Letting out the Worms: Guilty or not? If not then the alternative is terrifying (Kitty Thomas Book 1 Sue Nicholls (best short books to read TXT) 📖

‘Made you laugh, didn’t I?’

Kitty kicked his shin.

The light from the laptop gave Sam’s face a blueish hue as he read, ‘Millie moved in.’

‘It was one long series of arrivals…’ Kitty paused, ‘And then leavings.’ Seeing Sam’s face, she hurried on. ‘OK. What can we say about when Millie came?’

‘We kept moving bedrooms.’

‘True, and more furniture arrived. On the day you and Josh moved in, Nicola brought us kids to her house to play with her two.’

Sam keyed this in and said, ‘So, when did our fathers move to their new places?’

Kitty frowned. ‘Not sure. Easy enough to find out.’

‘Not without telling them what we are doing.’

‘We’ll find a way. There must be records somewhere.’

Cerys had been like a tornado since she moved in with Paul, organising, boxing and filing paperwork, and cleaning and sorting cupboards. Kitty imagined there would be a labelled box in the attic or the office.

Sam said, ‘It must have been before the spring, if that’s when he beat up the two guys next door.’

‘Mm. I wish I had an accurate timestamp for that. The police should have a record.’

‘Do we need an exact date? It doesn’t seem that important if we’re only building a picture.’

‘I suppose you’re right. OK. Leave it for now. Anything else?’

‘The restaurant, before Millie died.’

They trawled through more events, while around them, the coffee shop emptied and filled again, this time with theatre goers. The rise in noise level and scent of perfume caught Kitty’s attention. ‘What time is it?’

‘Half past six.’

‘We should go.’

Sam saved the spreadsheet which now had events from their childhood through to Max’s imprisonment. Many without detail or date.

‘I’ll have a word with Seth, see if I can get firmer dates for some of these things,’ Kitty said. Seth was one of Kitty’s police contacts. A civilian, he was responsible for taking calls and entering data into the police database. Kitty continued, ‘Would you take a squint at death records - find out when our mothers were pronounced dead? At least it’s something precise to start us off. Check the housing records too, see if you can find out when our homes were sold, and new ones bought.’

Sam sighed. ‘OK. Shame we don’t have anyone’s diary, it would save so much time.’

‘Sam!’ Kitty thumped the table, ‘I’ve remembered something. My mum’s old Filofaxes. They’re in the loft at Dad’s. I didn’t have room in my flat, so I asked if they’d store some boxes for me. He’s got no idea what’s in them.’

Sam’s face brightened. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. Mum was meticulous about everything. Anal, to be honest. I bet she kept detailed records.’

‘You’d better get over there then.’

18 ANWEN

The walls of the grey house on Mynydd Hen carried the scars of decades of battering by wind, rain and frost. Anwen sat upright on her bare bed, a prisoner in her room. She hugged her upper body for warmth.

This was her punishment for slipping out. She had not mentioned Cerys, but her mother noticed that the brand of milk she brought home differed from that sold in the shop. When questioned, Anwen could not or would not provide a satisfactory explanation, so here she was, wrapped in a coat in her frigid cell. Instructed to pray for forgiveness, and the strength to tell the truth.

Although accustomed to such treatment, her earlier conversation with Cerys had unsettled her. The promise of comfort and love taunted her. How cruel, to tell her all that stuff and expect her to wait for permission. But then it struck Anwen that she did, perhaps, have options other than obedience.

She eyed the window. Its ancient metal frame, with its once elegant, curved catches, was black with mildew and years of grime. A layer of yellowing paint sealed the casement shut. Never had Anwen hung over that sill to breathe in the warm fragrance of grass cuttings or the iron scent of rain. In fact, the possibility had not occurred to her until now. Downstairs, the front door banged and Anwen pressed her forehead to the pane to see her mother, buttoned to the neck in a brown woollen coat, her feet encased in sturdy boots, marching along the scrubby path to the road. Anwen followed the wiry form with her eyes as it turned left at the end of the track and strode to the bend in the road before disappearing - her purpose, no doubt, the interrogation of Mr Davies the shopkeeper.

On this bleak, gorse encrusted land, it took time to warm the ground. In winter, snow would linger for weeks in sheltered spots. But there was no snow now, instead there was, what people round here called, ‘a lazy wind’, meaning one that travelled through, rather than round you. In his shop, Mr Davies would often tell Anwen this, regarding her pinched features with sympathetic eyes. Then he would throw back his head and laugh as if he had never made the joke before, and she would nod and smile, watching his tonsils wiggle in his glistening, pink mouth.

Against her bedroom wall, a creak-doored tallboy housed Anwen’s few items of clothing, along with household linens such as tablecloths and towels. On many a night had she wrapped these around her body and dozed in the scent of mothballs and mildew. Now, she spread an old shawl on the boards and pitched her clothing into its centre before bundling everything into a parcel. Next, she pulled the chair to the window, and with an old curtain over her arm to protect her from broken glass, stood on its seat. There was still no sound from downstairs, so with a grunt, she kicked hard at the glass through the heavy fabric. After many attempts, and with her arms shaking from the strain of the curtain, she felt