Only a Mother

by Elisabeth Carpenter

Genres: Suspense

Synopsis

Only a mother

Erica Wright lives a quiet, lonely life in her two-bed end of terrace. Her front door hasn't been graffitied in more than a year, but that's soon about to change — her son, Craig, is being released from prison.

Could believe him

Local journalist Luke Harding is determined to warn the public. As the person who covered the arrest and trial all those years ago, he knows the kind of predator Craig really is.

Could bury the truth

When Luke's worst fears are realised after a woman is attacked days after Craig's release, he becomes obsessed with trying to prove that Craig was behind it.

Could forgive what he has done.

Erica is worried, too — but how can a mother turn her back on her son? And how far will she go to protect him?

Release date: December 27, 2018

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

1

Erica

I step outside and close my front door. Out of habit, I examine it quickly from top to bottom. My shoulders relax. The green paint is covered in tiny cracks, but there’s no writing sprayed on it today, no excrement wiped across or pushed into the keyhole. The door’s been free of graffiti for nearly eighteen months, but it won’t stay that way for long.

It was always the same words: Murderer; Get out; Scum. It was like they thought I did it. I used to wait till after dark before taking a scrubbing brush to it. There was hardly anyone around at three o’clock in the morning, and I didn’t have to be up early for anything. I still don’t – well, except for Wednesdays.

I don’t know why we settled on Wednesdays. I suppose it’s because it was my day off when I worked at the … No. There’s no point thinking about that: my other life.

The clouds are grey and heavy and it’s raining. I like it best this way; people have their heads down or under umbrellas. I open mine and catch sight of the bit of tinsel lingering in the inside corner of next door’s window; it’s been there for over a month. Don’t they know it’s unlucky? Though I don’t believe in luck. My mother used to be superstitious. No new shoes on the table, no passing anyone on the stairs. For years after she died, I imagined what she’d say to me. You can’t become a single mother, Erica! What would the neighbours think of you? Or A job in a supermarket, Erica? I pictured you doing so much more. I expect it’s for the best that she passed before my Craig was born. Then me being a single parent would’ve been the least of her worries.

I wait at the bus stop in the rain as the shelter has long since been destroyed by vandals. A car splashes me, driving through the small lake of a puddle near the kerb. I forgot to step out of the way. I need to concentrate, stop daydreaming. I’m sure drivers take great delight in drenching pedestrians these days. I try not to take it personally – not everyone knows who I am. I’m soaked to the skin, but it’ll dry on the bus. They’re always too hot when it’s raining; all the windows’ll be closed.

At last, the bus pulls in. I step on, into the sweaty warmth.

‘The bus sta—’

‘One eighty,’ the driver says.

Why is it always him? I pull the coins out of my purse one at a time, placing them slowly on the money tray. He doesn’t even look at me; he’s staring out of the window.

I grab the handles as I walk down the aisle, trying to stay upright as the bus sets off. There’s someone in my usual seat – two from the back – so I sit on one of the middle ones next to the steamed-up window. I smile a little as I picture Craig as a child, drawing silly faces in the condensation. My heart drops when I remember where I’m going. I wipe the memory from the window with the palm of my hand. I like to see outside, anyway.

I take my magazine out of my handbag and try to focus on the words. It’s one of those real-life magazines. All problems are relative. I don’t recall where I read that, but it’s true. It helps to read about other people’s lives. It’s good to feel a connection – even if it’s a distant one, like on my forum: PrisonConnect. Families of prisoners from all over the world can talk in a safe space. I’ve been on it so long, I’m a moderator now. I’ve never told Craig about it – he wouldn’t like being talked about by strangers, though he must be used to it by now.

The bus stops at the traffic lights. I look out at the bakery on the corner. It used to be the pet shop – must be nearly thirty years ago now. We’d look at the kittens and the rabbits in the window on a Saturday morning on our way to Kwik Save. Craig always felt sorry for them. ‘Can we take them all home, Mummy?’ he said, every week. ‘It’s not fair they’re stuck in there all day.’

It’s like he knew where he’d end up. I blink the memory away.

The engine idles as the pedestrians cross the road in front.

It’s then that I spot her.

I try not to look out for her; I haven’t seen her for years. She’s standing there, in the rain outside the newsagents, staring into space. Gillian Sharpe, Lucy’s mother. She’s the only parent who stayed in this town. So many names imprinted on my soul. There was another girl, Jenna. But my Craig wasn’t convicted for that. It doesn’t make sense, and I often think this, that surely the two are connected. The two happened just a week apart. If they thought he wasn’t responsible for Jenna, then why imprison him for Lucy? There’s a killer out there and they’ve not caught him. Or her; it could be a she. You never know.

What I do know is that my son would never harm anyone.

I lower my gaze; my face burns. I can’t look at Gillian Sharpe any more. When I do, I see her daughter’s face, her photo in the newspapers. I’ve kept them all, organised in date order and highlighted with the information I need to help me prove Craig’s innocence.

How old would Lucy be now?

No, no, no, no.

I pinch the skin on my wrist so hard that my nails almost meet in the middle.



I stand in line with the other relatives: the girlfriends, the wives, the friends, whatever or whoever they are. I recognise some from their clothes, their shape, but not their faces – I never look at their faces.

When I first started coming here all those years ago, a few of them muttered under their breath, called me a stuck-up bitch, but that’s stopped. I was no different from the rest of them; they soon realised that. Some even brought children with them, which is understandable – you have to maintain contact, even for the briefest of visits. But prison’s no place for kiddies. The world’s bad enough without them seeing the worst of it. Well, almost the worst.

The prison officer opens the door dead on two; never early, never late. I suppose it’s because it’s owned by the Queen. I’ve read the royal household is quite strict when it comes to time. I hand over my card and they usher me in. I give them my handbag and they place it in a locker. I hold out my arms and they pat the whole of my body. Even though I recognise them, and they know my name, my face, I must show them my passport. It’s ridiculous that I have one, really, seeing as I never get the chance to leave the country. I have so many places that I want to visit, things I want to do: see the Northern Lights; travel along Route 66 in a convertible. I read a bucket list of places in a copy of the Telegraph at the doctors’, but they didn’t mention the Lake District, which I thought was a bit short-sighted of them.

Usually, I bring Craig a paperback. I get them from the jumble sale in the church hall in the next village. I’ve been filling the bookcase on the upstairs landing at home for months. I hope Craig turns to reading when he’s home and doesn’t fill his head with notions of mixing with the wrong crowd. He can’t have made any nice friends while he’s been inside.

I won’t tell him I saw Gillian Sharpe on my way here. The first time I visited, Craig was crying, his head in his hands. ‘I’m innocent, Mum,’ he said. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Son,’ I said. ‘Of course, I believe you.’

He doesn’t speak about it much now. It hurts him when I mention it. We’ve had to find other things to talk about since.

The guard calls my name. He lets me into the visitors’ room and Craig’s already sitting at the table waiting. He stands as he sees me – he always looks relieved. As if I’d not come.

We hug for a few seconds. I’d love to hold him for longer, but this is all we’re allowed.

‘Hello, Mother,’ he says, as usual, pulling away from me. His northern accent’s stronger in here than it ever was at home.

‘Hello, Son.’

I sit on the plastic chair and shuffle it towards the table that divides us. He used to be such a skinny child – he was slim, even as a teenager. He took up weight-training after the first few years in here, said he didn’t want to be a victim any more. Looking at him now, it’s like he’s doubled in size. That grey sweatshirt used to drown him.

‘There was a documentary on last Friday,’ he says, ‘about penguins on the Falkland Islands. Did you see it? I thought of you when I watched it. I said to myself, Mum’ll be watching this, she likes—’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I didn’t, sorry.’

‘But it was only on at seven.’

‘I don’t sit and watch television all day,’ I say sharply.

I must’ve fallen asleep. I don’t sleep well. Unless I’m doing the shopping, I’d rather sleep during the day. Then at night I can go out into the backyard and breathe in the fresh air.

Out of the window to my right, there’s just the right amount of sky and trees visible to remember there’s a world out there.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ I say. I look at him as he stares down at his hands – his nails are bitten so badly; the tops of his fingers are smooth and shiny. I glance at his face; such lovely long eyelashes. ‘I’m sorry if I was short with you.’

‘Has everyone heard?’ he says. ‘Are they giving you a hard time again?’

A hard time. He makes it seem like a cross word or a quarrel over parking spaces.

‘No,’ I say. ‘But I’m worried about you … about what’ll happen in a fortnight. We could move away, you know. Start afresh. I’ve always fancied the Lake District.’

‘How the hell would we afford the Lake District? You’re dreaming again, Mum.’

It’s all I have, I want to say.

‘I know I’ve asked this nearly every time you’ve visited,’ he says, ‘but I thought I’d ask one more time. For tradition, I suppose. One last time. Have you found him?’

‘No. No, I haven’t.’

His shoulders drop, and he lowers his head.

He means Pete Lawton. The man Craig has always said he was with the night Lucy was murdered. There’s been no sign of him since, and I can’t find anyone that’ll vouch for him working at the garage when Craig was doing work experience there.

‘Anyway. About your bedroom …’ I say, trying to distract him. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I put some of your old things in boxes – only your boyish things … didn’t think you’d want to be looking at them. I’ve not thrown them out – they’re in the loft.’

He smiles slightly.

‘I can’t wait to be home, Mum. It’ll be like old times.’

I give a small smile. I don’t want to mention that the old times meant he was never home, barely giving me the time of day.

‘Have you had a visit from probation yet?’ he says.

‘Yes, but they’re coming again tomorrow.’

‘I told them I want to be a personal trainer.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘What did they make of that?’

He tilts his head and shrugs.

‘They said it’s not likely … I’d need one of those background check things. But what do they know?’

‘I suppose,’ I say. ‘If you put your mind to it, you could do anything.’

My words hang in the air like a moth hovering before a bare flame.

‘I want to make a life for myself.’ His knees bounce up and down underneath the table. ‘If it doesn’t work out, I promise we’ll move. How about that?’

I stretch my fingers as close as I can towards his and he does the same back.

‘I’ll help you all I can, love.’

I know he doesn’t mean what he says. He’ll not want to be living with me for long – seventeen years is a long time to be trapped inside. He’ll want to see some life.

Too soon, it’s time to go. He quickly lists the items he wants me to buy. I’m not sure if it’s allowed, him having two phones, but I tell him I’ll get them anyway.

‘I love you, Son,’ I say.

‘Right back atcha, Mum,’ he says, as usual.

I stand. I’m leaving this prison for the last time. Inside this place, he’s safe, he’s warm, he’s fed. He doesn’t know what he’s coming home to, does he? Everyone thinks he’s guilty; they’ll probably think he’s got a nerve returning to the town where it happened. They’ll be angry, I know they will.

And I don’t have the power to protect him from it.









2

Luke

Luke Simmons sits too heavily on his chair and it wheels visibly backwards. The work experience lad next to him purses his lips, suppressing a snigger probably, which is rare for one of these millennials; they usually feel the need to share bloody everything. They’ll be comparing shits on Snapchat soon, given a few months.

God. How has Luke’s belly got so big that he can’t even sit on a chair without sounding as though he’s been winded? It’s not as if there’s much fat on the rest of him. It’s his wife Helen’s fault. She’s been on a diet of only five points a day or whatever, and the mere idea of zero-point crap soup makes Luke crave his mum’s proper chip-pan chips from when he was a lad.

He sniffs the air. The Greggs cheese and onion pasty that’s been keeping his left nipple warm in his jacket pocket smells like BO. Great. Overweight, and now everyone within five feet of him reckons he’s a soap dodger.

Ah sod it, he thinks, taking it out and pushing the pasty up from its paper bag. He can taste every glorious calorie and it warms his soul. Oh, how I’ve missed you, he says in his mind. It’s been a long week – thank God it’s Friday tomorrow.

Afterwards, he immediately feels that he shouldn’t have eaten it. He can feel the cholesterol coat his arteries and the fat adding another layer to his abdomen. ‘It’s for the kids,’ Helen said on Sunday as she was chopping celery and carrots into batons. ‘We’re older parents – we’re not far off forty. We need to think about them.’ Yes. Luke should’ve thought about them. He’d read enough crap editorial copy to know that eating pastry wasn’t the key to eternal youth.

It’s just too hard to resist. It’s a well-known fact that life’s shit these days. Baby boomers and happy-clappy hippies are what his parents were. What do we have now? Brexit and Donald Trump. And it’s pissing it down outside. Luke rests his chin in his hand.

‘Luke!’

It’s Sarah, the news editor – who’s also his line manager, head of PR and something else. When had it all got so corporate? It used to be more about the story. But that was when this place was bigger, had more staff and more actual paper copies were sold. Luke sits up, grabbing a pen from the pile on his desk.

‘Sarah!’ he says. ‘Light of my professional life.’

She frowns.

‘Are you trying to be funny?’ She leans towards him. ‘You know there’s a fine line.’

‘I … No. I was only trying to lift the mood.’

‘What mood?’

‘Sorry, Sarah. I don’t know.’

Luke lowers his head a little. He doesn’t know what to say any more. Back in the day, everyone joked with each other. Now there’s HR, PR, HSE, and God knows what else.

‘Craig Wright is out in less than a week,’ Sarah says.

‘I know – I’m putting a piece together. I’m going to contact his mother, see if she’ll talk to me again … find out if she still believes he’s innocent after all this time.’

‘Good idea. Plus, he’s planning on moving back to the area. Thought we should warn the community in a roundabout kind of way.’

Luke glances at Sarah. What age might she be? Twenty-nine? Thirty? She’s not from around here – she won’t remember when it all happened. The year 2000: a year that promised a fresh new millennium but warned that planes might fall from the sky if computers failed. Craig Wright had been a ‘normal’ lad – well, he’d appeared to be. He’d never told anyone what had motivated him to kill. Whatever it was, Luke doesn’t believe that seventeen years in prison will have changed him for the better. He’s going to reoffend, there’s no doubt about it.

‘I was thinking of interviewing the witnesses,’ says Luke. ‘See if they remember anything new – perhaps dig a little deeper into his childhood and what made him do it. I’m going to look into the second victim, too – try to come up with some more details about her. Craig’s mother, though … she might be a tough one. She’s been through a lot.’

‘It’s not our fault she chose to stay here. If a murderer lived on my street, I’d want to know about it. Wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

Luke has thought about Erica often over the years. He’s the same age as her son. How different their lives had turned out – did Erica ever wonder how different Craig’s life could’ve been? He managed to get a brief interview with her after Craig’s sentencing. It hadn’t felt right at the time. He’d not long started at the Chronicle; the most serious crime he’d covered was illegals working at the takeaway on the high street.

Erica hadn’t known that Luke worked for the newspaper when he spoke to her – perhaps she assumed he was a concerned bystander. He’d known that he wouldn’t be able to use what she told him, but perhaps it would get him a new angle, help him get his lucky break – maybe he’d make the nationals.

He found her down one of the side streets, taking a drag from a cigarette. Luke remembers she wore black and was shivering. He’d wanted to put his arms around her, like he would’ve done had it been his mother at a funeral. He wasn’t sure if Erica dressed like that for her son, or the girl Craig murdered.

Luke doesn’t need to read his article again to recall her every word; there weren’t many. ‘Do you think he did it?’ Luke had asked, pretending not to know who she was.

‘Of course not,’ she said, looking at the floor, then to the crowd in the near distance.

Her voice was barely a whisper. She appeared so small, like she wanted to disappear, blend into the concrete.

The detective leading the case had read out a statement saying how justice had been done – that a dangerous, calculating and manipulative young man had rightfully been put away. The victim’s relatives huddled behind him, clinging to each other to stay upright, while cameras captured their grief, pain and tears.

Erica Wright had sat alone during the trial. There were no friends or relatives there to support her. Luke recalls glancing at her as the photographs of Lucy were shown to the court. Unlike others in the courtroom, there were no gasps from Erica’s mouth. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, her mouth remained pressed into a straight line. Why had she done that to herself? But then, Luke thought, why had the victim’s parents sat there, too? Who would want to see their child’s lifeless body, or listen to what happened in their last moments?

Craig had looked at the photographs, too. Of course, he’d already seen the body in person, hadn’t he. He showed no emotion as he gazed at them. Perhaps he got some sick gratification, as though reliving the memory. Craig remained detached when Lucy’s mother ran out of the courtroom in tears. Only a person so cold, sociopathic, could ignore suffering like that.

Down that side street, Erica threw her spent cigarette on to the ground. She fumbled with a crumpled packet for a new one. Luke always carried a lighter, alongside a pen, notepad, and a packet of fags, even though he didn’t smoke. As he held the flame up to her and cupped his other hand to shield the wind, he said, ‘Will you visit him in prison?’

She narrowed her eyes at him.

‘Of course. He’s my son. I love him.’

Tears rolled down each side of her face. Then she turned her back on Luke and walked away.

He wondered if she had visited him. What had they talked about for all these years? Did they talk about the most serious of subjects, his guilt? Luke would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall during their visits.

There was another girl: Jenna Threlfall. She went missing a week after Lucy did. Everyone feared the worst for her after Lucy’s body was found in woodland outside Preston. Their fears were realised when Jenna Threlfall was found in the playing field. She was right in the centre, star-shaped as though she were in the middle of making snow angels. Dog walkers found her. It’s always dog walkers, isn’t it? They’re out so early, in random places and the dogs can smell it: death, bodies.

The police interviewed Craig about the second girl, but he had an alibi – the MO was different. There was no evidence to connect the two. Only circumstantial, and that wasn’t enough. But people thought it was him. Otherwise, why hadn’t the police pursued anyone else?

‘I’ll get on it,’ Luke says to Sarah.

He retrieves Erica’s number from the database, lifts the receiver and dials.

She picks up after ten rings.

‘Hello?’ Her voice is quiet.

‘Erica? It’s Luke from the Chronicle. Do you . . .