by Ivan Pope
‘Do you know why he let you go?’ he asked. He had been trying to work out why she was let out, what had triggered her release after all that time.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s our plan. I’m going to be famous. I’m going to be on television, and he’s going to watch me. That’s what we agreed.’
He wasn’t expecting that and now began to wonder where this was going.
‘Why does he want to do that?’ he asked.
‘Because that’s how the world works. Because that was what we agreed, when we got married, that he would let me go but I would always be visible, he could always see me.’
‘How can he see you?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s clever, and I have to go where he can, that’s all. That’s why I need to be on television.’
‘What happens if it doesn’t work, if you don’t become famous?’ he asked.
‘It will work. If it doesn’t, I’m going back to him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I love him,’ she said.
There was a sound at the door. When he turned, Jennifer’s mother was standing there. ‘I think you two should stop now, you’ll get Jennifer all tired out. I think we’ve done enough for today. Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked. He looked at his watch. Two hours had passed in this crowded room. ‘No thanks,’ he said. He turned back to his interviewee.
‘Thanks, Jennifer,’ he said. ‘That was a good start. I hope it’s not been too much for you?’
‘It’s been lovely,’ she said. ‘Will you do my book?’
‘I would really like to. I’ll come back and if we still get on, I think so. We’ll need to spend more time together, and you’ll need to tell me your story properly. Everything. I’ll write it down as we go along, record some of it. How does that sound?’
Her mother interrupted from behind him. ‘I’m sure we can arrange something, assuming that man gets a contract,’ she said, making clear that today was over.
Allen stood up and stretched his stiff legs.
‘Goodbye Jen,’ he said.
She looked away, not answering as he left the room.
The people gathered downstairs didn’t seem in any hurry to leave. They were settling in for a drinking session. Laughter reverberated around the house. As he left, Jennifer’s mother told him he should certainly come back. ‘I think she likes you, but let’s wait until she’s calmed down a bit,’ she said. He still wasn’t sure whether she really wanted it to happen, but he was determined to write this book.
Walking back to the bus stop, he wondered how he would take it if that were his daughter, if he’d lost her for twelve years. He had a daughter of his own who he hadn’t seen for several years, an uncomfortably similar situation, he realised. At least he knew where she was, who she was with. He only had to pick up the phone. She hadn’t gone without a trace. Not like Jennifer. But Jennifer had come back. And was threatening to go again. It didn’t make much sense. There was worse, he thought. She seemed to have bonded with her captor, unlike most of the stories he was hearing. He couldn’t relate it to personal experience, to know the wrench of that sort of loss. He could try and imagine it. Bringing a child into the world, looking after it, learning everything about it day after day, watching it change from a fragile baby, only to lose it to … to what?
During the journey home his mind churned over the logic, the history, the timings of this event. He tried to relate it to his own knowledge. When she had gone, who might have been around, where she was held. She hadn’t given him any clues, not yet. He wondered what the police had asked her, what efforts they were making to find this place. They might not believe her story. Did he? It wasn’t really a valid question; her story fitted perfectly well into what he knew about these things, how human beings could be hidden away in the middle of a city without anyone noticing, be broken down. Even friends and family could sometimes pretend to themselves that there was nothing wrong. He’d found it staggering how a partner was party to the predations of their loved one, like Detroux’s girlfriend in Belgium, how she’d left two girls to starve to death in his basement while he was in prison. Scared, she said. Human fear, fear of loneliness, love, abuse, control, manipulation – powerful motivators. And Jennifer, maybe she could lead him to whoever had held her: The Prick, as she called him. If he was watching, if they did have a plan. It seemed crazy, he knew, but stranger things did happen. Maybe.
When he got home there was a message from Jenkins. Urgent it said, but when he called him, it wasn’t.
‘I need feedback. I want the gory details. Is she a deformed hobbit girl?’ Jenkins pleaded, but Allen wasn’t in a mood to deliver. He was sinking into melancholy, remembering the way she had talked and talked without ever emerging as a functional human. He felt he had to get back to see her again.
Emily was at work and the flat was quiet and cold. He wanted her back, someone to hold on to, to feel human warmth. He’d see her later, after work, but he knew she’d be wrapped up in schoolwork, her mind activated by thirty small children, full of arguments and small progresses. She didn’t like his work at the best of times, least of all when she was immersed in the vocal clamour of her class.
He made himself some beans on toast and sat on the sofa with them, running Jennifer’s words around in his head. If it doesn’t work, I’m going back to him.
He uploaded the interview onto the computer and listened to a small part of it. It was so predictable, he decided. And, it was crap. Well, that wasn’t fair, she was listless, unable to help him understand what had happened. She wasn’t answering anything, just going through the motions. He couldn’t blame her, poor thing, she must be fucked up. He wondered if the mother had been lurking on the landing the whole way through. What did she think, that he might assault her? That she might tell him something he shouldn’t hear? It might be the only way she could hear about her daughter’s missing years. If so, he couldn’t blame her. That might be why she’d set up the interview in the first place. What a mess, he thought.
Then for no reason he was swept with a tremor of awful desire for his own child, for another person to look after, to safeguard. And not for the first time, he imagined those who were still locked in dark spaces, and he shuddered.
He picked up the phone and rang Emily’s mobile, but got her voicemail.
‘Want to come round tonight?’ he said to the phone. ‘I’ll cook.’
Later that night, after they’d eaten and drunk a bottle of wine between them and shortly before they fucked, she asked him how the meeting with Jennifer had gone. He trod carefully around her question. She wasn’t a fan of his work and would often take offence at assumptions he made. He was the expert, he researched the subject, but still felt at a disadvantage when questioned by an innocent. After she’d gone to bed, he went back to the book he was reading, Tutankhamen: The Story of a Tomb, but he couldn’t settle.
There still had been no more emails from the person who had sent the keepens video. That footage was more interesting to him than a hundred Jennifers. It meant that someone was reaching out to him, wanted him to know something; it might be a doorway to a world he had glimpsed but never could enter. Jennifer, on the other hand, was over, released, finished as a story. But who was reaching out, and what did they want to tell him? He checked his account obsessively, wanting to keep the contact live, but for now there was just silence.
The Mile End
A few days later Jennifer’s mother rang. He was surprised to hear her sounding so cheerful.
‘Hi Julie,’ he said. ‘Everything alright?’
He shifted the phone to under his chin, held it tight and continued making tea and toast while she talked. He dexterously shifted toast, butter, jam, teabag, mug and milk from place to place and let her ramble on for a while about her family and her lawyer. Finally, she got to the point.
‘Jennifer wants to talk to you,’ she said. ‘She wants to show you something.’
He stopped buttering and
put the toast down.
‘She might know where she was held,’ she said, adding quickly, ‘I know that sounds crazy.’
He was tempted but wary. He’d heard that story before. ‘Have you told the police?’ he said, hoping that she hadn’t. He wanted the next part of the puzzle to himself, if there was one. ‘Has she said what she knows?’
‘She won’t let me do anything and she won’t tell me anything. She only wants to tell you. She says you should help her find it, the place where she was.’
‘What does she mean?’
‘If you’ll go with her, maybe she can work it out.’
He wondered what this would lead to. Maybe her interment had made her crazy after all. But there was no question that he’d go. There was something unique about her, a confidence he hadn’t encountered before. After the call he sat down and thought. He was sure she couldn’t know how to find the location. Then he wondered what they would do if they did find it. Was this man, The Prick, sitting in his flat waiting for her to reappear? It didn’t seem likely, but what did he know?
‘Why not the police?’
‘She likes you. I think you’ve made a friend. And she doesn’t like the police, you know that. That’s all, really.’
‘Should I come now?’
‘If you can, please. Can we meet at the tube station at Mile End? Do you know it?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And bring a map. She’s scaring me a bit.’
‘Give me ninety minutes,’ Allen said and put the phone down. He looked for a cab but soon gave up and walked to the tube station and started his journey again.
It took him over an hour but he met them outside the underground station and although it was plain Jennifer’s mother wanted to come further, both Allen and Jennifer stared her down. She backed into the tube and disappeared. They walked off around the corner and Jennifer took Allen’s arm, looped hers right through and held on tight to him. Maybe we look like a couple, he thought, in dismay.
He’d grabbed a map of London. ‘Show me this station, where we are,’ she said, so he marked it with a big arrow. She spent a long while looking at the map, turning it round and round as if to orientate something in her head. Then she pointed to a council estate on the Isle of Dogs. Allen knew it vaguely. ‘I think if we go there, I can work it out,’ she said,
She was a different person to the recalcitrant lump he’d interviewed the other day. She hung on his arm as they walked towards the pendulous droplet of land suspended above the Thames that was for some reason called an island. It wasn’t, though it was strangely cut off from the city and encapsulated by the river on three sides and the looming glass towers of the new office blocks on the fourth.
Jenni bloomed in the sunlight and had obviously put some effort into how she looked for their mission, as she called it. He was wearing his usual jeans and hoodie; she was dressed in tights and a short skirt with a denim jacket over a T-shirt that bore a large slogan. Bit dated, he thought, but then what did he expect? He was nervous, she didn’t seem so.
‘Have you got a girlfriend?’ she asked.
He said he did.
‘What’s she like?’
Allen thought about it. ‘She’s a teacher. She works with children all day. I guess she’s good at it, but I couldn’t be – I like to be out and about.’
‘What’s her name?’
He wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea to answer that, but he did. ‘Emily.’
‘I like that name. And I’d like to be a teacher.’
‘And be on television? Anything else you’d like to do?’
It didn’t seem she’d been asked this question before.
‘When I was in there, I used to think about what I would do when I got free. The Prick used to go on about getting me on the stage and how to get on TV and all that; and how hard I would have to work and how important it all was going to be so I never thought about any other job. Not even about getting married or having children. I don’t think I could do anything, I’m not clever enough. I never even finished school.’
‘You didn’t finish school because you couldn’t. That’s hardly your fault, right? Didn’t you read a lot over the years?’
‘I did, I read whatever he brought me, a lot of books, magazines. But I didn’t learn much from them.’
She turned towards a newsagent’s window filled with trinkets and gaudy magazines.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Jewellery. That’s beautiful.’ She stood and stared for a while at the cheap chains and earrings. ‘Have you got any money?’
Allen smiled at her. He took her hand. ‘Come on then.’ Twelve years, he thought. She deserved it. He wondered what Emily would make of this, holding hands with this rather pretty woman in a strange part of town, buying her jewellery. And because the thought had occurred to him, he realised it was a dangerous thought, or that there was danger lurking behind the innocent. He dropped her hand suddenly, but Jennifer didn’t notice. She was entranced by the array of glittering objects. She selected a necklace, iridescent glass beads hung on a silver chain, which he paid for.
‘It’s a present,’ he said as they left the shop. ‘To say thanks for helping me out.’ She smiled at him and he felt even more guilty.
‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
They approached a busy junction.
‘I remember this road,’ she said. ‘We walked up here, me and The Prick, the last time I saw him.’
She told him how she’d been taken from the room by the man who had kept her locked up for twelve years, how they’d walked up the road to the tube station. She said she’d tried to remember the route, although he would not let her turn around.
Allen walked where she indicated, but it was soon obvious she was lost or confused. He steered her into a coffee shop and they drank lattes.
‘I never had anything like this all the time I was captured.’ She had taken to calling her kidnap time her capture.
‘When he walked me up to the station to abandon me, I looked in shop windows to see reflections. I wanted to see where I’d come from. I saw these tower blocks, the very big ones. I knew we had walked under them and come out on this road.’
She seemed unhappy. He wondered what her relationship with her abductor had become, what all those years meant.
‘Should I tell you something, something I know, that I always knew? How I knew where I was? When I was in that place all those years, where I wasn’t supposed to know where I was? I could see out. There was a crack in the wall and I could see out. It was a view, you know, I was looking down from high up, like I was in a tower block. I was in a tower block, that’s what I mean. That’s all I know, I was in a room in a tower block, high up, very high up. I could see the river, sometimes I’d see ships. It was only a little crack, but if I lay on my side I could see out and I could feel the wind through it. Sometimes I lay there all day looking out through my little keyhole. That’s what I called it, my little keyhole, because I thought it might get me out of there one day.’
She laughed.
Why would a kidnapper keep her locked up for twelve years and then walk her to the local station and leave her there?
‘So where was this tower?’
‘I don’t know. How would I know?’ The petulant teenager again. ‘But I might be able to work it out. He told me that there were others who wanted me, who would take me away.’
‘Do you think that was true?’ said Allen.
‘Yes, it is. I met them,’ she said. ‘I went to places with him. He took me to see people. We planned it together, it was part of the plan, to get famous, so I could look after him.’
Now Allen was confused.
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
Her face fell. She looked up at him like a small child. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You shouldn’t talk to me like that,’ she said. ‘You must say sorry.’
‘Yes, of course
. I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But what did he take you to? What did you do?’
‘To auditions, of course. The Prick said if I could get onto telly he would let me go, because then he’d know where I was. He taught me to sing, and dance, and things like that.’
‘You went and met people for acting parts?’ He was incredulous. ‘What happened?’
‘I never got any parts,’ she said, deflating again. ‘It was because they were jealous of me. That’s what he said. Then he told me we had a different plan and we never went out again. That was when he said he’d let me go if I promised to do our plan.’
‘And did you?’
‘What?’ she said.
‘Did you promise to keep to his plan?’
She looked at him, wide-eyed. ‘Of course, I did,’ she said. ‘That’s how I got out.’
She was a different person today, out in the open. No longer the lumpen girl-child that he had tried to interview in that hot room, she seemed to blossom in the outdoors, on the London street. Lorries roared past and he found it hard to catch some of what she said. He leaned closer in, it seemed important to follow as she talked. They seemed to be drifting around with little idea of direction, but maybe that was necessary, he decided. She reached out and held his hand for a while. He looked around.
‘Do you recognise anything?’
‘Let’s go to the towers. I could see a bit of them from my room, through a gap he didn’t know was there. It was my sunshine hole. I looked out for hours when he wasn’t there and I thought about all the people working in those buildings.’
They crossed onto the Isle of Dogs. He’d hung out here a long time ago, before the tower blocks came and swept away the connection between the Dogs and the rest of London. Those monstrous blocks, built to house the banks of the world, were coming fully into view as they strode south. I’d rather be at home writing, he thought.
The last coffee they’d had was now a distant memory and Allen’s feet were sore. Jennifer didn’t seem bothered in the slightest, she was in some sort of dream world. She’d navigated in a zig-zag fashion, now running off down this street, now doglegging back in the opposite direction. He’d begun to wonder whether there actually was a destination, whether she was just playing games with him. But in the end, it became clear that they were headed in a specific direction, that she had the scent of where she wanted to go. It just took a long time to get there.