Page 84 of First Blood

The door was opened by Jay who nodded and stepped aside.

Kim headed straight into the office of Marianne, who although as smart and groomed as she had been the last time they’d met, appeared pale. The light make-up she wore did nothing to conceal the dark circles beneath her eyes.

‘You’ve heard, I take it?’ Kim asked.

‘Not officially but I assume it’s true, that the woman found is Hayley?’

Kim nodded. ‘You understand that we need to talk to people here. I need a list of names of staff and residents who knew her.’

‘I can get you that. There are only a couple of the ladies who were here with Hayley, and I’ll explain to the staff that they need to be open and co-operative.’

Kim glanced across the hall.

‘I’d like to start with Jay.’

‘Feel free to speak to him in the CCTV room while I brief the rest of the staff.’

Kim headed towards the door, but Marianne’s voice stopped her.

‘She might have made some bad decisions but she didn’t deserve that.’

‘You mean going back to Luke Fenton?’

‘Yes.’

Kim had a sudden thought. Yes, they knew Hayley had gone back to a man who was possibly abusing her daughter but they hadn’t yet examined why.

‘But why was that, Marianne?’ Kim asked, recalling the maximum length of time the women were allowed to stay in the shelter. ‘Was her time here at an end?’

‘Yes, we had to let her go. There was no room. There were urgent cases. Her stay here had—’

‘Okay, thank you,’ Kim said, shortly, and headed across the hall.

This woman had thrown her out when she had nowhere else to go. From what Stacey had uncovered about Hayley her life had been anything but joyful. She’d thought she’d found someone to love her in Luke Fenton but had eventually found the courage to leave him. For six months she’d been safe here, but for Hayley six months had not been enough to get her life back on track. Years of abuse, isolation, loneliness and crime had not been erased by a couple of courses and a polished CV. Hayley would have needed years of help, support and encouragement to get her life back on track.

And in that respect, Marianne had failed her. Badly.

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Marianne had seen the look on the police officer’s face when she’d tried to explain about the six-month time limit on placements at the shelter. Yes, she could have quoted statistics at the detective; that for every woman she accepted she had to turn five away and none were more deserving than the next. Every woman referred her way had suffered and try as she might she couldn’t save them all.

She knew this time of year brought reflection from people. Occasionally she wondered if she should have married, had children, taken more holidays, but in truth she was married to the shelters and the women were like her children. Her only reflection was whether she’d done enough to secure as many futures as she could. The festive communication to past benefactors was her own way of making that last effort at a time of year when people were more in touch with their own generosity.

She started combing through the responses to her mailshot. She hated to think of them as begging letters for more money but in effect that’s what they were. There were stories of all the good work and the statistics and the success stories over the last six months, evidence of their charitable pounds at work. And then at the bottom a list of jobs and goals yet to achieve. Not least the computer suite that would mean that more women could be online applying for jobs or updating their CVs at one time rather than the hourly time slots they currently allocated to share the resources of the two computers fairly.

The mailshot had been emailed to seventy-six recipients. She accessed the statistics of the email. Of those seventy-six recipients, seventy-five had bothered to open the email, which brought a smile to her face. Of the seventy-five engagements, she’d received twenty-seven responses. Less than half, despite the season of goodwill.

Marianne’s agitation increased when she returned to the only person who hadn’t even bothered to open the email. Probably the wealthiest person on the list and someone who had been extremely generous in the past.

She would consider devising some kind of reminder; a prompt that would encourage him to reconsider.

She scrolled through the replies she’d received. She only needed to read the first line, in some cases just the first word, before moving on to the next.

Sorry but times are hard…

It’s been a bad year…

We’ve had to restructure…