by Anne Cassidy
Jennifer couldn’t speak. She just looked in astonishment. After many days of the dreary flat, the grumpy dog and Gran’s fog of cigarette smoke, her mum bending down in front of her was like an apparition.
“Haven’t you got a kiss for me?”
Jennifer threw her arms round her mum and hugged her tightly, weaving her fingers in and out of each other so that she could keep hold of her. Her face buried in her mum’s neck, she inhaled the scent of her perfume, felt the tickle of her hair and the cold metal of her earring.
“Look,” her mum whispered, trying to disengage herself. “I’ve bought you a present!”
But she wouldn’t let go. Over her mum’s shoulder she could see her gran standing by the telly giving both of them a sour look.
“And I’ve got something for you!” her mum said, straining to look around at Gran, whose expression didn’t change.
Jennifer felt a pang of resentment. Why was her mum bothering with Gran? Hadn’t she been talking to her on the telephone for weeks? Wasn’t this Jennifer’s turn? She closed her eyes for a moment, blocking out her gran’s square head, the little curl of smoke that was twisting its way up to the ceiling. Later, when her mum had gently pulled her hands away from her neck, they sat on the sofa together. Her mum put a wrapped present on her lap. Jennifer, feeling lightheaded, let it lie there, feeling over it with her fingers.
“Are we going home?” she said.
“Not right now, love. Gran’s probably told you that Mummy’s had a few problems. But I’ve got some more modelling work now and I’ve got a chance of a flat soon. As soon as that comes through I’ll come and get you. You’ll have your own bedroom again and we can paint it any colour you like. That’ll be good, won’t it?”
Jennifer nodded. There were so many things she wanted to ask. Her mum was fidgety, though, sitting on the seat for only a few minutes, then getting up to pace up and down before perching on the arm of Nelson’s chair. Although she’d taken her coat off it was simply draped over the seat, ready, close to hand. She wasn’t going to stay long, Jennifer knew. She kept her eye on her all the time, on her face, the back of her hair. If she didn’t let her out of her sight then maybe she wouldn’t be able to go. Her gran didn’t seem bothered at all and kept bending over to pet Nelson. After a while she brought in a mug of tea which her mum held and blew across but didn’t actually drink. Eventually she stood up and picked up her coat.
Jennifer felt a sense of panic, like a tiny figure jumping up and down inside her chest. On the sofa, lying by Macy’s side, was the present, unopened because Jennifer didn’t have the time. She had to keep alert, find things to say to her mum to keep her there. But the words wouldn’t come, and the tiny figure inside her seemed to be laughing hysterically. You can’t do anything to stop her going! it seemed to say. So she pushed herself back into the settee and sat there rigidly, as though she was tied there and couldn’t move. She looked her mum over. She’d had her blonde hair cut short and was wearing a long leather coat over some white trousers. Her shoes were glittery, as though someone had sprinkled gold dust on them. She was like a princess.
“What about the child?” Her gran pointed her cigarette in Jennifer’s direction.
Her mum ignored the comment. She carried on sorting through her bag and finally pulled an envelope out and gave it to her gran. Her gran took it with a sneer and then placed it on the mantelpiece behind a pot plant.
“As soon as I hear about this flat, then I’m going to come and get you, so don’t get too comfortable here!” Her mum leaned over and combed her fingers through Jennifer’s hair.
Jennifer couldn’t speak. Her tongue felt thick and heavy and even though she wanted to walk to the front door and say goodbye she found she couldn’t move. Her eyes misted over. Could this be it? Could the visit be over? Was her mum to disappear again?
Don’t go, she wanted to say, but it was too late, her mum’s coat had swished out of the living room and there was a final Bye love! from out in the hall and the front door clicked shut. She sat on the sofa as still as could be, her eyes blurring with tears. After a few seconds her gran walked back into the room and went straight to the mantelpiece. She opened the envelope and pulled out some money. She flicked through the notes, her lips moving silently as though she was counting. Looking up she caught Jennifer’s eye.
“There now,” her gran said. “You’ve seen your mum. Doesn’t she look well?”
She nodded, her throat too dry to speak. Her mum shone out, wherever she went. Once she had been with Jennifer all the time. Now it was different. She was just a visitor, and Jennifer had to live in this tiny room and all she had to look at was a mean little dog sitting on its own chair.
“Open your present,” her gran said, looking much happier.
With heavy hands she pulled the paper off.
Inside was a doll in a box. A model doll. It was Macy, International Catwalk Model. She looked puzzled. She already had Macy. Turning to the side she saw dear old Macy sitting against the arm of the chair, wearing her evening dress and tiara. Why should she want another Macy? She pulled at the cardboard, tearing it untidily until she had the second Macy out, in her hands.
There was an odd sound. It wasn’t her gran. She had tucked the money into her trousers and was picking her mum’s leftover tea up. Then she went out into the kitchen and Jennifer heard her humming to herself. It was Nelson. Staring at her from beneath his overgrown hair she could see his mouth open and his teeth bared. The noise was a low growl like a drill coming from far away.
Why was he doing that? Didn’t he know that she had just lost her mum again? Was he so stupid? In her hand was the doll, like a dumb twin, lying, staring up at her. Just a plastic shape really, not like her Macy. It was wearing jeans and a cutoff top; casual stuff that her Macy never chose to wear. The gravelly growl of the stupid mean little dog was still going on so she turned and said shush in a loud whisper.
He didn’t stop, though. He just carried on as though he was a radio that someone had switched on. Even though he didn’t move or open his mouth the noise, the drilling sound, seemed to get louder and louder. She looked round towards the door. Possibly her gran was on the sewing machine. But there was silence coming from there. It was only when she turned her head back that the growling seemed to grow and grow and the strangest thing was that Nelson appeared to get bigger in front of her eyes so that his head took up all the space on the armchair.
Then she saw it. On the floor there was a sprinkling of glitter. It had come off her mum’s shoe. Like magic dust it lay there, the only reminder that she had of her mum’s visit. Apart from the doll. She looked down and saw its ugly face, nothing like her Macy. She picked it up in one hand as though it was a stick, not a doll at all. She looked at the giant dog on the chair who simply would not keep quiet. Then she raised the plastic Macy above her head and brought it crashing down on the dog’s back. There was a moment’s silence then a terrible cry, a howl. She didn’t wait, she brought the doll thumping down again and again until the howling was louder than the drilling noise, until she felt someone’s hands on her shoulders, shaking her, picking her up by the skin and flinging her backwards so that she bumped against the side of the settee.
The drilling had stopped.
There was just a yodelling whine and the dog was lying on the floor with her gran bent over it.
“You horrible, wicked girl. You wicked, nasty girl, get out,” her gran screamed at her. “Get out. Go into your room, I don’t want to see your face for the rest of the day.”
Jennifer stood up, reached over and picked up the real Macy and went back into the sewing room. She pulled the duvet off the tiny bed, crept into the corner and wrapped it around herself.
It wasn’t possible to have people all for yourself. It was something Frankie would have to learn.
His dad arrived about four. He was not what Alice had expected. A small man with a shiny bald head. He shook her hand formally, as though she was someone important. Then
he spent some time opening the rear of the car and flattening the back seats so that Frankie’s stuff could go in. The three of them went back and forth, up and down the stairs, carrying the boxes. Every time Alice came face to face with Frankie’s dad he made some funny little comment. This’ll give you muscles! This’ll put hair on your chest! What’ve you got in this, Frank? Gold bars?
When they were all packed up Frankie locked the front door and the two of them stood on the pavement while his dad, giving a little wave, got into the driver’s seat and waited.
“August the fourteenth. You’ll come and stay with me.”
Alice nodded. This had all been agreed but Frankie was just repeating it for safety.
“Rosie says she’ll drive me over.”
Frankie huffed.
“Check up on me more likely.”
“She looks after me. She wants to make sure you’re not taking advantage of me!”
“Better not tell her then.”
“What?”
He bent down and kissed her neck, whispering in her ear.
“That’s precisely what I am going to do. Take advantage of you.”
She waved as they drove off, standing in the same position until Frankie’s dad’s car turned out of the street. Then she picked her mobile out of her bag and pressed the button for Rosie.
Frankie had been gone for almost ten days when the story appeared. Jill Newton rang Alice at eleven o’clock on the evening before and told her that it was about to break, that it would be the lead story in at least two newspapers the following morning.
It was a blow. As each morning had passed bringing no sign of the name Jennifer Jones in the newspaper, a tiny bud of hope had grown inside her. The press was no longer interested in where JJ was. They had ignored the story, thought it unimportant. So what if she was in Holland. What did they care?
It had given her a feeling of recklessness. She’d walked out of the flat with a spring in her step. She’d smiled at the postman and didn’t even mind having a few minutes’ chat with Sara from downstairs. She went into the newsagents on the corner and bought some mints, scanning the rest of the papers and feeling buoyant that she hadn’t been mentioned. The newsagent’s son, whose name was Stuart, chatted to her about the buses, the traffic, the weather, her job at the Coffee Pot. She didn’t mind. Leaving the shop she felt lighthearted, weightless, as though she wasn’t walking at all but gliding along.
And then, on the morning after Jill Newton rang, the newspaper slid through the letterbox and thudded on to the mat. They both heard it. Rosie gave a sigh and went downstairs to collect it. Alice sat at the kitchen table, spooning up her cereal, chewing and swallowing, her knees and feet close together, the music from the radio drifting over her head. She had kept to her routine, got up early and showered, washing her hair and getting ready for work. Rosie had fussed around her but she’d tried to shake her off. I’m fine, she’d said, several times, even though all her body weight seemed to have dropped down to her feet and she walked around her room heavily. Pushing her bowl away she heard Rosie at the bottom of the stairs, the paper rustling as she straightened it out to read. Several footsteps sounded and then stopped, the paper crinkling. Rosie had paused, her eyes glued to the story. More footsteps and Rosie appeared puffing slightly, the newspaper opened in front of her.
“It’s not so bad,” she said.
But that was Rosie’s newspaper. They both knew that the others, the tabloids, would be worse, much worse.
Jennifer Jones reportedly on European Offenders Scheme
It was a small headline at the bottom of the front page. Rosie laid the big newspaper across the kitchen table and turned the pages. On page six was the full story. It was brief, just the main details with a quote from Patricia Coffey, Director, Monksgrove Secure Facility. “I cannot confirm or deny the whereabouts of Jennifer Jones. I am not at liberty to comment on any of the residents at Monksgrove, past or present.” Lower down was a quote from the probation authorities in Holland. “We do not comment on individual cases. We can only say that in Holland ex-offenders are given every opportunity to start a new life and to become responsible members of society.”
“You’d hardly notice it,” Rosie said.
Alice didn’t answer. She gave Rosie’s arm a squeeze, picked up her jacket and went out to work. Luckily there was no sign of Sara from downstairs so she put her head down and marched up the street, past the newsagents and in the direction of the Coffee Pot. There would be no avoiding the newspapers there, she knew that.
Even though it was just after seven Pippa and Jules were already serving. A small queue of sleepy-looking commuters stood along the counter and one or two were sitting at the tables, blowing on to steaming cups. They all looked a bit distracted, a couple with newspapers under their arms. On the rack were the café’s own papers, untouched, still lying neatly in their folds. No one seemed bothered.
This pleased Alice. For the first time since the previous evening she felt her spirits rise. Looking round she saw that the queue had disappeared and Jules and Pippa were talking quietly, Jules using a cloth to rub over the glass surface of the counter. Pippa stacking cups and mugs within easy reach. Behind them the cappuccino-maker was hissing like a steam train. Everything was so normal.
It wasn’t until eleven-thirty, when she was due her break, that she sat down by the window and unfolded one of the papers with the intention of reading about herself. The headline was everything she thought it would be.
Child Killer Gets New Life in Holland
She felt curiously cold about it. As if she wasn’t sitting reading about it but was watching herself, from a distance, like an actress in a film. It didn’t take long to scan the first article. The usual phrases were there. Berwick Waters, dead girl, prostitution, glamour model, hidden body. . .
“What you reading?”
It was Pippa’s voice. She was standing looking out of the café window, her mobile at her ear.
Just the news, Alice was about to answer, but Pippa started to speak into the mobile, turning slightly away.
Alice flicked through the inside pages. She was looking for other references to the story. Turning to page four she had a momentary shock. Her mother’s face was staring back at her. A photograph, taken the previous day, at her home in the north of England. Alice sat very still, looking at the picture. Behind her she could hear Pippa’s voice talking on her mobile and the clinking of cups and plates. The sound of the traffic from beyond the glass was suddenly amplified by someone coming into the café. She let it all fade into the back of her mind as she searched out the photograph. Her mother, in front of her, for the first time in four years.
Did she feel anything? Was there a tremor of emotion? Or just the rock-hardness of her chest, her feelings trapped inside ribs of stone.
Carol Jones looked older, her face a little chubby. Her hair was still blonde but it looked tired, as though it had been combed and teased once too often. Her smile was wide and the painted lips were still there. She was wearing a low-cut top and the mark of her cleavage showed as a dark line. Behind her, on a strategically positioned shelf, was a photograph of Alice as a baby.
She looked away from the picture and back to the story. The headline was suitably dramatic:
NOT ALLOWED TO SEE HER DAUGHTER.
Carol Jones, attractive 34-year-old former model, had tears in her eyes yesterday when she spoke of her long separation from her daughter, Jennifer Jones, the notorious killer of a 10-year-old girl at Berwick Waters six years ago.
“I know that my Jenny did a terrible thing and I know that some people say that she should be in prison for longer. But to me it seems as though she is still in prison because I’m not allowed to have any contact with her. I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing. I’m not even allowed to have a photograph of her.”
Carol Jones, recently remarried, had to stop frequently in order to compose herself. Her husband, a forty-year-old sales consultant, was holding her han
d. “Carol thinks of her daughter all the time. She is appalled that the authorities have sent her out of the country. Carol needs her daughter. Jennifer needs her mother. She even sent her a birthday card. There is a permanent home here for her. She doesn’t need to go and live in Holland.”
Alice stopped reading. She looked around the shop before tearing out the page with her mother’s picture. She folded it up and put it in the pocket of her overall. Then she took the remainder of the paper and put it into the flip-top bin. The picture crinkled in her pocket and she rubbed it with her fingers. She almost smiled. A permanent home for her with Carol and her new man. A home with her mother. It was all she had ever wanted, and it was the one thing she had never had.
During the first few years at Monksgrove she talked a lot to Patricia Coffey.
“Call me Pat,” she said, at the first session.
She was a big, tall woman, with hair that reached down past her shoulders and glasses that hung on a string around her neck.
Jennifer couldn’t do that, though. She called her Miss instead.
She sat on one end of a settee in an office. There were stuffed animals nearby, a giraffe, a hippo, an elephant, a lion and a monkey. When she was talking she held them and moved their arms and legs.
Patricia Coffey wanted to chat about her life. She poured her some Ribena in a big glass and then sat in the armchair and started.
“I wasn’t at the trial, Jennifer, so I just want to confirm some details with you.”
Jennifer nodded, her hand reaching out to touch the lion, her finger running along its back.
“You lived with your mum until you were six and then with your gran for a year, I think?”
“Yes, Miss. A year.”
“And you didn’t have much schooling at that time?”
“No.”
The lion was soft. She pulled it away from the other animals and hugged it like a cushion.
“And then you went back and lived with your mum for about six months, I think?”