Looking for JJ (2 page)

 

 

 

It took a few days for Alice to actually notice the man in the leather jacket. She might have served him each time he came in but she couldn’t be sure. She was on an early shift that week, getting to the
Coffee Pot
at around seven. Between them, she, Pip and Jules served hundreds of customers every morning. It was especially busy in the half-hour before eight o’clock. There was a constant stream of business men and women in smart clothes, rushing in for a coffee or cappuccino, a Danish or croissant, all served in a handy carry-out bag that could be taken on to a train and consumed on the way to work. By eight-fifteen, when the rush trailed off, Alice was usually exhausted and the other two were sneaking upstairs for a cigarette break. That was when there was time to rest, to look around the coffee shop, to get her bearings and maybe have a drink herself.

The man sat at a table by the window in the smoking section. He had a large cappuccino and a muffin. It took him a while to drink it and when he’d finished he came up for a refill. In all he sat in the same seat for about ninety minutes each morning. This didn’t bother Alice. There were about ten tables in the coffee bar and, apart from lunchtime, they were usually half empty. If someone wanted to linger, read the newspaper, work on a laptop or just flick through a magazine, that was no problem. They were about two hundred metres from the station. People were often waiting to meet someone, or maybe just passing the time of day.

When the man in the leather jacket sat down for the third morning running Alice had a good look at him. He was middle-aged and quite large, his body too big for the tiny tables and chairs that dotted the front of the coffee shop. His head was balding on top and the rest of his hair had grown long and was held back in a straggly ponytail at the base of his neck. The table in front of him was covered in things that he’d unpacked from a battered rucksack which sat on the floor: a camera, a notepad, a map book, some document folders. There was barely room for his cardboard cup of coffee and his pastry. He spent most of his time looking out of the window and making notes. She wondered whether he was a writer of some sort.

She was preoccupied that morning. The night before she and Frankie had had an argument. She had been due to go round to his flat after work but had been a little late because she’d popped into the hairdressers for a trim. It hadn’t taken more than fifteen minutes but when she arrived he’d taken one look at her tightly cropped hair and got into a mood.

“I thought you were going to grow it!” he said, padding up the hall in front of her.

“I never said I was,” Alice said, letting her hand slide down the back of her short hair.

The flat was empty, Frankie’s flatmates probably still out at college.

“You look like a boy!” Frankie said.

“I like it short.”

Frankie sat down on the sofa. He’d left her standing and the way his legs were spread across the seat it didn’t look as though he wanted her to sit down beside him. She tried to keep cheerful. He had his exams and was under pressure.

“Shall we have a takeaway? I’ve got some cash?”

He didn’t answer. He glared at the blank screen of the television. She felt tired suddenly and couldn’t be bothered with the row.

“I’ll go. I’ll ring you later,” she said and turned.

She hadn’t got far when she heard him coming behind her. She kept on walking. Just as she was a couple of metres from the door he darted ahead of her, blocking her way. In a moment his arms were around her and he was giving her a tight squeeze, squashing her small chest against his.

“Don’t let’s argue,” he whispered and slid his hands under her T-shirt.

Later, after eating the takeaway, they sat watching the television.

“I thought you had some work to do,” Alice said, looking at a pile of books and folders on the sideboard.

“Tomorrow,” Frankie said, stretching back, lifting his arms up in the air, taking up more space on the sofa.

She’d wanted to go home soon after, but he’d held her there on the sofa in a kind of play fight. She made a half-hearted attempt to wrestle him off, but it wasn’t going to happen and in the end she lay limp and captive, laughing at him. He began to kiss her gently at first, holding himself up above her as though he was doing press-ups but then the kisses got longer and he half lay on top of her, rifling her clothes and stroking and touching her until she was dizzy.
I’ve got condoms
, he’d whispered hoarsely but she had shaken her head and pushed him off. He’d been good-natured about it but underneath she sensed a growing impatience.

Would there be a day when he got fed up with her? Alice thought about this as she cleared the tables in the smokers’ area. Some of the daily newspapers provided by the coffee shop had been opened up and left on various tables. She tidied them up, catching the eye of the man in the leather jacket as she did it. He held his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and nodded pleasantly at her. When he finally left, Jules cleared his table and came walking back to the counter with a piece of paper flapping in her hand.

“That fat bloke with the ponytail? He must have left this behind. Keep it behind the counter. He might come back.”

Alice took it. It was covered in scraps of writing and some doodles.

“It was on the opposite chair. Most probably it slid off the table. Look, there’s a couple of phone numbers on it. He might miss them.”

But Alice wasn’t looking at the phone numbers. At the top there were three names written out and several lines drawn under each of them.

 

Jennifer Jones

Michelle Livingstone

Lucy Bussell

 

Alice folded the paper in half and half again. From behind she could hear Pip and Jules talking, but she had no idea what their conversation was about. She folded the sheet over and over until it was a tiny fat rectangle, the size of a biscuit. Then she shoved it in her pocket and took her apron off.

“I’ll have my break now,” she said.

Jules and Pip were unloading the trays of lunchtime baguettes and packed sandwiches and hardly gave her a look. She walked out of the coffee shop, along the high street and turned off into the road that led to Rosie’s flat. It was only five minutes away but she quickened her step, wanting to get there, to be on her own before something inside her exploded.

In the street there was a small white van parked in front of the house. The back doors of the van were wide open and so was the front door of the downstairs flat. Alice stopped for a second. A couple of bags and a suitcase were in the hallway and she could hear the inside doors opening and closing. Someone new was moving in downstairs. She got her key out and quickly opened Rosie’s door, walked inside and shut it tightly behind her. She did not want to meet the new neighbour. She had no time for small talk now. She leaned back on to the door. She was only small and she didn’t weigh a lot, but for a few moments she pushed against the heavy wood with all the willpower she could muster. As if that was good enough to keep someone out.

Then she ran up the stairs into the kitchen. With trembling fingers, she got out the piece of paper and flattened it on to the table. The three names stared back at her
. Jennifer Jones, Michelle Livingstone, Lucy Bussell.
Three children who had gone up to Berwick Waters on a spring day six years before. Names that had been plastered over the newspapers for many months. Only one name had remained famous.
JJ. Jennifer Jones.

Why had the man in the leather jacket written them out? What was it to him?

She rang Rosie. Her fingers rigid, she jabbed at the telephone and asked to speak to Rose Sutherland, and said it was urgent. Rosie’s voice, when it came, was slow and steady. She listened to Alice’s stuttering explanation and didn’t rush to speak. When she did speak her words were considered. She tried to calm Alice down. It was nothing, just somebody’s scribbles. Possibly he was a writer or a journalist. So what? There was nothing for him to find out. This was something she had to be prepared for, would always have to be prepared for. Now that the media knew that JJ had been released there would always be people willing to try and find her. Alice nodded. She had had this conversation many times with Rosie. She knew that Rosie was right.

Replacing the telephone receiver, she seemed to pull herself together. She returned to work and slipped the piece of paper into a gap between the till and the wall. When the man in the leather jacket came in the next day she waited until the rush was over and walked across to him, carrying the scrap with her.

“You dropped this yesterday. I thought it might be important.”

She held it out. It was criss-crossed with lines from where she had folded it. He looked surprised, pleased.

“Thanks, darling. I wondered where that had got to.”

“Are you a journalist?” she said, casually.

“No.”

“Only, I thought, what with the names, that you were investigating that girl. The one who’s just been released.”

“Good spot,” he said. “Only I’m a freelance detective. I am looking for Jennifer Jones. Only not for a newspaper story.”

He tapped his finger on the end of his nose and went back to his papers. Alice gave a rictus smile. Her lips were drawn across her teeth and she nodded her head as though he’d just said something pleasant. Inside though she had turned to dust. Going back behind the counter she found herself staring at him, a sudden, intense dislike stirring up inside her. She noticed his hair was greasy and his skin was pockmarked. His shoes were scuffed and the hem of his leather jacket had come down on one side. From where she was standing she could see him pushing the last crumbs of his Danish into his mouth with one hand while using the other to punch a number into his mobile.

He was despicable and he
was
looking for JJ.

If only he knew that he had found her.

 

 

 

When Rosie came home from work a week later she found Alice sitting in a corner in her bedroom wrapped in her duvet. Beside her was a fan heater. It was three o’ clock in the afternoon and the curtains were closed and the room was in twilight. The air was heavy and hot. Rosie sighed, squatted down and pulled out the plug of the fan heater. Alice pulled the duvet around her more tightly and watched as Rosie stepped across and drew the curtains back, letting the daylight crash-land into the room. For a moment she looked as though she was going to open a window. The very thought of it made Alice feel cold, and she pushed herself back into the corner, the duvet up to her nose.

“We need to have a chat,” Rosie said, in a no-nonsense voice.

Alice had been waiting for it. It wasn’t the first time in the last seven days that Rosie had found her cocooned in her room. Up to then Rosie had made a laugh of it, treated it lightly, just one more of Alice’s little ways.

But this was different. Alice had walked out of her job.

She’d arrived at the
Coffee Pot
on time, in good spirits. She’d climbed into her overall and took up her position behind the counter looking out into the street beyond. She’d watched as a line of determined-looking people made their way towards the station, their heads down, their bags and briefcases in hand, some glancing at watches, fishing out travelcards in readiness for the machines.

They’d looked so ordinary.

She even served a couple: a frothy coffee to go, a croissant in a greaseproof bag; a large latte and camomile tea for the couple in the corner perched on the seats, grabbing a few minutes before their train.

At eight minutes past eight she suddenly felt lightheaded. She looked down at her body. Thin. She was too thin, too lightweight. Like a piece of paper that the wind might blow away. Somebody was standing on the other side of the counter asking for something but she couldn’t answer.

If they knew. If the woman with the flapping ten-pound note knew who she was talking to. If she had any inkling that she was centimetres away from Jennifer Jones, JJ, the girl from Berwick who had spent six years in prison for murder. What would she say? Would she be so bright and pleasant, commenting on the good weather as she asked for her black coffee and pecan biscuit?

Alice mumbled some words, but honestly she had no idea what she was saying.
I am not who you think I am,
she wanted to say. Instead she unbuttoned her overall and let it slide off her, stepping out of it, leaving it on the tiled floor like a skin that she had just shed. She was going home because she couldn’t go on pretending.

The manager looked at her with concern. It wasn’t as though she’d been acting completely normally that week, after all. There had been other things: crying in the toilets, dropping plates, spilling hot coffee on her wrist.

When she walked out of the shop she felt a moment’s relief. The door closed behind her and she didn’t even look round. But it wasn’t as easy as that. She found herself walking against the crowds, sidestepping people on their way to work, stepping half on the pavement, half on the road, glancing round from time to time to make sure the trams weren’t anywhere near. Then, turning the corner, she was in Rosie’s street and she was hit by the quiet. No people, only a car or two seesawing across the speed bumps.

Alice knew the manager would ring Rosie. She could almost hear the bleeps on his mobile as he tapped Rosie’s number in and rang her to report Alice’s departure. Rosie was an old friend of his. He’d given Alice a job as a favour. Not that he knew the truth. No, Rosie had had other girls staying with her; girls whose families had given up on them and who needed time and space. A safe house where they could make some sort of life for themselves.

Rosie had never had a murderer stay with her before.

“I’ll make some coffee, and I want you to come into the kitchen and chat to me,” Rosie said, walking out of Alice’s room and leaving the door wide open so that a gale could come through it.

Alice heard the water running and the sound of crockery clinking gently, the fridge door opening and shutting, the tinkling of the teaspoons. Then she could smell the coffee, strong and warming. She let her duvet fall away and got up, her legs feeling like twigs. She made her way into the kitchen, and sat down quietly on a chair that had Rosie’s jacket hanging over the back of it. Rosie placed two mugs on the table, and then pulled a chair along the floor so that she could sit down directly in front of Alice.

“We knew that things might be difficult,” she said, grabbing Alice’s hand and searching out her eyes. “We knew that someone might come looking for you. That was one of the first things we talked about. You remember? On that day in Patricia Coffey’s flat?”

Alice nodded. Of course she remembered that day.

“We are not going to let this get us down. They can look all they like. As far as these reporters, or detectives, are concerned you’ve only just been released.”

Alice nodded, although Rosie made it sound as though there were a whole group of them searching for her. A posse.

“I rang Patricia this morning just to check on how things were. She says that no one has approached her for any information. I also rang Jill. She’s not been contacted either.”

Jill Newton was Alice’s probation officer, a thin lady with white-blonde hair and tinted glasses.

“The media are looking for a girl who has just arrived in the community. You’ve been around for over six months. No one is going to put you and Jennifer Jones together.”

Rosie half-turned and lifted a plastic container from the side. She opened it and took out a shortcake biscuit and put it in Alice’s hand.

“Eat up,” she said, her voice insistent.

Alice didn’t usually eat snacks but she knew that it would make Rosie happy. Rosie
needed
her to eat the biscuit. She nibbled at its buttery edges and saw a smile break out on Rosie’s face. Rosie pushed her chair back and stood up, her baggy trousers showing line after line of creases.

“So what if this detective, this Sherlock Holmes, comes into the café. What’s he going to say? He doesn’t know your new name! He has no photographs of you! He thinks Jennifer Jones has just arrived. He can ask anyone he likes but no one will be able to point at you.”

The sound of the front door intercom made Rosie stop. She gave a little tut and trotted off in the direction of the hallway. Alice heard her pick up the receiver and then her voice let out a friendly
Hi!
She talked for a moment and Alice wondered if it was her mum, Kathy, come to visit. She took a tiny bite from the shortcake biscuit and then looked at it. Its edges were uneven, like all of the biscuits that Rosie made. From the hallway she heard the receiver being replaced and saw Rosie’s face at the door.

“The new woman downstairs, Sara? She’s got a leak in one of her taps. She doesn’t know where to turn the water off from the mains. OK if I go down there for a sec? I won’t be long.”

“I’m fine,” Alice said, holding the biscuit up and nibbling at the edge.

Rosie had brought a box of her homemade biscuits with her on their first ever meeting at Monksgrove. Patricia Coffey, the director, had told her about the proposed visit three weeks before it happened. She’d looked forward to it, counted the days, picked three or four different outfits to wear. It had been like preparing for a date with a boy. Not that she had ever experienced such a thing.

“May I introduce Rose Sutherland,” Patricia Coffey had said in a typically formal way.

Alice had been walking behind her into the living room of her apartment. She hadn’t been called
Alice
then. The new name had been just some dream of the future; a different person, Alice Tully. JJ would step into her shoes soon. But first she had to meet the woman who would take care of her, who would give her a new life.

“This is Alice Tully,” Patricia said, introducing her.

Rosie stood up immediately. She was a big woman, wearing layered clothes, a long skirt, a loose blouse, a sleeveless jerkin; all made from clashing cotton prints that hung like fussy curtains. Her hair was jaw length and neat and her face ruddy. Alice immediately noticed her odd earrings. On one ear was a long beaded concoction, on the other a series of small hoops. Rosie hardly gave Alice a second to take all these details in because she stepped towards her and gave Alice a hug. She’d felt winded by the woman’s grip and slightly embarrassed by the show of affection. She’d smiled a little and allowed Rosie to lead her back to the settee.

“I’ve heard such a lot about you, Alice,” Rosie said, using her name.

“Pat’s told me a bit about you, too,” Alice had said, looking Rosie up and down.

“About my good looks and perfect figure,” she said breaking into a laugh and looking across to Patricia Coffey.

“No,” Alice said, sheepishly, “she said you’re a social worker and that you like cooking. . .”

They talked on for a while, Patricia Coffey hovering in the background. Rosie told her all about her flat and her life in Croydon. She told her about her mum, who was Irish and who was never happier than when she was doing someone’s hair. She described her kitchen and double oven and her recipes and the book she planned to write called
Rosie’s Kitchen
. Then she produced a small plastic box that was full of crumbly, sweet biscuits.

Alice took one and broke it into four while Rosie talked. When Alice had taken a mouthful, Rosie suddenly slapped the flat of her hand over her mouth.

“I’m just going on and on,” she whispered, looking as though she’d done something naughty. “You’re not getting a chance to speak!”

Alice told Rosie about the A levels that she had taken a year early, about her results, three Bs, about the university place she had for the following year. She told her which television programmes she liked and which books she was reading.

“But do you cook?” Rosie snapped the question at her.

Alice shook her head. Some of the residents cooked but it had never been something she was interested in.

“Then I’ll teach you!” Rosie said.

Later, before she left, Rosie became serious.

“When you move into my flat things won’t be easy for you. There’ll be a lot of adjustments to make. After living in . . . such a closed community?”

Rosie had a sprinkling of crumbs down her front and Alice wanted to brush them away but she was too shy to do so. What Rosie had really meant to say was that Alice was living in a prison. It wasn’t called that, but that’s what it was. Even when Pat had told her about the arrangements for her release she called it a
placement
. Like a job she was starting. Not a life. Not freedom.

She was to leave Monksgrove in January to go and live with Rosie. Only three people would know this: Patricia Coffey, Jill Newton and Rosie. Everyone else, the staff, the workers, the other residents, would think that she had gone to a further secure unit until her official release six months later. That way the media, the dead girl’s parents, her own mother, would all think that she had only just been released, when in fact she’d been living a normal life for over six months. It would give her a better chance to fit in, Patricia Coffey had said. It was their secret, just the three of them. None of them would divulge Alice’s new identity or her whereabouts to anyone.

Alice heard Rosie’s footsteps on the stairs and then she came dashing back into the kitchen.

“You OK, love? That Sara! She’s hopeless and she’s a teacher as well! Doesn’t even know how to turn the water off at the mains. Still, it doesn’t hurt to be neighbourly, does it?”

“No, course it doesn’t,” Alice said.

“So, where were we?” Rosie sat down on the chair again, a little flustered and gasping for breath.

“That no one will ever find out about me living here. About my new life.”

“That’s right. That detective? He just hit lucky when he came to Croydon. He has no idea whether you live here or in Newcastle or Brighton or. . .”

Rosie hesitated for a moment.

“What?” Alice said, thrown by this momentary loss of certainty.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”