by Agatha Frost
Claire glanced at the small section in the gift shop, mainly taken up by birthday cards. The simple plain labels said ‘Lilac Gifts,’ but Claire recognised the products; she’d certainly applied enough of the stickers. While she couldn’t compete on price, she was confident the quality of her homemade candles spoke for itself.
“How do you feel opening a direct competitor so close to Gwyn’s shop?” asked the man, his voice both scratchier and higher than Claire would have expected. “You could be infringing on her—”
“Joey!” Gwyneth silenced the man with a slap on the arm. “There’s nothing wrong with a little competition, and besides, I barely sell candles anyway.” Gwyneth leaned in and said to Claire, “Between you and me, you can barely smell them when you light them.”
“I promise you won’t have the same problem with these,” Claire said, offering a genuine smile of her own as she pushed the bag across the counter. “Come over any time. Square discount, of course.”
“Same to you,” she said, nodding around the shop. “You’ll find most shops around the square look out for each other. Except for the chippy, but that’s probably for the best. I’d be in there every lunch hour, and I’d never keep my figure!”
Gwyneth laughed, a hand on her unbelievably narrow waist. Claire almost found it cruel that some women could joke about eating fish and chips every day while looking so perfect. Her own waistline was cursed with what Granny Greta called the ‘Harris thickness.’
“I’m sorry to hear about Nick,” Claire said. “DI Ramsbottom told me you were close.”
“That’s a breach of your rights!” Joey called. “Uncle or not, he should keep your personal life private.”
“Uncle Harry is harmless,” she said, rolling her eyes at Joey. “And it’s hardly a secret that Nick and I have been running hot and cold for the past twenty years. Give it a rest, will you, Joey?” She turned back to Claire and softened. “Yes, we were close. I’m devastated, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“You’re not?”
“He was always getting himself into trouble,” she said, her gaze going to the window and out into the dark square as though in the direction of Nick’s house. “He was forever running from someone or something. That’s what always drove us apart. I knew something would catch him up eventually, I just never dreamed it would be his own demons.”
Gwyneth lifted a shaky hand and rested it against her lips before returning her watery eyes to Claire.
“I really am sorry for your loss.” Claire paused to take a deep breath before adding, “I hate to ask now, but do you know if Nick had much contact with Pat since he went to prison?”
“I don’t know,” Gwyneth said with a shake of her head; her curls didn’t move. “Nick didn’t like talking about it. Pat was the only role model he had. I think it broke his heart to find out the last good man wasn’t good at all.” She lifted her index finger to her nose and sniffed back tears. “Is this about Uncle Harry thinking Nick was the one to vandalise the – Oh, wait!” She bit into her bottom lip, her eyes widening. “Candle shop. It was your shop.”
“It was,” Claire smiled, almost apologetically. “I was actually on my way to Nick’s to ask him about it when they—”
Claire stopped before she finished the sentence, choosing to let the silence fill in the gaps instead.
“Alright!” Joey put an arm across the counter and swept Claire away. “Enough questions.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “You want to talk to Gwyn, you come through me.”
“For goodness sake, Joey!” Gwyneth snatched her glasses off and slammed her hands on the counter. “The girl has a right to ask questions. She was connected to Nick through her uncle. You knew Nick as well as I did. I wouldn’t have put such dirty tactics past him.”
Claire looked down at the card.
Joseph Smith – Lawyer.
“People are looking to point a finger, Gwyn.” This time, Joey directed his firmness at Gwyneth. “The ex-girlfriend is the first person they’re going to point at. You don’t need that right now.” He turned to Claire as his eyes darted meaningfully towards the door. “You want to ask questions, you call the number on that card and leave a message with my secretary.”
Claire tucked the card away and went to say goodbye to Gwyneth but thought better of it, given Joey’s warning. She returned Gwyneth’s awkward ‘why are men like this?’ smile before heading out into the rain that was now coming down even harder. She hurried back to the shop and nearly had a heart attack when Em wandered casually out of the kitchen, blowing into a steaming cup.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Em said, her clothes soaked through from the rain. “I didn’t fancy going to the narrowboat to dry off in this, and I saw your light was on.”
“You’re always welcome here,” Claire said, laughing away her shock. “You know that.”
“Thanks, Claire.” Em slurped the hot drink before putting it on the counter next to the till. “Nothing like a hot cup of green tea to chase the chill away. I was going to make you a cup of coffee, but I didn’t know how to work your machine.”
After changing into her dry clothes in the kitchen, Claire turned on her bean-to-cup espresso machine – one of the few luxuries she’d bought when she still worked at the factory and had her own house. It was also one of the few things she kept hold of when she’d moved back to her parents. She’d brought it down, cradled in her arms, before the opening.
The machine whirred to life, crunched up the beans, and poured out a generous cup of black coffee with a rich crema swirling on the surface. After years of weaning herself off the milk and sugar, she’d grown fond enough of the taste of coffee to have it exactly as it came – as long as the beans were good. Coffee was one of the few places she allowed herself to display her mother’s snobbish ways.
“Do you know a Joey Smith?” Claire asked, tossing the card onto the counter after fishing it from her pocket. “He basically just threatened to take me to court for trying to talk to Gwyneth.”
“Joey?” Em examined the card and chuckled. “Oh, I know him very well. He’s always taken himself too seriously.” She tossed the card down and picked up her green tea. “Ste, Joey, Gwyn, and I moved in the same circles at school. I was always closest to Ste, but we all got on. Joey and Gwyn were an item back then, but it didn’t last long after we left school. Well, not the first time, at least. She met Nick at our twenty-year school reunion. He was sleeping on Ste’s couch at the time, so he tagged along even though he was five years younger. I think it was love at first sight for them both, but they were rarely on the same page. Nick couldn’t hold it together as much as Gwyn needed him to.”
“And Joey stuck around all this time?”
“They don’t just call her Marilyn because of her looks,” Em said after a sip as sharp as a hiss. “When she wasn’t with Nick, she was with Joey. Just when you thought she was about to settle with Nick, he’d do something that sent her back to Joey. When she grew bored with Joey, she went back to Nick.” Em set her cup down. “That’s the impression I got from Ste, at least. I’ve been sleeping on his sofa all weekend. Didn’t want to leave him. He’s torn up.”
“Were they close?”
“At times.” She bobbed her head from side to side. “Nick’s always been very up and down. He would give with one hand, but he’d take with two, and even his brother wasn’t immune. From the sounds of it, Nick still owed Ste a considerable amount of money when he died.” Em bit her lip and leaned in before adding in a low voice, “Ste is convinced Nick was murdered. He just can’t wrap his head around his brother doing such a thing.”
“I don’t think anyone ever can.”
“I don’t see it, Claire,” Em insisted, her brows tilting sharply over her eyes. “I knew him his whole life. I’d believe that he sprayed your shop for your uncle, but I can’t wrap my head around the idea of him taking his own life. I’ve searched and searched my soul, but my feelings about this are crystal clear.”
“There’s someone else who might know Nick better than anyone,” she said, her breath suddenly shaky, handing the card to Em. “It’s tomorrow.”
“Are you going to visit him?” Em asked without a hint of judgement in her voice.
“Yes,” Claire replied firmly, resting a hand on Em’s shoulder. “You’re the only person I’ve told. Will you come with me? I don’t want to go on my own.”
“Of course.” Em smiled up at Claire and nodded, patting her hand. “I sense you’ve got a little time before you need to open. Why don’t you go back there and make some candles for fun? Start the day in the right frame of mind, and the rest will slot into place. You can forget about your uncle until we arrive at the prison tomorrow. I’ll keep watch here.”
Grateful, Claire retreated into the kitchen, and for the first time since developing her range for the shop, gathered her few remaining ingredients, and started playing.
CHAPTER SIX
“T he sky is so blue,” Claire said, peering through the window of the top deck of the X41 bus as the Manchester cityscape came into view the next afternoon. “Over breakfast, my mum swore we were supposed to get thunder and lightning tonight.”
“The calm before the storm.” Em wiped beads of sweat from her forehead. “You can feel it in the air.”
Claire could. She had opted for what her mother called one of her ‘girlie outfits’ of thigh-skirting denim shorts and a long, lacey blouse. Even with significantly more skin on show than she usually displayed, the hot air boiled her from the inside. Without the rain to cool things down, the humidity was nearly unbearable. If the bus had air conditioning, it wasn’t making a dent.
“I’ve been coming to Manchester since I was a teenager,” Em explained. “Had most of my tattoos done in parlours around the city. The place stayed the same for years, but the gentrification’s really taking hold.”
Claire had noticed it too, especially over the last decade. The city had sprung upwards, sprouting shiny new office and apartment buildings. Every corner had a chain coffee shop, and the mass of residents thickened with each visit. Her mother had read aloud a magazine article claiming Manchester was ‘the new London,’ and Claire couldn’t disagree. She still loved the place, though. The city had a soul, and its people were much nicer than anything she’d ever experienced in the country’s capital.
“It’s this next stop,” Em said, tapping the visiting order between them, which had been kind enough to include the locations of the nearest transport links. “Let’s get downstairs.”
They rang a couple of the bells on the way down. The double-decker bus screeched to a halt at a red bus stop, almost throwing them down the narrow staircase to the lower deck. As the doors shuddered open, they thanked the driver and left the bus. Next to the canal as they were, the humidity only worsened. The red-brick tower of the prison loomed above them, not too far away.
“Come on,” Em said, nodding down a tight street between two graffiti-covered buildings. “I think I know where it is. I’ve sailed by here on my narrowboat a few times.”
Despite this being her first visit, Claire recognised the front of Her Majesty’s Prison Manchester – still more commonly known as its former name, Strangeways – at once. After Strangeways was the scene of an infamous prison riot that brought the country to a standstill in 1990, Claire had been inundated with images of the prison’s Victorian entrance of red and beige stone. As famous as the prison was, she’d expected something more imposing. Instead, it existed on a normal-looking city backstreet with old Victorian factories and more modern industrial retail structures surrounding it.
As it turned out, the grand entrance was purely decorative now, with the real access, a less imposing more modern addition, on the corner. Visiting order in hand, Claire and Em joined the steady stream of people walking through the visitor’s entrance and forming a queue for the front desk. For the first time in days, she felt the sweet kiss of air conditioning.
“You show the card,” Em said as she nodded towards the door the staff were sending visitors through. “Then you go in for your searches. It might seem scary, but you have nothing to hide. Let them do their jobs, and you’ll be inside in no time.”
Claire nodded shakily, her usually calm composure under attack at the thought of entering prison for the first time. Everything had happened so fast she hadn’t given herself a chance to process it.
“Sounds like the voice of experience.”
“I have friends all over.” Em’s smile was stiff. “When you get in there, Claire, just try and remember they’re all real people. Real people who have done terrible things, but real people, nonetheless.”
“Are my nerves that obvious?” Claire laughed, prompting harsh glares from a few of the guards positioned around the room. “You always know exactly what to say.”
“You remind me of myself at your age.” Em ducked her head. When she lifted it, her smile had lost its edge. “You’re at an age where people start getting stuck in their ways and thinking they have it all figured out. But you, Claire? You’re still open to life. The good and the bad. And you’re willing to listen to what people have to say.”
“I’m here for my own selfish reasons.”
“You say that,” Em said softly, bumping their shoulders, “and perhaps it’s partly true, but I saw your face when you were reading one of your uncle’s letters on the bus. You want to know if it’s true.” She paused and gave Claire’s hand a little squeeze. “Just listen to him. You don’t have to believe him. Just listen.” She dropped Claire’s hand and gave her a little nudge towards the desk. “It’s your turn. I can’t go any further, but I’ll be right here when you get out.”
While Em positioned herself cross-legged on one of the plastic chairs attached to the edge of the wall, Claire walked up to the desk.
“Visiting?” barked the uniformed officer behind the desk, tapping away on her screen.
“Pat.”
“Pat, who?”
“Pat Harris,” Claire said, her voice shrinking. “Patrick Harris.”
“ID.” The woman held her hand out and snapped her fingers. “Come on, love. Haven’t got all day, and the queue isn’t getting any shorter.”
“Right.” Claire pulled her purse from her bag and retrieved her pink ID. “It’s only a provisional licence. Failed too many times to face another driving test.”
The woman’s face didn’t crack as she checked Claire’s face against the ID. She typed something into the screen, slapped the ID on the counter, and slid it back to Claire.
“Don’t stand there all day,” she demanded. “Door at the end of the hall.”
Claire swiped her ID, her heart pounding. She hurried to the door, glancing back at Em one last time before she went in. The subtle thumbs up eased a little of Claire’s tension.
As soon as she stepped through the doorway, she was like a calf in a cattle market.
“Phones, shoes, bags in these trays,” a woman called, holding up two trays to demonstrate like she was at an airport. “When you’ve filled them, they go over there for scanning, and then you go over here for your body search.”
Claire found a bench and pulled off her sandals; they went in the tray along with her bag and phone. The slightly sticky tiles were the least of her worries. She looked around the search area. At one end was a window into the visiting room. The prisoners were already inside, waiting as approved visitors filtered into a holding room. She imagined Uncle Pat in there, probably as nervous as she was. Em had been right; her stomach fluttered with curiosity about the man she was about to sit and talk with.
After putting her tray on the conveyor belt into a scanner, a guard returned her shoes. Bags weren’t allowed inside; she would collect hers at the end. Stuffing the token the man gave her into her pocket, she joined the line at the full-body scanner.<
br />
“No need to be nervous,” said a woman about her age. “First time?”
“That obvious?”
“You start to learn the faces,” she said with a shrug. “What’s yours in for?”
“Oh, erm—”
“Don’t be shy, love,” she said. “Mine’s in for murder. Brother. He won’t get out till my kids are our age.”
“Murder,” Claire replied, liking the woman’s forthright tone. “Uncle. He’s old enough that I don’t think he’ll ever get out.”
“Considering where they sent him,” said the woman as she stepped forwards to take her turn through the scanner, “might be for the best.”
Claire waited until they called her. She walked through the scanner, and a woman with blue gloves beckoned her over. The guard checked Claire’s waistband, hair, and mouth before she was satisfied and waved towards the holding group. Most visitors were already looking through the window; a few even waved and tried to communicate silently through it. Although a handful of the visitors were men, most were women. The mothers, sisters, daughters of people like Pat.
For the first time since her uncle’s arrest, Claire didn’t feel quite so alone.
Head down, Claire waited until the door finally clicked open. One by one, everyone filed into the large room. She didn’t look up until she crossed over into the stuffy visiting area. Men in red bibs waited behind single desks in the sterile room. Some looked like the stereotypical ‘violent criminal’ of news and TV with facial tattoos and broken noses. Still, most looked like any man she’d pass on the street and not look twice at. There were people of all ages, from men who barely looked old enough to drink, to men so old they looked like they had already spent their lifetimes inside. Remembering Em’s advice about them being real people, she inhaled deeply as she looked for Uncle Pat.
By the time she spotted him in the back corner, he was already staring at her. He greeted her with a raised hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to return it. She wasn’t sure if she’d been expecting arched eyebrows and devil horns, but he still looked like she remembered, if a little thinner. Eyes on the tiles, she made her way to the chair and sat down.
