Scarred for Life (24 page)

‘I know.’

‘Is it because of . . . ?’

Adam didn’t want to say it outright – no one except Jessica’s mother ever did – but it was clear what he meant. ‘You think I’m trying to be Bex’s mum?’

‘I didn’t say that – you’re the one who said you don’t know what you’re doing. I just want to make sure you’re not going to end up hurting yourself.’

‘Why would I do that?’

Adam started to reply but had to pause as the waiter cheerfully brought over a tray with their starters on. It was all smiles and thank yous until they were alone again, then Adam leant in and whispered: ‘You don’t know who she is, Jess. I know you want to help and it’s fine if you want her to stay at our house for a while – but you have to think about what you’re getting yourself into. Are you going to help her get a job? Go to college? Find her own place? What about clothes, food and transport?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Can you at least try to think about things?’

Jessica took another mouthful of wine, holding it in her mouth, enjoying the slightly bitter taste. ‘I
have
thought about them, I just don’t know the answers yet.’

Adam tilted his head, smiling slightly. ‘Okay.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I want you to be happy, Jess.’

‘What about us?’

‘I’m happy if you are.’

She finished her drink. ‘That’s not an answer – what do
you
want?’

It was Adam’s turn to become self-conscious, using a napkin to wipe something non-existent from his face and replying almost apologetically: ‘I’ve already got everything I want.’

Jessica immersed herself in the food so that she didn’t have to respond, then changed the subject. She hated it when he said things like that because what was she supposed to say back?

The rest of the meal was terrific, the wine was smooth, the taxi drive back to the house was uneventful and the lights were off when they arrived home. Adam waved Jessica into the living room with a cheeky grin, asking if she fancied one more drink. Considering she planned, after seeing Adam off to work in the morning, to spend the rest of the day in bed, Jessica figured it couldn’t do much harm.

They giggled their way into the room like a pair of teenagers left on their own for the first time. Adam took a pair of shot glasses and half-full vodka bottle out of the cabinet underneath the television and poured them each a glass. They flopped on the sofa and toasted their first meal out alone together for months. Jessica enjoyed the burn of the liquid on her throat and reached for the bottle, pouring another. Adam shook his head: ‘I’ve got work tomorrow.’

Jessica didn’t let that stop her, downing the second shot in one and slumping even deeper into the cushions of the sofa.

‘Something’s different,’ Adam said, out of the blue.

‘What?’

‘I’m not sure – but something’s not quite right in here.’

Jessica poured – and drank – a third shot. Perhaps moving onto lates wasn’t a bad thing after all if it meant she had more evenings off in between times to hang around with Adam and go drinking. ‘I think you’ve had too much to drink,’ she said.

‘You’re the one slurring your words.’

‘Am not.’

Adam sounded as if he was about to say something but then he paused, biting his lip. ‘The candlesticks are missing.’

Jessica squinted towards the shelf they’d sat atop since they had partially unpacked but Adam was right – they had gone.

29

The alcohol helped Jessica sleep but Holden Wyatt, Damon Potter, Cassie Edmonds, Grace Savage, Bones, DCI Cole, Assistant Chief Constable Graham Pomeroy and strange curved symbols were haunting her.

Then there was Bex.

Jessica had checked through the gap between the door and the frame before she’d gone to bed but the teenager was in the same position she’d been in for the past few nights: curled into a ball under the bed covers, breathing deeply. Everything Adam had said at the restaurant was correct – but Jessica so wanted to help and knowing Bex had a roof over her head and food in her stomach was one of the few things that had got her through the week.

Although she knew she had to be up through the night, Jessica got up early and waited in the kitchen. She put some toast on for Adam, kissed him goodbye and then waited some more. She heard Bex moving around upstairs at twenty past nine and then the sound of the shower. Just before ten, the teenager emerged into the kitchen humming a song that Jessica didn’t know. Her long black hair was wet and loose, the damp ends creating a wet patch on the oversized T-shirt Adam had given her; the angular tattoo on her arm was bold and bright. Her slim legs hardly seemed to have the width to support the rest of her frame as she padded barefoot into the room, stopping when she noticed Jessica.

‘Oh, you’re up,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be sleeping most of the day.’

‘I probably will be. Do you want something to eat?’

Bex grinned, chewing on the corners of her mouth hungrily. ‘I shouldn’t keep eating your food.’

‘Maybe we should sit down one evening and have a talk about things?’

Jessica didn’t know how Bex would take it but the teenager nodded and grinned again. Her face had started to fill out slightly over the past few days, which was perhaps no surprise seeing as she couldn’t have got any thinner.

Jessica dropped a couple more slices of bread into the toaster and then started hunting through the cereal packets in the cupboard. That was the other thing about letting Adam do the food shopping by himself: he bought lots of cereal. If he could get away with eating it three times a day, he probably would.

Moments later and Bex was mashing a Shredded Wheat into a Weetabix while taking a bite of toast. Jessica took a strange pleasure in watching someone clearly so in need of food being able to wolf down the contents of her cupboards. That was until she felt self-conscious that she was turning into her mother. When Jessica had been a child, her mum constantly used to invite her primary school friends around after classes and then spend the evening trying to feed them as much as human beings could fit into themselves. Things hadn’t changed by the time Jessica took Adam home for the first time. Her mother had frowned in disapproval at his slender frame and then spent an hour finding out exactly which foods he liked so she could shove them down his gullet over the course of an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon. It must be a mumsy thing – and the fact that Jessica could happily keep making food for Bex, even though she rarely bothered to make anything for herself, was a worrying development.

That wasn’t the only worrying thing.

‘What did you get up to last night?’ Jessica asked.

Munch, munch, munch.

‘I had a walk to the end of your road and then carried on to the shops and back. It was nice to get some air but then it started getting cold again and I was convinced that I’d left the door unlocked. I’m not used to locking things.’

‘Had you?’

‘No, it’s one of those things where you know you’ve done something but your mind won’t switch off from it until you check. I sort of . . .’

Bex tailed off, delving into the mushy remains of her cereal and drawing her free hand across her chest protectively.

‘It’s okay.’

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

‘I’m a bit like that with my bag,’ Bex added. ‘It’s the only thing I have left from my mum’s house. All my clothes gradually became too big so I . . . got some more.’ She glanced away from the table guiltily. ‘I know how to pack it so that I can reach anything I need and then it has this sort of balance to it. But you end up getting paranoid if it doesn’t feel right. You think someone’s been nicking off you while you’ve been asleep, so you’re constantly on edge. Even though I know I’ve packed it right, I still get that urge to check it. I know it’s mad.’

Jessica knew it wasn’t. When you owned hardly anything, it made sense that you’d obsess over the things you did.

‘How long were you out for last night?’

Bex lifted the bowl and drank the dregs of the milk at the bottom. ‘I don’t know – an hour? Should I have stayed in?’

‘No, it’s not that, it’s just . . .’ To compound the fact that Jessica didn’t know which words to use, Bex took that moment to peer up from the table and smile at her. Whether she’d got her looks from her junkie mother or absent father, Bex really was naturally pretty, despite the slight hollowness she still had in her face. ‘. . . do you remember the candlesticks from the other room?’

‘You said they’d survived a fire.’

‘Right . . . it’s just they’re missing . . .’

Bex bit through the triangle of toast and then carefully put it back on the plate. She kept her eyes fixed on Jessica as she chewed, saying nothing. Jessica tried to read her face, her posture, anything; but there was only a darkness that hadn’t been there before. Suddenly Jessica saw the Bex she didn’t know – the street Bex, the girl who’d seen and survived things as a fourteen-year-old that Jessica didn’t even want to guess about. Her pointed shoulders had angled forward, pressing into the material of the T-shirt, her eyebrows had turned into a V, with vertical crease lines in the centre of her forehead.

Bex’s voice had dropped an octave into a forced calmness. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Nothing, I’m asking if you’ve seen them. Adam says he remembers them being there when he got home from work yesterday.’

‘Are you asking if I nicked them?’

‘No, I’m asking if you’ve seen them.’

Somewhere outside a pair of birds were singing to each other, probably complaining about the weather and wondering when it was time to go south. A car blazed along the street in front, wheels spinning as they weaved in and out of the parked cars in a rush to get to the next give way sign. Elsewhere, a lawnmower chugged its way into life, spluttering burnt fuel into the atmosphere as its owner took advantage of the temporary respite from the rain.

Inside, there was only silence as the two women stared at each other. Jessica was good at this game – she had played it enough times – but this was different because now she felt like the guilty one. Bex might have been thinner than she was, perhaps not as strong, as fast, or as experienced, but she was definitely better than Jessica at this.

Without a word, Bex stood, turned, and thundered her way out of the kitchen, up the stairs.

Jessica followed, halting at the bottom of the stairs: ‘Bex, wait . . .’

Thump, thump, thump, slam!

Bex ran down the stairs so quickly that she stumbled on the bottom one, only just righting herself before falling. She was wearing a pair of jeans but hadn’t done the button up and they were flapping loosely underneath the top she’d been wearing when she turned up on Jessica’s doorstep. She was clasping her rucksack, glaring daggers at Jessica as she turned it upside down and emptied everything onto the hallway floor.

Thick socks, fingerless gloves, three identical long-sleeved cotton tops, a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, a rolled-up fleece, half-a-dozen pairs of knickers, bras, more socks, two pairs of balled-up thick dark tights, a metal spoon, a bobble hat, a scarf, a toothbrush, a fork, a knife, a tin opener.

Into the side pockets: a small pair of scissors, a handful of rubber bands, a much stabbier knife that clanged off the wall as Bex threw it in Jessica’s general direction.

Jessica stood looking at the sharpness of the blade as Bex dropped the empty bag on the floor and began turning out her pockets, ignoring Jessica’s protestations that it wasn’t necessary.

A scrunched-up twenty-pound note, a ripped fiver, a handful of coins and a hair tie.

‘There!’ Bex shouted, fastening her trousers and straightening her coat. ‘That’s all I own. Most of it’s nicked. If you want to take it back to the shops then fine – but I didn’t take your stupid candlestick things.’

‘I’m sorry, I was just asking.’

Bex began bundling the items back into her bag, far more haphazardly than the way she’d described before. Jessica crouched and picked up the blade: one single piece of metal with a thick handle that slotted all too comfortably into her palm. The blade wasn’t particularly long but it was wide and ferociously sharp.

You don’t know who she is, Jess.

Bex held her hand out, wanting the weapon.

‘Why have you got this?’ Jessica asked.

Bex spat the reply. ‘Why do you think?’ When Jessica didn’t answer immediately, Bex snatched it away. ‘You think I go around robbing people with it?’

Jessica tried to say no but she’d seen too many reports of knifepoint robberies to think differently and she’d only just finished dealing with Bones. Bex saw the hesitation and then the anger in her eyes was replaced by tears. ‘That’s what you think of me?’

‘No, I . . .’

Bex finished cramming her belongings into her rucksack, stuffing the knife into its side pocket, and slinging the bag across her back. ‘Forget it. What do you think it’s like being a girl on the streets by yourself? Do you think you tell someone to piss off and they turn around and do it?’

‘I know it’s not like that!’

Bex pushed past Jessica with her shoulder and opened the front door but Jessica pushed against it, trying to force it closed again.

‘Please don’t go.’

If Jessica had been in any doubt about how Bex had managed to get away with picking people’s pockets, then the teenager showed her once and for all, slipping underneath her arms and gliding through the door in a single fluid movement before Jessica could lay a finger on her. In a flash, she was outside.

Jessica began to follow but Bex was already halfway along the path, reaching into her back pocket and pulling out the front-door key Jessica had given her. She stopped momentarily, throwing it as hard as she could in Jessica’s direction before running away from the house and along the street.

30

Adam arrived home in the early afternoon, reminding Jessica that he’d told her the previous evening he was on a half-day. He knew instantly there was something wrong but Jessica could barely get the words out. She could deal with criminals, threats, bodies, horrendous interviews with witnesses and most other things the job threw at her – but knowing her big mouth had sent Bex back onto the streets to fend for herself was too much to take.