Moth Girls

by Anne Cassidy

  She turned her back to the shed and looked up the garden towards her house. Just then she heard the sound of the neighbour’s back door opening. The fence was too high to see over so she didn’t feel she had to say hello. She was glad. How would she explain why she was standing out in her garden on a cold November afternoon?

  She was trying to jog her memory. She was trying to recall the one time that she’d been in the garden of the house on Princess Street. That garden no longer existed so she was using her own garden to reconstruct that day. The three of them had gone in. Mandy had trailed along reluctantly, after Petra had given her one of her withering looks. As soon as they’d got through the side gate Mandy had decided that she would be the bravest of them and walked ahead. She’d gone straight into the overgrown grass and right up the middle, past the trees and the old swing. She went to the very bottom of the garden where there were a couple of old sheds and she’d stood there feeling gratified that Tina had followed her and not stayed with Petra.

  She’d been standing then as she was now with her back to the shed, looking up the garden at the rear of the house. Petra, for all her bravado, had stayed by the building and seemed to be fiddling with the ivy that grew across the brickwork. For a few moments Mandy had felt good. Tina was there with her and they had ventured much further into the old property than Petra had.

  Then the neighbour had seen them and shouted.

  Now Mandy looked to the left where the fence of her garden was. It was high and solid. On that day over five years ago the garden fence where the neighbour was standing had been broken, and some of it lay flat on the ground. That’s why the sight of him had been such a shock. It was as if he suddenly materialised in the garden with them. They had run away like mad from him. That was all she remembered.

  Her phone beeped. She took it out and saw the name ‘Jon Wallis’ on the screen.

  Why not come round mine this evening and listen to some of my vinyls?

  It was the third text he’d sent her since Friday, when they’d chatted on their way to school. He liked her, she knew. He was a nice person, easy to talk to, but he wasn’t Tommy Eliot and she couldn’t pretend otherwise. Even though she knew that nothing would happen between her and Tommy it didn’t mean that she could just switch off her emotions. They were still there, deep down, even though she was no longer upset by them. Underneath the text from Jon was one from Lucy that’d arrived late last night:

  Mum’s running a Sat course on ‘Working with Silver’. She says we can go for free if we make the tea and tidy up afterwards. What do you think?

  She’d already replied to it saying she would go. Lucy hadn’t given up trying to be friendly and Mandy had enjoyed having someone to sit with at lunchtimes. Her mum was really nice too and she loved learning about the jewellery making.

  She thought about what answer to send to Jon. She had made excuses on the previous texts but it didn’t seem right to keep doing it. She remembered those weeks in the first half of term when she had been drawn along by Tommy. Had he intended her to think that he cared for her? She would never know. She composed a reply.

  Sorry, Jon, I’m still too hung up on someone else to be good company.

  She pressed ‘Send’ quickly so that she didn’t lose her confidence.

  She stared up the garden.

  There was another decision she still had to make. She pulled the card Officer Farraday had given her out of her pocket. Should she tell the police officer that she’d seen Petra? She’d thought about it all weekend. The previous evening it’d come more into focus because her mum had said that Alison Pointer had just been round and told her that there had been another sighting of Tina – this time in Greece. Her mother said Alison seemed less keen to actually go herself but was in touch with a Greek organisation who were liaising with the police on her behalf. Alison had seemed tired and out of sorts, her mum had told her, and she’d been wearing jeans and an old jumper. It made Mandy feel bad.

  Why shouldn’t Alison know that Tina hadn’t stayed in the old house; that whatever happened to Tina happened to her on her own?

  But Mandy was still concerned that if she told the police she’d seen and spoken to Petra they might not actually believe her. And even if they took her seriously would there be some kind of blame allotted to her because she’d waited so long to tell them? It was three weeks since she’d seen Petra. Why had she waited so long? Wasn’t it a kind of replay of that night in October when the girls went missing? She’d known they’d gone in the house but she’d waited five hours to tell anyone then as well. Wouldn’t this just confirm how secretive she was, how she was always taking time to think of her own skin before others? In fact, wasn’t that what she was doing right this minute standing in her garden?

  But she had thought about other things too.

  If Tina was really was dead, was there any point in ruining Petra’s new life?

  Mandy stared up the garden at her own house and tried to picture exactly what the back of the old house had looked like. It was much bigger than hers and much older. The only detail she could remember was that the wall was thick with ivy. There had definitely been a door. Petra had said that she and Tina went into the kitchen and that was when Tina became afraid. They must have gone through that door.

  Mandy imagined the scene: the back door wide open and two twelve-year-old trespassers standing there. One of them wanted to go further. The other was afraid. There was tugging and whispering. It would have been pitch-dark because the old man only lived in the front part of the house. There would have been no light spilling out of windows and the garden would have been thick with bushes and overgrown foliage.

  At one point Tina had decided she didn’t want to go any further.

  Mandy closed her eyes. It was hard to picture Tina at twelve years old but she held onto the image of a skinny girl whose hair was a bit bushy. She’d been wearing her mum’s hoodie which was far too big for her. She must have stepped away from Petra and stood by the door. Had she said she was going? Had she said goodbye? Had she tried to persuade Petra to go with her?

  If Petra was telling the truth then Tina turned and came out of the back door. She would have been moving quickly because she was frightened. Had she dashed along the house and turned into the pathway to the side gate? There were no lights guiding her, just blackness. Had she traced her way back round the side of the house in the inky dark? Or had she, in her confusion, turned around and run into the back garden, straight through the foliage, the long grass and past the swing? Had she run down to the end of the garden where the two of them had gone that day a couple of weeks before?

  Mandy pictured Tina standing at the wall, near the sheds, confused and frightened. Had she come to a full stop and known then that she’d gone the wrong way? Had she spun around?

  A terrible feeling was taking hold of Mandy.

  If Tina turned round, what she might have seen? She glanced to her left and saw her own garden fence, solid and uniform, each panel fixed to the next. On that night it would have been dark and the fence would have been broken.

  She tried to picture it. Tina, confused and scared. Had she seen a man standing there? Where the fence should have been? Had it made her jump? The angry neighbour would have been staring at her, his big belly sticking out, his face full of fury that she was there after he’d shouted at her last time. ‘Sorry,’ she might have gasped, but maybe she didn’t get a chance to say any more as he took her by the arm and pulled her into his garden. Maybe he put his hand across her mouth to stop her shouting out. Or possibly he had to pick her up, her legs and arms wriggling, until he took her into his house and shut the door.

  Mandy imagined the door banging and heard the key as it turned in the lock.

  Then she opened her eyes as if from a bad dream. Her hands were screwed up into fists. She uncurled them and saw Officer Farraday’s card crumpled in one of them. There was a sound from her house: the front door slamming. It was her mum. She would tell her now. She would no
t wait hours or days or weeks. She wouldn’t keep this story to herself, even if it meant Petra’s new life would be exposed. Alison had a right to know what had happened to Tina, however terrible the truth was.

  The back door swung open and her mum stood there.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she called down the garden, looking a bit upset.

  Mandy walked towards her, taking a deep breath, knowing what she had to say. When she got up to the door she was shaken to find her mum crying, tears rolling down her face. It was as if she knew what Mandy was going to tell her.

  ‘What?’ she said, holding Officer Farraday’s card in her fingers.

  Her mum pulled a tissue out and wiped her eyes.

  ‘I’ve just seen Alison in Princess Street. She’s in a terrible state. The police have found Tina.’

  Thirty-One

  Princess Street was full of people and police cars. Mandy and her mother walked among them. They were looking for Alison Pointer. They edged through the crowd standing around and saw her in the middle of a throng. She was by a police officer and another was trying to move people away from her. There were three police cars and several officers. Two of them stood guard outside number fifty-five Princess Street. Next door the building site was at a standstill, and men in yellow hats stood around smoking cigarettes and looking serious. A truck with giant bags of sand on it was parked half up on the pavement and the driver was in a heated discussion with a WPC.

  ‘Alison,’ Mandy’s mum called out.

  Alison turned round and saw them. She gave a slight nod to acknowledge them but her face was frozen. Her mum edged through the people and grabbed Alison’s arm. Then Alison seemed to crumple, leaning sideways on her mum’s shoulder. The policeman raised his voice and people around appeared to slink away, moving back along the street. There was crime scene tape across the road and Mandy noticed a van with a satellite dish on the top beyond it.

  The newsagent was outside on the pavement, his face grim, appearing to be unhappy about his street making the news again.

  Mandy walked over to Alison. Her mum was holding her up now.

  ‘He took her,’ she said, looking at Mandy, her eyes glittering with tears. ‘That bastard took her. My Tina’s been there for the last five years.’

  Mandy knew that Tina wasn’t in there alive. This wasn’t going to be like the girls in Cleveland, Ohio. She wasn’t going to be rescued. Tina was dead, her mum had told her while walking round there. Tina’s body was probably buried in the cellar of the house and the police intended to find it. Alison knew these things but she had talked about Tina as if she were alive for the last five years and it was hard for her to say it any other way.

  Mandy looked at the house that she’d seen the neighbour come out of days before. It was an old end-of-terrace building and the front garden had been paved. There were no flowers there in contrast to other gardens along the way. Its curtains were drawn top and bottom. The police officers standing at the gate had no expressions on their faces. The front door opened unexpectedly, silencing the small crowd. Two men in white paper suits came out. They were carrying items inside thick plastic bags. One of them looked bulky. It was a computer screen, cumbersome and heavy; it looked as if it had been bought many years before.

  ‘Mrs Pointer?’ a woman said.

  Alison turned around. A woman in a dark quilted jacket stood there.

  ‘Detective Constable Bernice Morgan. I think it would be a good idea if we retired to your home. That way I can keep you up to date with the search. Maybe your friends could come and make you something to eat.’

  ‘I don’t want to eat.’

  Alison was staring at the house, her forehead lined, her teeth gritted.

  ‘That would be a good idea,’ her mum said, pulling her gently away. ‘Let’s go. It’s just a couple of streets. We can walk.’

  ‘Best to go in my car,’ DC Morgan said. ‘The press will be everywhere.’

  ‘I can deal with the press,’ Alison said.

  ‘We know you can but now isn’t the time,’ her mum said.

  Alison nodded. She let go of Mandy’s mum’s arm and began to walk. The DC took her elbow and led her through the onlookers. They knew who she was. They stood back respectfully. Mandy looked back at the house.

  ‘Is he in custody?’ she said.

  Her mum frowned.

  ‘The man who lives there. Have the police got him?’

  Her mum linked Mandy’s arm and drew her away.

  ‘Oh, Mandy, he killed himself. They think he did it Friday night. He posted a letter to the police confessing what happened and an officer went there this morning. They found him dead.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She’d seen the angry neighbour twice on Friday. She’d passed him as he got out of a cab on Friday evening.

  They were heading for the DC’s car. Alison was already in the passenger seat.

  ‘How did he do it?’ Mandy said.

  ‘He took sleeping tablets. He had bottles of them apparently. Maybe he’d been planning it for years and the demolition of the house was a trigger.’

  It was the first time that Mandy had been inside Alison’s home since she’d been friends with Tina. It had changed a lot. Then it had been wooden floors and lots of pictures and decorative ornaments. There’d been rugs here and there and scatter cushions on every available seat. There had always been things to look at, little mementoes that the family had brought back from somewhere. In those days it hadn’t always been a happy place because Tina’s mum was upset about her husband who was no longer living there. Now it was clean and neat with oatmeal carpets on the floors and a beige sofa with black throws over the arms and back. There were no small things on view. It was an emotionless place, like a waiting room.

  Mandy’s mum dashed off to the kitchen, calling, ‘I’ll see what’s in the fridge.’ Mandy hoped she wasn’t planning to bake anything. Alison sat in the middle of the sofa with her hands sandwiched between her legs. She stared straight ahead. DC Morgan was beside her. Mandy perched on the armchair opposite. Her mum came out of the kitchen.

  ‘Shall I make some toast? There’s not much else. I could pop out to the shops? There’s some tins of soup …’

  She was talking quickly with an air of panic in her voice.

  ‘Perhaps we could just have some tea for Alison,’ DC Morgan said. ‘That would be a start. I would like a cup of tea and I’m sure Mandy would too.’

  Her mum went off. Mandy was disconcerted that the detective knew her name, but of course she would. Mandy was no bit player in this. She was at the heart of it. No one said anything while the tea was being made. Her mum brought it in and handed the mugs around. Alison put hers straight on the carpet by her foot. DC Morgan spoke quietly and without any sense of drama.

  ‘The things I’m going to explain will be in the public domain any minute now: television, radio, social media. So you need to know what is going on. On Saturday a letter was delivered to Holloway Road Police Station. It wasn’t addressed to any particular person so it was channelled through admin. The letter was not opened until this morning. It was a confession: two pages of closely written text. As soon as it had been read, officers went to the address. They had to break down the door of the house and Alan Monk was found dead on his bed. Beside him were a couple of hairslides. We believe these may have belonged to Tina.’