‘What am I doing boy?’ Michelle asked Rowdy as the doorbell went and she rose to let Andy in.
‘Are you ready?’ Andy asked.
‘As I’ll ever be, I guess.’ She took one last glance in the mirror in the hall before following him out to the van.
She’d never been inside a prison before; she had no idea what to expect except for what she’d seen in the movies. She could have asked Andy, but she didn’t really want to know.
‘She wants to see you, you know,’ he said. ‘I think she really has changed.’
Michelle didn’t answer. She thought about Nick and about what he’d want; about how all he’d wished to do was to atone for his past sins. She wondered sometimes if Caitlin’s killing him had wiped the slate clean.
David Casey’s body had never been found. Andy still had his suspicions that his friend lay at the bottom of the lake, but the guards had dismissed his suggestion and even though he visited Caitlin in the prison every week, she refused to be drawn on it. Michelle suspected that despite everything Andy was still in love with Caitlin, and that he wanted to believe she’d changed.
‘I could have told her … if you didn’t want to do this,’ Andy said.
Michelle shook her head. ‘It’s better coming from me.’
She picked up her bag, saw a text from Conor wishing her luck, before she took a deep breath and got out of the van.
‘I’ll be here when you come out,’ Andy told her, and she smiled, grateful that he’d become such a good friend.
She didn’t recognize Caitlin at first, but then she was too afraid to look too closely at the room of tough-looking women, and her eyes passed over the thin brunette in the corner of the room. The prison guard pointed her out, and when Michelle followed her line of vision, she saw that Caitlin had already seen her, that she was waiting for Michelle to approach.
‘Andy said you’d come, but I didn’t believe it.’
Michelle sat, trying to ignore the fleeting images at the back of her mind – the flash of the blade, Nick dying in her arms.
‘How are you?’ Michelle asked.
Caitlin shrugged. ‘How you’d expect. Days are endless, often I just lose count … if it weren’t for Gillian and Andy, I’d probably go mad.’
Mad. Caitlin’s lawyers had tried to claim insanity when she’d been arrested for Nick’s murder, but psychologists had said that there was nothing wrong with her, that she was perfectly sane. Manslaughter was the final charge.
‘David’s mother comes to see you?’ Michelle asked.
‘Why wouldn’t she?’ The words were spat back, a flash of the old vehemence. And Michelle understood – Caitlin’s mother-in-law still believed that her son was missing. There was no evidence to the contrary. Who knew what Caitlin had told her in relation to her attack on Nick – she’d have claimed her own innocence, of that much she was sure.
‘Lydia’s dead,’ Michelle told her.
Caitlin shrugged.
‘She died intestate, which means that everything goes to you.’
‘What could she possibly have? Living out there in that old mobile home?’
‘More than you think.’ Michelle told her. ‘About sixty thousand euros.’
Caitlin looked at her, suspicious. ‘How do you know this?’
‘She told me. I used to visit her, take her groceries. She’d said she was going to make a will. She was going to donate a large sum to the Simon Community … but she didn’t get around to it. She went peacefully in her sleep.’
‘Is that all you came to tell me?’ Caitlin asked.
‘No. I wanted to give you this.’ Michelle took the photo from her purse. She handed it to Caitlin and waited for her reaction. Caitlin looked at the picture, then dropped it on the table as though it had burned her fingers. She glanced at Michelle and then looked again.
Michelle had found the photo among several others in a box of Lydia’s things when they’d cleaned out the mobile home. Caitlin was a little girl, her dark hair tied in two pigtails. She wore a blue denim pinafore and by her side was a small boy – a toddler, not even two years old. They held hands and smiled at the camera. Michelle could see now from Caitlin’s expression that she’d hit a nerve.
‘That’s him, isn’t it? That’s Daniel?’
Caitlin nodded. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘Lydia had it. There are more, lots more. They’re all yours now – I’ve given them to Andy to keep safe.’
Michelle didn’t tell her that she’d kept one for herself: a photo of Johnny Davis before his life had gone so terribly wrong. She kept it among her photos of Nick.
She stood up, prepared to leave. ‘What happened – it’s all in the past now. It’s what Nick would want …’
Caitlin stood too, and Michelle noticed just how much weight she’d lost. She may not have been caught for Daniel’s death, or David’s, but she was paying the price. It would be another six years at least before she got out.
‘Will I see you again?’ Caitlin asked her, suddenly.
Michelle shook her head. ‘It’ll all go through probate. I’m sure they’ll be in touch.’
As she got back into the van, Michelle ran a protective hand across her belly.
‘Well, how was it?’ Andy asked.
‘Better,’ she said. ‘We said everything we needed to.’ They were quiet as they drove back towards Nick’s house – she would always think of it as Nick’s house, even though it was now hers.
‘Andy … Conor and I went for another scan yesterday …’
‘And?’
Michelle smiled. ‘It’s a boy … we wondered if you’d like to be godfather?’
Andy took one hand off the wheel to squeeze hers and as he did so, she felt a kick. ‘Any ideas what you’re going to call him?’
‘Yes. His name’s Nick,’ she said. ‘We’re both agreed on that.’