Looking for JJ (14 page)

There was a sound of movement, a cough, a mumble, her mum’s voice. The door opened a crack.

“What’s up love? I thought you’d gone out?”

“Are you all right? I thought I heard you cry out.”

“I’m fine,” she said, the door relaxing a little, opening back.

She could see her mum’s head and neck. She was wearing the school blouse and tie again. A gruff voice came from behind and her mum turned away to say something. The door opened a little more and she could see Mr Smith sitting on the bed, wearing a shirt and tie just like her mum’s. As though they were both schoolkids. Mr Cottis was standing to the side, leaning against the chest of drawers, his glasses darkened in the brightly lit up room.

“I’m fine. We’re just doing a few situation shots.” She lowered her voice. “We won’t be long. You run off now, love, or else I’ll get into trouble with Mr Cottis.”

Jennifer stood on the landing for a few moments before going back into her room to collect her things. She didn’t like Mr Cottis. Mr Smith neither. She didn’t like the photographs with the school ties. She’d never seen any of those on the front of a magazine.

She walked down the stairs slowly, listening at every step for a sound from her mum’s room. She felt jittery, as though something might jump out at her. She didn’t know exactly what was going on but it was different to any modelling her mum had ever done before. She gripped on to the cassette player and hesitated. She didn’t want to go out and spend time with Michelle. She might want to talk about her mum’s career and how she herself wanted to be a model when she grew up.

Outside, she saw Lucy standing next to Michelle. Her hair had been cut and styled and it made her look quite pretty. She was wearing some fashionable clothes; probably things that Mrs Livingstone had sorted out for her. They were clean and ironed and she looked normal, just like any other kid, relaxed and happy. Michelle was not happy. She seemed exasperated.

“I’ve told her she can’t come with us,” she said, crossly.

Jennifer looked sternly at the pair of them. She really couldn’t be bothered. She glanced back up to her house and felt a great lump of frustration at her throat. She didn’t know what was happening in her mum’s room. And yet deep down, in a way that she couldn’t have explained to anybody, she did know. Mr Smith in his school uniform, his silly little earring swinging back and forth. Mr Cottis, stiff as an ironing board, standing behind a camera. Maybe his bony face broke into a smile of some sort, possibly he took his glasses off and looked through the camera lens with his cold blue eye.

“She can’t come, can she, Jennifer?” Michelle continued.

Why her mum? Other mums had jobs. Mrs Livingstone was a secretary. Why couldn’t her mum do something like that? Even her gran sewed up clothes for people to wear. Why couldn’t her mum be like her?

“You’re too young to hang around with us,” Michelle said. “Isn’t she?”

Lucy looked the best that Jennifer had ever seen her. Without her hopeless mum and her awful brothers she seemed to be stepping forward. Even with her mother lying in a hospital bed she seemed happier than ever.

“I can come, can’t I?”

“No,” Jennifer said, her throat turning to steel.

“Why not?”

“Go away! You can’t come! Go and visit your mum or something!”

Lucy looked startled, her mouth hanging open. Jennifer felt a sudden fury. What was the girl upset about? Wasn’t she being looked after? Cared for? Wasn’t her mum being nursed back to health? What did she have to whine about?

“My mum’s coming home next week,” Lucy said, uncertainly, a hopeful smile on her face.

“Maybe she will. Maybe she won’t,” Jennifer said.

“What?” Lucy said, her mouth bunched up.

“Maybe she won’t come out of hospital at all. Maybe you’ll never see her again!”

Michelle looked astonished.

“That’s not true, is it?” Lucy said, looking at Michelle, her eyes becoming glassy. “She’s coming home next week. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Course she is!” Michelle said.

“You don’t know,” Jennifer said, unable to stop herself, “her mum might be dead. At this very minute, she might be DEAD.”

“No, she’s not!” Lucy said, a sob coming out.

“Don’t say that to her, I’ll get in trouble with my mum!” Michelle said, her words coming through clenched teeth.

But Jennifer couldn’t stop. Why should she stop?

“LEAVE US ALONE!” she shouted. “GO AWAY! GO AND FIND YOUR MUM!”

“You’re mad, you are. You’re MAD!” Michelle said, grabbing Lucy by the arm and taking her off down the lane, her arm protectively around Lucy’s shoulder, as if she were her best friend in the world.

Jennifer swallowed back and sat down on the pavement. She turned her cassette player on as loud as she could and sat there until much later, until her front door opened and Mr Cottis and Mr Smith came out, both laughing at some joke.

Mr Cottis raised his hand to wave at her but she didn’t wave back.

 

 

 

Lucy forgave her.

It was something Jennifer could hardly understand. How vile she had been. What horrible things she had said. On the way to school the following morning Jennifer ran up behind and put her arm around her.

“I’m really, really sorry. I was in a bad mood and I never meant that about your mum. Course your mum’s coming home. Next week. I heard Mrs Livingstone say it!”

“OK,” Lucy said.

“You my friend? Really?” she said, giving Lucy a hug.

“Yes, course.”

Lucy was walking with a spring in her step, Michelle on one side and Jennifer on the other. She didn’t seem to hold a grudge. She was like a puppydog, bouncing along the lane, an invisible tail wagging behind her.

Unlike Michelle, who was grumpy and round-shouldered all the way down to the main road.
You could have got me in a lot of trouble with my mum!
she hissed and only cheered up when they got to school and Lucy ran off to her classroom. Jennifer slipped her arm through hers and said,
Hey Ginger, you’re still my best friend, aren’t you?

At lunchtime, a few days later, they sat in the corner of the library flicking through magazines.

“Look at this, JJ,” Michelle said, in a loud voice.

Michelle liked the other kids to hear them use their nicknames. It wasn’t enough to just use them when they were alone. Michelle wanted everyone to know. Even though Jennifer sometimes felt a bit silly calling her friend
Ginger
, as though she was some kind of pet. Michelle loved it, though, and seemed to fiddle with her hair whenever she heard the name, pulling her long curls out or sweeping a great clump of it back off her face. Jennifer’s own name, JJ, was less pleasing, just a couple of initials that didn’t really mean anything. She looked at the magazine. Michelle was pointing at a picture of a pop singer that they both liked. She’d seen it a dozen times and had one like it on her bedroom wall.

“And here, look, there’s that nail varnish that I’m going to get!”

Jennifer didn’t answer. She was bored with the magazines and fed up with sitting inside every lunchtime. She looked out in the playground. Some of the kids from her class were playing rounders and she had a desire to be out there, running round, feeling the fresh air on her face. But she and Michelle didn’t do those things now. They were too babyish. She noticed the younger kids and, in the middle of them, Lucy.

“Since Lucy’s been staying with you she doesn’t hang around us at school so much.”

Michelle nodded, opening a new magazine at the back page and working her way forward.

“It’s like she doesn’t need to be with us now. She’s got her own friends.”

“She’s not staying with me permanently!”

“I know
that
. I’m just saying.”

They were quiet for a minute.

“Is your mum coming to the picnic on Sunday?” Michelle said.

The picnic was to be up at the reservoir. It was Lucy’s birthday treat and Mrs Livingstone had invited Lucy’s brothers and Jennifer’s mum.

“I think so,” she answered.

Jennifer wasn’t sure if her mum was going to go to the picnic. She’d asked the previous night.

“I’m really busy this week and on Sunday morning Mr Cottis has got me a session.”

“On a Sunday?” Jennifer had said, flatly.

Mr Cottis seemed to be everywhere. Either he was visiting her house or telephoning or her mum was talking about him. A horrible thing occurred to her. Was Mr Cottis her mum’s
boyfriend
? Jennifer didn’t like to think about it.

“Amateur photographers. It’s good money. I don’t like to turn it down, love.”

“But it’s not all day?”

“No, maybe I could make it back. What time is the picnic?”

“About three o’clock. If it’s dry.”

“I should get back for then. If I don’t you can explain, can’t you?”

Jennifer nodded. She could explain if she had to.

“Tell you what, I’ll give you some cash to buy Lucy a nice present. How about that?”

There was plenty of cash, Jennifer knew that. It should have made her feel good. They could pay the rent, buy the shopping, have money for clothes and holidays. She just didn’t feel relaxed about it. It was all in a box in her mum’s wardrobe. Sometimes she went in there and took it out and looked at the notes lying untidily inside. It gave her an uneasy feeling, as though it didn’t really belong to them, as if her mum had robbed a bank or something. When she put the box away, in her mum’s wardrobe, she covered it with jumpers and shoes.

On Sunday the weather was dry so they joined the lane at the back of the houses to walk up to the reservoir. There was a train of people, everyone carrying something, Mrs Livingstone shouting instructions. Lucy was up at the front, saying,
This way, this way!
in her scratchy voice.

Mr Livingstone, who kept asking everyone to call him
Frank
, laid the blankets on a flat area of grass that sloped down to the edge of the lake. Mrs Livingstone unpacked the food, plastic boxes of sandwiches and bags of crisps. She had even baked a cake and brought candles. On it were the words
Happy Birthday Lucy
.

“Perhaps Carol will get here later,” Mrs Livingstone said.

Jennifer nodded but knew that her mum wouldn’t come. Mr Cottis had picked her up in his van much later than she’d expected. She’d been annoyed when he finally came, whispering loudly to him in the hallway, her words too muffled to hear but her voice forced out, like a hissing kettle. Jennifer had come out of her bedroom to say goodbye but the front door had slammed shut and she’d been left alone in the house, the sound of Mr Cottis’s van driving off up the lane.

She hadn’t really expected her to come. She knew her mum wouldn’t sit on a blanket and chat to Mr and Mrs Livingstone. She couldn’t imagine her eating sandwiches and singing
Happy Birthday
. It was a picture that just wouldn’t form in her head. It was as unlikely as her mum putting an apron on and making a cake with the words
Happy Birthday Lucy
on it.

Lucy had a new dress. She looked clean, her skin pink and shiny, her thin hair pulled up into a ponytail. She told them about the card she got from her mum. She was coming home soon, she said. Jennifer was enthusiastic about it, nodding her head and saying,
That’s good!
Trying to make up for the awful things she’d said a few days before. Her brothers were wearing their usual: oversized dark-green jackets and heavy boots. Stevie’s trousers had a camouflage pattern but Joe’s were plain green. Lucy was thrilled with everything and kept getting up to walk around the blanket and sit in a different place. The brothers looked uncomfortable as though they’d rather not be there. Whenever Stevie was asked if he wanted anything he grunted, nodding or shaking his head. Joe was more polite, saying,
No thank you, Mrs Livingstone
or
Yes please, Mrs Livingstone
.

Michelle hadn’t dressed up. She was wearing the same clothes as she’d had on the day before; as if she couldn’t be bothered. Jennifer knew it was deliberate. Michelle loved dressing up but she wasn’t going to do it for Lucy.

They ate and drank and Mrs Livingstone lit the candles and they all sang
Happy Birthday
to Lucy. After the rubbish was tidied away Michelle’s dad stood up and started to flex his legs.

“Anyone fancy a walk?” he said.

“No thank you, Mr Livingstone,” Joe said, buttoning his army jacket up to the neck, as though it was deep winter.

“Do call me
Frank
,” Mr Livingstone said.

Mrs Livingstone got up.

“Come on you three, come for a walk!”

Michelle shook her head but Lucy stood up and walked towards her. Michelle looked directly at Jennifer and rolled her eyes. Jennifer was thrown. She didn’t mind going for a walk but she didn’t want to upset her friend.

“Oh, you lazy pair!” Mrs Livingstone said, striding off with Lucy at her side, her husband up ahead.

They watched as the three of them walked away. Jennifer wanted to make a joke but Michelle’s face seemed to harden as she kept her eyes on her mum and dad and Lucy, looking every bit a family. The brothers were mumbling together at the other end of the blanket. Stevie lay back suddenly, his head on the ground, his big boots pointing up to the sky. Joe laughed for no reason as though someone had just told him a joke.

“What you laughing at?” Michelle demanded.

He didn’t answer. He just laughed and nodded his head as though someone had just said something that he agreed with. Stevie raised himself up on his elbows and looked at the girls. Beside his brother his head looked small and bony, his eyes narrow, like slits.

“Don’t say nothing to him,” he said.

“Why? Why shouldn’t I?”

Michelle knelt up on the blanket, her shoulders squared up ready for an argument. In the distance her parents had become tiny figures. Jennifer wished she’d gone for a walk with them. She didn’t like the Bussell brothers. There was something
dangerous
about them.

“Don’t. . .” she said. “Don’t let’s argue.”

“
Don’t let’s argue
,” Stevie said, repeating her words. He gave her a childish grin, showing a mouthful of crooked teeth.

“He’s not very bright, is he? Your brother?” Michelle said.

Jennifer’s shoulders sank down. Why couldn’t Michelle just leave it!

“You shut your mouth,” Stevie said, without moving a muscle. “Or I’ll come over and shut it for you!”

“I’ll tell my mum!”

“
I’ll tell my mum
.” Stevie mimicked Michelle’s voice.

“Stop it!” Jennifer said, louder than she meant to.

Stevie’s face turned towards her. He was no longer angry. There was a flicker of something behind his eyes, like a light going on in a distant room of a big house.

“How’s your mum?” he said, his lips turning up at the corners.

“She’s . . . she’s all right.”

Jennifer hated his expression. Hated the way his body lay in front of her, his legs open, his camouflage trousers making him look like an oversized Action Man.

“Her mum’s a model!” Michelle said.

Why did she have to say that? Jennifer wished she would keep quiet. It was her business and her mum’s. She didn’t go round to everyone saying that Michelle’s mum was a
secretary
.

“A model? Is that what she calls it?”

“A model,” Joe repeated his brother’s words.

“What do you mean?” Michelle said. “She is a model. I’ve seen her pictures. She’s been a model for years, hasn’t she, Jennifer? She’s even had her face in magazines.”

Jennifer nodded half-heartedly. She’d shown Michelle her mum’s portfolio. Eight years’ worth of photographs. Hundreds in the first few years but less and less as time went on.

“Yeah, I’ll bet she’s had more than her face in magazines,” Stevie said.

“A lot more,” Joe said, giving a horrible laugh.

“What do you mean?” Jennifer said, even though she knew exactly what they meant.

“How come she has all these blokes visiting her every day? If she’s just a
model
?”

Jennifer was puzzled. Blokes visiting her? What did he mean?

“You mean Mr Cottis? He’s her agent? He’s the photographer, see?”

“Is that what he calls it?”

She looked at Michelle who seemed as bewildered as she was. Her mum probably did have visitors. Amateur photographers. She had to take the work. It was her way of getting back into modelling. Jennifer knew that. She looked with disdain at the two Bussell brothers. Not a half a brain between them. Stevie, lying back, his hand resting lightly on his crotch. Joe looking at her then back to his brother whose hand had begun to press against his camouflage trousers.