by Nina Jon
After quickly modelling her new jacket for her colleagues, she returned to work, eating her lunch at her desk between calls, watched by Jane, now eating her own lunch.
Lucy caught the twenty past six bus home. Lucy climbed up to the upper deck, while Jane remained on the lower deck.
Unseen by Lucy, Jane followed her off the bus. On the way to her apartment block, Lucy stopped off to buy herself a takeaway pizza. This girl’s diet is appalling, Jane thought to herself disapprovingly, as Lucy returned to her apartment carrying the large pizza box in one hand, and clutching her shopping bag in the other. Jane suspected that Lucy wouldn’t be enjoying a quiet night in. She had a sinking feeling that it was going to be another long night. She decided to wait to see if Lucy reappeared. As she had no idea how long this would be, she took herself off to a local restaurant and ordered some soup and a salad.
Lucy eventually left her flat again dressed up for a night out in a short tight black dress, and a pair of black platform sandals, which Jane eyed rather jealously. She herself wore a pair of black flat lace-ups. While she no longer loathed such footwear as much as she had done when she was Lucy’s age, she still loved heels – the higher, the better. Unfortunately, a combination of her age, sciatica, and her new line of business, meant she rarely wore them anymore, much as she adored them.
Based on her outfit and pizza supper, Jane guessed Lucy was going to a nightclub, rather than a restaurant. Lucy jumped on board the bus, followed by Jane. Lucy sat on the lower deck, with Jane two rows behind her. Lucy spent the entire journey texting, looking up only long enough to press the STOP BUS bell. Jane was the last to disembark. Lucy was so busy texting that she nearly walked past the nightclub she was going to. Three girls, all about the same age as Lucy, already in the queue forming outside the nightclub, had to shout her name out as she went past: “Lucy!” they yelled. She stopped dead in her tracks, realised her mistake, and hurried over to join them in the queue. All shrieked with laughter at Lucy’s absent-mindedness.
Jane stopped someway back and pretended to window-shop. It was still quite early and the queue outside the club was quite short. It wouldn’t be long before Lucy and her friends would be inside. Jane had no intention of following them. There was no way a woman in her sixties could blend into the background of a nightclub, even one dressed in black slacks and a polo neck jumper, however dark it was. Jane would need to think of something else. She spotted a gastro-pub on the other side of the road from the nightclub. The pub was one of a well-known national chain and was family orientated, although at that moment Jane could only see young people inside. Nonetheless, she made her way there, to sit at the window seat with a coffee and a paper in front of her. She could kill an hour or five in relative anonymity – although she may need to drink a lot of coffee.
To Jane’s relief (and possibly because it was a work night) Lucy eventually left the club before eleven. She was clearly the worse for wear. Lucy was still in the company of her friends. Jane watched the group stagger to a taxi rank. The girls kissed each other goodbye and each got into a taxi alone. Jane could not be certain where Lucy was going, but the taxi did leave in the direction of Lucy’s flat. It was too late to follow her now. Jane would have to leave it at that and return home.
Thus ended the second day of her surveillance of Lucy. So far she had little to report, other than there didn’t seem to be a sugar daddy in sight, not that she’d seen, anyway.
The third day of Jane’s surveillance was not dissimilar from the previous two days, except that the evening was spent with Jane sitting by herself in the corner of a champagne bar, nursing a solitary glass of sparkling white wine, watching Lucy and her colleagues swill champagne. Champagne which, Jane noticed, was paid for by Lucy. She even heard Lucy say, “No, it’s on me. I want to. Spending money makes me happy.”
Jane couldn’t help noticing that Lucy was starting to look as tired as Jane herself was feeling. Thankfully the evening ended at a relatively civilised hour, with Lucy returning home alone just after half past eleven in the evening.
Friday night was spent in a wine bar next to Lucy’s apartment block. As always, Lucy was surrounded by other young people and the alcohol flowed freely, mostly paid for by Lucy again. The evening ended with Lucy and her friends returning to Lucy’s flat, after a visit to a kebab shop. It was almost the end of her first week’s surveillance, and all
Jane had learnt about Lucy was that she spent too much money, ate badly and burned the candle at both ends – so far nothing atypical for an eighteen year old girl; and nothing to explain the unusual rift with her family.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jill
I
Jane began her weekend surveillance of Lucy’s flat quite early on Saturday morning. She managed to find a free parking space on the opposite side of the road from the apartment block. Lucy’s apartment was in darkness, her curtains drawn. As Jane had no idea when Lucy was likely to put in an appearance (although she suspected it wouldn’t be early), she’d brought with her a book, a thermos flask of coffee, and some sandwiches. She settled herself down for the wait.
Lucy’s apartment remained in darkness for the entire morning. The curtains remained drawn until past lunchtime, but she didn’t leave the apartment for another hour. From the car, Jane watched Lucy walk along the high street and into a nail bar. Another long wait, Jane thought. She took the opportunity to step out of the car and stretch her legs with a walk to the public toilets and back.
Lucy emerged from the nail bar a couple of hours later, sporting a set of new, bright red nails. She’d also had her hair tinted and blow-dried into a fashionable bob. She must be going out for the evening again. Good for her, thought Jane who’d enjoyed plenty of late nights herself when she’d still been Lucy’s age, and didn’t begrudge any young person doing the same. On her way back to her flat, Lucy called briefly into a local grocery store and left it not much later, clutching a shopping bag of groceries. These she carried back inside her apartment block. As Jane watched her, she wondered if she’d be able to follow her that evening.
Bearing in mind the time it normally took Lucy to get ready, Jane judged she had enough time to visit a nearby cafe and eat a light supper there.
At about eight o’clock, Lucy emerged from her apartment block and climbed into a waiting taxi, wearing a short, blue, cut-away dress, high-heeled silver sandals, and holding a beautifully wrapped parcel. A balloon with the words, ‘Happy 19th Birthday!’ emblazoned on it, bobbed in the air behind her, attached by a piece of string to her silver handbag. When the taxi left Jane followed it. The journey didn’t take long. The taxi pulled up outside a local hotel and Lucy got out. While Lucy walked into the hotel, Jane parked. By the time she got back to the hotel, Lucy had disappeared. A sign in the hotel lobby told Jane the hotel’s conference room had been booked for a private party. She spent some minutes in the lobby, watching other young girls arriving for the party, carrying birthday presents and cards.
All this reminded Jane of the sister she’d lost – Jill. Jill died a few weeks before her nineteenth birthday and now all Jane could see was the number nineteen: 19 Today! Happy 19th! 19! 19! 19! It was too much to bear. The pain of her loss came flooding back as it did from time to time, in a tide of grief so searing she had no choice but to let the tears come. She didn’t want to walk through the streets in tears, or sit sobbing in her car in a car park, she needed somewhere where she could be alone, where people weren’t going to stop to ask if she was all right.
She walked over to the reception desk, managing to hold the tears back as she booked a room. She contained herself while she took the escalator to it, but once through the door, she collapsed in tears.
‘Girl pillion thrown to death after collision between motorbike and lorry!’ the newspapers reported.
She would always remember her poor mother screaming,
“She wasn’t a girl pillion – she was my daughter!”
Decades may had passed since her siste
r’s death, yet not a day went by when Jane didn’t re-live the moment her father sat on the end of her bed to break the news to her. She still found it impossible to talk about. She hadn’t even been able to talk to Hugh about it, other than to tell him what had happened. She still had the present she’d bought for Jill – a hard backed Navy blue diary – on which she’d written,
‘To Jill,
Happy 19th
Your loving sister, Jane’ on its inside cover, before wrapping it up and putting the present inside a plastic bag for safekeeping.
The wrapped present, still in its plastic bag, now lay in an empty shoebox in the bottom drawer of her writing bureau. Since the day she had put the diary inside its box, not once had she taken it out, nor would she ever. To this day, she could not bear to hold the present in her hands, and she knew she wouldn’t ever be able to unwrap it, open it, and read her own words written there, but she would never part with it either.
II
Jane awoke abruptly, having fallen asleep. She glanced at her watch. Good heavens – it was the early hours of the morning. How could she have been so remiss? Lucy could have left the party with any one.
She hurried downstairs to the hotel’s reception, just as the party ended, and its guests, including Lucy, piled out of the conference room, each as drunk as the other. The girls noisily bid the birthday girl goodbye on the steps of the hotel, and climbed into waiting taxis. Jane hurried back to her car.
She managed to beat the taxi to Lucy’s apartment block, and arrived in time to see Lucy, the last in the taxi, stagger out of the car and into her apartment block. Jane waited until the lights in her apartment went out, before tilting her car seat back and drifting off to sleep.
She awoke at eleven a.m. Lucy’s apartment was still in darkness, curtains drawn. Jane got out of the car. She was rather stiff. As Lucy wasn’t likely to emerge from her apartment block much before midday, Jane decided to go for a walk to loosen up, and buy herself some breakfast and a paper. She returned to her car with both, and continued her stake-out. It had turned half-past one when Lucy eventually stepped out of her front door.
Lucy drove her new car to the local shopping mall, where she spent the afternoon going from shop to shop, purchasing something in every store, with Jane trailing after her, marvelling at her ability to shop without stopping or dropping. In one shop, Lucy tried on every single pair of jeans, left without buying anything, returning minutes later to purchase three pairs of jeans in the same style but different colours. Jane hadn’t thought there was anyone who enjoyed clothes shopping more than she, but even she was amazed by Lucy’s ability to spend money. By her calculations, based on only one week’s observation of Lucy, if she kept shopping at this rate, she’d soon own more clothes than she’d be able to wear in a life-time, even if she only wore them once. What does she do with all these unwanted purchases, Jane wondered. Were they languishing in the back of her wardrobe? Or did Lucy actually spend her time in the office selling her unwanted purchases on-line? At that moment, a tannoy announced that as it was four p.m., the shopping mall was closing.
While the shops started to close up for the day, those in the shopping centre – mostly groups of friends or family members – began to drift out. Jane continued to watch Lucy, beginning to get her first real feel of the girl since she’d begun her surveillance of her. It was abundantly obvious that Lucy did not wish to leave the shopping centre. She looked vulnerable and even rather panic-stricken. Left with no choice, Lucy left the store to return to her car with her shopping. She didn’t get into the car though. She opened it and threw her shopping bags onto its back seat, locked the car again, then made her way out of the car park and over towards a small park on one side of the shopping mall, followed at a safe distance by Jane.
On the way there, Lucy stopped off to buy four extra large burgers and fries, two bags of doughnuts, a bottle of fizzy drink, and a coffee. More junk food, Jane thought, with a shake of the head. Carrying the food in two brown paper bags, Lucy crossed the park in the direction of an alcove created by a hedge and some trees. Jane continued to follow her, staying some way behind. When Lucy reached the semicircular alcove, she sat down on the ground there, shielded from the main park by a hedge. Jane sat down on the grass on the other side of the hedge, and unseen by Lucy, she gently parted the branches. She saw Lucy take out her provisions and lay them on the ground in front of her.
Jane watched on in mild disgust as Lucy furiously rammed, first a large mouthful of burger, then fries and doughnuts into her mouth. She ate as though she was ravenous, even angry. When she couldn’t get any more food in her mouth, she slurped down fizzy orange drink and hot coffee, almost choking in her haste, only to start the frenzy of comfort eating again. The bingeing continued until there wasn’t anything left to eat or drink and the wrappers had been licked clean. Lucy wiped her hand across her mouth and stared at the empty packaging in front of her for some time. “Enjoyed that did you!” she said out loud.
The tone used was so direct, that for a split second, Jane wondered if Lucy had actually seen her. But she hadn’t. Lucy’s comments she realised, were directed at Lucy.
“You greedy cow! Couldn’t stop yourself could you? Oh no! You never can, can you? You have no self-control! You’re pathetic! You’re like a child in a sweet shop!” Lucy taunted herself.
Jane was amazed by the outburst she was witnessing. The comments were so critical, and spoken in such an unpleasant tone of voice that Jane wondered whether she was repeating something unpleasant that someone had once said to her. By now, Lucy was bent over, crying. In between her sobs, she asked herself the same question over and over again. “Why did you do it? Why? It hasn’t made you happy, has it?”
Jane wasn’t surprised to discover that happy-go-lucky Lucy was in reality rather lonely. A day like today, a lovely bright Sunday, could only serve to remind Lucy how alone she was. Most girls of her age, all her friends probably, would either be spending the day with their families or with their boyfriends. Lucy as yet didn’t have a boyfriend, and she’d mysteriously cut her family out of her life for reasons that Jane was frankly no closer to establishing.
Lucy suddenly stuffed the empty packaging into the paper bags, got to her feet and walked over to a nearby paper bin, where she deposited the bags. Still sobbing and talking to herself, she walked towards the exit. Jane gave her a few minutes before she too left the park, again from a safe distance.
Lucy left the mall’s car park before Jane. Jane followed Lucy to her apartment then drove home. She was worried about Lucy. As far as she could tell, she was basically a good kid, but not a particularly happy one. Lucy almost certainly wasn’t working as a prostitute, and if Lucy had a Svengali-like man in her life, Jane had found no sign of him. This was a result of sorts. But it still left the question – where was she getting the money – unanswered. Was it the never-never? Did she have creditors after her? Was she about to be declared bankrupt at the grand old age of eighteen, and was it this that was causing her so much embarrassment that she’d rather not see her own family?
As Jane opened her front door, she heard the telephone ringing in the hallway. She hurried to answer it, only to spend the next ten minutes answering questions about who she was intending to vote for at the next election and why. It was during the call that an idea came to her. As soon as the call was over, Jane sat in her study and prepared a script based on a conversation she’d just had with the opinion poll company. She read the script back to herself, before telephoning Lucy’s mobile phone number. After a few rings, a groggy-sounding Lucy answered. It sounded as though she’d just woken up from a nap.
“Just a courtesy call, on behalf of an opinion poll agency,” Jane began, sounding rather professional, if she said so herself. “Your telephone number has been randomly selected. Your identity remains confidential, not just to myself, but also to my agency. May I take a few minutes of your time to ask you a few questions if it’s not too much trouble?”
�
�Not at all,” Lucy answered. Jane had already worked out that Lucy was an attention craving girl, and for a girl such as that, any attention, in whatever form, was better than none at all. “May I begin by asking you if you are over eighteen?” Jane began.
“I’m exactly eighteen,” Lucy said yawning.
“That puts you in the eighteen -twenty-four age range,” Jane said, tapping the keyboard of her computer randomly, to make it sound as though she was inputting data. “Now, as I’ve mentioned, this call to you was randomly generated and all the information gathered from it will remain entirely confidential, and we will not be able to trace it back to you. We will not even retain a copy of your telephone number, either. So, to repeat, your answers are completely anonymous. Neither I, nor the company I work for, have any idea who you are, nor will we be able to trace you.”
Jane heard Lucy yawning, this time louder than before. Well, you have rather laboured the point, Jane, she thought to herself.
“Whatever,” Lucy said, with adolescent indifference.
“My first question – how much unsecured debt do you have?”
“Dunno. Dunno what that means, do I?”
“It means, do you owe anybody money, other than a loan you may have borrowed from a bank to buy the property you live in.”
“In that case, none. I rent my flat. I might buy it, though. I haven’t decided.”
“Do you have a bank overdraft?” Jane asked.
“Not any more.”
“Do you use a credit card?”
“Certainly do,” Lucy giggled. “Be lost without it, wouldn’t I?”
“Can I ask if you pay your card balance off at the end of each month?”
“I do now.”
“How much would you say you spend each month on non-vital items?” Jane asked.