The Truth About Celia Frost

by Paula Rawsthorne

  “Do you remember what taxi firm it was?” Frankie asked, thinking quickly.

  “Of course. It was A2B Cabs. I use them myself. Their office is only on Mount Road.”

  “And when was this exactly?”

  “Oh, a couple of weeks ago now. It was a Friday. I remember as it’s the day I get my hair done and I wasn’t too pleased because Doreen – that’s my hairdresser – well I don’t know what she was thinking of, she made me look like a dog’s dinner. I keep washing it but I still think it looks a mess,” she said, patting her lavender hair.

  “No, it looks lovely. Really suits you,” Frankie said with a sickly smile.

  “Oh, that’s very kind of you, young man.” The old lady giggled like a schoolgirl.

  “Did you know the Frosts then?”

  “Only Celia. Such a lovely girl! I don’t know what could have happened to make them run off like that.”

  “Have you got any idea where they might have gone? Do they have friends or relatives around here?” Frankie asked. “Because I’d really like to get this parcel to them.”

  “No. I don’t know much about them. Celia never used to talk about herself really. She’d pop over after school sometimes, do a bit of shopping for me at the corner store before her mum got back from work. Her mum didn’t like her going out, you see. She was meant to stay in the house until Janice came home. I’d often see her looking out the window at the other kids playing in the street; I tell you, it used to break my heart. She didn’t seem to have any friends who called round. She’s a striking-looking girl – so tall and pale, with all this orange hair – but you know how cruel other kids can be. And then, of course, she had this illness.”

  “What kind of illness?” Frankie asked.

  “I’m not sure,” the old woman replied. “She didn’t talk about it, but when I told her that she should be getting out like other teenagers, she just said she couldn’t, that she had this disorder and her mum was worried about her hurting herself.”

  “Where did her mum work? Maybe they could give me her new address,” Frankie asked.

  “Well...I don’t know. She had cleaning jobs all over town. The poor woman always looked worn out. It must be hard for these single mums.”

  “Any boyfriends who’d know?”

  “Not that Celia ever mentioned. I never saw anyone go over their doorstep. It was always just the two of them.”

  Frankie pulled the photo out of his pocket. “Is this Janice Frost?” he asked tentatively.

  The old woman peered closely at the grainy image. “Oh, well. I can’t be absolutely sure. This photo isn’t very clear and the girl here looks a lot younger than Celia’s mum, but it could be her... Yes,” she said after some consideration. “Put a good few years on her, make her face thinner, more lined, and it could well be her.”

  On hearing this, Frankie’s adrenalin started pumping.

  “But why have you got a photo of her?” the old lady asked curiously.

  “The person sending the parcel gave it to us,” he answered without hesitation. “They were anxious that it got delivered to the right person. I think it’s something very precious. Family mementoes or something.”

  “Oh, what a shame she won’t get it.”

  “I’m not giving up yet. Could I leave my mobile number? Then if Celia ever gets in touch with you, perhaps you could let me know and I could get this parcel to her mum.” Frankie wrote his first name and number on a card.

  “Yes, of course. What a good idea. I must say, it’s lovely to meet someone who’s so dedicated to their job.”

  “I like to do my best, Mrs...?” Frankie said.

  “It’s Mary. Call me Mary.”

  “Well, Mary, you’ve been so helpful,” Frankie said, getting up to leave, “but if you don’t mind me saying, in future you shouldn’t leave your door on the latch. There are some very unsavoury people out there who could take advantage of a nice lady like you.”

  A buoyant Frankie returned to the street at five o’clock. He’d kept his courier uniform on in case Mary was looking out of her window. He didn’t want her to get suspicious, and hopefully, if she saw him going into the house, she’d think he was still on his quest to deliver the parcel. The landlord arrived promptly and looked Frankie up and down.

  “I’ve just knocked off work,” Frankie told him.

  They entered the front room, which was chilly despite the heat of the day. A depressing aroma of damp and bleach permeated the shabby place. The landlord took him through, confidently describing the abode as if it were luxury accommodation. But Frankie was happy for him to prattle on as he scanned every room for clues.

  “You can look as hard as you like,” the landlord said proudly. “You won’t find any dirt here. The previous tenants may have done a runner but they always kept the place spotless.”

  But Frankie had spotted something as they entered the second bedroom. Under the bed was a hairbrush and entwined around the bristles were springy strands of orange hair. He needed to distract the landlord.

  “Is that the doorbell?” Frankie frowned.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” the landlord replied.

  “No...listen. It’s just gone again.”

  “Really? Well, I best go down and check then.”

  As soon as the landlord had left the room Frankie quickly pulled his gloves on and got a specimen bag out of his pocket. He carefully picked up the brush and placed it in the bag, sealed it and hid it in his jacket. The landlord came up the stairs, puffing.

  “There was no one there,” he said. “Do you want to see the bathroom? It’s fully carpeted!”

  Frankie walked straight past him. “I don’t think I’ll bother. This house just isn’t doing it for me,” he said, heading for the front door.

  Back at his car, Frankie changed his jacket, inputted the taxi firm’s details into his satnav and drove to A2B. Once there, he slipped the radio operator forty pounds to put the question out to all the drivers.

  “Who did a pick-up from 14 Central Street on Friday the 23rd? It was a woman and a ginger girl. They had lots of bags with them,” the operator asked. The radio waves were silent.

  “Tell them that there’s forty quid in it for the driver. That should help jog their memories,” Frankie said. Within seconds of hearing this additional information, a driver responded.

  “Yeah, it was me. It was an odd pick-up. The girl seemed really upset. I took them to the coach station in town.”

  Frankie felt like he was on a roll and went straight to the coach station, where he knocked on the door of the drivers’ staffroom. Armed with the photo of Janice, he began his story of how he’d come home one evening to find that his wife had left with their daughter.

  “My Celia was distraught. She didn’t want to go. I even found a note she left, pleading with me to come and find her. She’s a girl you’d remember; fourteen, tall with orange hair. It was the evening of Friday the 23rd. All I know is that they came here, and I really need to know where they were heading. She won’t let Celia get in touch with me; she’s using her to get at me. I need to find them. Doesn’t my daughter have the right to decide for herself who she wants to be with?” Frankie said, in angst-ridden mode.

  He was greeted by a lot of sympathetic noises from the room full of male coach drivers. Some of them knew what it was like to have their kids taken from them by estranged wives, and the sight of this bruiser of a man, obviously ripped apart by it, moved them.

  “Listen, don’t worry, mate,” one driver said, slapping Frankie on the back. “You leave that photo with me. There’s loads more drivers out on the road who might have taken them. Leave us your number and I’ll ask around.”

  “You’re a real gent,” Frankie said, managing a brave smile.

  Celia stood on the balcony of the latest shell that she had to call home. A smiling Janice came out to join her. Janice loved the vertigo-inducing balcony of their twentieth-floor flat. She’d sit at the rickety table, drinking tea and humming s
ome Rat Pack tune, as her cigarette smoke rose into the blue, cloudless sky. From her crow’s nest she could observe hundreds of other balconies. Many were cluttered with bikes, prams, clothes horses and pot plants. A few even housed colourful, exotic birds, who twittered manically in their tiny gilded cages. Janice enjoyed these secret snapshots into people’s lives, as they flittered in and out of view, hanging out washing, calming crying babies, having blazing rows. But for Celia, being able to see these people and knowing that they were all strangers only made her feel more alone. However, the balcony was her only escape from the stifling temperature of their flat, whose radiators, despite being turned off, belched out heat day and night. When Janice had complained to the Bluebell Tower Two caretaker, he’d just shrugged and said that all the flats had the same problem.

  “Think of it as a built-in sauna,” he’d replied facetiously. “You’d pay a lot of money for one of those in some penthouse apartment.”

  Celia’s heart sank as she surveyed the four monstrous high-rises. They rose out of the landscape like a fortress, casting permanent shadows over the warren of houses spread out at their feet. This was the Bluebell Estate, but if there had ever been any bluebells growing, then they had long ago been buried under thousands of tonnes of dirty grey concrete.

  Her eyes followed the long, winding road which cut through flat, parched fields and bypassed a sprawling wood before continuing its journey into the distant city. How she wished they’d stayed there, instead of coming here, to this godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere.

  Far from being a commuter-belt haven, the Estate had been built in the late 1960s to accommodate all the inner-city residents whose slum houses were being demolished. At first people had been happy to relocate, seduced by the thought of modern homes and amenities. Unfortunately, once they arrived, the new residents discovered that their promised land offered them nothing but cells in the sky, and the only way for them to go was down.

  Celia turned to Janice. Her smug face wound Celia up.

  “I don’t know what you’re so cheerful about,” she griped.

  “This place, of course. It’s perfect for us.”

  “Are you even on the same planet as me?” Celia threw her arms out at the view in disgust.

  “I like it up in the clouds. No one’s going to bother us here,” Janice answered.

  “Yeah, it’s the kind of place you could be lying dead in your flat for weeks and people would only notice because of the stench of your decaying body.”

  “Exactly, just the kind of place I like,” Janice cackled. “People leave you alone.”

  “It’s okay for you. You’re out at work all day. What about me? You’ve been saying that you’re going to sort out a new school since we got here. I’m going out of my head with boredom stuck in here.”

  Janice took a deep drag on her cigarette, avoiding Celia’s gaze. “Well, there’s only a couple more weeks until the summer holidays. It’s not worth starting a new school now, is it?”

  “It’d be better than doing nothing in this place all day. Anyway, you need to contact them now to get me a place for September.”

  “Actually, love,” Janice mumbled. “I know I said I’d look into it, but I’ve come to a decision about your education.”

  “Oh yeah.” Celia was instantly worried.

  “Yes.” Janice summoned up her voice of authority. “I’ve decided that I can’t trust any school to take care of you properly. I think we’ve seen that, haven’t we? I’m not happy putting my little girl in danger every day. I don’t want to send you to a place where some thug might attack you.”

  Celia’s head jolted back in shock. Janice took another puff on her cigarette.

  “You’re having me on, aren’t you?”

  Janice exhaled, forming a smokescreen between them. “I wouldn’t joke about something like this. I can’t send you to school. I’m not prepared to take the risk any more.”

  “But...but...you can’t do this! I’ve got to go to school.”

  “No you don’t,” Janice said triumphantly. “They can’t make you. Not if I’m going to teach you at home.”

  “Teach me at home? You can’t teach me at home!” Celia screeched.

  “Yes I can. I should have done it years ago. Other people do it. At home, I can guarantee you’ll be safe.”

  “No way! You’re not doing this to me.”

  “I’ll do whatever I like; I’m your mother. What’s wrong with you anyway? Any kid would be jumping for joy at not having to go to school.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not any kid, am I?” Celia said bitterly. “Other kids have a life, friends, things to do... You don’t let me go anywhere, do anything. I may get treated like a leper at school, but at least I’m with other human beings apart from you!”

  “We have a nice time together, don’t we?” Janice said desperately. “What about our takeaway and DVD nights? You enjoy them. And it’s not like we don’t have a giggle together, reading those trashy mags and watching those makeover shows.”

  Celia sighed. “I know you try to do your best for me, but it’s not exactly normal for a teenager to hang around with their mum all the time, is it?”

  “I understand,” Janice said sympathetically. “I know it’s hard for you, Celia, but this way I can keep you safe.”

  “No!” Celia snapped. “This way you’re wrecking my chance of passing any exams, and I want to do something with my life, not like—” Celia stopped herself, but it was too late.

  “Don’t worry. I know what you mean.” Janice smarted. “Not like me; you don’t want to end up like me, cleaning up other people’s dirt for a living.”

  “But think about it, Mum,” Celia said, straining to be gentle. “How are you going to teach me? You left school with no qualifications, nothing.”

  “I’ll get books out. I’ll find out what you’re meant to be learning.”

  “You can’t spend your time doing that. Who’s going to earn the money? Who’s going to pay the rent on this dump? You need to work, Mum, and I need to go to school.”

  Janice took Celia’s hands. “You’re a bright kid, Celia; you don’t take after me. We can make this work.”

  Celia pulled away, knowing that Janice wasn’t going to back down.

  “You’re more like my jailer than my mother. You can’t keep me a prisoner in this flat!”

  “Don’t be such a drama queen. You’re not a prisoner. There are plenty of things we can do together. It’ll be fun,” Janice said unconvincingly.

  Celia stormed inside, looking around in disgust at the place that was to be her cage. Just like everywhere else they’d lived, the flat came furnished with sagging sofas, paper-thin curtains and threadbare carpets. They didn’t seem to own anything – always on the move, always having to fit their possessions in a few bags.

  Janice had tried to personalize the living room by sticking photos on the walls. But today, the sight of them only made Celia feel more upset. Her whole life seemed to be charted by the gallery of curling pictures. One showed a wide-eyed toddler being cuddled by a youthful-looking Janice, the ravages of worry yet to carve themselves into the woman’s features. Others captured happy days of picnics in the park, story time in the library and endless games involving teddies and tea parties that Janice would patiently play along with. These were the days when she’d be taken to work; sitting with colouring books and a bag of sweets as Janice cleaned office after office, singing and dancing around with her duster to make Celia laugh. These were the days before she grew up and Janice let her fear overshadow their lives as she could no longer control every minute of Celia’s time.

  Celia looked at the row of portraits from the many different schools. They were a painful reminder of the toll she was paying, as her maturing face stared out from them; with each passing year her smile seemed weaker, her eyes duller and her head held lower. She no longer felt like the special little girl that Janice always told her she was – she just felt like a freak.

  She walk
ed into her bedroom and slammed the flimsy door. She smoothed the creases out of her precious posters, which came with her wherever they moved. The Clash, Blondie and The Sex Pistols looked down at her from the wall, with their “two fingers up to the world” snarls. She’d tried to like the music that other kids were into. She wanted to be able to join in their conversations about handsome boy bands and warbling divas. She’d listened to rappers, but their macho rants had left her cold. Pop was too forgettable and none of the guitar bands seemed to be the real deal. Music had never meant anything to Celia, until a couple of years ago when she’d tuned in to a late-night radio show and had been blown away by the noise that flooded her senses and shook her insides.

  Punk may have had no meaning to her classmates, and did nothing for Janice – who preferred Frank Sinatra to The Sex Pistols – but to Celia those three-minute songs were short, sharp shocks of pure joy: the thrashing guitars, the thumping drums, the singing that was more like shouting but always sounded like they meant every word. Celia loved everything about punk: the anarchy of it, not caring what anyone else thought of you, the feeling that anything was possible. She loved the outrageous way the girl punks had dressed; safety pins through noses, pink hair stuck up with soap, Dr. Martens boots and ripped fishnets, pulling themselves into skintight PVC dresses no matter what shape or size they were. As far as she could see, punk had welcomed anyone who ever felt like they didn’t fit in. She imagined that in another life, one where she didn’t have this stupid disorder, there’d have been no stopping her – she’d have been Queen of the Punks, without boundaries, without rules, without fear. Everything she wasn’t.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Celia, love, don’t go shutting yourself in your room. We need to talk about this.”

  Celia responded by putting her Clash CD on ear-bleedingly loud. The noise tore through the walls. “Leave me alone!” she shouted.

  “I’ll go out then. Give you a bit of space.”

  “Good – and don’t bother coming back!”

  As soon as she heard the front door shut she threw her bedroom door open and began to jump around the living room like someone possessed, all her anger and frustration channelled into the raw energy roaring out of the speakers. She bounced on the sofa, singing along at the top of her voice, as The Clash yelled about breaking rocks and fighting the law.