LITMIR.BIZ

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I don’t know … I don’t want Lucy to have another upheaval. She likes Emma. It’s just …’

      ‘The monsters?’

      ‘Yes …’ Jane frowned at her painting, brushing away a tiny spider that was running on the surface. ‘No.’ She looked up at Suzanne. ‘I’ve decided. I’m not letting Emma look after her again. I’ll find someone else.’

      By the time Suzanne had finished talking to Jane, it was nearly eleven. She let herself in through the back door and stepped over the pile of shoes on the doormat. The breakfast dishes were in the sink and the worktops were a mess of toast crumbs, butter and a congealing pool of spilt milk and sugar where she had eaten breakfast. A fly was exploring this, and she aimed a swat at it. It flew up, its drone filling the air for a moment, then stopping as it settled again.

      She walked through the middle room to the side door to collect the post. Three brown envelopes lay on the mat. She picked them up and flicked through them. Bills, but not red ones. She put them into the in-tray she kept on the dining table. The new additions caused a minor landslide, and she had to scoop up a pile of envelopes from the floor and cram them back.

      She needed to go and do some work.

      Upstairs in her study, she closed the door behind her and felt a sense of peace. Her study was in the small attic room under the roof. It had a dormer window, high and narrow, that opened at just the right height for her to lean her arms on the sill and look out across the rooftops. She did that now, enjoying the high, cloudless sky and the gleam of the sunlight off the wet roofs that tumbled up the other side of the valley. In front of her, the slates of her own roof sloped down into the guttering, concealing the drop down to the road below. If she craned her neck, she could just see Jane still sitting on her front step, her head bent intently over her drawing.

      But she had work to do. Inside, the study was cool and shadowed. Her desk stood in the light from the window. Further back into the room, the walls were lined with shelves of books, all sorted by subject and author. A filing cabinet, functional metallic grey, stood against one wall, and an easy chair, a splash of colour, fire-engine red, occupied one corner under a small reading lamp. Shelves at the side of her desk held her set of audio tapes, the start of her research project.

      If she wanted to study the way the young men on the Alpha Project communicated, she had to record them, study their language, to see if they employed all the strategies and skills of conversation that researchers had identified over the years. When the negotiation degenerated into violence, was it because they wanted to fight, to assert themselves, to establish their dominance, or was it because they couldn’t read those subtle signals of language that meant I am being polite, I don’t like what you are saying, I am asking you to do something? When they looked blank and nodded in vague agreement to something they hadn’t heard, or hadn’t understood, was it because they didn’t want to hear, or was it because they didn’t know they hadn’t understood, or didn’t know how to say they hadn’t understood? And did the resulting frustration boil over into anti-social behaviour?

      As a first step, she’d been recording quite formal interviews with some of the young men on the programme. She’d asked for, and been given, the ones with the most serious or the most persistent records. One frustrating thing was that she didn’t actually know what they had done, and might never if they themselves didn’t volunteer the information. The Alpha management had been grudging with their permission, and draconian about confidentiality.

      She took the tapes of the individual interviews out of her bag. She wasn’t supposed to have them here. They were supposed to be kept secure at the university. She’d interviewed three of the young offenders so far. Dean – seventeen, and on the programme as a condition of his parole – she was sure could be violent. He had been monosyllabic, sullen, occasionally aggressive; then she’d interviewed Lee – also seventeen, bright, lively and endlessly in trouble. He’d shown flashes of insight when he forgot his manic clowning. And Ashley. That interview had been odd. She knew Ashley better than any of the others, and yet he had been halting, incoherent, illogical. She had listened to the tape several times in the four weeks since she had actually carried out the interview, and she still had trouble making sense of it.

       Q. Tell me about your family, Ashley.

       A. Er … It’s not …

       Q. Sorry, you don’t have to tell me if you’d rather not.

       A. Yes.

       Q. You want to tell me?

       A. Brothers and sisters?

       Q. If …

       A. (Laughs.) Brothers and sisters.

       Q. Sorry, Ashley, I don’t understand.

       A. Er … So … em … loose …

       Q. What?

       A. Simon.

       Q. Simon is your brother?

       A. Yes.

       Q. Tell me about Simon.

       A. (Laughs.) Simon says …

       Q. Yes?

       A. Not much. (Laughs.)

      At the time, she had kept thinking, Odd, odd. He had become increasingly uncomfortable and, in the end, he’d cut the interview short. She wondered if he would let her tape him again. He might be the first one who could provide her with data that would support her theory. Ironically, she had been doubtful about his suitability for her research, as he was classified as having ‘learning difficulties’, and she wasn’t sure if that would skew her results. She needed more background on Ashley before she could trust her analysis. She thought about the new insights her work would give into the dark world of youth crime, which might lead to better ways of helping boys like Adam, before … Daydreaming! She pulled herself back to the work in hand.

      At twelve-thirty, she packed her recording equipment away. She needed to go to the university. She rewound the tape, noting the counter number, and put it back in her briefcase. She felt buoyant and optimistic. She tested the mood, and the feeling of lightness stayed with her. It was as if something heavy and dark, something she hadn’t been aware of, had been lifted off her recently, and she was just now understanding how heavy and constricting it had been. She thought about Michael’s weekend, and instead of the chest-tightening anxiety she was accustomed to feeling, she realized she was almost looking forward to it.

      Maybe she could cope with the responsibility. Maybe there was no reason to dread something awful happening. Maybe all mothers worried about their children. Maybe, dare she say it, maybe she was normal. She ran a comb through her hair and tied it back, thought about putting on some make-up and decided against it. Maybe Jane was right. Maybe it was time to come out of her shell. She picked up her briefcase and ran down the stairs. She grabbed her bag and keys and headed out. As she locked the door behind her, she saw Jane standing at her gate, looking anxiously down the road. ‘Hi,’ Suzanne greeted her on a note of query. ‘Is something wrong?’

      Jane pushed her hair back off her face. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Emma and Lucy are late.’ She looked at her watch.

      ‘When should they have been back?’ Suzanne asked.

      Jane looked at her watch. ‘Over an hour ago. Lucy’s appointment was at quarter to twelve.’

      Suzanne remembered their earlier conversation, and felt a stirring of unease. Monsters … She tried to be reassuring. ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ she said. ‘Lucy will have run off and be hiding, and poor old Em will be frantic. We could go and look.’ Both women were familiar with Lucy’s disappearing stunts.

      Jane’s face was tense. ‘I’ve just come back. I went right through both parks. They weren’t there. I tried the café. They hadn’t been in. Then I thought they might have come back … I don’t know what to do.’

      Suzanne thought. ‘Em knows about Lucy hiding, doesn’t she?’

      ‘Oh

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