‘Give me one,’ said Danielle, laughing. ‘It’ll make up for the Wispa that got nicked.’
Tina looked on in horror. The girls were all laughing at her, each one grabbing at her crotch and taunting her, chanting ‘Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!’ She fled in tears to Leanne’s room.
Leanne’s door was ajar, she must have heard the commotion, but she was sitting on her bed with a magazine. She looked up as Tina ran in, an amused expression on her face. ‘What’s up?’ she asked.
‘Those bitches …’ Tina hid her face.
Leanne put the magazine down. ‘Take no notice.’
‘Did you hear what they said?’ Tina could still hear the girls laughing and jeering outside.
‘Some of it.’
‘Why didn’t you stick up for me?’
‘You seemed to be doing okay.’
‘They said … they said …’
‘I heard what they said. Shhh …’ Leanne put her arms around Tina. ‘They’re just jealous. I told them how good you are and—’
Tina sprang back, away from Leanne. ‘You did what?’
Leanne shrugged. ‘Well, it’s no secret, is it? That we’re together? I told them you’re always up for it, not like those frigid bitches.’ She reached out to stroke Tina’s hair; Tina pulled away from her. ‘Oh, don’t be like that! You’ll need somebody when I move on.’ She grinned. ‘Sounds like you’re in with a chance with Danielle. What do you think? Could you eat her out like you do me? Her fucking head would explode.’
‘You cow!’
‘Oh, don’t be so precious, sweetheart. You’re just meat, that’s all. Not even fresh anymore.’
Tina fled to her own room and slammed the door behind her. She could hardly believe Leanne would talk about her like that. Could what they had together really mean so little to her? It meant everything to Tina, absolutely everything. She had depended on Leanne, confided in her, trusted her completely. She had turned a blind eye when Leanne ‘borrowed’ things from her, persuading herself that if Leanne had asked for whatever it was, a tube of lip gloss, a CD, a T-shirt, she’d have gladly given it to her anyway. What did it matter when they shared so much? Besides, Leanne was generous with pills. She trusted Tina to keep her stash, too. In fact, Tina also had a half bottle of vodka in her room, which she and Leanne planned to drink on Saturday night, mixing it with their orange squash while they watched
X Factor
with the rest of the girls.
Tina sat on her bed, arms wrapped around her legs, head resting on her knees. For the first time ever, she realised she was truly on her own. Leanne had betrayed her. The other girls despised her. Hilary didn’t visit or write. Vanessa had moved away. Annie was gone. Her dad was dead, and her gran, too.
And her mum … her mum hated her.
Tina thought about the wedding; she didn’t know where it was to be held, didn’t even know if it was morning or afternoon. She must be a truly dreadful person, she thought, if those people who supposedly loved her the most could care so little about her. She thought about her dream of training as a hairdresser, of one day having her own salon, of being her own boss, like Vanessa. It seemed ridiculous now. The sort of thing a silly little girl would want, like being a princess or a WAG.
Tina sat up most of the night and then, when she went for her medication the next day, took advantage of the doctor’s distraction and trust of her to help herself to some extra pills. When she got back to her room, she took out Tina’s stash and the half bottle of vodka and used the alcohol to wash down the drugs. It felt like taking charge. It felt like the only thing to do. The fact that she cried the whole time she was gulping the pills down, choking on the neat spirit, well, that felt appropriate, too, as did cutting at her arm with the hairdressing scissors Leanne had given her. She got the blood flowing then lay down on her bed, exhausted, and slept.
The next thing she remembered was Irish Mary shouting, an alarm bell ringing, being pulled to her feet and given salt water to drink to make her throw up, being in an ambulance, then at the hospital, where they pumped her stomach. She still felt sore from that experience. She vowed never again to put herself in a position where that would happen to her.
Tina pulled the covers up to her chin and closed her eyes. She didn’t expect to sleep, but the next thing she knew, she was being woken up for breakfast. After that, she would shower and dress and go back to Weardale, where she would have to face everyone. She gritted her teeth. Time would pass and this would be forgotten. Leanne would soon go to the adult wing. Other girls would come and go at the YOI. Things would get better and the bad stuff would fade. New things would happen. She just had to hang on until enough time passed that the pain was eased.
PART THREE
Tina sat on her bed and looked around her. Unlike her room in the YOI, where she could sometimes make believe she wasn’t incarcerated, on the adult wing of the prison there was no hiding from the fact that she was in a cell. There was a small window, quite high up, which was bare and barred. The metal bed had a plastic covered mattress on which she sat, a pile of bedding next to her with which she would make it up. Other than that, there was a chest of drawers by the bed, a small shelved cupboard, and a taller unit with a hanging rail to use as a wardrobe. The toilet and wash basin were hidden from the cell door by a wall, but there was no bathroom door. She knew it was only for use when she was locked in her cell, there was a shower room and toilet block to be used at other times, but she realised that there would be no real privacy here. Her things were in a plastic bag that she had placed on the floor beside her feet. She reached into it, pulled out the fluffy bunny toy she’d had for years, and hid her face in it.
Tina had been determined to be brave about the transfer, to take it all in her stride. Mary McCluskey had prepared her as best she could, explained that the set up on an adult wing was different, but still Tina had been taken aback by just how stark everything seemed. Adam, her volunteer prison visitor, would be the one constant that would move with her from the YOI to the adult wing. He was due to visit next afternoon and Tina tried to focus on that, to think of how supportive he was, how good he made her feel.
She heard a tap on the open door of her cell, peeled the bunny away from her face and looked up.
‘Hello, love.’ The woman stood in the doorway but didn’t come in. ‘I’m Jackie. Are you all right?’
‘I’m Tina,’ Tina told her. She stood up and walked over to her, then shook her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Pleased to meet you, too, pet.’ The woman looked around. ‘Do you want a hand making your bed up?’
‘Yes, please,’ Tina said, and the woman picked up the pile of bedding and sorted out a sheet. As they tucked it around the mattress, Jackie told Tina that she was in the next cell along.
‘We’re neighbours, Tina, so that’s nice, isn’t it?’ she said, stuffing a pillow into a pillowcase. Once the bed was made, she straightened up. ‘Why don’t you come into my cell and I’ll pour us both some squash,’ she suggested. Then, when Tina hesitated, she added, ‘I’ve got some chocolate biscuits.’
Tina nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, thanks, Jackie. I’d like that.’
They went into Jackie’s cell and Tina took the chance to look around while Jackie busied herself getting drinks and biscuits for them. ‘You can make them quite nice, if you put a bit of work in,’ Jackie said, seeing Tina looking at the cell window. ‘A bit more cosy, like. I made my curtains at sewing class. I saved up my wages for the material.’ She pointed to the bed, on which she had placed a couple of matching scatter cushions. ‘I got a bit extra to make the cushion covers.’
‘It all looks really nice,’ said Tina, thinking she’d do the same just as soon as she could. Then she could close her curtains at night and hide the cell bars. Tina was studying the photographs on the wall above the bed when Jackie came over and handed her a plastic cup of orange squash.
‘That’s my daughter,’ she said, pointing to one. ‘That’s my son and his wife, and these ones are my grand-daughter. The first one there, that shows her when she was just born. Then I’ve got one for every year, right up to her last birthday when she was seven. She’ll be eight in a couple of months. They’ll send me another picture then.’
‘She’s very pretty,’ said Tina.
‘I put them there so that she’s the last thing I see when I go to sleep and the first thing when I wake up in the morning and open my eyes.’
‘Do you see her very often?’ Tina asked. ‘In visits, I mean.’
‘No, pet,’ said Jackie. ‘I’ve never seen her, never held her when she was a baby or had a hug or a kiss off her.’ She smiled, but Tina saw only sadness. ‘I’ve been in here since before she was born.’
‘Oh, Jackie, I’m so sorry.’ Tina struggled for something else to say. ‘When will you …?’ she asked.
‘Not for a long time,’ said Jackie. She turned away and wiped her eyes. ‘Here,’ she said to Tina when she turned back, ‘have a biscuit.’ She offered her the open packet and Tina took one.
‘Jackie,’ she said, slowly. ‘Can I ask what you’re in here for?’
‘Same as you,’ said Jackie, taking a biscuit from the packet.
‘Oh. Did you stab someone, too?’
‘No, love. I got caught.’
***
Karen Fitzgerald was sick at heart. Four weeks earlier, ten-year-old Amy Thompson had fallen out with the friend she was sleeping over with and, unknown to the girl’s parents, left the house around midnight to walk home. She had never arrived. No one had seen her since, although her parents had received a letter saying they didn’t deserve her and she was going to be with God.
That Friday night, Karen and Ruth Crinson were sharing a bottle of wine in a bar in town. ‘I’m getting nowhere looking for Amy,’ Karen told Ruth. ‘Every lead is a dead end. I even dug out the Snowdon and Addams case files and went through everything in them again, in case we’d missed something.’
Ruth sipped at her wine. ‘Have you found anything?’
Karen shook her head slowly, drew the number ‘six’ in the condensation on her glass. ‘But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something. I even wonder if the kids might be alive somewhere.’
‘Somewhere abroad, do you mean? It’s possible, I suppose.’
‘No, I think they’re here. Somewhere in Sunderland.’
‘Someone would have said something by now if they were. You can’t keep secrets like that in a city like this.’
‘Normally I’d agree with you. But this whole situation is peculiar, don’t you think? Take the Snowdon case; after all, that’s the only one we really know anything about. We know the girls were in Cotter’s car, there was even a T-shirt from the gig in there, but nothing else.’
‘The girls wore hats and gloves.’
‘True, and that wouldn’t have helped, but even so, it’s odd. And the ones we know about aren’t the only kids to have vanished without a trace. I did a search, and guess how many missing kids in the north east fit into the pattern? Six,’ she said, without waiting for Ruth to ask. ‘Six in nine years.’
‘It’s sickening, but it’s a fact of life that kids are vulnerable, some people see them as targets. They go to a friend’s house, to the pictures, just out for an ice-cream from the van and someone sees his opportunity.’
‘Yes, but we normally find them. These are kids who have vanished without a trace. They’ve been … I don’t know, spirited away somehow. There one minute, gone the next. No sign of violence, no bodies, no trace of them whatsoever. But do you know what else they all have in common?’ She ploughed on, unable to stop. ‘They each wrote a farewell letter to their parents, saying they didn’t deserve to have them and they were going to be in a better place.’
‘I thought we only had two letters?’
‘When Mr and Mrs Thompson got that letter from Amy, I got in touch with Ben Addams’s mum and dad on a hunch, and they told me that they had got a letter, too. God only knows why they hadn’t mentioned it earlier. So that tied Annie, Amy and Ben together and I started digging. There’s Rosemary Cairns from Hartlepool, Timothy Barker from Seaham and Billy Scoggins from Middlesbrough.’
Ruth put her glass down. ‘How in hell have these not been linked before? Jesus Christ, Karen.’
‘Because up until last week, there was our three from Sunderland with just the two letters, and three others from out of the area. Ruth, there are at least six, but there may be more. Someone’s taking our kids and we don’t know who or why or what they’re doing with them.’
***
‘Hello, Martha.’
Amy’s lip trembled. She knew better than to argue with the name they called her; she kept her eyes on the Bible she held.
‘I’ve brought you some juice.’ The man put the glass of juice down on the desk. ‘What do you say?’
‘Thank you,’ said Amy.
‘This is Rachael. She’s going to spend some time with you.’
‘Hello, Rachael.’
‘Hi, Martha. What’s the passage you’re reading? May I see?’
The man smiled and went out again leaving the two girls to their study. It always took a little time for the saved to adjust, but Martha was doing very well.
***
The connection Karen Fitzgerald had made revitalised the investigation. All six cases were now linked, and DSI Hardcastle was heading up the joint task force. The jury was still out as to whether any of the letters ought to be disclosed to the wider world, perhaps used as the basis of a further appeal by the missing children’s parents. They had all so far been kept from the press, however, and it was possible keeping the existence of the letters secret might afford some advantage: at the very least, it would help when trying to establish if information was accurate or bogus when the anticipated rash of confessions surfaced.