Silent Voices

see him. His mother’s cooking a family lunch. There was a three-line whip.’ A pause. ‘Look, boss, I really think I should stay. Hannah shouldn’t be left on her own, and the FLO can’t get here until this afternoon.’
    ‘No problem,’ Vera said. ‘I need to chat to her anyway, so you pack up your stuff and be ready to leave. I’ll be there in half an hour.’ I must be a truly horrible person , she thought, passing a timber lorry, for that exchange to have given me so much pleasure .
    Hannah still seemed doped up when Vera arrived. She sat in a rocking chair by the kitchen window, staring at the blue tits pecking at a string of peanuts hanging from the bird table. Holly gave her a big hug before she left, but Hannah hardly responded. Vera thought Holly wouldn’t have liked that: she was kind-hearted enough, but she needed emotional payback.
    ‘I don’t know about you,’ Vera said. ‘But I’m starving. Is there anything to eat in this place?’
    Hannah turned in her seat, but only shrugged. She looked as if she’d lost pounds just in the two days since her mother had died, and she’d been skinny to start with. Vera thought Holly would have done better to spend her time cooking a proper meal for the girl than to sit around feeding off her grief.
    The freezer was well organized and everything labelled. Jenny Lister, superwoman. Vera found a tub of home-made soup and a bag of wholemeal rolls. She set the soup whirring round the microwave and stuck the rolls in the oven to thaw and crisp. Her sort of cooking. She ignored Hannah while she set the table and then called her to come for her lunch.
    ‘I’m not really hungry.’ Hannah looked at her with blurred, unfocused eyes.
    ‘Well, I am, and your mam will have taught you it’s rude to sit and watch a person eat.’
    Hannah got up from the rocking chair and joined Vera. She sat with her elbows on the table as Vera ladled soup into a bowl. It smelled delicious – of tomato and basil – and, despite herself, the girl dipped in her spoon and reached out to break off a piece of bread.
    Vera waited until the soup had gone before she started talking.
    ‘Did you know your mother went to visit Mattie Jones in prison?’
    Hannah looked a bit brighter now, sharper. ‘She didn’t talk much about her work.’
    ‘Mattie Jones is the young woman who killed her child. You’d have seen about it on the news. It was a big case. Your mother didn’t mention it at the time?’
    A pause. ‘I do remember. It was one of the few times I’d seen Mum get angry. She got up and switched off the television. She said she couldn’t stand the way the media demonized the people involved – Mattie and the social worker. The reporters made everything seem so simple, and this case wasn’t simple at all.’ Hannah shut her eyes and there was a little smile. Vera could tell in that moment that her mother had become alive for her again.
    ‘Did Jenny ever talk about a book she was writing?’
    Hannah smiled again. ‘She was always talking about her book, but I don’t think she’d started writing it.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Not wanting to put the girl under pressure, not wanting to give away how important the answer might be, Vera raised herself to her feet and filled the kettle.
    ‘It was her dream. To be a writer.’
    ‘You mean stories, and that?’ Still with her back to Hannah, Vera dropped teabags into mugs.
    ‘No! She said she’d never be any good at fiction. She wanted to do a sort of popular guide to social work. Real cases – the individuals disguised of course – to bring it alive for the reader. So people could understand the strains and the dilemmas that social workers face.’
    Vera set a mug of tea in front of Hannah, ferreted in a tin for a couple of biscuits.
    ‘I think she started writing it,’ Vera said. ‘Researching it anyway. Are you sure she didn’t work on it at home?’
    ‘Not sure, no. We both led our own lives. She spent quite a lot of time working here on her laptop. Maybe she wanted to start her book in secret. You know what it’s like when you talk about your dreams. People have expectations, put the pressure on. I can imagine her completing it, even waiting before she got a deal with the publisher before telling me. Then it would be: Ta-da, look what I’ve done! And a bottle of fizz to celebrate.’ Hannah looked up, her eyes as feverish as Mattie’s had been. ‘But now it’ll never happen, will it?’
    ‘Would she have