by Anne Cassidy
After a while Alice sat on a bench and looked up at the floors above; the food hall with its neon signs, the giant palms, the roof above with its glass spires that seemed to pierce the fast-moving clouds beyond. It made her feel dizzy.
It was the Saturday before she was due to return to work and she and Rosie were shopping. It wasn’t really Rosie’s kind of place, but she knew Alice liked it so they occasionally spent time there. Rosie preferred markets, and spent hours at stalls where the owners had designed and made the clothes themselves. It’s more individual, real designer clothes, she’d say, holding heavy velvet skirts up against her, trying on linen blouses that fell into wrinkles as soon as they were touched. She also liked charity shops where she often picked up expensive shoes and jackets for a fraction of their price. But someone’s already worn them, Alice would say, shivering slightly at the idea. Rosie didn’t care. She washed, ironed or polished the items and took pleasure in showing them off. Alice preferred the mass-produced stuff in the chain stores. She didn’t want to look original. She liked to look the same as everybody else.
She was carrying two carrier bags. In one was a light suede jacket, something she had jumped on when she saw it on the rail. She’d run her fingers across it, feeling its softness. She’d tried on the smallest size they had and loved the way it sat around her shoulders, lightweight and comfortable, like a loose embrace. In the other bag was some underwear, plain white and black pants and bras. Rosie had tried to interest her in coloured sets, with lace and netting; pretty things that looked like tiny works of art. She didn’t want them, though. They were too frivolous, too gaudy.
For once Rosie had bought something. A floaty top from a department store. It had gathered sleeves and a drawstring neck and looked extremely impractical. Rosie had liked it though, slipping it on over her T-shirt in the middle of the store, twirling around in front of a mirror and nodding contentedly to herself. Alice had crept off to look at other things while Rosie paid for it, striking up a conversation with the woman on the till as though she knew her.
Alice sat at the café table and waited for her lunch.
Rosie was such a warm person, easy to get on with. That’s why she bonded with the girls who came to stay. Sometimes it made Alice feel good. At other times she resented those easygoing ways because it meant that Rosie clicked with everyone she met. Like Sara, the new woman from downstairs. Alice could never do that.
“Here we are!” Rosie said, placing a tray on the table.
Alice picked up a plate with her sandwich. Rosie moved the other things on to the table and then slid the tray between the legs of the chair.
“Are you seeing Frankie tonight?” Rosie said, biting into her sandwich.
Alice nodded.
“You won’t be too late, though?”
“No. We’re just going for a drink at the college bar.”
“Soft drinks, though?” Rosie said.
Alice nodded. It was a ritual they both went through every time Alice talked about going to a pub. Rosie knew that Alice drank beer and wine. Alice knew that Rosie knew. But each time she went they both had to say the same words. Like a mantra.
“What about you?” Alice said.
“I’m going out for an Indian meal with Sara. I’m looking forward to it!”
“Sara? You didn’t say.”
“It’s a sort of last-minute thing. I saw her yesterday struggling with her shopping. I helped her in, we got chatting. She’s really quite nice.”
“She talks a lot,” Alice said, remembering the couple of times she had been going out and had met Sara coming in.
“She’s a teacher. You know what they’re like!”
Rosie was beaming. Apart from work things and going out with her mum she hardly ever went anywhere. And that was why she’d bought herself the new top. Alice felt a stirring of jealousy. Rosie had a new friend. She shouldn’t mind but she did. Sara from downstairs who never stopped talking.
“What does she teach?” Alice said, remembering the pile of exercise books she’d been carrying the last time she saw her.
“Primary kids. Seven or eight year olds.”
“Hasn’t she got a partner?” Alice said, wishing she had.
“Nope. Like me. Footloose and fancy-free.”
Rosie looked embarrassed for a moment.
“Listen to me. I’m sounding like a teenager.”
Alice felt a rush of affection. She reached over and squeezed Rosie’s hand. Why shouldn’t she have a life of her own?
“Make sure you don’t stay out too late!” she said.
“All right, Mum!” Rosie said, smiling, picking up the second half of her sandwich and inserting the pointed end of it into her mouth.
On the way home Alice felt weary. Her carrier bags hung low and her shoulders drooped. She looked into the Coffee Pot as they passed and saw Pip and the manager behind the counter.
“You OK about going back to work on Monday?” Rosie said, softly.
They were leaving the big shopping centre behind and approaching the quieter end of the high street. There were fewer people around, although the traffic was still slow, queued up behind buses that hadn’t bothered to pull into the stop. They passed the pet shop and the bookies and a DIY store that had had the sign Closing Down Sale outside for months.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
She’d had just over a week at home. Rosie had insisted that she hadn’t been well, that she was off-colour, stressed and needed to rest. Alice had gone along with it although she’d known, deep down, that she was hiding away. She’d hadn’t told Rosie about the birthday card. It was her secret. She was allowed that much; now that she was out in the real world. It had unsettled her, though; that her mother had passed on information to someone about where she might be. It sat in her head like a banging door that she couldn’t close.
“I’m just going to pay the papers,” Rosie said when they got to the newsagent’s on the corner of their street.
“I’ll wait here.”
Alice didn’t want to go into the shop. The newsagent’s son, a short, muscular lad, was always looking at her and trying to draw her into conversation. She walked a few paces on and leaned against a lamp-post. An old dog shuffled past, pausing to sniff at her legs and then carrying on. The shop window was full of posters and small ads, and through it she could only just see parts of Rosie’s back and the profile of the newsagent talking and laughing. He was probably adding up her bill, tearing the slips off from his folder. Rosie was probably asking after his wife, who had recently had an operation. Alice let a light sigh out.
Frankie was coming round for her about eight. They were going to the college where there was a DJ who Frankie liked. The drinks were cheap and Frankie knew a lot of people. They’d have a good evening, she knew. She found herself smiling thinking of this, and then from somewhere deep down she felt this tickle of excitement, thinking of Frankie’s rough, unshaven face against her neck and her shoulder, and the feel of his hands on her skin pulling her so close that she could feel his ribs and his hipbones. It didn’t take much for him to scoop her up in his arms and carry her across to the bed. Even if they weren’t going to do anything he liked her there, in the muddle of his sheets, her head, her short boyish hair, on his pillow.
She tutted to herself. She’d let herself get carried away thinking about him. How silly she must have looked standing on a corner in a kind of reverie. She tried to focus on Rosie. How long did it take to pay the papers? She looked at the posters in the window and then at the small ads. A huge headline stood out from one of them. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? it said. Underneath was just a photo but Alice couldn’t make it out from where she was standing. Inside the shop she saw Rosie moving backwards away from the counter, the newsagent still talking, looking like he was counting something off on his fingers.
Have you seen this girl? The words gave her a mild shock. All those years ago. In Berwick. The day after it happened. The streets of Berwick were covered in p
hotographs. It had been taken from some album, photocopied and enlarged. Someone had put the pictures in plastic wallets, the kind that usually fitted into ring binders. They’d been stuck to trees and lamp-posts and the inside of people’s windows. She’d been at home at the time, so she couldn’t have seen them herself; she must have seen it on the television. A reporter standing by a poster. Have you seen this girl? it said. Everyone was looking for her.
Only JJ had known where she was.
Alice took a few steps along the pavement and then turned to walk back. Like a sentry marching up and down, she tried to pull herself together. These memories from the past had to be fought off, subdued. She went briskly back to the shop to see what Rosie was doing. Was she ever coming out? She steered her eye away from the offending small ad and tried to focus on a poster which advertised a circus and funfair. There was a picture of a woman in a sparkling skin-tight catsuit, balancing on a tightrope holding a long thin pole. She couldn’t concentrate though. The headline was there, at the corner of her eye. Have you seen this girl? The ad with the photograph, and finally, just as Rosie turned and walked towards the door of the shop, she let herself look closely at it.
The picture made her freeze. It was cut from a larger photograph and photocopied. It was stuck to the middle of the postcard, and was just a face. The face of a teenage girl, about sixteen years old.
Her face.
Her hair was longer then, flicking round her jaw. The image was slightly blurred at the edges. Probably it had been taken a year or so before, by one of the workers at Monksgrove, or a visitor taking a shot of a group of residents. She hadn’t posed for it, she wasn’t that stupid, but somehow she had ended up in someone’s photo. And now it was being used to try and find her.
“That man never stops talking!”
She could hear Rosie’s voice, feel her closeness but her concentration was on the small ad. Underneath the familiar face were some words. Her family long to hear from her. Last seen in the Croydon area. Reward of £100 for any information on her whereabouts. Then a phone number.
“What’s this?” Rosie said, drawn to whatever was holding Alice’s attention. “Oh my goodness. Oh no.”
Her voice dropped and Alice knew that she had recognized her. Rosie could see the likeness. Alice couldn’t move. Her legs felt like sticks. If she bent her knees they would snap. She was staying there, on the street, next to her picture.
“Let’s go home,” Rosie said, gripping her arm and pulling her away. “We’ll contact Jill. She’ll put a stop to this.”
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.