by Ruth Dugdall
Dad’s laughter makes the camera wobble, and his hand comes into the frame, making a grab for a chocolate button. Jena nervously slaps him away with a tea towel.
‘Please don’t, Dad. You’ll ruin it.’
The screen went blank, and then came back to life.
My six-year-old self sits like a princess on a throne at the end of the table decked with pink streamers and brightly coloured food: yellow crisps, red strawberries, green cucumber. I’m wearing those colours too, and a plastic crown. Hair floats around my face in ringlets, eyes glittering greedily at the spread laid out in front of me. On the table is the hedgehog with its cherry nose, and by my side Jena strikes a match and bends forward to light the six candles pushed into its chocolatey back. Mum bustles into the frame, neatly turned out, hair newly permed in tight corkscrews, eyeshadow toothpaste-blue, but her smile forgivingly natural. She looks slim; young too. But the biggest difference is in her shoulders, and her back, which isn’t stooped with grief.
Candles flicker. Mum, Dad and Jena all sing ‘Happy Birthday’, badly out of tune, enjoying the rowdy noise of their own singing as I smile and clap and blow out the candles. Then Jena kisses me; she’s so happy there are tears in her eyes.
Jena had become wrapped up in the action on the tape. The dividing wall in her damaged brain had crumbled, the gap between the life she was living in the hospital and her past life captured in the videotape was gone. She turned to me and said, ‘Make a wish, Sammy!’
Sadness filled me, and I ached inside. There was so very much to want. I took her hands in mine, feeling the dry skin, thirsty for moisture, and longed as I’ve never longed for anything else.
‘I wish you’d remember who hurt you, Jen-Jen.’
She pulled away, and I saw that she was back with me, in the television room; the party she had just enjoyed was only a film. The life she had returned to was frightening. But I had to continue; I needed her to remember, even if it caused her distress.
‘Jena, I know about the rape.’ She didn’t react, but I kept going.
I scrambled through my rucksack for the picture I’d stolen from Sonia’s bedroom, of Douglas Campbell holding the baby. I placed it in Jena’s lap.
‘Was it true that you sent him a message on Facebook, that you arranged to meet him? Why, Jena? After what he’d done to you . . .’
Beat of silence. Everything on pause. She held the photograph like it was made of snow, looking at the television screen with longing. She wanted to escape, to lose herself again in the past.
I tapped her wrist. ‘Do you remember?’
She shook her head, looked back at the TV screen. Frustrated, I held her chin this time. ‘What happened, Jena?’
‘He said it was my fault. Because I was so pretty.’
I wanted to tell her that was crap; she was just thirteen and he was an adult, but I could see she wanted to say more.
She leaned towards me, so close our noses almost touched, and whispered madly, ‘I didn’t say no. I didn’t say anything; I just let it happen. Because I didn’t know what to do, and I thought it would be over soon. He always found me when I was alone, and he said he loved me. He does love me, doesn’t he?’
‘He raped you, Jena. That’s not love.’
Her eyes were wild, and the whispering grew louder. ‘And Mrs Read, she started to ask questions. She saw that I was changing; she wanted to know why.’
‘Our crazy neighbour, Mrs Read?’
‘She was my PE teacher.’
I hadn’t known this. ‘So what did she do?’
‘She called Social Services. And they spoke with me, for such a long time. The same question, again and again. Who did this to you, Jena? Tell us who. But I’d promised to forget.’
Her shoulders started heaving. Her eyes were glittery with fear, but I couldn’t let that stop me. We’d opened a wound, and I needed to dig inside. I retrieved the photo of Douglas Campbell, stolen from Rob’s home, from my rucksack.
‘You just have to look at this, Jena. You just have to say that he attacked you.’
She looked down at the photo, then turned her head away at a sharp angle.
‘No!’ And she tore the photo in half, a violent rip that sent me into a rage.
I grabbed her shoulders and shook her, yelling, ‘I’m trying to help you, you stupid cow!’ My voice was loud and unsteady, and I knew I’d reached breaking point. ‘Fucking snap out of it, Jena.’
I shook her, again and again, her head wobbling as she pleaded with me to stop.
The door swung open and Mum pulled me off Jena. A quick hard slap on my cheek, over the scab.
‘Enough!’
Mum panted, caught her breath, her hand pressed hard to her body, as if she was fighting the urge to commit more violence. She picked up the torn photo, placing the two pieces together. She peered at it, and I saw the dawn of recognition as she stared at Douglas Campbell’s face. When she finally spoke, her voice was uneven and shot through with fury.
‘Samantha Hoolihan, you need to get out of my sight right now, or I will not be responsible for my actions.’
I was propelled by anger and need, my hunger keeping my thinking in straight simple lines. Train back to Ipswich. Bike ride back home. But I didn’t go home; I went to another house. Next door but one.
I knocked on Mrs Read’s door, but there was no answer, so I scuttled down the side alley, a mirror image of our own, and found her in the overgrown garden, as motionless as a tree. She was looking over the fence, in the direction of my house, and in her hand was a notebook.
She jumped when she saw me, and put her hand to her chest, then said, ‘Well, I thought you’d come round at some time. I just expected you to knock.’
‘I did.’
Bird-like, she twitched her head, and I saw what had attracted her attention. Dad was walking down the path towards his shed, unlocking the padlock and looking around before disappearing into its dark interior. She took a pencil from behind her ear, made a note in her book, then she turned to me.
‘Let’s talk inside where they can’t hear us.’
Although Mrs Read’s house was the same as ours, it was nothing like. There were books everywhere, open and tossed, and I saw from the covers that they were mainly the biographies of criminals: Crippen, Fred and Rose West, Hindley and Brady. The place was a mess of old wrappers and half-drunk cups of tea. Piles of newspapers, large broadsheets, seemed to be in some kind of order, judging from the many faded yellow Post-it notes that stuck out from the pages. A feral-looking cat with pink eyes wound its way around the mess, and my chest tightened as lost strands of white fur floated before me.
Mrs Read smoothed down her trousers, which I saw now were baggy tracksuit bottoms, wearing thin on the legs and none too clean. Her top was a polo shirt, which must have once been white, and I remembered that she had been a PE teacher.
‘I need to ask you about what happened to Jena.’
‘Naturally.’ Mrs Read had a very proper way of speaking. ‘I’ll get us some tea.’
She left the room, and I looked again at the chaos around me. Mrs Read was a hoarder, and as I read some of the Post-it notes I saw that they related to various articles, all about high-profile cases. Madeleine McCann, Holly and Jessica, Sarah Payne. Her spiky writing on the yellow notes, when I managed to decipher it, said things like: links to other countries? And both blonde. Swedish heritage? And neo-Nazi connection?
Dad was right: she was a lunatic.
‘Tea.’
She placed a silver tray on top of a pile of papers. The spout of the pot was stained, and when I peered into the milk jug, I saw skin on the surface. Nevertheless, Mrs Read poured, and I accepted a cup.
‘So, you have finally come to see me. Good girl.’
I felt like I was back at school and had done well on some test.
‘Jena said it was you she told about the rape?’
Mrs Read drank her sour tea delicately, making my mouth tingle in sympathy.
&nb
sp; ‘Not exactly. Her body told me.’
Loopy old bird. ‘Eh?’
Again she smoothed her trousers; I realised it was a habitual gesture, the reason for the thinning fabric over her ropey thighs.
‘As a PE teacher, one of the tasks is to monitor shower activity. Some teenagers avoid water like they will melt!’ She laughed at her own joke, but I thought that showering under Mrs Read’s piercing gaze would be enough to deter anyone. And she smelt none too fresh herself.
‘So what did her body tell you?’ I was going with it, but already feared the woman was too mad to be of help.
‘That she wanted to die. She was starving herself.’
‘Jena was? No, I’m sorry. You must be thinking of someone else. Jena’s always had a good appetite. She’s slim, but not skinny.’
Mrs Read tutted at my ignorance. ‘Remember, this is before you were born. She was a different girl back then. What happened when she was thirteen changed her; she grew into a woman with a scarred soul, but she was a survivor. But the danger was always there, in the background. I thought she might just make it out, but I wasn’t watching closely enough. They got her first.’
Mrs Read gazed sadly at her newspapers, as if thinking of the other girls she was so obsessed with, who had also been ‘got’.
‘Okay, so she was starving herself. Then what?’ I was irritated. I felt I’d wasted my time coming, and I just wanted to hear what Mrs Read had to say, and leave.
But Mrs Read focused on me now. ‘She looked like you. Skinny. Starved.’
I said nothing. I waited.
‘There were no bruises; there rarely are in cases like this. But the body shows its pain anyway. I tried to help her; it was my duty.’
‘What did she tell you about the rape?’
Mrs Read raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘The rape. Dear girl, Jena had been systematically abused for a long time. What happened to her was not a one-off event but a pattern of activity.’ She gestured to her stack of articles. ‘So many young girls are groomed and violated. I knew I had to help her before it was too late. Did you know that in almost all cases like this there are warning signs that people ignore? At Praia da Luz there had been twelve sexual assaults before Maddie was taken. Twelve missed opportunities, and twelve occasions for the kidnappers to practise before their ultimate coup.’
I’d had enough. The woman was clearly a conspiracy theorist.
‘Okay, Mrs Read, well, I really must be going now. Thanks for the tea.’
She stood and smiled. ‘You are welcome. I’m glad I could help.’
I headed quickly for the back door, desperate to get out of this crazy house and away from her crazy brain. As I opened the door, she asked, ‘But what happened to the baby?’
I whipped around. ‘What?’
‘Jena’s baby. They said she’d lost it, but I think it must have been taken away. Sold into slavery, or given to a childless couple. What do you think?’
I thought she was certifiable. I thought I needed to go.
CHAPTER 23
20 January
In our lesson on Food Facts, the six of us sit in a semi-circle on squishy beanbags in primary colours. They are presumably meant to make the food-tech room ‘fun’ or ‘relaxed’, this being such a touchy subject for us, but only serve to make us feel like children as we squish about on thousands of polystyrene beads, trying to find a comfortable position.
Manda scribbles on the whiteboard:
How much fat do we need in our diets?
Inwardly, I groan. This is her pet subject, and always provokes heated debate.
‘The food we have here,’ says Joelle, leaning back in her red beanbag like it’s a throne. ‘It’s way too fatty. Chicken nuggets on Thursdays.’
‘And chips!’ adds Fiona, joining in the game. ‘That’s not healthy food.’
Manda could answer this question in her sleep. We all could. It doesn’t make us believe it, though.
‘The diet you have here is not low-fat. It is giving you the fat you need, which is a third of your calories.’
‘So, why do the government bang on about healthy eating, then?’ says Stacey, trying to sit upright but failing as the material bulges and sags under her skinny frame. ‘You don’t need Jamie Oliver to tell you that chicken nuggets are shit nutrition.’
The three of them have the energy to play, but I’ve heard it all before, and Pearl looks too sick to enjoy the debate.
Mina is sunk into her blue beanbag like she wants it to swallow her; usually her eyes are cast down, but not now.
‘Shut up, please,’ she says, quietly, but with enough force that there is silence in the room. ‘I’m tired of hearing the same stuff.’
Manda clears her voice as if to reply, but then doesn’t. The rest of us just wait; we have waited a long time for Mina to say anything.
‘I know,’ she says, simply. ‘I know about fat and calories, good and bad food. We all do, much more than you ever could,’ she says to Manda. ‘Why don’t you get that?’
She’s right. The hours, weeks, months that we have studied our calories – we are all experts. We are united by our shared illness, our shared expertise.
‘So then why not eat healthily?’ asks Manda, gently. ‘Why starve?’
Such a simple question. Such a fucking impossible question.
For once, Mina has an answer.
‘You can’t be healthy in a sick environment.’
Later, at our scheduled time, I find Clive in his office. I’ve been thinking about Mina’s words, and wondering if the sick environment is this hospital, or the world outside. We may all have anorexia, but for each of us the sickness is different.
I can no longer hide behind the others, like in group sessions. Mina’s story is not Fiona’s; Stacey’s is not Pearl’s. And none of them have this story.
In Clive’s office, it’s only my voice, continuing my sad tale. The only story I know.
Friday 17 June broke with heat and a low sun, and I felt a renewed hunger to fix the case, to bring Douglas to justice, burning inside.
Rob was in the workshop, a wrench in his hand. I didn’t want to tell him what Mrs Read had said about Jena having a baby, and anyway he had news of his own. A letter had arrived, at his house.
‘From my dad, the bastard. No contact for years, and then this. But it sounds like he’s sent a few and Mum hasn’t been passing them to me. I was there when the postman arrived, picking up my duvet, so it was only a fluke I got this.’
He was agitated, and when he thrust the envelope into my hand, I sensed it was the very thing I needed: access to Jena’s attacker.
Inside, the paper was thin, with HMP BISHOP’S HILL stamped on the top, then a scrawled prison number. Douglas’s writing was cramped and spiky. The writing of the man who raped my sister when she was thirteen, who had most likely attacked her nearly eight weeks ago. And here I was, with his son, who was lacing his arms around my waist.
Hello Rob,
Still waiting on your reply, son, and I’m hoping you aren’t mad at me because I’m in prison again. I tried to explain it to your mum, but she just hangs up on me. She won’t believe me, but it’s a conspiracy, another bullshit accusation, but they have nothing on me. They’ll have no choice but to release me. My brief says it might not even get before a judge – CPS will likely pull the file first thing Monday before my bail hearing.
I know I said I’d never return to Suffolk, but I’ve had enough of all this crap. It’s taken everything from me – my business, my marriage, my son.
I’m going to put an end to it now, so I’ll need somewhere to stay. Tell your mum I need to kip on the sofa. It’s the least she can do, giving up on me like she did. Sonia and me need to talk anyway. I have some questions for her.
So, since she won’t talk to me, this is the only way I can let her know. You tell her, son. Once I’m free, I’ll be on the first train to Ipswich.
Dad
Douglas Campbell was coming home.
&n
bsp; If I could see his face, up close, then I might fill in the blank I’d had since the attack. I wouldn’t need Jena to remember; I could remember for us both, and then Penny would have evidence that wasn’t just circumstantial. She’d have an eye-witness identification.
‘That bastard can’t just show up at Mum’s,’ Rob shouted over the sound of the revving cars and yells of the other mechanics. ‘She’s on a suspended sentence, and the police will be watching, waiting for her to fuck up. Anything happens, any violence or drugs or just anything, she’ll be sent to prison. I’m not having that.’
I coughed away some fumes, and sidestepped into a dusty gully to get away from the prying eyes of the other mechanics. I touched Rob on the shoulder.
‘That’s right, you need to protect your mum. Just like I need to protect Jena. Douglas hurt them both, Rob. We need to work together on this to make sure he doesn’t do any more damage to them. And to get him sent back to prison where he belongs.’
Rob was flustered, moving jerkily around the car. His face was patchy with sweat and I had the urge to wipe it away with my fingers.
‘The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned. He’s no dad of mine. Uncle Andy always said he was no good – he’s been more of a father figure to me.’
I shelved this positive image of Andy, to reflect on later. Right now, I needed to focus.
‘So, you won’t feel bad? Helping me get something concrete on your dad?’
‘Why should I? I don’t owe him anything. Do you know what it does to you, knowing your dad is a rapist? The things people on the estate said about my family . . . After he was sent down, Mum lost everything, got into drugs. You saw how vulnerable she is right now. I’m not gonna let him mess up our lives a second time.’
‘Then help me get him sent back to prison,’ I said, holding him tight, my eyes not leaving his conflicted face, willing him to be on my side.
There was a warning whistle from one of Rob’s mates, who pointed to the open doorway of the workshop, where Mac stood, arms folded.