Stone Cold Red Hot - страница 42

“I couldn’t tell you what day it was, or anything, but I remember it because Jenny got upset and I wasn’t sure if I’d said something, you know, something stupid…”

“Go on,” I encouraged her.

“We’d been in my room, it was early evening but it was still hot. My room was stifling and we decided to go out in the garden. I got a rug and the radio, pop, that sort of thing.” She stroked the baby’s legs and squeezed his feet all the time she was talking. “Jenny was a bit low really, most of the time she was so sparky, tons of energy but she was on edge. I probably did most of the talking. It got late and she was all ready to go. She climbed up the wall and then she came back. I thought she’d forgotten something but she pushed past me and went off down the side. I ran after her, asked what was wrong, she rounded on me, told me to leave her alone, said I’d no idea – something like that. She was crying. I felt awful.” She chewed at her lip. “I tried ringing later but the phone was engaged.”

“What do you think upset her?”

“I don’t know, something I’d said, maybe me prattling on when she was so worried? There was I lounging around not a care in the world, and she’s pregnant and confused. Plus she can’t even confide in me because she knows how I feel about abortion. Or maybe it was the thought of going home, maybe she just couldn’t face them.”

“Had she told her parents she was pregnant?”

“No, I don’t think so. Lisa said that Jenny wanted to decide what she was going to do before she said anything. So she’d stormed off and I phoned the next day, it was Caroline’s birthday do, we were going to go into town together, but there was no answer. I felt awful. I thought Jenny had not come because she was cross with me. I got horribly drunk. I did try to ring a couple of times after that then when I finally did get through her mother said she’d gone to Keele. I couldn’t believe it. I rang Lisa and she told me it was true.”

“Why was it hard to believe?”

“She never said goodbye – not even to Lisa. And she never took her mascot, it was still on her windowsill – that’s why I thought she was still at home. We all had them, little troll things, peculiar really. We took them into exams for good luck. Jenny had kitted hers out in this glam rock outfit and drawn make up on it.”

I felt an unpleasant undertow of apprehension. It didn’t add up. Jennifer had been a gregarious teenager with a circle of close friends. She’d left without so much as a goodbye. Without her lucky mascot. None of them had ever heard from her. She hadn’t even sent her little brother a birthday card on the day they shared. Had she run away? Had something happened to her that meant she couldn’t keep in touch with her friends?

My imagination conjured up new pictures, Jennifer on the run. Lost in London. Hurt. Worse. I was being melodramatic, I told myself. There must be a simple explanation. But a seed of suspicion had taken root. I kept coming back to the explanation that fit everything so far. If Jennifer Pickering was dead then it all made sense.

I left Frances Delaney, thanking her for her time. It was another balmy autumn day, the warm sunshine and soft air at odds with the gripe in my stomach and the tension in my neck. I needed to unwind a little, think things through before my one o’ clock appointment.

I cycled home and took refuge in the garden. Several large trees frame the space, their leaves were turning and many were scattered across the grass. I sat in the sun with my pen and paper, a bowl of carrot and red pepper soup. Insects and floating seeds drifted in the air, spider webs glinted on the clematis and across the kitchen windows. I drank my soup and let the snippets of information jostle in my mind for a while, then I wrote down a list of what I knew followed by what I suspected. I had no proof that Jennifer was dead. After all she might have just cut everything and everyone off, started a new life and never looked back. People do. There are hundreds of people who just walk out of their lives into new ones, leaving families to tear themselves apart with worry and pain.