara, that’s not actually true. You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the gutter press. And you should have a bit more respect. It wasn’t even a psychiatric hospital, it was a sanitorium, and then a children’s home where she was,’ Geoff said. ‘There but for the… Clara.’

  ‘How did you hear that about Stella… Stella Moon, Clara?’ Gareth interrupted. ‘Has it been in the papers?’

  Gareth should have been keeping an eye on the press, but somehow it’s slipped his mind. Has he missed a crucial development?

  ‘If it hasn’t,’ said Clara, ‘it soon will be.’ She replaced her tweezers in the pencil tin on her desk.

  ‘And how do you know that bit of information?’ Gareth asked. He should really keep on top of things: in this job you have to. He though he’d been keeping up with the papers. ‘How d’you know that, Clara?’

  ‘The man from the paper.’

  ‘What man from what paper? When was that, Clara?’ Geoff was concerned. He’d stopped in the middle of what he was doing and was looking across at Clara. ‘How come you never mentioned this before now?’

  ‘It was only yesterday,’ said Clara. ‘You two weren’t even here. And I’m mentioning it now, aren’t I? What d’you think I’m doing now?’

  ‘You know you
don’t to talk to the press, Clara. It’s a condition of the job.’ Geoff’s voice was stern and authoritative.

  ‘Well, I didn’t talk to them, if you must know – not really. It was him who talked to me. He was very nice. I didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know.’

  ‘Good God!’ said Geoff. ‘As if I didn’t have enough on my plate, and now you throw out that little bombshell! What exactly did you say to him?’

  ‘Mr Macalinden,’ Clara interjected.

  ‘You can be sued, you know,’ Geoff continued, ‘breach of confidentiality is a breach of contract. Confidentiality is the number one rule in this game, Clara.’

  ‘Well, what was I supposed to do?’

  ‘You’re supposed to keep your stupid mouth shut, that’s what.’ Geoff had stood up and was pacing about in the room.

  ‘I don’t see why you’re blaming me,’ Clara said. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong. I told you, he knew everything anyway, I don’t even know why he came, when he already knew all there was to know…’

  ‘Clara,’ Geoff sounded exasperated, ‘don’t be so naïve. That’s how they do it, journalists – they talk like they know it all, they wait to see if you contradict them. It’s a strategy. Oh my God, what a bloody mess. I’ll have to sort this out.’

  ‘Hey, steady on, Geoff,’ Gareth said. ‘It might not be as bad as you think. We don’t even know who he was or what Clara told him. What did you say, Clara, exactly?’

  ‘How come you even know anything about the Moon case anyway, Clara?’ Geoff interrupted, ‘Stella Moon’s only just come out. You’re peddling fiction just like the rest of them. Getting off on it. You can’t have known any more about it than what was in the papers at the time, and it’s unlikely, given your age, that you’d remember it.’

  Clara looked over at Gareth.

  ‘She looked at the file,’ Gareth said.

  ‘She what? She looked at the file? And you knew about it?’ Geoff shook his head. ‘This is incredible. Is there anything else I need to know?’