Looking for JJ (4 page)

 

 

 

Jill Newton arranged for them to meet in a bookshop in London a week later. It seemed like a cloak and dagger affair and Alice couldn’t help but look carefully around as she walked along the busy street. As though someone might be there, in the slipstream behind her, keeping her in their sights.

As soon as she’d seen the photograph in the newsagent’s shop window she’d known that there would be others. Rosie herself admitted to seeing at least three (probably more, Rosie keeping it to herself, trying not to worry her). They were dotted about the town centre of Croydon like tiny landmines. Someone, the detective in the greasy leather jacket perhaps, was hanging round the corners of her life, waiting to walk up behind her one day and lay an accusing hand on her shoulder.

Before turning into the bookshop she took a last look round.

It was just after five. The shop had four floors and she stood on the escalator and let it carry her upstairs towards the café. She had never seen so many books before. Jill Newton was already at a table when she got there. She was sitting with her back to the window, her shoulders straight, her head high. Her blonde hair was stiff and she was wearing different black-rimmed glasses that made her look like a secretary who was about to take shorthand for a boss. As Alice got closer she wanted to wave, but Jill was absorbed in some magazine that she was reading and Alice had to tap her on the wrist before she actually looked up.

“Alice, great to see you. Have a seat. I’ll get you something. A coffee?”

Alice shook her head. She’d had enough of coffees and lattes and hot chocolates to last her a lifetime.

“How’s the job?” Jill said, closing the magazine up and slipping it into a bag down by the side of her chair.

“It’s OK. I had a bad couple of weeks but I think I’m OK now.”

Jill’s coffee was sitting in front of her and she had her hands loosely clasped around it. She seemed very calm, her fingers only moving to pick her cup up and then replace it. Alice, even though she tried to sit still, was fidgety, crossing and recrossing her legs and picking at the sleeves of her new suede jacket.

“Alice.” Jill began to speak after a few moments’ quiet. “I’ve had a message through from Pat Coffey. She says your mother has been in touch with her. Your mother says you sent her a birthday card. Is that true?”

Alice took a deep breath. Even now, now that she was free, there were no secrets. She nodded.

“Your mother has taken this as a sign that you want to re-establish contact with her. Is that the case? Do you want to see her?”

Alice shook her head. She didn’t know exactly why she’d sent the card but she knew that she didn’t want to see her mother. Jill Newton seemed pleased with her response.

“That’s what I thought. That’s what I told Pat. Sending a card to her wasn’t exactly the best thing to do. It went to an old address and had to be passed on through friends.”

Jill drank the rest of her coffee. Then she pushed the cup and saucer away and turned directly to Alice. She put one of her hands over Alice’s.

“Alice, love. We had this plan. That you would live in total secrecy for a number of years, maybe even longer. This would give you a chance to have a normal sort of life. To live in the community. To go to university. To get a job. Find a partner, maybe, have a family of your own. This means total anonymity. There are only three people who know. . .”

“You, Pat and Rosie,” Alice said, feeling her throat tighten up.

It sounded good. A new life. A new start. Like being born again. Except that Alice was carrying a heavy load into that new life. A lot of baggage from the past, weighing her down.

“People who care about you. People you can trust.”

Alice nodded. She knew that this was true. She also knew that there were people who she couldn’t trust and that her mother was one of them.

“It means that people, from your past, they have to be left behind. Maybe not for always. Maybe ten years down the line, when you’re established, when you’ve made a life for yourself. Maybe then you could consider some contact with your mother.”

In ten years she would be twenty-seven.

“Now, with this business in Croydon we have two options. First we could contact a judge and set up an exclusion order. Stop the detective from coming anywhere within a certain distance of you. If we do this it will, no doubt, lead back to the dead girl’s parents.”

Alice swallowed back. The words
dead girl
just tumbled out of Jill’s mouth. How easy it was for her to speak of things that she had no involvement in. Those words,
the dead girl
, would have sat heavy on Alice’s tongue, like having a mouth full of cement.

“But if we do contact a judge the press will certainly get hold of the story. It will show them that they’ve stumbled on your whereabouts. It might mean that you have to move on from Croydon. We might have to find another placement for you.”

Alice shook her head. She couldn’t leave Rosie. Not ever.

“The second possibility is that we could simply ignore it. A lack of reaction from you, and this detective will think he’s looking in the wrong place. After a while he’ll move on. He’ll suspect that the card you posted to your mother was posted by someone else, somewhere far away from where you live.”

“I’m so sorry,” Alice said, looking at Jill Newton.

She was causing trouble for everyone, being a nuisance. Jill had had to come away from her office to see her. Pat Coffey was getting phone calls from her mother. Rosie was having sleepless nights. She had seen her, boiling the kettle at ten past four in the morning, sitting at the kitchen table while the sky paled into daylight. It gave her a mild feeling of panic. How long before they got fed up, tired of her? Maybe one day they would let her go. Tell her to look after herself. Then she would have to face the newspapers and television on her own. Possibly, one day, she would be forced to come face to face with the parents. She shook her head. She couldn’t stand that. She’d rather fold up and die than be in that position.

What on earth had made her send that birthday card?

Later, after they’d left the bookshop and got to the station, Jill told her about the mobile phone.

“I’m organizing some funds to pay for it. That way you can contact me if anything else occurs. Personally, I don’t think it will. This detective won’t get a response. Then he’ll get tired of looking. He’ll give up when his pay stops coming in. Then you can get back to normal.”

Jill gave her a little hug before she peeled off to go to a different platform. Alice waited for her train, feeling the warmth of the woman’s embrace for ages afterwards. When the carriage doors opened she stepped quickly in and got herself a window seat. The train filled up and she turned to look out of the window, her face leaning on the glass. The next track was empty but there were people standing on the platform waiting. As her train moved off she tried to recall all the things that Jill Newton had said: the two options, the birthday card, the mobile phone. It was hard to concentrate, though. The rhythm of the train and the tightly packed bodies made it easy to just drift off into her own thoughts. All she was aware of was the train rocking gently underneath her, people close by, the window and the outside world chugging past. She might have even closed her eyes for a moment.

 

A raw day in January six years before. There was dirty snow on the ground as they carried their stuff in suitcases and black plastic bags down the stairs from the flats in Norwich. Jennifer and her mother, Carol Jones, half walking, half running to the old cream van that was idling by the pavement. Jennifer dumped her bags in the back, next to the dismantled beds and old armchairs that had been carried down in the lift. She kept her tiny rucksack and climbed into the passenger seat while Carol went back up to the flat for the last few things. Danny, a huge man, a pal, her mum had said, was slumped on the steering wheel, holding a tiny dog-end in between his thumb and forefinger. When Carol reappeared she was carrying a black bag and the small portable telly that usually sat in her and Perry’s bedroom. This made Jennifer feel uncomfortable and she wriggled about on her seat, smoothing down her trousers. She put her hand into her rucksack and felt Macy, her old doll, there, and used her fingers to rub at her silky hair. She wished the van were going, driving along the streets instead of sitting by the side of the flats. When the doors closed Danny sat up suddenly and cleared his throat, flicking the cigarette butt out of the window. Jennifer watched as it landed on a drift of snow, gasping out a last ribbon of smoke before it died completely.

“Quick,” Carol said, getting into the front of the van, squashing Jennifer in the middle. “Let’s get going.”

Danny turned the ignition key and the van spluttered but didn’t start. He tried it again a few times and Jennifer felt her mum’s leg and arm stiffen on the seat beside her. Danny turned and looked at Carol and she gave him a glowing smile, her perfectly lipsticked mouth opening to show a row of straight white teeth.

They hadn’t taken much from the flat. Just their beds, a couple of chairs and small kitchen things, towels and clothes. Perry was out at work and unaware of the move that was taking place. Jennifer was sorry about this. She liked Perry. He was only twenty-four but he’d been nice to her. He’d chatted to her a lot and opened tins of Heinz tomato soup for her when she got in from school on cold afternoons. He was a
StarWars
fan and had a cupboard full of his childhood toys. Her mum was always trying to get him to sell them.
They’ll make a few bob
, she said, running her long fingers over Darth Vader, but Perry wouldn’t part with any of them.

That’s why her mum decided that they had to go.

“He’s a complete waste of space,” she’d said, when the letter came about the new house. “We don’t want the likes of him weighing us down.”

So Danny drove them to Berwick.

“I didn’t realize it was this far,” he grumbled, pulling the van up half on a grassy verge and half off.

There was a road sign attached to the garden wall of the end cottage.
Water Lane
, it said. Carol got out and walked towards the middle house. In her hand was a pair of keys with a cardboard label attached to them. She turned and looked back at Danny who was still sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Come on! There’s a lot of stuff to shift!” she said with mock righteousness.

Jennifer heard Danny sigh and then turn off the ignition.

The three of them stood by the front door, exhaling small clouds of hot air. Around their feet, on the icy grass, were holdalls, cases and black plastic bags full of stuff that had been hastily packed that morning. Jennifer saw Danny zip his jacket right up to the neck and glance at his watch as her mum fiddled with the keys. When the door opened on to a dark hallway she picked up a couple of bags and followed her mum in.

The cottage was tiny, smaller than she thought from outside. Her mum seemed to take up all the space in the hallway in front of her. Jennifer felt the bags that she was carrying scraping along the walls and when she looked around Danny was ducking to save hitting the light bulb.

“Is the power on?” Danny said.

“Midday. That’s my official moving-in time,” her mum said.

A door opened and the three found themselves in a dark living room. Her mum walked over to the window and pulled back a pair of dusty curtains. A faint wash of light made the room seem bigger and colder at the same time.

“Not too small,” her mum said. “It’s big enough for us, right Jen?”

Jennifer nodded. Just the two of them again.

“Freezing in here!” Danny said, looking a bit put out. “I’ll need some warming up, Carol.”

He threw his arm round her mum’s shoulder and her mum wriggled out of the hold. She kept her smile but her voice was dripping with cold.

“Everything in good time, Danny. Let’s be patient. There’s furniture to put up and then we’ll see what we can do to warm the place up a bit.”

Later, when the beds had been reassembled, the bags and cases unpacked and the two armchairs sat side by side in the living room, the power came on. The bulb in the living room gave off a blur of light which did nothing to brighten the room up. After a while, though, Jennifer could feel the gentle thrum of the central heating. She took her coat off and sat on the edge of one of the armchairs. On her lap was Macy, her favourite doll that she had owned for years. Macy wasn’t a
toy
. She didn’t
play
with her. She just liked to have her near and touch her hair. From upstairs she could hear the murmur of her mum and Danny’s voices and the sound of things moving around, scraping against the floor. The tiny television sat on the floor in front of her armchair and she wondered if Perry would be angry that they had taken it, and what he would say when he realized that they were gone. She’d heard him call her mum a
thief
before, but they’d made up afterwards, spending all afternoon in the bedroom while she watched her video of
The Jungle Book
.