The Confession of Stella Moon

by Shelley Day

  ‘Alright, alright, there’s no need for that. Say what exactly it is you want,’ says Gareth, ‘and I’ll wake her up and ask her.’

  ‘It happens to be confidential,’ says Frank, ‘as in between me and Stella. And old Mrs Willoughby,’ he adds. ‘Nothing to do with you. So you can mind your own business.’ Frank puts his fist through the window next to the door and the shattered glass falls to the floor. ‘Now are you going to open the frigging door? I’ll smash the rest of those windows if I have to.’ Frank goes back to the front door and starts kicking away at the cracked panel.

  ‘How do I know you’re who you say you are? You could be one of those press people for all I know…’

  ‘I’m warning you.’ Frank stands back and aims a heavy kick at the middle of the door. The wood splinters and the heel of Frank’s boot is visible. ‘Get Stella and she’ll tell you.’

  ‘Alright, alright, I’m opening it.’ Gareth pulls the chair out of the way, turns the key and the door swings back on its hinges, letting in an icy blast of wind and snow.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ says Frank, stepping inside and banging the door shut behind him. He stamps his feet on the mat. ‘Where d’you say you’ve got Stella?’ He shakes the snow off his hat and hangs it on the back of the door.

  ‘Asleep,’ says Gareth. ‘She’s asleep.’

  ‘Well, go and wake her up, then.’ Frank takes off his donkey jacket and shakes that as well before hanging it up. ‘Evil out there, eh?’ He picks his cigarettes and a box of matches out of the pocket, taps one out, lights it and inhales. ‘If you’re not getting her up, mate, I will.’ Frank throws the still burning match down by the stove and goes towards the bedroom. ‘Stella!’

  ‘Let her alone,’ Gareth says. ‘Let her sleep a bit longer. She’s had a hard time. If you’d seen her before… Here, sit down, have a drink.’ Gareth pours some whisky into a plastic beaker and hands it to Frank.

  Frank takes it, gulps it back and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Nice one. What did you say your name was?’ He holds out the beaker and Gareth refills it.

  ‘Davies, Gareth Davies. Probation Officer – part of the protocol when they’re released. Idea was to get her settled in a hostel in Newcastle. But, well, one thing led to another, and it was here she wanted to be.’

  ‘Protocol, you say?’ a smirk spreads across Frank’s face. ‘Is that what they call it these days, protocol, eh?’ He laughs and nods slowly. ‘One thing led to another, eh? I’m getting the picture.’ Frank lights another cigarette and flicks the match onto the hearth. ‘Don’t worry, official protocol man, Probation Officer Davies, your secret’s safe with me.’ Frank touches a forefinger to the side of his nose.

  He’s a sly bugger, this Frank. And a quick one. Gareth had better watch out. ‘Yeah,’ he says, sounding unconcerned, ‘Stella mentioned she’d…er…bumped into you, at the boarding house place. I …er … Desperate to get away, she was, for more reasons than one, as I understand it…’

  ‘Fact is,’ Frank interrupts, ‘I gotta see her. And I gotta see her quick. There’s unfinished business, and time’s running short.’

  ‘You know about the press then…getting onto her story?’ Gareth says.

  Frank gets the crumpled Page 2 out of the donkey jacket pocket and smooths it out. ‘Damn right.’ He hands the paper to Gareth, ‘That’s the main reason I come looking for her.’

  Gareth glances at the page. ‘Bound to happen, sooner or later. Case like that.’ He hands the page back to Frank.

  ‘She’s hiding out? Here?’ Frank doesn’t sound convinced. ‘Bit stupid, if you don’t mind me saying so. Beach Hut will be the first place they look.’

  Gareth shrugs. ‘It’s what she wanted. I was only following orders.’ Gareth riddles the stove a bit, ‘This weather’ll keep them away, for the time being, anyway. Tell me, though, what’s it to you, Mr Fanshaw – Frank – whether they get to her or not? I’m not quite sure how you’re fitting into this story. Why should you be bothered what the press does and does not do?’

  ‘What’s Stella told you, Probation Officer?’ Frank asks. ‘Lot of beans get spilled in pillow talk.’

  ‘Did you say you’d seen the grandmother? Stella seemed to think she might be, well, passed away, like.’

  ‘Oh, no, she’s alive alright. Ruby Willoughby, strong as an ox. She’ll see me out, that one, I shouldn’t wonder. I just came from there. Like I said.’

  ‘Stella didn’t know what to make of it, the house all boarded up and what have you. She hasn’t heard from her grandmother in years, not since…’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Frank drains his beaker. ‘Matter of fact,’ he says, ‘it was the old lady’s idea I come up here. See Stella. Get things straightened out.’ Frank gets to his feet again. ‘So, Mr Probation Officer, I’ll not be wasting any more of your time. If you’ll just excuse me, Stella’ll be awake by now. Stella!’

  Gareth gets onto his feet and edges himself between Frank and the bedroom door. ‘Hey, hey, wait a minute.’ Gareth’s on uncertain ground, as Frank’s a much bigger man than he is. ‘Stella said something, like you were “after her” or something. What’s that all about?’

  Frank shakes his head. ‘What’s she talking about? After her? Girl’s paranoid. I’m not “after” no-one. Not like that, anyway.’ Frank winks. ‘I’ll leave that to you, Mr Probation. I just need to talk to her, that’s all. I’ve come with her grandmother’s blessing. Then I’ll make myself scarce. Leave you two to your own business.’

  ‘Talk to her? What about? She’s been inside seven years. What’s so urgent that it can’t wait a little while longer?’

  Frank looks agitated, like his patience is about to run out.

  ‘Look here, Frank. Stella’s told me everything, all from when she was a kid. She’s remembering a lot of stuff, since she’s been out, and her mental health…’

  ‘Mental health, my arse. I don’t know what she’s told you, Probation Officer lover boy, but I can tell you the girl’s not reliable, never has been. Half the time she doesn’t know her arse from her elbow, believe you me. That’s been half the trouble. Half the things she remembers never actually happened. And things that do happen, she clean forgets. Ask the grandmother.’

  Gareth’s got Frank on the back foot. They come in handy, these training manouevres. Frank looks at Gareth, then goes over and throws a few more logs into the stove. ‘I think we’ve just caught it,’ he says, opening the vent, sitting back down. Gareth empties the bottle into the two beakers with a shakey hand. ‘Time was, when I lived here with Muriel…’

  The two men sit talking well into the night, while Stella sleeps on.

  ‘So you see, Gareth,’ Frank says, ‘I have to tell Stella the grandmother says it was Muriel that killed the baby and not Stella at all. Muriel never was in full possession of her senses when it came to babies, and for good reason. Stella needs to tell me what she’s done with the baby’s body. We need to get it sorted before the reporters get here. Thank God for snow for once, eh?’

  ‘I’d better get her up,’ says Gareth.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ‘Hello, Frank,’ says Stella, her face pale, eyes huge and hair all over the place. She follows Gareth into the room, pulling the eiderdown around her. ‘Gareth says you’ve seen my grandmother? You know where she is…’ On Stella’s feet, a pair of old hiking socks, way too big.

  ‘My socks!’ Frank says, pointing and laughing.

  Stella looks down. ‘They’re all I could find,’ she says. She makes no attempt to return them. ‘How’s my grandmother? Where is she, can I see her?’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll see you, but we’ve got…er…things to be sorted first.’ Frank glances at Gareth then looks at Stella. ‘I mean, she’s sent me here with strict instructions.’

  ‘Sit here, Stella,’ says Gareth, ‘Have my chair, I’ll get anothe
r.’ Gareth stumbles a bit as he crosses the room and tries to laugh it off. Frank looks at Stella and shrugs. He nods his head sideways, indicating the empty bottle lying on the floor.

  Frank looks up at Gareth as though he expects him to leave the room. Stella’s good at picking up on cues. She’s had to be. She’s Muriel’s daughter.

  ‘He’s alright,’ says Stella, sitting down in Gareth’s chair and pulling the eiderdown closer about her. ‘I’ve told him. I’ve told him all of it, haven’t I, Gareth?’ She looks at Gareth. ‘I think we can trust him. Are you to be trusted, Gareth?’

  ‘I can make myself scarce, if you prefer...’ Gareth articulates each word carefully. He puts the chair down at the other side of the room and plonks himself down on it, a silly grin spreads across his face.

  ‘No need, as far as I’m concerned,’ Stella is not bothered. ‘Frank?’

  Frank shrugs.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Stella says, ‘Gareth already knows about the baby.’

  ‘Bottom line is what you’ve done with the baby’s body, Stella…’ Frank says.

  Stella interrupts, emphatic, ‘I like that!’ she says. ‘Me? I haven’t touched it. How don’t you know where it is, since you’re the one that buried it?’

  Frank had feared the worst and now the worst was happening. Gareth leaves the room to fetch some firewood and as soon as he is gone, Frank leans over to Stella and says in a loud whisper, ‘What if he talks? What exactly have you told him? You know he’s under a professional duty.’ Frank is very obviously trying not to get agitated. ‘You know the papers are looking for you?’ Frank fishes in his pocket and pulls out Page 2, hands it to Stella. She waves it away.

  ‘I already know all that,’ she says, ‘and it’s why Gareth came here. To warn me. To protect me.’

  ‘They’re on the scent, and that Macalinden is going on about the baby.’

  ‘Well, what if they are? It’s no secret that I’ve been released. It was bound to come out sooner or later.’

  ‘Stella! You better not have dropped me in it.’

  ‘Stop thinking about yourself, Frank. What is it about you blokes? You’d think you were the centre of the universe.’ Stella sounds like Muriel, that tart edge to her voice. ‘Anyway,’ she says, adjusting her tone, ‘I’ve already made up my mind. I’m giving myself up as regards the baby. As soon as this snow’s gone, I’m turning myself in and, in the meantime, Gareth won’t talk.’ Stella is emphatic, ‘I can absolutely assure you of that. I’ve made as certain as it’s possible to be certain.’

  Gareth comes back into the room, carrying a few bits of wood in the welt of his jumper. ‘That really is the last of it,’ he says. ‘What were you saying, Stella? Did I hear my name?’

  ‘Cold air seems to have sobered you up, man,’ Frank says.

  ‘I was saying you’re not going to tell anybody anything, are you, Gareth? Frank here is worried, you being a Probation Officer and all. I told him you’re not going to say a single thing to a single person, that you’ve no intention of doing anything of the sort. Isn’t that right, Gareth?’

  ‘I have nothing but your interests at heart, Stella. You know that.’

  ‘There, that’s settled.’ Stella cups her hands to her face and blows on them.

  ‘None of this settles the question of the baby’s body,’ Frank says. ‘If the polis have already got that… Anyway, you don’t need to be thinking of giving yourself up for that, Stella. That’s not what your grandmother says. She says it was Muriel who killed Baby Keating. It wasn’t you at all.’

  Stella is silent for a few moments.

  ‘But she said it was me. She said all along it was me. That night of the séance…’

  ‘I didn’t know till now, Stella, believe me,’ Frank says. ‘It was Muriel who killed the baby. Muriel lied to you. That’s what your grandmother says. Muriel never let on to me – I swear it. She always maintained it was you.’

  ‘Muriel? Why would Muriel have done that? Why did she make people – why did she make me – think I was to blame?’ Gareth moves out of the chair to let Stella sit down. ‘It all came back to me, Frank, that night at the Boarding House, about the séance and everything. To think I believed her, I really believed her. I thought I must be some kind of monster. I thought they should lock me away for good.’

  ‘Is that why you dug up the body?’

  ‘What? I never dug anything up.’

  ‘That hole in the kitchen floor. I filled it in.’

  ‘I never made that hole, Frank. It was there when I came here, on the day Muriel died.’

  ‘Christ,’ says Frank, ‘was it there that long ago? So someone’s had that body all this time. If it wasn’t you, Stella, who the hell was it? Did Muriel get rid of it before she died? Is that what happened? But why the hell would she do that? Where would she have put it?’

  ‘I don’t know, Frank. All I know is that the hole was there the day I came here, the day I found everything ransacked and Muriel gone and out there on the cliff. When I went to find her, she kept wailing and saying the baby’s gone and I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I see now. She meant Baby Keating.’

  Frank explains to Stella what Ruby’s told him about Muriel’s strange relationship with infants, how Billy took his own life after the teenage Muriel accused him of ‘interfering’ with her, how Muriel’s father had saved her from a lifetime of shame by doing the abortion himself, how the family secrets had festered on across the years, one piling on top of the other, fragments of truth swamped by supposition.

  ‘And now my grandmother’s saying Muriel killed Baby Keating, killed him for the same reason she couldn’t keep me? I can’t take this in,’ Stella says.

  ‘Nobody knew what you knew, what you remembered.’ Frank leans forward, rests a hand on Stella’s shoulder.

  ‘Murdering seems to run in my family…’

  ‘Now, now, stop that. Stop it this minute. There’s nothing to be gained by going down that road.’

  Frank stands up and walks to the window and back again. It seems to him that the room’s gone stuffy, despite the broken window. He goes back to the window and opens another. He has to bang it with the palm of his hand where the paint has stuck. Stella is sitting by the stove weeping quietly, wiping away tears with the cuff of her jumper. Frank has never seen her give into weeping before, not even when she was small.

  ‘We’ll never know all the whys and wherefores, Stella,’ he says. ‘Ruby was more interested in laying the whole thing to rest than finding out the truth, if such a thing can ever be found…’

  ‘Quite right’ Gareth interrupts. ‘And that’s what we should be doing now, if I may say so. Drawing a line under all this, so we can each get on with our lives.’

  Frank shakes his head. He wishes Gareth would shut his stupid, drunken mouth. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t know the half of it.

  ‘You can put all that business about the baby to rest now, Stella,’ Gareth is gabbing on. ‘That’s all in the past now, Stella. No more of this giving yourself up stuff, alright? Isn’t that right, Frank? It’s all over with.’

  ‘Well, not exactly all over and done with.’ Frank says.

  ‘I want to see my grandmother. I want her to tell me all this herself,’ Stella says.

  ‘You can see her,’ says Frank, ‘but not yet. I know exactly where she is. I can take you. But not right now. First we have to… We’ve got other things to do, before we go on down to Brighton.’

  ‘Like what other things?’ says Gareth. ‘I say we get gone from here as soon as the weather lets up. Eh, Stella?’

  Stella looks up as Frank gets to his feet, scraping back his chair. She sees that look on his face, she knows this is not the end of anything. The eiderdown has slipped off her shoulders and she’s shuddering, whether from cold or emotion, Frank can’t tell.

 
‘She’s exhausted, man, can’t you see?’ Gareth says.

  Frank paces the room, hands thrust deep into his pockets.

  ‘I appreciate your concern, Gareth, it’s very touching, but fact is we don’t have the luxury of time. You know as well as I do that the press rats will be sniffing under every dung lump until they get what they want. Until we can find out for certain what happened to the baby’s body, we’re up to our necks, well and truly, up shit creek without a paddle. And I’m including you.’

  Gareth interrupts. ‘Now who’s the paranoid one? If anyone was going to open their mouth about that, Frank, they’d have done it long before now. I mean, man, we’re ten years on...’

  ‘Because Stella’s out, that’s why. Wake up, Gareth. Anyone decides to mention the séance, or the baby, there’s a load of juicy scoops those hacks – especially that Macalinden bloke – would give their right arms to get hold of…’ Frank’s voice tails off.

  ‘What are you suggesting, then?’

  ‘Hedy. Hedy Keating, the baby’s mother,’ Frank explains for Gareth’s benefit, ‘isn’t that far from here, according to Ruby. I’m suggesting that we find her and warn her to keep her mouth shut. It’s the very least we should do. She was in on it from the start, she’s got as much to lose as the rest of us. The original story was that the baby disappeared from his pram outside the house. Hedy can confirm that and…’

  ‘And how do you propose we persuade her to keep her story to herself, eh?’ Gareth looks worried, ‘Now look here, Frank. I can’t afford to be getting involved in any dodgy goings on.’

  ‘A bit late for that, Gareth,’ Frank laughs. ‘But seriously, I can make it worth Hedy’s while. Ruby’s got money. She says she’ll hand some over to keep Hedy quiet. Take it or leave it, Gareth. But it seems to me you’re not exactly in a position to pick and choose.’