Finding Jennifer Jones (11 page)

“Why?” Jennifer said.

“People don’t understand stuff like that. They read bad things into it.”

Her mother exhaled a couple of times.

“They’ll try and blame me. That’s what the authorities are like. Then I could go to prison and then when you come out you’ll have to go to foster care. We might never see each other again!”

Jennifer felt her eyes fill up. She rubbed them with her fingers. She looked away from her mother and had a picture in her mind of the days when she was first at school and she’d look out the classroom window and see her mum standing there, head and shoulders above the other mums, her blonde hair shining out, her smile lighting up the grey playground. Sometimes she’d wear casual clothes, or maybe shorts and a vest top, showing off her long legs, her tiny breasts. She was like a film star. Now she looked completely different. Just like one of the other mums.

“Don’t cry, Jen. We have to keep our wits about us here. What happened was an accident, most probably, and you won’t have to stay here for very long. If we keep quiet, about the photos, then we’ll be back to normal in a year or two, or three.”

Her mother gave her a hug before she went. Jennifer went back to her room carrying the holdall. When she got there she unpacked it piece by piece. She placed her school books on the small desk and her clothes in the drawers. When she got to the bottom of the bag she frowned. Her doll, Macy, was there but she was naked. Jennifer pulled her out. Where were her clothes? She had lots of outfits in the cardboard box where she kept her. Now she had nothing on. Her mother had forgotten her clothes.

Jennifer put her back in the bag and zipped it up.

Macy was no good without her clothes. No good at all.

Fifteen

On the ninth of June it was her birthday. She was eleven years old. Jan came into her room after breakfast and gave her a card. On the front there was a drawing of a puppy dog and the words
On Your Birthday!
Inside it said,
Many Happy Returns from Jan and Laura
.

“There will be no celebrations, Jennifer, we don’t have parties here,” Jan said, “although your mother and grandmother are coming to see you today.”

Jennifer nodded. She’d known there would be no party. She hadn’t expected anything at all so the card came as a surprise and she’d looked at it with a sense of guilt. She would have liked her birthday to go past without anyone noticing. She wished she’d said,
Can I ignore my birthday?
But she had no idea who to say it to or whether that statement, in itself, might have been taken as her being dramatic.

So she put the card on the table beside her bed.

She’d had a birthday party the year before when they’d lived with Perry, her mum’s boyfriend before they lived in Berwick. He had spent all afternoon making her a Star Wars birthday cake and given her a tiny camera as a present. Jennifer had taken photographs of the cake and of Perry’s collection of Star Wars figures. When her mum came in from work she’d rolled her eyes at the cake but she’d still smiled for a photo. Jennifer had wanted to have the film developed and had taken it out of the camera but she’d done something wrong and spoiled it so the photos had never come out.

The cake lasted a few days though.

Her mother came in the afternoon with her grandmother. They had the visitors’ room to themselves.

“How are you, Jen?” her gran said.

“I’m all right.”

“It seems quite nice here. I’ve passed this place on the bus over the years but never knew it was a prison.”

“It’s not a prison, Mum!” her mother said. “It’s a special place…”

“It’s called a
Facility
,” Jennifer said.

“When I used to get the twenty-nine bus. That’s when I saw it.”

Her gran’s fingers were tapping on the table. Jennifer looked at the
No Smoking
sign on the wall and knew that her gran was suffering. Her mum leaned down to a carrier bag and pulled out a wrapped present. It was flat and looked like a book or a game.

“Thanks,” she said, pulling at the paper.

“It’s from both of us,” her gran said “Well, I paid for it. Your mum’s promised to pay me back but I’m not holding my breath.”

“I will, Thursday. When I get my benefits. I told you.”

It was a jewellery-making set. Jennifer smiled at it, pleased. There were rows of coloured beads and threads. There were some clasps and pins for a brooch. There was some coloured felt and on the front of the box was a photograph of a felt brooch in the shape of a flower. She was instantly reminded of Alma’s heart-shaped brooch.

“This is really nice,” she said.

“Well, I thought you should have something creative,” her mother said. “It’s good to be able to make things. Look at all the clothes your gran makes.”

Her gran smiled and looked down at the top she was wearing. She fingered the neckline as though checking for a piece of thread.

“I’ve always made my own clothes,” she said. “I’d have made some for your mum if she’d let me. But no, my dressmaking was never good enough for Miss Carol Jones! No, she wanted clothes from Topshop.”

“I did wear some of the clothes you made me!”

“Hardly ever. But that was your mum, Jennifer, always did her own thing. Never cared about hurting other people’s feelings.”

“Don’t go on, Mum.”

Her gran continued talking and Jennifer looked at her mother. She was frowning and had moved her chair back a little, further away from the table. She noticed then that her mother’s hair was a lighter colour than recently and she was wearing a fitted blouse which was deep pink. She had eyeliner on and it made little flicks at the corner of her eyes. She looked nice again, not like she had when Jennifer first came to the Facility.

“In any case, Mum,” her mother interrupted her gran, “I was going to tell Jen about my new job. It’s in a clothes shop. A friend of Mum’s told me about it.”

“Oh.”

“The shop’s called Sharp Style. Georgie Miller is the boss. It’s just serving in the shop but he said he might get me to model the clothes so that they could put pictures of them on the walls. It’s quite good money and could keep me going until things sort themselves out…”

“That’s always assuming you don’t muck it up, Carol.”

“She won’t muck it up, will you, Mum?” Jennifer said, pressing her fingers onto the corner of the jewellery box set.

“Course not.”

“And make sure that Georgie keeps his hands to himself. I know what you’re like…”

“Mum!”

“I tell like I see it, don’t I Jen?”

Jennifer stared at her gran, who was chewing at her nails. How long was it since she’d had a cigarette? Twenty minutes? Half an hour?

“How’s the dog?” Jennifer said, suddenly.

Her gran frowned at her, a look of something dark flickering across her features. Jennifer pictured Nelson, one of her gran’s dogs from years before. It was a small Jack Russell breed. It had its own special armchair and it didn’t like Jennifer, showing its teeth to her and growling at her from time to time. In the end it had stopped growling forever.

Her grandmother seemed to stumble over her answer. “You mean my…my Minty? She’s good as gold. I had to take her to the vet the other day for her injections. Did I tell you, Carol, that I’m going to Portugal with my friend, Maureen, from bingo? Early September?”

“What about Jen’s trial?”

“When is it?”

“We don’t know exactly. In the autumn some time.”

“Probably be later than September. They’ve got evidence to collect and witnesses to sort out. Honestly, the trouble you’ve caused, Jen! And that poor little girl dead.”

Jennifer felt her face heat up. She studied the jewellery set. She used her fingers to flick at the glassy beads.

“And it doesn’t seem to have taken a feather out of her!”

“Don’t have a go at her, Mum. She’s being punished.”

“Not enough. I always said you were too soft on her. I always told you that, Carol. Give her a good telling off or a few thumps from time to time.”

Her gran directed these words straight at Jennifer.

“Now’s not the time, Mum.”

“I wasn’t soft on you, Carol, and you turned out all right. Mostly. Look at all those lovely photos you’ve had taken. Not many mums can show off pictures of their daughter in the Littlewoods catalogue. I can though.”

“We best be getting off, Jen,” her mum said, standing up and leaning across the table to give Jennifer a kiss on the cheek.

Her gran walked ahead, towards the door, waving as she went. Jennifer could see her patting her bag, looking for her cigarettes and her lighter.

“See you when I can, Jen,” her mum said. “Remember I’m starting work next week.”

Jennifer sat with the jewellery set on her lap until Laura came into the room to take her back to her block.

“That’s nice,” Laura said. “You can make some pretty necklaces with that.”

When they got back to her room Laura followed her in and sat on her chair.

“I got you this,” she said, holding her hand out.

It was a wrapped present, like a slim book, and Jennifer took it, feeling embarrassed. She opened it and saw a hardback book,
A Child’s First Book of Prayers.

“I know that on your notes there is no mention of religion in your family but I thought you might like to look at these. There are some lovely illustrations and you might enjoy reading some of them. It’s up to you.”

“Thank you,” Jennifer said.

When Laura left her she looked at the book, at the pictures and the words. In school they had said prayers but it had always been just a case of remembering the lines and looking serious as she spoke. She placed the book in one of her drawers and carried the jewellery set over to her table. In the distance she could hear a train. She wondered if her mum and her gran were on it going back home to her gran’s. Or was her mum going somewhere else, to someone else’s room or flat? Someone like Perry who was so good at making birthday cakes.

Sixteen

Jennifer thought about her mother, the model.

She’d been looking through some of her old books that had been sent from her school. She was to do exercises on how to use capital letters. Laura had told her to spend thirty minutes at it and then call her to go over it. Jennifer found a new exercise book underneath a reading diary. She looked through it and was surprised to see a photograph of her mother inside the pages.

It was a very old photograph. Her mother was wearing a swimsuit. She had wedge sandals on and a sarong around her waist. She was smiling and holding a beach ball as if she was about to throw it. Behind her was the beach and the sea. It wasn’t a photograph, it was a picture that had been cut out of a catalogue or magazine. She couldn’t remember which. Maybe it was Michelle who cut it out.

Michelle had loved the fact that Jennifer’s mum was a model. Jennifer had been proud of it herself. She had a portfolio of her pictures and she often pulled it out of the cupboard and spent time going through it, turning each page and seeing her mum look so glamorous and well dressed. Sometimes the clothes made her look like a different person; a business woman or a movie star or a top fashion model. Most of her mother’s work was for clothes catalogues but her real ambition was to model the latest fashions in glossy magazines. Jennifer had pored over pictures of her mother in dresses and formal wear and casual clothes. She’d shown these to Michelle. Her friend had been impressed.
Wow!
she’d said.

But the modelling world was a hard one, her mother said. Sometimes there was lots of work but often the photographers stopped calling her and the sessions dried up and her mother stayed at home and Jennifer watched the place gently deteriorate around her. Instead of being up bright and early, instead of spending hours in the bathroom and emerging washed and made up and smelling of perfume, her mother slept late and lay around on the sofa watching television all day.

When they moved to Water Lane things seemed to improve.

Mr Cottis came. Her mother started to get more photographic work. Mr Cottis was a freelance photographer and didn’t have his own studio so he brought his equipment to her house and took photographs of her mother there. Jennifer pictured him standing in their kitchen. He was tall and thin and had no hair at all. He wore glasses that went dark in the sunlight and sometimes stayed dark for a few moments when he was inside the house. It made him look strange.

He would spend ages fiddling with a camera. He seemed to have a number of them and they sat on her kitchen table while he used bits of cloth to polish sections. His tripod leaned against the wall in the corner, making it difficult to walk easily round the small room. Sometimes, if she was getting a glass of water, she found him looking at her steadily, without blinking, as if his eye was a lens that he was setting up, waiting to take a picture of her.

Mostly the photo sessions took place in her mum’s bedroom. It was easier to get the camera set up in there and simpler to move her furniture round. Sometimes the sessions took a long time.

Jennifer frowned at the memory. An uncomfortable feeling dragged at her throat. She put her mother’s picture aside and looked at the exercise in the book in front of her. Capital letters for place names, days of the week, months of the year. All she had to do was copy out the sentences and put the capital letters in where they should be. They went at the beginning of a sentence, everyone knew that. She copied the words out in her neatest handwriting.

On Thursday John and Sarah went to Buckingham Palace.

Her mother had to role play in these photographs. She had to dress up. Jennifer hadn’t liked the way she looked. She’d seen her in a schoolgirl outfit and there were things in her bedroom that Mr Cottis must have brought; a globe, a ruler, some books. Her mother had always had to dress up in order to be a model but before it had been smart clothes in a catalogue that lots of people could look at. The photos with Mr Cottis didn’t seem like that. They seemed like the kind of photos only a few people would see. Jennifer thought of Lucy Bussell’s brothers, Stevie and Joe, and the picture she had found in their den up at Berwick Waters. Jennifer had gasped to see her mother like that. Michelle had seen it too. She had called it
gross
.