by Marc Scott
Kayleigh had begun to believe that her friend might be ‘asexual’. She never asked her, maybe Bree didn’t know herself. It just never seemed right to her that Bree did not seem to have any sexual urges at all. Kayleigh had once met with, and although she would probably deny it to Bree, slept with, one of the few men that had dated her friend. The two of them spent the following morning together, during which time the very forward ‘Jack the Lad’ gave his own opinion on her sexual preferences. He had taken Bree out several times over a period of around a month, but in his words ‘had never even got to first base’. He thought at the time that she was either frigid or, again in his words, ‘a closet lesbian, screaming to get out of the cupboard’.
But the question of her sexuality was not the thing that had been on Kayleigh’s mind. Of course, she was curious about her friend’s lack of interest in relationships, but in truth that was none of her business. No, this was something more concerning – a throwaway line that Krista had used in their phone call and the certainty that her friend had called out a name during at least two of her nightmares. The name was Jess. She knew that it could only be Jess Chambers. Nobody ever mentioned that name to either of the twins after what had happened at the Husavik Straits of Iceland.
Jamie had met Jess during his first week at Bristol University. The two had become an item very quickly and soon became inseparable. Bree really took to his brother’s new girlfriend. She liked her outgoing approach on life and her zany dress sense. For a while, Kayleigh seemed to be cast to one side, as Jess, Jamie and Bree became ‘the new clique’. Bree would travel to Bristol most weekends and the three of them would go to wild parties together or to music venues to watch indie rock bands. Bree would return, with hundreds of pictures of their escapades on her mobile phone, and if truth be told, Kayleigh was rather jealous.
Around five months after Jamie had first met Jess, the three of them travelled to Iceland on a four-day excursion. They took in the usual tourist sites in the first couple of days, but Jamie had his heart set on seeing the fjords, something Per had often told him was one of the most beautiful places in the world. The small fishing boats could be hired out with a captain, who would get you ‘up close and personal’ with the whales in the sea, so close you could touch them.
And that is when tragedy struck. The small vessel taking them on the two-hour excursion hit bad weather. Jess, being the crazy carefree girl that she was, stayed on the deck of the boat taking selfies, while the others were sheltered in the cabin. Before anyone knew what was happening, the boat hit a large wave which caused Jess to lose her footing and slip over the side. But it was what happened afterwards that shocked everyone. Jamie, who was a school champion swimmer and a qualified lifeguard, made no attempt to save her, no attempt at all. He simply froze like a statue fixed to the deck of the boat, he couldn’t move. He watched on as his girlfriend’s body was swept away by the undercurrents. By the time the captain had alerted the coastguard, the poor girl had drowned, her lifeless body pulled from the sea in front of both the twins.
The siblings were left traumatised by the incident. Both attended private counselling and neither of them were seen in public for months. Per took time off work to stay at home with them and eventually Jamie went back to university. But his mind was not right. He would walk out of lectures in floods of tears and began drinking very heavily. He spent every waking hour blaming himself for what had happened. Bree buried herself in her work. She had recently started a new job at the fashion promoters and her boss was very supportive of her situation. She too felt responsible. It had been her idea to go on that excursion. She told Kayleigh at the time that she would never forgive herself for that. As time moved on Jamie seemed to be coming to terms with the tragic event. He said that he no longer felt as if he was to blame, but there was always a look of sadness in his eyes. The usually happy-go-lucky character was a shadow of his former self. The twins made a pact never to mention her name again, asking all their family and friends to follow their lead.
The question was, and Kayleigh was far from alone in thinking it, did Jamie ever really come to terms with the death of his girlfriend? Is it possible that the incident at the Maple crossing may have been suicide? A close friend of Jamie had confided in Kayleigh, shortly after his death, that he had been severely depressed for months. He had not wanted to go to Australia but was doing so because his life was such a mess. He had told him that he hated himself and had dark thoughts most of the time. He was drinking himself into oblivion most days rather than face the reality of his existence. A rumour had circulated amongst his small crowd of friends that Jamie had left a suicide note, but that Bree had found it and destroyed it. She would never want anyone to think that her brother had taken his own life. She would protect his memory with her dying breath.
Could the rumours be true, could this have been a spur-of-the-moment thing? The toxicology report had shown that there were no traces of any drugs, including anti-depressants, inside his body, There was, however, an overwhelming amount of alcohol, over five times the legal drink-drive limit.
And so now the dilemma for Kayleigh was how to ask that awkward question, was there a suicide note? She would need to tread very carefully, her friend was still very fragile, she could tell, but maybe if she opened up and talked about that night, it might help. She knew that Bree would never go to counselling again, she had told her that, after her last series of sessions following the death of Jess. But if her ‘bestie’ wanted to confide in her, Kayleigh could keep her secret and maybe help her to finally come to terms with Jamie’s death. It might also be the answer to stopping her having those awful nightmares, which seemed to be draining all the life out of her troubled friend.
* * *
Bree arrived around midday with an air of unbridled excitement about her. Her words seemed to be firing out of her mouth at one hundred miles per hour as she gave Kayleigh the details of her encounter with Poppy. The overexcited girl used the word ‘sister’ at least twenty times in the first ten minutes of the conversation, something that Kayleigh found most strange, considering it had only been a few days since she had discovered she existed at all. It was almost as if her newfound half-sibling had been on a very long vacation and that the two of them had finally been reunited. Kayleigh’s internet research, however, had told her that Poppy Jarvis had indeed been on an extended holiday, but not on sun-kissed beaches on a faraway exotic island. No, she had recently spent just under four years at HMP Bronzefield. Kayleigh chose not to dampen her best friend’s joyous mood, at least not for that moment.
Somewhere around Bree’s thirtieth mention of her ‘sister’ and their first meeting, Kayleigh attempted to change the direction of the conversation and lead on to those awkward questions that were still buzzing around in her head. ‘I spoke with your mother last night,’ she said. ‘She called me from Tampere, she was worried about you.’
Bree looked angry. ‘What did that bitch want?’ she asked.
‘She told me about your conversation. She told me that you were going to meet with this Poppy girl.’
‘My sister, you mean, Kayleigh, my sister.’
There is that word again, Kayleigh thought, but tried not to be distracted. ‘She said that you have stopped answering your phone.’
‘She can’t handle me knowing the truth. She didn’t like the fact that I have found Poppy.’
‘She really is worried about you, babe, she wanted the chance to explain.’
‘Explain why she has kept my sister hidden from me for more than twenty years? To explain why she never told me that Per was not my real father? I still love him, of course I still love him, but I hate her, I hate her for everything.’
‘I told her that you need time, time to let it all sink in. Please don’t hate her, babe, she says she only did it to protect you and Jamie. She knows she was wrong.’
‘No, Kayleigh, this is the final straw. I really don’t want anything
to do with that bitch again.’
Not knowing where to lead the conversation next, Kayleigh moved to her kitchen and started to make some coffee. Her friend followed her. Bree still had more to tell her about the previous day. ‘I saw where she lives yesterday, it is a real shithole, Kayleigh. She lives in one of those slum estates in South London, you know where all the places look the same. God, her flat is fucking awful!’
‘She invited you to her home?’ Kayleigh asked, slightly concerned that things were moving a bit too fast. After all, Kayleigh knew now what type of girl Poppy Jarvis was.
‘Well, she didn’t exactly invite me,’ Bree said. ‘I sort of, well, I sort of followed her home from work. It is disgusting, there were kids throwing lighted matches into a post box and the smell of cannabis everywhere.’
Her friend shook her head in disbelief. ‘You don’t know this girl, babe, you can’t just rock up on her doorstep.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Kayleigh! You are starting to sound like my mother.’
‘Did you go inside?’
‘No, I just watched her from the road, she was having a massive argument with someone in her flat.’
‘You shouldn’t have gone to her home, babe, not until you get to know more about her, you shouldn’t have gone there.’
‘I know that she is my sister, that is all that matters.’
The girls took their coffees back into the lounge. The time had come for Kayleigh to open that ‘can of worms’ she had been holding back on, but first she wanted to give her the lowdown on her newfound sibling.
‘Sit down, babe,’ she said. ‘Let me show you what I found.’
Kayleigh opened her laptop and retyped the search she had made the previous day – ‘Poppy Jarvis Prison’. Over two hundred pages came up on the Google counter. Almost immediately several blurred photographs of the girl Bree had met the previous day appeared. Kayleigh clicked on the top line, an old article for a national newspaper with the headline, ‘Getting away with murder’. She gave time for Bree to read the subtext before moving on to the next newspaper’s take on what had happened, its headline much more damning – ‘No justice for Billy Keyes as jury says it’s manslaughter’. Bree’s eyes raced down the page, barely batting an eyelid as she reached the part of the story revealing that Poppy had been high on a cocktail of drugs at the time she stabbed a youth to death in a fit of rage. Kayleigh clicked on another. ‘This is the Gazette’s one, you know where we…’
Bree snapped sharply at her friend. ‘I know what the fucking Gazette is!’ she said.
This article had been one of several by the Southern Gazette on the Poppy Jarvis case. The last two called for petitions to be started in a bid to have the trial reheard. They wanted real justice to be executed and were seeking a life sentence for the clearly disturbed murderess. The text in these articles was highly emotive, citing the words ‘psychopath’ and ‘deranged’ almost as many times as Bree had used the word ‘sister’ that day. Kayleigh drank her coffee, pondering on how to open the awkward conversation with her best friend, when Bree’s comment took her completely by surprise. ‘She doesn’t look very nice in those photos, does she?’ Kayleigh was speechless. Her friend had just read three articles on how her sibling had stabbed an innocent youth to death with a hunting knife with an eight-inch blade and her only concern was that her hair might look out of place in her police mugshot. She was more than worried now, she was alarmed. The girl in the photographs had been jailed for seven years, with a recommendation for psychiatric help, and Bree was talking about her sister as if she had simply received one too many parking tickets.
Before Kayleigh could get around to starting her planned conversation, her best friend started to turn on her. ‘So you want to piss on my parade, do you? I have found something in my life that means something to me and you want to knock me back down. What is it, Kayleigh, are you jealous or something?’
Kayleigh was puzzled by her comment. ‘Jealous? No, of course not. I am worried about you, babe.’ Bree stood up as if she was about to leave. Her friend rose swiftly from the sofa and stood in front of her. ‘Don’t go, babe, I really need to speak with you today.’ Kayleigh had been rehearsing her speech in her head but realised now that her friend was still very vulnerable. Showing her those newspaper articles about her sister would not have helped matters much. She took a deep breath and started. ‘It is about Jamie, about what happened.’
Bree stood and faced her friend. She was curious to know where this was going. ‘Jamie?’ she asked. ‘What has me finding my sister got to do with Jamie’s accident?’
Kayleigh finally plucked up the courage to say what was on her mind. ‘That night,’ she asked, ‘I don’t want to ask you, babe, but I need to know. That night, did he mean to do it? Did Jamie mean to stop the car on the tracks? I know he was depressed, babe, I know what everyone has been saying and I would never have believed it, but…’
Bree interrupted her friend with a look of disgust and hurt on her face. ‘Shame on you, Kayleigh Hardy!’ she said, gritting her teeth together. ‘How could you ever think that my Jamie could do that? Fucking shame on you!’
‘Babe, he was still cut up, he never really got over, you know, he never really got over Jess and what happened. He wasn’t, you know, he wasn’t the bravest person in the world, I didn’t even know he could drive. Why would he just crash into that car, and not, and not move?’
‘How can you say he wasn’t brave, Kayleigh? You are talking out of your fucking arse.’
‘But, he didn’t, you know, with Jess, he never tried to help her.’
‘She drowned, Kayleigh, he didn’t have time to help her for fuck’s sake!’
‘But you know, he loved her, and he didn’t even try.’
‘You were not there, Kayleigh, you don’t fucking know what happened!’
‘He told everyone afterwards, he told everyone how guilty he felt. He said he just froze, he couldn’t move.’
‘But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t brave. He saved Caroline and Maisie that night at the crossing. If Jamie hadn’t used the car to push them off the tracks they would have died.’
‘Your mum says he was not himself, that he was really depressed after losing Jess and all the stuff about his real dad was messing with his head. That’s why she booked his trip to Australia. She wanted him to have a fresh start. She knew some people out there, distant cousins or something.’
‘You never listen, do you, Kayleigh? I have told you before, my fucking whore of a mother booked him that trip to keep him away from me. She would do anything to separate the two of us, she hates me that much.’
‘But she thinks,’ Kayleigh had to pause a second, this was her real question, ‘your mother thinks that he wrote a suicide note. She thinks that you knew about it, she thinks you have hidden it or destroyed it.’
A sudden burst of anger ripped through Bree and she turned on her friend. ‘I fucking told you, Kayleigh, he would never have done that, he wasn’t depressed, he was pissed off. He was pissed off with our fucking mother trying to control our lives!’
‘But he was, babe. I could see he was still hurting over Jess. He wasn’t the same after that, he really loved her.’
‘He didn’t love her, Kayleigh, he only knew her for a few months. Yes, of course he was upset when it happened, we both were, but trust me, he didn’t love her like everyone thinks he did. She was my friend too, I was upset about her drowning, but no one ever gave a shit about the way I was feeling, they just fucked me off to counselling and thought that I would be OK. Well I wasn’t, Kayleigh! I wasn’t fucking OK! But no one gave a shit, it was all about Jamie, it was always all about Jamie.’
‘But your mother said that Jess…’
Bree snapped again. ‘Stop bringing her into this, my mother doesn’t know anything! Why are we talking about a girl that died years and years ago? Trust me, Jamie was not cut up about
her, he did not kill himself over Jess. There was no suicide note, Kayleigh, it was an accident, it was a fucking accident!’
‘OK, I believe you,’ Kayleigh said, trying to calm her friend down. ‘I believe you.’
‘I don’t care if you do or you don’t. You are just like the rest of them fucking idiots out there, you are just like my mother. If Jamie was here now he would be so disappointed in you, Kayleigh. Shame on you, you have shown your true colours today, you are not a real friend.’
‘No, babe, don’t say that. I am your friend, Bree, I will always be there for you.’
‘Not always. Sometimes you can be selfish, Kayleigh.’
‘Selfish?’
‘Yes, you can be very selfish.’
‘How can you say that?’
Bree shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s true. You are selfish sometimes.’
‘No, babe, I have been there for you, I have always been there for you.’
‘Like when you tried to bed Jamie, is that what a best friend does?’
‘No, that’s not true.’
‘He told me, Kayleigh, he told me you tried to bed him when he got kicked out of university, when his head was a complete mess.’
‘No, babe, I swear, I was just trying to be a friend, to be there for him, after what happened with Jess. He just wanted to talk.’
‘But of course he only wanted to talk, Kayleigh, he wouldn’t have looked twice at a cheap tramp like you!’
‘That hurts, babe, don’t say that.’
‘Well it’s true, let’s face it, Kayleigh, you have turned into a real slag over the years.’
‘Bree, stop it, you don’t mean that.’
‘Oh, I do, you are a cheap fucking slag, the standing joke in every bar in Surrey. No, Kayleigh, my brother would not have gone anywhere near you. He told me once that he thought you were ugly, he said you had froggy eyes and you always smelled of piss.’