Finding Jennifer Jones (2 page)

Kate sighed. “That’s not quite true, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I took someone’s life away. I’m still that person. Nothing can change what I did.”

An image of Michelle Livingstone’s red hair flashed in Kate’s mind. She pushed it away.

Julia looked uncomfortable. She preferred to skirt around things. A real conversation where things were said always seemed to make her edgy. Any moment now she would mention the time or targets or tell Kate some little bit of gossip just so that they didn’t have to float out into the dangerous waters of what Kate actually did eight years before.

“What I’d like us to agree on…” Julia started.

Kate closed her eyes. It was time for plans.

“I’m sorry, Kate, am I irritating you?”

“No, I’m just not in the mood for this kind of discussion.”

“Well, you do not have a choice in this matter. Your continuing freedom demands that you accept certain parameters…”

“What freedom? I can’t go anywhere without you knowing. I’m not even allowed to have a passport.”

“Goodness! You are not
incarcerated
. You are living among law-abiding people. You are a student, you come and go as you please. How much more freedom can you have?”

Julia was clearly exasperated. She closed her pad, resting her hands on it as if to shut away all the troublesome notes she had written.

“What if I went back to prison?”

“What an extraordinary thing to say.”

Julia’s mouth was open and she glared straight at Kate without seeming to blink. Then she shook her head slowly. Kate suddenly felt flustered and averted her eyes. She looked at the pictures on the wall, feeling the weight of Julia’s stare.

“I mean… Well, it could happen…”

It was something she’d thought of for a while. She couldn’t deny it. Going back to prison where she was a true inmate, where she wasn’t pretending to be another person. Kate folded her arms. She would never make Julia understand.

“I think it’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Julia said, standing up, brushing her clothes down as though she had somewhere she had to rush off to. “That said, I think we’ve probably covered enough ground today. We should meet again next week to make up for the missed session. Say Friday again, five thirty.”

Kate stared at the new chair. It was smooth and shiny. A replacement for the old one. Just like Julia was a replacement for a previous probation officer.

“And I would just warn you to be careful of saying things about going back to prison. You were in a children’s institution. I can assure you that adult women’s facilities are a much more unpleasant experience.”

Kate didn’t answer, just grabbed her bag and stood up.

“Next Friday at five thirty,” Julia called out as Kate left the office.

She went straight home after the meeting. The house was empty and she found herself restless, pacing around, starting to make something to eat and then stopping. She was always like this after a meeting with Julia. She thought about having a shower, getting changed, the evening ahead. Sally, her housemate, had suggested they spend the evening in together. Ruth, the other girl who lived there, would be in soon and most probably bring her boyfriend Robbie home with her. They could get a takeaway. They often did on Fridays.

But Kate couldn’t imagine herself doing either of those things.

She looked out of the window. The sun was still strong. There were hours of daylight left. She got undressed, opened her drawer, took out her swimming costume and put it on. She pulled on jeans and a top and put her sandals on. She picked up her towel, her straw beach mat and a book. She went downstairs and packed some bread, cheese and fruit. Also a screw-top bottle of wine and a plastic glass.

She needed a swim and some time on the beach. Maybe then she would feel less tense.

She jumped on the bus heading for Sandy Bay, an area at the eastern end of Exmouth beach. The main beach at Exmouth had a gentle curve and flat yellow sand. Sandy Bay had sharp edges and rocky inlets and she liked it better there. She got off the bus and headed for the coastal path which started to take her upland and past the caravan and mobile home parks. She passed by families who had packed up for the day and were heading back to where they were staying.

The beach was not too busy. There were a few families left and some young teenage boys playing a kind of makeshift handball. She found a place to sit and unrolled her straw mat and unpacked her towel. Then she slipped off her jeans and top and headed for the water. She ran a few steps, the shingle biting at her feet, and then took a dive, plunging in.

She hardly had time to gasp because the momentum carried her swiftly deep underwater where it was black and there was no sound, as if both ears were stuffed with cotton wool. She surfaced moments later, shaking her head, her wet hair streaking her face. She trod water and found herself rising and falling. There were no waves but the sea was undulating, seesawing.

She swam out, twenty, forty, fifty strokes. Now the beach looked small and she felt like she was in the middle of an ocean. She lay on her back and looked up at the sky. There were vapour trails across it and the sun was low. She closed her eyes and felt the water holding her up. She could do anything here and no one could stop her. She swam out further, feeling the water temperature lower. Glancing down she fancied she could see the depth increasing, miles and miles of life and vegetation beneath her. She felt precarious, like she was hanging over the top of the unknown.

She flipped over and headed back towards the beach, her strokes taking armfuls of water and flinging it behind her. In moments she was touching the bottom, her toes feeling the thick wetness of the shore.

She dried herself and sat on her straw mat looking out to sea.

It was gone seven o’clock but still warm enough to sit there in her wet costume so she started her picnic and drank some wine. Across the beach some girls were playing. They were wearing their swimsuits with T-shirts over them. They were lined up and singing like a girl band, one of them pretending to hold a microphone. When they finished their song they laughed and elbowed each other.

The sight of them made Kate smile.

It made her think again of the letter she had sent. So far there had been no reply. Had she expected one? She’d taken a chance sending it at all. Every part of her knew that. It was part of the conditions of her release that she should never contact any of the people involved in that terrible day eight years ago
.
Julia had reiterated this from time to time.
Under no circumstances must you make any contact either physically or by any other means with a person or persons involved in the events at Berwick Waters.

Kate thought of the names of those involved.

Lucy Bussell; Michelle’s parents – Donna and Frank Livingstone.

But Kate had had things she needed to say so she had written
Dear Lucy
and signed it
Yours, Jennifer Jones.

She started to pack up her stuff. She decided to walk further up the coastal path and find a place on the top of the cliffs to sit and watch the sun go down. She had her book and the rest of the wine and some fruit.

She’d have a solitary picnic.

She spent a lot of time alone; it suited her.

Three

On Saturday, at just after ten, Kate walked into the tourist information office for her shift. Aimee was talking to an elderly couple, pointing at a map she had unfolded. She stopped for a minute and smiled. Kate headed behind the counter.

“Oh, Kate,” Aimee said, breaking off from her explanation, “Those arrived early this morning. It’s the fliers for the attractions. Could you take them into the storeroom and unpack them?”

“Sure.”

Kate saw two small brown cardboard boxes one on top of the other by the door. She picked them up and carried them round the counter into the small staff kitchen and put them down on the table. She opened her locker and took out the hanger which held her work blouse. It was pale blue and had the words
Exmouth Tourist Information
imprinted on the fabric. She peeled off her T-shirt and put it on. She buttoned it up and then wriggled around a bit, pulling it straight. Even though it was her size it didn’t quite fit and she never felt very comfortable in it. She looked for the new child-friendly badge that Aimee insisted they all wore. It wasn’t in her locker. She tutted and plucked up one of the others that were there and pinned it on.

A bell sounded from the shop. Kate headed out in case more holidaymakers had come in and were waiting. It was just the elderly couple leaving though. Aimee was folding up a map she had been using to show them places to go.

“Would it kill those people to pay a pound for a map? Would it? Why come on holiday to a place if you don’t want to explore it? Mind you, why come on holiday here at all? When you could go to Spain. Beats me!”

“Then we’d be out of a job,” Kate said. ‘Has it been busy?’

“So, so. But we have a number of coach parties visiting later today and I was hoping you would display those fliers,” Aimee said, pointing to a wall of brown wood pockets which held wads of leaflets for local attractions.

“Sure.”

Kate went into the staff area and picked up handfuls of leaflets. She took them back into the shop and began to sort through them.

“You heard about the drowning?” Aimee said.

“No. When? Where? What happened?”

“Last night. It was on the local news website this morning and I heard some people talking about it in the paper shop. Some teenagers going swimming at Sandy Bay. That’s all I know.”

“I was over at Sandy Bay last night. I didn’t see any sign of trouble.”

She was frowning though. The tides could be dangerous and the sea bed dropped away quickly in places. She loved swimming in the sea but she knew she had to treat it with respect.

“It’s not good for the town,” Aimee added.

Kate nodded. In June a man had fallen from the Starcross ferry. It was a terrible thing to happen and it upset everyone for ages. The people who worked in the town seemed to take it personally, as though it was one of their own family who had died. It happened the Saturday before she started work at the tourist information office.

She began to file the leaflets into the wooden pockets. She did it automatically, without concentrating, musing on what she had just heard.

The man’s body had washed up near Starcross days later. It gave her a bad feeling to think about it. She remembered how people had said he’d had a suit, shirt and tie on, as though he was dressed smartly to go out somewhere. She exhaled. Now someone else had drowned, but they didn’t know who or how. She ruffled her fingers through her hair and felt some knots in it. She pulled at them. She knew she had to shake these thoughts from her mind. Every counsellor she’d ever seen had told her not to dwell on morbid subjects. She had enough of her own dark places to keep clear of.

“Do you want a coffee?” she asked.

“Sure. And see if there are any of those chocolate digestives left.”

“I thought you were on a diet?” Kate said, smiling, trying to make a joke.

“Just a couple. See me through to lunch. That reminds me. Two weeks today is your last day at work so we’ll have to get a cake of some sort. Maybe I’ll bake it!”

Kate brought the drinks and biscuits out to Aimee in the shop and then spent some time on the computer identifying accommodation vacancies and looking through emails and enquiries. Aimee preferred it if Kate did this work. She liked to talk to customers and hated working on the computer. Kate didn’t mind. This was the latest in a long line of jobs she had done since coming to Exeter University. She’d been a waitress, a postal worker, a shelf stacker and a cleaner. She liked working. It meant that holiday time was filled up and it gave her some money in the bank. When she finished updating the computer she made some phone calls and looked at the rotas for the following week.

Later a couple of police cars went by, their sirens on. Kate frowned and went on to the local news website. Her face fell when she saw the headline. It had been updated an hour before.

Child Feared Drowned at Sandy Bay

A nine-year-old girl is missing in the Sandy Bay area. The incident happened between nine and midnight on Friday evening. Her teenage brother and friends were partying on the beach and the child joined them. Witnesses say that she went into the water by herself. The alarm was not raised until after midnight when the girl was missed. Holidaymakers have been helping in the search. The police have an open mind about this case and say they are not yet looking for a body. “There is every chance that this little girl will be found alive,” a police spokesperson said.

Kate logged off, the story giving her a shiver. A
child
had died. It made it ten times worse. The loss of a child with a lifetime ahead of her. Kate found herself staring at the computer screen with her hands clasped tightly. She knew what that meant only too well.

Later on, when it was quiet, Aimee talked about her daughter, Louise. She’d had her sixth birthday party the previous Sunday.

“Her dad said he’d come. He promised her faithfully he’d come with a huge surprise. Well, the surprise was he didn’t show up. No surprise to me, of course, but Louise was so upset and tearful. It’s not fair. Do you think it’s fair? It’s not fair.”

Aimee wasn’t really expecting an answer so Kate didn’t give one.

“And then he rings me this morning and says he wants to take her away this weekend to make up for it. He’s going to take her to Croyde. Well, I know what that means. He’s got a surfing weekend with his mates and he will take Louise and dump her with a load of other surfers’ kids while he goes off enjoying himself. That’s not right. Is it? Do you think that’s right?”

There was silence and Kate realised that this time Aimee did expect an answer.

“Not if that’s what he does,” Kate said. What was she supposed to say?

“Last time he took her – Easter I think it was – she told me she woke up in the middle of the night and there was a lady standing in the hallway with just her knickers on! See, he doesn’t mind his daughter witnessing his goings-on!”