Looking for JJ (19 page)

“No we don’t!” His mum slapped his arm.

“Takeaways and pizzas,” Peter said, joining in.

“We never have takeaways!” Sophie said. “Do we, Mum?”

They had three courses and two different types of wine. Sophie was allowed a glass of each and she grimaced as she drank the first sip. After they’d finished eating Sophie insisted on making the coffee and the sound of beans being ground up reached their ears.

“Where did we get that girl?” Jan asked.

“We stole her from a well-balanced family so that she could be our servant,” Peter said.

Later, when the dishes had been cleared away and Jan and Peter had gone inside, taking a reluctant Sophie with them, Frankie and Alice were left alone on the patio. Frankie pulled out a couple of the garden loungers and sat them side by side. The sound of classical music spilled out into the night and they sat in the dark looking out at the dense shapes of the garden and the lights of other houses in the distance. It was a perfect night. Alice stretched her arms up until her bones cracked. A few days before she had thought that such a night was out of reach for her. When Sara had come into the flat and said that she knew the truth, Alice had thought that everything she and Rosie had built over the past six months was over.

She’d been wrong.

There had been hasty conferences between Rosie, Jill Newton and Sara. The three women sat round the table in Rosie’s kitchen, trying to salvage a future of some sort for Alice Tully. Alice wandered around the flat in her pyjamas peering cautiously through the windows. There were phone calls between solicitors and newspaper editors; between senior probation workers and Patricia Coffey. There had been long faces and angry words. Rosie’s kitchen, once a place of warmth, pungent with the aroma of herbs and spices, now smelled of compromises and deals.

They couldn’t just ignore Sara and her newspaper. The scoop was too good for the editor to pass on. While the rest of the press thought Jennifer Jones was in Holland, they knew the truth, and they had the right, they thought, to splash it across their front page. The threat of an injunction did not seem to worry them. They had a sister paper in Scotland and would publish there.

Unless Alice Tully agreed to be interviewed.

They would withhold her name and whereabouts if she was prepared to tell her side of the story; the killing of Michelle Livingstone, her life in Monksgrove, her new life in society. It would be an intelligent piece of investigative journalism and it would lead to a book which would be published in a year or so. The information in the book would be thorough, leaving no stone unturned. But none of it would break Alice’s cover.

Rosie had been unconvinced. Wearing the same clothes two days running, she slumped across the table looking tired. Sara Wright, arriving punctually, wore crisp suits and carried a wafer-thin laptop. On the third visit she closed the laptop until it gave a soft click. She looked from Rosie to Jill and then round to Alice.

“The press are only interested in you because you are such a mystery. If you let me interview you, write up your story from your point of view, you’ll cease to be a mystery and they will give up on you.”

Rosie looked up. Jill Newton picked up her glasses off the table and put them on.

“The newspapers are racing with each other. Once they see that we’ve won they won’t be so keen for Alice’s story. It’ll be yesterday’s news.”

Sara tapped her nails on the laptop and looked at Rosie and Jill. Both women looked weary, Rosie fiddling with her earring.

“I’ll do it,” Alice said suddenly. “Just one interview. I’ll answer your questions but then you’ll leave us alone. You won’t come back for any more?”

Sara Wright shook her head.

The one interview was to be a whole-day affair, on the Saturday after she got back from Frankie’s. It was to take place in a hotel in the centre of London and there would just be Sara, Alice and Rosie. The article would appear about a week later. Then it would be over.

“Hey, you two.” A voice broke into Alice’s thoughts. “Come in and play charades. Girls against boys!”

Sophie was standing at the French doors, one leg on the patio.

“My family!” Frankie said, under his breath.

“Don’t say that!” Alice said, standing up, using her hand to pull Frankie back on his feet. “I think they’re lovely.”

 

 

 

The house was dark when Alice heard the patter of footsteps coming down the stairs from the loft. She’d been awake for a while, lying in the strange bed looking around the room. Even though she was exhausted and a little woozy from the wine she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes closed for more than a few seconds. She was troubled. Her conversation with the reporter was weighing heavily on her. It was years since she had talked about Berwick Waters.

The footsteps reached her door. It was Frankie, she knew.

He came cautiously into the room with a finger on his lips, as though she might suddenly call out. She pulled herself up, fixing her pillow so that it made a back-rest. He sat down on the bed and kissed her hard, his fingers on her shoulders, pressing into her skin.

“I thought we weren’t going to do this!” she said, when he finally moved back.

“We’re not! I’ve just come to say goodnight,” he said, running his fingers down the front of her new nightdress, his hand resting on her breast.

“Goodnight!” she said severely, moving his hand.

But he didn’t go. He lay down beside her, his head on her chest.

“They all love you, I can tell,” he said, his voice crackly as if he was about to fall asleep.

“They’ve only just met me,” Alice said, stroking his hair. “They don’t know me.”

“What’s to know?” he said.

Alice’s breath became shallow and she spoke before thinking.

“You don’t really know me either. I mean, about my life. When I was younger, a kid.”

“You never talk about it,” he said.

“What if. . .” She stopped, hardly daring to go on. “What if . . . I’d done something bad. When I was younger?”

He didn’t speak and she was aware of his arm moving under the covers, his fingers pulling at her nightdress. She gripped his hand and pulled it up to her face.

“Frankie,” she whispered, “what if I’d done something awful? In my past? Would you still want me then?”

He raised his head and looked at her, his face in shadow but his eyes dark and penetrating.

“Of course I’d still want you. I love you, silly!”

He kissed her again, softer this time, and then sat up rubbing his eyes with his fists.

“I’d better go and get some sleep. We’ve got sightseeing to do tomorrow!”

She waited until he’d gone before lowering her pillow. The bed felt empty, her own body hardly making a dent in it. She let her eyes shut and pulled the duvet over her face. All she could see was darkness, but it still didn’t help her to sleep. How could she rest when she had to tell it all again? When it meant dragging up images and memories that she had buried long ago.

 

The wild cat didn’t stay for long. Once it had looked at the small girl standing with the baseball bat and the other lying face down on the rocks it made a slow turn and gracefully leaped away.

Jennifer’s body was rigid, her thin hair moved by a sudden breeze that came from nowhere. A bird shrieked from up on high and the sound pierced the air. Then it was all still and she looked at Michelle’s back, her jeans and pink top, her trainers, one of them dirty from where she had sunk into the mud. She looked at the ginger hair, springing out from her head, in the middle a dark wet patch that seemed to be getting bigger before her eyes.

“Michelle,” she whispered, the word hardly leaving her lips.

There was no answer. There couldn’t be any answer. She sank down, on to her knees, the very air wavering in front of her.
What had she done?
A thin cry came, but it wasn’t from Michelle, it couldn’t be. The sound came from somewhere deep down inside Jennifer, hardly loud enough to be heard. She glanced down. In her hand was the baseball bat. It shouldn’t have been there, but it was. She raised it to look. Blood on the wood; a terrible red stain that had soaked into the fibres. Her hand began to shake and she turned and started to half walk and half run along the water’s edge until she came to the lake itself. In front were giant grasses standing high, as tall as she was. She shoved the bat into them, stretching her arm as far as she possibly could, and then let go. There was no thump or splash and she hesitated for a moment before pulling herself back, drawing her breath in great gulps as though she’d just surfaced from underwater.

The sun came out, sending a dazzling light on the surface of the lake. She shielded her eyes and looked through the top of the grasses to the other side. There were people there, standing in a tight knot, some dogs scurrying around them. It was too far to make out anything about them, who they were, whether they were young or old.

She walked backwards, away from the water and into the wood. Something scooted by her foot and she jumped back, gripping on to a branch while she looked down to see what it was. Nothing. A water rat, maybe. Whatever. It was gone and she was alone. After a moment, pulling herself together, she crept back through the trees and bushes until she came to the spot where the three of them had emerged earlier, when they had first walked out to the place where the Bussell brothers had their den.

She hardly dared to look.

Michelle was face down on a rock, her hair as springy and curly as ever. In the middle of it was a great brown stain, wet and sticky. It looked like treacle.

“No, no, no. . .” she said, her head bobbing up and down, her hands in fists, her teeth welded together.

She began to walk distractedly back and forward and saw the hole where the tin box had been. Beside it was a mound of branches. She looked back to Michelle and then back to the hole. She was breathing lightly, her chest hardly moving. She walked towards Michelle’s still body, her feet hardly touching the ground.

She had to do
something
.

She bent down and pulled at one of Michelle’s shoulders, turning her over so that she was lying on her back. Her pale face was there among the untidy ginger hair, and Jennifer backed off, looking at it with awe. Inside her chest everything was still, as if her own heart had stopped beating. She stood for a long time, putting the flat of her hand against her ribs. There was no feeling there, no life inside her, and yet she was still standing.

She had to
do
something.

She stepped closer and bent down. Averting her eyes from her friend’s face, she put her hands underneath her armpits and pulled her a few centimetres before resting. She did it again and again until she had her in front of the hole. It wasn’t deep, sixty centimetres or so. She pulled her by the arms one last time until the girl’s motionless form slipped into the earth.

She became busy, picking up the branches one by one and laying them gently across Michelle, taking care not to cover her completely. The sun had gone in and she felt chilly, hugging herself to keep warm. She noticed the stuff from the box then, the rope, the sleeping bags, the things that they had unpacked earlier. The whole place looked messy, untidy. It would draw attention to what was there, under the branches. She piled it all up and pushed it under a bush. The only thing that was left out in the open was the empty tin box. She pulled it to the edge of the water and inched it over the side, dipping it in so that it began to fill. When it got too heavy she let it go and in seconds it disappeared from sight.

Then she turned away, not daring to cast her eyes in the direction of her friend. She walked into the trees and strode off, tears coming, her chest heaving, her shoulders shaking with emotion. She walked down the path and round the edge of the lake. It took almost an hour but she met no one. When she left the reservoir her face was wet and her eyes felt raw and puffy.

What had she done?

 

Alice sat up. It was no good. She simply couldn’t sleep. She switched the tiny bedside light on and looked around the room. She’d thought it pretty earlier in the day but now it seemed garish. There were too many flowers: on the wallpaper, the curtains, the duvet cover. The carpet was too thick, the chest of drawers too shiny. Looking down she saw the white nightdress that had been given to her as a present. A simple style, just some lace around the neck and sleeves. White; the colour of purity. She pulled at it for a moment and then took it off over her head and threw it down at the side of the bed.

She lay naked, staring into the light for a long time. After a while she drifted into sleep.

 

Jennifer’s breath was punching in and out of her chest as she ran down the lane, leaving the woods and the lake behind her. She found Lucy on a swing in Michelle’s back garden. The little girl was moving back and forward in a dull way. Jennifer walked straight up to her and put her hand on her shoulder. Her dress was still damp and her teeth were chattering.

“There’s no one in,” Lucy said, dejectedly.

Jennifer hopped over the fence and went carefully into her own house. Only then did she remember the photographs. Mr Cottis and his camera and the bright lights. The hallway was empty; no bag or suitcase on wheels. She looked at the clock in the kitchen. It was almost three o’clock. The day had disappeared, and so had Mr Cottis.

“Mum?” she shouted up the stairs, but there was no answer.

She pulled Lucy by the hand into her house and up to the bathroom. She ran a hot bath and made Lucy get in and wash herself including her hair. She felt like a mum fussing over the girl, sorting out some of her old clothes for her to wear. Then she used hot water to dab at her own grazed hand and chin.

“Where’s Michelle?” Lucy suddenly said, getting out of the bath and wrapping herself in a big towel.

“We had a row. She walked off.”

When she was dressed Jennifer took her downstairs into the kitchen and made some tea and toast. Lucy ate hers while Jennifer’s sat untouched on the plate in front of her. Lucy talked about her mum and her brothers. It didn’t seem to worry her that Jennifer was not paying attention.

“Thing is,” Jennifer said, finally interrupting, “I think it’s better if we don’t tell anyone about what happened today. About you falling in the lake. . .”

Lucy stopped eating, her little mouse face looking straight at Jennifer. She hadn’t fallen in the lake, she’d been pushed in, but Jennifer hadn’t said that.

“Me and Michelle will get in trouble because we were supposed to be looking after you. Your mum might not let you play with us again.”

Lucy nodded, her eyes shifting from side to side as though she was thinking it through.

“And . . . it might be better not to mention that we went up to the lake. You know Mrs Livingstone doesn’t allow Michelle to go. She might blame me. Or even blame you, and you don’t want that.”

Lucy shook her head.

“So we’ll just say we went to the park. You fell over and dirtied your dress. Michelle walked off in a huff and I brought you back here to change. That’s all we need to say.”

They watched television and for a while Jennifer seemed to relax. She kept her eyes on the screen as programme after programme started and finished. She concentrated on the sound, the words and the music. She let it fill her head so that other thoughts were pushed aside, covered up.

When the doorbell rang it surprised her. Lucy, engrossed in the programme, didn’t look up but Jennifer stood up and walked over to the window to see who was there.

When she saw Mrs Livingstone standing at the door it was a shock. Her hair was loose, blowing around in the wind, ginger and curly. She rang the doorbell, bending over to call through the letterbox. Jennifer stumbled her way towards the front door, opening it just a few centimetres.

“I’m back. I left Stevie and Joe up at the hospital. They’re going to stay overnight and get a train back later tomorrow. Are Lucy and Michelle in there?”

Jennifer couldn’t speak, her fingers holding fast to the door. Lucy came up behind her so she opened the door wider for her to go through.

“Michelle’s not here.” She forced the words out. “We had a row down the park and she walked off.”

“Oh no, that’s a shame. You’ll make it up. She’ll be home soon, I’m sure. Come on, Lucy, let’s go and get tea ready.”

She turned and walked away and Lucy trotted behind her.
What happened to your dress?
Mrs Livingstone was saying as she walked down the path. Jennifer closed the door tightly, standing against it, pinning it shut with her forehead and shoulders as if she thought Mrs Livingstone might come running back towards it, demanding to know what the truth was. When a while had passed she ran up the stairs and sat in her room, on her bed, with Macy on her lap, the cardboard box of her clothes beside her.