by Marc Scott
Kayleigh became tearful. ‘Why are you saying that, babe? I never tried to bed Jamie, he was like a brother to me, like you are a sister.’
Bree shrugged her shoulders. ‘You are not my sister, Kayleigh. I have a sister, a real sister.’
Kayleigh became more upset and fought hard to hold back her tears. ‘I wish I had never found her for you, I wish I had thrown that picture away. What is happening to you, Bree? What is happening to my friend?’
Seeing what her cruel comments had done to Kayleigh made Bree become emotional herself. Suddenly a feeling of overwhelming guilt came over her and she broke down in tears. ‘I am sorry, really, I am so sorry,’ she said, pulling Kayleigh closer to her and hugging her tightly. ‘I just miss him so much, Kayleigh, I miss him every day, I miss him every day.’ Large tears escaped from Bree’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks, landing gently on her best friend’s shoulder. She sobbed loudly as she embraced Kayleigh in a heartfelt grip. She knew she didn’t really mean those terrible things she had just said to her only true friend, her emotions were bouncing all over the place at that time. Bree’s voice became a little croaky. ‘I still dream about him, all of the time. It is like he is still with me. Sometimes I don’t want to wake up, I just want to sleep, in the hope that I can see more of him.’
Holding her friend close, Kayleigh tried her best to offer some words of comfort. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘one day things will be OK, babe. I promise that one day all this hurt and pain will go away and you will get your life back.’
Bree broke their embrace and pushed her friend away. ‘You don’t understand, Kayleigh, you really don’t understand. I don’t want this pain to go away. If the pain leaves me, it means he is gone, it means Jamie is gone, forever!’
Kayleigh wrapped her arms around her friend again and squeezed her tightly. ‘I do understand, babe, I do understand.’
When the crying had come to an end, the girls sat with some fresh coffee and Bree continued to tell her friend more about her encounter with Poppy and how much she wanted to see her again. She promised Kayleigh that she would take her with her next time, so that she could see for herself that this girl was not the deranged monster that the newspapers had made her out to be. Kayleigh smiled and laughed throughout their conversation but deep inside she had the feeling that this newfound relationship would somehow backfire on her best friend and send her reeling back to those dark days she had endured earlier in the year. In her head she really wished that she had destroyed that photograph in Krista’s little box of treasured memories.
The girls shared a small box of cakes that Kayleigh had brought the previous day and by mid-afternoon their heated argument seemed to have been forgotten. Bree had said that she needed to leave earlier than planned to pick some things up from a clothes store before it closed. She had begun to say her goodbyes, thanking Kayleigh for always being there for her and assuring her that she would call her before she returned to meet her sister again.
Their earlier differences seemed to have been buried, but just before Bree left the flat, Kayleigh saw a glimpse of the venom that she had witnessed earlier that day. Her friend’s face was stern and there was a glint of anger in her eyes. ‘And Kayleigh,’ she said, grabbing her friend’s wrist so tightly that her long nails cut into her skin, ‘don’t ever talk to my mother again without speaking to me first! Do you understand?’ With that parting comment, Bree stomped out of the flat and headed for her car.
Kayleigh looked down at her wrist. The scratch had drawn blood, but it hurt her more inside than out. She hated arguing with the girl she had known for most of her life. Alone in her flat, she realised that she never did get a straight answer to her question. She did not believe Bree now when she said there had been no suicide note.
The Gazette’s article on Poppy Jarvis was still staring back at Kayleigh from her laptop. She deleted the pages that she had shown her friend that day and poured herself a large glass of Prosecco. It was early in the day for her to start drinking, but she felt as if she needed some alcohol to calm her nerves. Kayleigh was in deep thought. There was a strange idea rolling around in her head and a sick feeling in her stomach. She wanted to put her twisted theories to the back of her mind, but they were screaming at her so loudly, she couldn’t. Before shutting down the screen on her computer she typed in three simple words on the search bar. They were words she never thought in a million years she would place together on her keyboard. Surely these things only happen in strange novels by unknown authors and stories of debauchery in Roman times, she thought. She took a deep breath and typed in the words ‘incest between twins’.
* * *
Bree had lied to her best friend that afternoon. There was no store to visit. She had left Kayleigh’s flat in time to visit Jamie’s graveside. There were some things that she needed to share with him, important things. When she arrived, she was cheered by the sight of an array of summer flowers blossoming all around the cemetery. The place seemed so much brighter these days.
As she reached her brother’s final resting place, she noticed some freshly laid ivory lilies, neatly displayed in the two silver pots. She smiled to herself, knowing that Caroline and Maisie had visited him recently. She sat down beside his gravestone and placed her hands on the top, as if to let him know that she was beside him. ‘I have found her, Jay,’ she said, crouching closer to his stone. ‘I have found our sister.’ Bree waited for a couple to pass by before continuing her revelation. ‘She is a bit confused, but I understand that. I think that I would be if someone came and told me that they were my sister.’
Bree ran her fingers over her brother’s name on the front of the stone. It gave her a small sense of his presence. ‘Mum is still being a bitch,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘She has got Kayleigh on her side now. I don’t trust Kayleigh anymore, Jay, but don’t worry I will never tell them, I will never say anything.’ Bree took out one of the flowers that Maisie had left in the pot and held it to her nose to breathe in its fresh aroma. ‘I know that you want to find out more about him, Jay, about our real dad. I am so sorry that I never believed you, maybe I was just scared, maybe I was just scared to know the truth. But I do want to meet him now. I want to know what he is like. I am sure that Poppy will let me meet him, now that she knows that I am his daughter too.’
Stretching out her legs, Bree lay down on top of where her brother was buried. She smiled, as if she felt that she might be lying next to him. Looking up at the clear blue sky she found her mind working overtime. ‘I wonder if we look like him, Jay, I wonder if we look just like him. Everyone keeps telling me that I look like her, telling me that I look like our bitch of a mother. You don’t think that, do you, Jamie? You always said I was much prettier than her, you always said that I was the prettiest girl in the world.’
Bree smiled, a small, knowing sort of smile and continued her speech. ‘When I find him, Jay, when I find our real father, I will tell him what a fine son he had, a handsome, strong and very brave son.’ Bree’s smile grew larger as an image of her lost brother appeared in her head. ‘Oh, and I will tell him that you were funny, Jay, you were always funny. I will tell him how you always made everyone around you laugh.’ Bree suddenly became tearful and her voice became a little shaky. ‘I miss your laugh,’ she said shaking her head, her eyes clouding over with tears. ‘Oh, Jamie, I miss your laugh so much!’
Chapter Twenty
This was not an ordinary Friday in the life of Poppy Jarvis, it was far from it. Despite the appearance of her unwelcome visitor at Chez Blanc earlier that week, she was in a buoyant mood, an extremely buoyant mood. The £400 Matt had loaned her to help with her rent arrears was safely tucked away in a sock beneath her bedroom wardrobe, safely out of Cameron’s reach. So with the wages she received from Danny at lunchtime, including £40 of tips for the week, she had more than the £550 she needed to give to her landlord Mr Rahwaz to avoid the eviction. Poppy had arranged to drop the money into h
is house the following morning on her way to work and he had agreed to cancel the eviction proceedings. She realised that it would be the first time that her rent would be up to date since they moved into their filthy little hovel in Stonely Parade. Poppy felt quite proud of that.
But this was not the only reason she was in high spirits. Following Wednesday’s session with Joe Manning she had finally reached the last week of her probation period. She felt so bullish about the upcoming release of her shackles, that she had even spoken with the ‘dreaded Mrs Bishop’ and agreed to attend a local anger management group for the following six weeks. The woman she had been avoiding for so long had turned out to be much more understanding of her reluctance to prolonged bouts of therapy than she could have hoped for. After a lengthy conversation, Mrs Bishop took it upon herself to change the requirement, reducing the length of the course on the provision that Poppy did not miss a session and the group’s counsellor was happy with her involvement. So now she was free of her landlord’s nagging phone calls and would soon be free of all the sermons, all the bullshit, and most of all, free of having to face those ‘awkward’ questions each week in Manning’s ‘holy’ office.
They say that good things come in threes. Maybe the most surprising element of Poppy’s new spring in her step was closer to home, much closer in fact. The previous evening, just when she thought that her week could not get any better, she found that an alien life force had taken over the body of her heavy-fisted boyfriend, at least that is what she assumed had happened. He was not high when she arrived home from work, not on his way up or down, he was just, well, just like you would expect a proper boyfriend to be, normal. She was greeted on her return from her shift at Chez Blanc with a cup of steaming hot tea, a plate of buttered toast and an invitation to sit down for a ‘chat’. The windows in the lounge were all open and the flat smelled unusually clean. Cameron had even made some sort of effort, not a great one, but an effort nevertheless, to tidy the living room. He told her that he had been sitting in the dark for hours, reflecting on his existence. He said that it depressed him to think how he had spent so much time just wasting his life away. He told her that he now realised that she would leave him if he did not change his behaviour and confessed that he was afraid that he would lose her. After Poppy had searched her flat trying to find ‘the real Cameron’ they sat and talked, something they hardly ever found time for over the past few months. This was not the first time that Poppy had heard the ‘changed man’ routine from him, but this time he wasn’t on the gear, this time he really seemed to mean it. There was no gain for him, he didn’t want anything from her, it was not a ruse to get her to find a wad of cash to feed his habit. Heaven knows he had already had the lion’s share of her wages for the past year. No, this time he seemed totally genuine. She did, however, check the ‘money sock’ beneath her wardrobe when he went to the toilet. She found, to her relief, that it had not been touched.
When she woke that Friday morning, she fully expected to find that the ‘old Cameron’ had re-entered the shell of her boyfriend. But she was wrong, when Poppy looked into the living room, she was shocked to find her boyfriend studying the situations vacant pages of the local paper. He had already circled a couple of jobs that he thought might suit him, one at a warehouse and the other in a furniture factory. Poppy sat down with him, letting him use the remaining available minutes on her mobile to make interviews with them both. Cameron had also told Poppy that he had picked up a card at the job centre for an organisation that helped people break free from their addictions. He assured her that he would be registering with them and that he was more determined than ever to kick his decade-long drug habit.
Poppy began to wonder, if it wasn’t an alien life force from another galaxy who had welcomed her home with that tea and toast supper the previous night, then it might be someone who had been influenced by one of the Reverend Joe’s friends. Maybe Cameron had found God, or maybe he met that bloody bloke from that road to Damascus or Dulwich or wherever it was, on his way to the shops, the one who saw the bright lights and turned from sinner to saint. That must be it, she thought, bloody Joe was right all along. People can change, some people do change.
He would need her help though, a lot of help. She remembered what it was like when she went through the process in Bronzefield prison, when she went from having ‘drugs on tap’ to nothing at all. It very nearly pushed her over the edge. The first two weeks that she was ‘on the cold-turkey run’ she would wake up screaming in her cell in the middle of the night. Her whole body ached constantly, as if she was living inside a punchbag and the whole world was taking their turn to hit her. She had a recurring dream that she was at the bottom of a dry well, dying of thirst. She would have killed, literally killed, for a glass of water. Poppy never knew why they referred to it as cold turkey. If she had seen a real wild turkey during that time, playfully running across the prison yard, she would have chased it, caught it and kicked the living daylights out of it, simply for being the creature that it was. So Cameron would need her help, but she would be there for him, no questions asked, after all, he had been there for her when Nathan Keyes came calling for revenge for his brother.
Poppy never knew whether or not she really loved Cameron. Love seemed to be such a strange word in her vocabulary, a word that other people used far too frequently. She remembered her friend Nikita’s definition of love, telling her that she thought its true meaning was often lost somewhere between people’s needs and their desires. ‘You want to love someone,’ she would say, ‘because you want to feel loved yourself.’ Poppy and Cameron had got intimate the previous night. It had been something of a fumbled sex session. It was the first time they had shared body fluids in months. Their sexual encounter would hardly be described as memorable. Poppy spent most of the three and half minutes that her boyfriend was bouncing up and down on top of her looking at the spider web that had formed in the corner of their bedroom ceiling. She made a mental note to brush it down the next time she was cleaning the flat. She did not climax, in truth she had hardly got moist at all during those two hundred-plus seconds of animated passion. Poppy had learned so much from Matt over the past few months during their secret sex trysts that her expectation levels were set at high numbers – nines and tens. Cameron may have scraped a three for effort at best, but only if the judge had been in a kindly mood. The Geordie chef could make the whole of her body feel like it was on fire when he was inside her and that little something he could do with his tongue would make her feel as if her whole body were about to explode. Maybe next time her and Cameron had sex she would have to fantasise that it was the ever-willing northerner on top of her, that might just help things along a bit.
Was this a new start? The pair had shared so many good times when they first met, back in the Marfield days. Poppy wondered if they could ever capture that romance again. They were two juvenile cast-offs, kicking back at the world that shunned them in those days, putting a middle finger up to society in unison and telling the world to ‘fuck off’, much like a budget shop version of Bonnie and Clyde. They were several years older now, but in truth, not much wiser. Maybe that’s what happens when you get to your mid-twenties, Poppy thought, maybe some lovers do settle for a tea and toast welcome home and a cosy cuddle-up in bed each night.
So, on this warm and sunny Friday afternoon in early August, Poppy was feeling good, she was buzzing, she was on a real high, without the need of any toxic substances running through her bloodstream. With her wages tucked away in her jacket pocket she decided to treat herself to a few bits from the charity shops at the far end of the high street. She had already picked up some ciggies and topped up her mobile phone and decided to do something that she rarely, if ever, got the chance to do these days: treat herself. She felt like a queen, like a lottery winner, £50 to herself, all to herself. No subsidising Cameron’s habit anymore, no more running from the landlord. She had a small, and rare, smile on her face as she strolled along past the
shops.
Poppy had one charity shop she visited all the time. It seemed to have more modern clothing in there than the other shops. She often spent a few pounds on a cheap top or two when she had earned some extra tips at Chez Blanc. She browsed through the clothing section. She had already picked out a brightly coloured top when something caught her eye. In the corner of the store, beneath the coat rack, she saw some leather boots. She was immediately drawn to them. They were smart black ankle-length boots with solid heels and small silver studs running down both sides, they were size five. Perfect, she thought. She tried them on and studied her reflection in the mirror. Look at me, she said to herself, out in the shops like a normal person, buying normal clothes. It was the first time in a long time she felt good about herself. She winked at her reflection, as if to say, ‘Looking very cool in those, missy.’ The boots were £15 and the T-shirt of her choice was £5. A nice crisp £20 note changed hands between her and the shop assistant and she walked out with a smug look of self-satisfaction on her face.
Her walk had become more of a strut as she continued her shopping trip along the high street. She still had an hour or so to kill before she had to start her evening shift and she still had money to spend. The images of the girl who had come to Chez Blanc to talk about her father had gone, so had all the other thoughts in her head. Today, Poppy Jarvis was relaxed. Suddenly something in a shop window brought her walk to a halt. It was a poster in the travel agents. She wasn’t sure why it had drawn her attention. Maybe her temporary position of wealth had gone to her head. The poster was of a couple, a young couple, walking along a sandy beach. It wasn’t like the beach at Bournemouth, it was massive, miles and miles of golden sand. The water was crystal clear and so very blue. Anyone would want to swim in that sea, she thought. The couple looked as if they were in love, their hands clasped tightly together, savouring the beautiful experience they were sharing. Maybe that would be her and Cameron one day, perhaps the pair of them had finally grown up, become real adults. They would get married, get old together. Maybe Cameron had seen the error of his ways, he was going to be a better person, to treat her like his real girlfriend, to love her. That’s all she really wanted, to feel truly loved. The sex would have to improve though. Maybe he could ask Matt for tips. They could become friends, drinking buddies. Maybe if Cameron was too tired to perform Matt could step in, a substitute, waiting patiently for his chance to shine.