Convictions by Julie Morrigan Page B

of going on to university. In the time since then, however, Tina had grown up considerably. Now just turned eighteen and with only a few months left at school, she had a whole new set of plans. She had been working at ‘Cutting Edge’, a hairdressing salon in town, and had a job lined up there just as soon as she finished her exams. The owner had also promised her first refusal on the little flat above the salon, which she was currently renovating. It would be ready at about the right time and Tina was looking forward to moving in.
    She hadn’t yet told her mother. When she did there’d be a row, guaranteed, and she was fed up with rowing.
    As Songs of Praise moved into what, for it, was high gear, Tina picked up a magazine and did her best to tune out the television. As a defence mechanism, she started playing her current favourite album on her internal stereo.
    When the programme finished and the news began, she still hadn’t tuned the television back in. Not until she heard her mother start to make a strange keening sound did she pay any attention to what was actually happening. She dropped the magazine and jumped out of the chair and onto the couch, next to Penny.
    ‘Mum! Mum, what’s wrong?’
    Penny couldn’t speak, could only manage to point at the television set and make that awful noise, while tears coursed down her cheeks. Tina looked at the set: the face on the screen was that of George Cotter, and the newsreader was saying something about an appeal that was expected to lead to an overturned conviction. Tina went cold as she realised what it meant: George Cotter would be released from prison. She ran upstairs to the bathroom, only just made it before she brought up her tea and jaffa cakes.
     
    ***
     
    Ruth Crinson pulled up outside of the Snowdon house next morning and was overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu. She had been back once or twice over the years since Annie Snowdon had disappeared and George Cotter had been convicted of her abduction and murder, on the strength of his confession and despite the lack of either evidence or a body, but today felt different. Today felt like they were back at the beginning, starting again, no idea who was responsible for the loss and misery the family had endured.
    ‘How could this happen?’ Penny asked her, almost as soon as she opened the door. ‘He admitted he’d done it. How can he change his mind now?’
    ‘It’s … complicated,’ said Ruth. She’d been dreading this, even though she’d insisted she should be the one to come. She’d helped the family through everything else that had happened to them, she felt she had to see the job through. ‘Can I come in?’
    Tina was bringing through a tray of drinks as Ruth went into the lounge. ‘I’ve made you your usual,’ she told Ruth, flashing her a smile that vanished so quickly Ruth was hardly sure it had been there at all. ‘I stayed home from school today. I thought I should be here.’
    ‘Good idea,’ said Ruth. ‘You can help your mum with this.’
    Tina smiled again, and this time it stayed in place for a little longer.
    Once they were all seated, Ruth tried to explain the situation. It was something she herself found confusing, frustrating: she could hardly imagine what Penny and Tina made of it.
    ‘When Cotter confessed, he put himself behind bars,’ Ruth told them. ‘We couldn’t have put him there. We had no evidence. Okay, we had a few bits of circumstantial evidence, but nothing that could be considered “beyond reasonable doubt”. Not enough, to be honest, to have even persuaded the CPS we had a case. Then, even when he told us where to find Annie, we couldn’t find her. She just wasn’t there.’ Ruth took a sip of her coffee. ‘Now Cotter is saying that his confession was false. He was stressed and scared by the questioning and then by being followed, and he imagined he must have done what he had been accused of. He says he made his confession while the balance of his mind was