The Penn Friends Series Books 1-4: Penn Friends Boxset

by T H Paul

  Asked about why she started running, Abbey had paused, as had Penny when she’d been watching the show; both girls had never truly discussed the answer to that question, not with each other, anyway. Only Penny knew the truth.

  “I’d always been scared of dogs,” Abbey started, the camera focusing in close to the teenager. The BBC had applied plenty of make-up on Abbey, though Penny would have to admit, Abbey had never looked as good as she did now. Penny had turned up the sound at the mention of the dog. “I don’t know why that was, but it probably had something to do with a stray dog that roamed around the neighbourhood where I grew up. One day it chased me. I hadn’t seen it approaching, and by the time I had, it was too late. I knew it was about to bite me. So I ran.”

  “You outrun the dog?” the female presenter asked, hanging on every word, the tension apparent.

  “Yes, I did. I’d never really had reason to run before. Athletics had not appealed much to me back then,” and both interviewee and interviewer laughed together at that comment. There Abbey was, about to compete in the Olympic Games, the pinnacle of any athlete’s career. A real athlete. And athletics might not have appealed to her when she was younger.

  “So what changed?” the presenter said, drawing the story out of Abbey as only an experienced interviewer could.

  “That day. I suddenly knew I could run. It’s amazing the change it makes when you know, deep down, that you are excellent at something.”

  “Indeed,” the presenter laughed, picking up a sheet of paper from the table, “you’ve broken plenty of records since discovering your hidden talent.” Penny scoffed at that last statement. Hidden would imply it had always been there. It wasn’t Abbey’s talent; it was mine. Why couldn’t anybody see that?

  Abbey gave an embarrassed smile, though didn’t comment on the records she’d broken since first competing as a fourteen-year-old. Ever the girl of modesty.

  “Were there and significant people of influences in your early years?” the interviewer said, before jokingly adding with a smile; “Anyone with you when that dog revealed your talent for running?” The camera came back in on Abbey as Penny mirrored the movement, drawing forward in her seat, even closer to the television.

  Abbey paused as if thinking what to say, as if willing herself not to have to go there, not to open that door, but she was on camera. She could hardly tell a lie.

  “I was with a friend I had at the time. She saw it happen, too.”

  The interviewer took a deep breath as if she had unknowingly uncovered something that maybe would have otherwise remained buried.

  “Was your friend okay? I mean, you must have outrun her.”

  Abbey hadn’t seen that connection, but smiled, as she understood the sudden nervousness in the presenter's demeanour.

  “No,” she laughed, “she’d run the other way. She climbed a tree. It was only me that the dog was chasing. I guess she was my first spectator,” and they laughed. For the next two minutes, the interviewer talked about the fact Abbey had only been running in small stadiums up to that point, the crowds growing over recent months, but nothing like what she was about to experience in an Olympic stadium. She asked Abbey how she felt about facing such a crowd. Penny tuned out for a moment, feeling that they were both laughing at her in that studio. Penny the fan, Penny, the spectator. How honoured she must have been to have witnessed the dawning of a great champion in the making. They hadn’t said any such thing, though, and by the time Penny had focused again on the screen, the interview had moved on.

  “What does your friend think about watching you run at the London Stadium?”

  There was silence again now––both in the studio where, again, Abbey looked as if she was weighing her thoughts carefully and in Penny’s room, where she was sitting alone but transfixed once again.

  “We aren’t friends anymore. We haven’t been for years. Drifted apart, actually, though I think she’s been jealous of me ever since if I’m honest. When my parents moved house so that I could train closer to home, it separated me and…” again, the briefest pause––Abbey couldn’t say her name, “…and that girl, and I was suddenly running so much that I had little time for anyone. Certainly no time for her, nor have I ever since.”

  The interviewer swallowed hard; that hadn’t been the soundbite she had expected, having allowed Abbey to carry on speaking, sensing she was opening up to that last line when it had become too dark. They moved things on well, Penny not hearing anything else said, indeed the subject of Abbey and her friends was kept very much out of the interview from then on. All Penny could repeat over and over again were those last words; no time for her, nor have I ever since.

  The whole school, especially her class, would know Abbey had been talking about Penny. They also, already, knew that the two girls hated each other, so in many ways, it wasn’t news at all. But Abbey had said it on national television, right in front of no doubt millions of people––people Penny would never meet, people who had no idea Abbey had been talking about a girl called Penny Black––, but none of that mattered to Penny. Abbey had made her a laughing stock.

  However, Penny knew she would have the last laugh; that before the end of the Games was even upon them, she would be the one laughing loudest. There were some nights that Penny couldn’t sleep because of the excitement she felt about finally getting back at Abbey. All that the interview had done was to prove, once and for all, that Abbey still held a grudge against her, and despite all Abbey had been through, Penny felt no remorse about what she knew she had to do. It had given Penny renewed drive.

  Penny had fallen asleep, the television still on, and as she woke an hour later, the national news was just finishing, and the local news was about to start. Penny got up to switch it off as the newsreader announced the headlines, but before she’d managed to get to the screen––she’d lost the remote control weeks ago––an image of her former dance teacher, Mr Jenkins, was flashing up onto the screen. The headline said that he was being sentenced later that day, having been found guilty at trial already and having been held in custody since.

  Penny felt sick.

  4

  I seemed to be getting it from all angles. If it wasn’t from the television with Abbey and her coded comments or the local news with coverage of Mr Jenkins’ sentencing, it was Jack hassling me at the checkout. My only escape was during my lunch hours, where I would go upstairs and hide––Jack wasn’t allowed up there, despite asking, despite arguing. He’d been thrown out by the security guard once for refusing to move away from the doors and let me through.

  Richard had been walking around with a black eye. He never told me Jack had done it, but I saw how he avoided me after it had appeared. Jack had made his mark.

  Still, even with all that going on, my sanctuary of the staff room was about to be desecrated. Ginger-haired lad was back.

  Penny had been eating lunch quietly by herself, looking through some information she’d sent off for the other week which had arrived at home for her that morning. Robin, the ginger-haired boy from her interview who’d always had a grudge against her since Penny had got given the job instead of his sister, came and sat down opposite Penny, grabbing the booklet from her hands.

  “What’s this you got?” he said, Penny reaching to grab it back.

  “It’s got words on it, Robin, you won’t be interested.” He glanced up at her from the brochure and contemplated what to say.

  “You think I can’t read?” he mocked. "Inmate PenPals,” he read, looking at the front cover of the brochure he’d just grabbed from Penny, before looking up at her. “Why you got this, then?”

  “I would think that was rather self-explanatory,” she said, making her best Hermione Granger impression. She couldn’t have sounded any more condescending if she’d tried. She grabbed back the material from his hand.

  “Know someone in prison, do you? Big deal.” Penny was sure Robin knew plenty of people in jail but wasn’t going to point out to him the blindingly obvious. />
  “No, actually, I don’t. I just wrote to these guys,” she said, not sure why she was even bothering to explain herself to a boy who had written her off because she got the job and his sister hadn’t. Only because she could fit into the uniform, and his sister would probably have eaten it as a pre-dinner snack. She smiled at the thought. She knew exactly why he hated her; “as I was interested in what they were doing. I want to help, connect with someone behind bars, be an anonymous pen pal to someone who needs a little hope, that’s all. I watched a documentary that said how the prisoners who receive at least one letter a week from outside have a far greater chance of never going back to crime once they are released.”

  Robin seemed impressed that Penny could be so selfless, though he wouldn’t allow that feeling to remain for long.

  “Why? They deserve what they get, don’t they? That’s why they are there in the first place.”

  “I’m not changing that by writing to them. Having outside communication statistically just means a prisoner is less likely to stay that way once they leave. They might give something back to society.”

  Robin just sniffed, clearly now out of things of which he might be able to come back at her. There was nothing more to throw her way.

  “My sister wants you to quit,” he said, changing the subject and dropping the topic onto Penny as if it were a heavyweight crashing to the table.

  “Sorry?”

  “You heard me. She wants your job.”

  “There’ll be plenty of jobs available soon. They are hiring all the time!” That was true. At least two people, albeit not cashiers, had started since she’d joined.

  “She doesn’t want any job; she wants you gone and to have your cashier’s job.”

  Penny couldn’t help but see the two conditions were inexplicably linked. It wasn’t about being a cashier. It was about not being a cashier with Penny still working there. If she were to leave, the job would be open, and she would no longer be around. Penny got it. Penny, however, wasn’t about to give up anything.

  “Get lost, Robin.”

  “I thought you’d take that tone,” he said, sounding pleased it had gone that way. “Be gone by the end of this week, or I’ll make your life here a misery. You understand?”

  “Piss off!” she said, though she didn’t want a fight. She didn’t need another conflict, neither had she ever needed to get physical. There were plenty of ways to hurt someone without having to touch them, though ever since Jack, she’d been wary of using her powers as freely as she had once done. She still needed to focus what she had left––she feared she was losing control of them––on her prime targets that summer.

  “I’m warning you, that’s all. If you aren’t out of here by the weekend, you’ll soon wish you were.” He got up, nothing more said, slamming the door closed behind him. Penny wanted with all her might to do something to him at that very moment. Piss gull stones, fart flames, but she couldn’t draw attention to herself. And what if she then couldn’t undo it? What if it kept happening? The situation with Jack had worried her. He now seemed rather immune to her. She couldn’t undo what she had given him, which bothered her.

  Penny picked up the brochure again, glancing through it. She wanted to do good to someone––a stranger––and needed to understand how the process worked, pulling out her mobile phone as the information mentioned a website to visit to apply. Penny opened her browser, typing in the address. She scrolled down the home screen, noticing the default option on the Pen Pals site set to female, and the default option for Prisoners listed as looking for a male prisoner. Was she just another girl trying to connect with a man? She certainly wasn’t doing it for any form of relationship. She had had enough of them for the time being. She also had other, better motives in mind. Still, the thought bothered her. She put her phone down for the moment and scanned through the information in the brochure over the remaining ten minutes of her lunch break before it was time to get back to work.

  Going to her locker, she found the door heavily dented. Robin had already started.

  At home that evening, Penny had made a simple dinner of beans on toast and then cleaned up after herself. She went up to her bedroom, switching on the television, the news coming on a few minutes later. She left it on mute, taking little interest in the national headlines and the sport mostly focused on the upcoming Olympics. It seemed to Penny that it was about all anybody could talk. She dared think what it would be like when the event started. It was all still just build up. She thought she would probably watch very little television at all by then.

  Penny had gone to make herself a cup of tea, and the local news had already started as she rushed back into her room, the news story currently being given coverage to was the main one––the sentencing of Mr Jenkins following his conviction on multiple counts. He was heading to HMP Whatton, which was a large prison in Nottinghamshire in the Midlands, and the report suggested it was the biggest prison in Europe for dealing with sex offenders. Jenkins was to be taken straight there from the hearing. He must already be there, Penny pondered.

  Penny had switched off the television moments after the story was over, picking up her phone again and going back to the browser she looked at earlier in the day. The web page was still showing, and she filled in her details, giving her age as twenty-three, as she wasn’t sure they would have accepted a teenager. She listed she wanted to correspond with a male inmate and was pleased to see HMP Whatton come up in the list of drop-down options. Names, crimes and sentence length were not listed, but it reported three inmates fitted her criteria who were in the program. Penny was confident Jenkins could not possibly be amongst those three, as he would just have arrived that day. She completed the setup process, confirming her email address when the message had come, and the website told her they would contact her in due course, but it should not be more than a couple of days.

  In the same way that Penny had found with Jack, the only other person where she had not been able to use her powers on had been that of her former dance teacher, Mr Jenkins. When she’d found out what he had done––who he was––she’d focused everything she could on him. He should never have even made it through his trial alive. He had. She had, therefore, not been able to punish him for what he had done to her.

  If she could get in touch with someone at the prison, if she could then build up trust with that person, then maybe she didn’t need to use her internal powers to hurt him. Maybe she just needed to use words and leave the retribution up to another?

  Pleased that she had finally been able to take the next step––she had had to wait until Jenkins sentencing, to know where he was being sent, before putting the plan into motion––she went out for a walk, Millie having called moments after. Millie, too, had most probably been watching the news. She needed someone to talk to, and Penny was the only person she could talk to about this. Neither girl had ever discussed it with anyone else. It was one of their shared secrets. That and the ability that Millie still could heal Penny that is.

  Penny just wished she could have reciprocated to her friend what she, too, was feeling. Told her what she was planning, even. Penny knew she couldn’t, however. Not until it was all done, she knew she couldn’t say anything. She doubted even after the event whether she should say something, either.

  5

  In the midst of all that was going on that summer, I nearly forgot to check my email, but thankfully spotted the reply back from the prison service, confirming that they had a match for me. I wrote to him for the first time that evening.

  All the covering letter had said was that he was a low-risk inmate––I would later find out that the twisted characters, people who had carried out sexual crimes of any sort, were not allowed to use the pen pals service for their protection, apparently. Around seventy per cent of the prison’s inmates had fallen into that category––Jenkins included within that number––but whoever I was speaking to, he was locked away there for another reason. I wasn’t allowed to ask. I didn’
t care. You don’t get put away into a place like that for stealing dinner money. I was confident I had found an ally.

  The fact he was an older man––again, I wasn’t told, but it was a men’s prison, and a grave one at that––someone faceless and that I was anonymous, instantly gave it all a charged excitement. Could I open up to someone, is that why I was doing it? Was I looking for a father figure, instead, and like always, searching in the wrong place? Or were my motives even more sinister? In truth, it was probably a mix of all three. I didn’t stop to ask myself that one, at the time, however.

  Work at the supermarket had become progressively worse for Penny over the last two weeks. Robin had kept up his threat of trouble if she wasn’t going to leave, and the rebel she was, wasn’t going to allow anyone to order her around. She knew she could handle Robin if she needed to. He was simply a minor irritation, one that Penny probably could have got sorted my mentioning something to someone––either her boss, who might have fired him or the other lads, who kept flirting with Penny and might have decked him for her. She didn’t want anyone else fighting her battles, however. Jack had taken that mission on, unasked, and she didn’t like it one bit.

  Jack, too, was still turning up uninvited. She was sure he was also using his invisibility to spy on her at work. Once, the till had been fifty pounds down as Penny cashed out after her shift. She had protested that it must have been an error, but the money had come out of her pay cheque regardless, the only way she was able to keep her job. They had a zero tolerance when it came to staff members stealing. After that, suspicious that it had in fact been Jack up to his old tricks, she had placed items strategically around her work area so that it would be impossible for Jack to try it again. She was sure he would attempt it before too long, however.