The Shoplifting Mothers' Club (16 page)

‘Forget it. I want to keep that million, so let’s just set about snatching those diamonds.’ Chelsea was all business now. ‘The email says they arrive tomorrow night, so we’ll meet here at eight. The kids should be in bed by then.’

Jessica prayed Ronald was at home. If he wasn’t, she couldn’t very well take the children to Elise’s again. Understanding and compassionate to a fault, Elise had not been able to mask the exhaustion when Jessica had picked the kids up after Dad’s funeral, and she didn’t have the heart to ask for a favour again so soon. It was likely that the tired mum would make some excuse anyway; Jessica certainly would, in similar circumstances.

‘And wear black,’ Hailey added, looking at Jessica’s tired denim skirt and ratty jumper pointedly. ‘Black is a very forgiving colour.’

RONALD FINALLY RANG VISA and learned the horrible truth, so when Jessica got home with the kids, he was standing on the front porch, looking daggers. The signals of one who was extremely pissed off were all there – hands on hips; narrowing of the eyes; perfunctory glance without acknowledgement of his offspring. Sighing, she picked up the mail that the postman had dumped on the porch, and walked past him into the hall.

Shooing Rachel and Paul towards the kitchen to find the leftover biscuits from Saturday’s picnic, she waited for the tirade.

It took all of three seconds, and she wasn’t disappointed – the pitch of his voice exceeded expectations. Shrill, her mother had once said, when Ronald had yelled at Jessica for burning a Sunday roast. And shrill didn’t sound good on a man.

‘How dare you go behind my back and do this?’ He wasn’t wearing his suit, she noticed. Why not? It was a workday, and he always wore a suit. Practically lived in the two suits he’d bought from Marks years ago. Now, he was in a pricey grey pullover and chinos, items that Jessica couldn’t recall previously seeing in his wardrobe. Surely he hadn’t bought new clothes, not with things being so tight? Not when Rachel had worn another hole in her school shoes.

‘Did you hear me?’

Gaining some strength from the altercation with Ms Scott, Jessica pulled the elastic band off the pile of mail, and began flicking through it. The Visa bill had arrived. Not that it mattered now. As she perused the mail, her husband began breathing heavily, as if irritated but not knowing how to verbalise it correctly. Ronald was the type of man who demanded the complete attention of both parties during a conversation. Jessica knew it would drive him mad if she refused to meet his eyes, so she didn’t look up from the mail when she spoke again. ‘I took matters into my own hands. It’s her face and her life, Ronald. It’s worth a lot more than ten thousand pounds. Which, by the way, would be nothing but a month’s earnings, if you chose to take up some of the offers you get to work at big firms, for a decent salary.’

‘Oh, that’s your solution, is it? Sponge off me, and when it’s not enough, insist that I leave a job I love so that you can suck even more out of me?’

Charming. Sponge off him? Maybe a bill for all the cleaning, washing and cooking over the entire period they’d been married was in order?

She gave in and looked directly at him. ‘We are married, Ronald. They are your children. You should be providing for them willingly. It’s not sponging.’ In order to keep her temper in check, Jessica began sorting the mail again. Junk, junk, junk, ah. Something from Mum.
God, what now?
She tore open the letter as Ronald continued berating her.

‘I am bloody sick of your assumptions. I didn’t even want kids, but you insisted you would deal with it. What a lie that turned out to be.’

But Jessica wasn’t listening to him anymore. She was staring open-mouthed at the letter and its contents. ‘I have to ring my mother.’

Then she remembered the diamond heist. ‘By the way, you have to look after the children tomorrow night. Be home by seven thirty.’

‘What? I am not going to mind the kids while you traipse off to–‘

Choosing not to answer, Jessica simply turned and walked away. The sounds of her husband’s protestations lingered as she climbed the stairs to their bedroom, and she didn’t give them a second thought.

Leaving him to fume, Jessica quickly checked on the kids, who had noisily taken themselves to their rooms, then dialled the familiar number. ‘Mum, it’s me. What on earth is this?’

Her mother immediately knew what she meant. ‘A cheque dear, what does it look like?’

‘But you don’t have this sort of money to give away?’

‘I didn’t. We didn’t. Your father made you the beneficiary of his work pension lump sum. On his death, two-thirds was always supposed to go to you.’

‘It’s nearly one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Are you sure you don’t want it?’

‘No dear. I don’t. I have plenty of money now that I don’t need to consider a nursing home for your father. It’s company that I don’t have.’

Jessica didn’t know how to respond. She knew how awful it was to feel all alone. ‘Things will pick up, Mum. How about joining a few local groups or clubs?’

‘You sound like most of my neighbours. All of a sudden, everyone knows of a great social gathering where I can dance, knit or drink away my loss. It isn’t that simple, that’s what I tell them.’

Jessica brought her mother back to the subject of the money. ‘Seriously, you use it. Go on a cruise or something.’

‘I know you are having problems dear. When you said you were marrying a lawyer I didn’t imagine you’d find the only poverty-stricken one in the whole country. You need it, it’s yours. Take it.’

‘Mum, I–‘

‘Jessica, that money is the one good thing to have come out of this whole grim affair with your father. Trust me when I say that I need you to take it. Not want,
need
.’

There was no getting around it. ‘Fine, but do I have to bank the cheque straight away?’

‘Of course not, but don’t take too long. Finance companies are a law unto themselves. You might lose it if you don’t do it soon.’

After she’d hung up, Jessica lay on the bed and pondered her future. At least the Visa bill was sorted. Ironically, if she’d just waited a month or so before joining Chelsea’s band of thieves, she’d have avoided the whole stupid mess with Gerry Courtauld.

Not that she truly wanted to avoid him. Well, not entirely. The DCI was a decent person to know, as far as she could tell; even helping the homeless guy near the pub who stank so comprehensively that no one would go near him to donate to his cause. Gerry stopped and offered coffee and sandwiches and chatted with him as an equal.

You are a hopeless judge of character though. Look at Ronald.

Sighing, Jessica slipped the cheque into her dressing table drawer, and went back downstairs to clean the kitchen. Let Ronald rage about the bill. She decided to say nothing and just deal with it. Let him feel bad later for being such a bastard.

He’ll never feel bad.
At least not as bad as Jessica felt: trapped in a loveless, controlling marriage, with so sign of escape.

The thought of the cheque, cosseted upstairs under her makeup bag, reminded her that wasn’t true anymore. There were opportunities now. Not huge ones, but there were definite options. Perhaps she should think about taking them. Sure she’d agreed marriage vows and they had two kids, but didn’t she deserve better than she had. Looking around at the messy hallway, full of signs of a family life, Jessica told herself to buck up and be sensible. Running away and tearing apart a family – that wasn’t the way things worked, was it? It might be tough now, but things would get better. Every marriage had its ups and downs.

And the downs couldn’t last forever, could they? Even Ronald would want to be happy at some point, and then he would make the effort. Then it would all be okay.

Only then would she reveal the windfall from her father; once Ronald had proved himself to be a viable candidate for her to spend the rest of her life with. Just because he had the career didn’t mean she couldn’t have hopes and dreams too, did it?

Satisfied, she arrived to find the kitchen empty and her husband gone. Bastard! Trust Ronald to run out on a problem. Idly wondering where he’d gone so late in the day, she set about packing the dishwasher, and picturing the look on her husband’s face when that Visa balance was suddenly extinguished.

But the daydream was soon ended by the sound of Rachel screaming. When Jessica got upstairs, she found that someone had drawn a nasty face with blonde curly hair just like her daughter’s, on the cover of her Science book. The face had an evil grin, and was covered in huge, cross-hatched scars.

‘Do I look like that, Mummy? Do I?’

‘No, no baby. The doctor made you all better, remember. The tiny scars you have will go away forever soon. Remember, the nice doctor promised.’

As she held her daughter, Jessica began thinking of her options again. The longer this went on, the longer Rachel remained in danger of another ‘fall’. Ms Scott would have to get to the bottom of that picture in the morning, but until then, Jessica would mull over the problem of how to save her little girl from the bullies. There had to be an answer somewhere.

Sadly, it didn’t lie in the complete and utter betrayal of the BIBs. Tomorrow night, the plan would unfold, and four lives, and families, could possibly be torn apart.

Watching Rachel cry herself to sleep, patting her back to try and sooth her, Jessica decided that she didn’t care. That Sienna Jordan was probably behind the drawing, so the sooner her mother went to jail the better.

But watching a crying child, and anticipating the tears of another – no matter how much of a bully – didn’t sit well with Jessica, so instead, she tried to figure out how to save her hapless fellow ‘clubbers’ from Gerry Courtauld.

But without sacrificing herself, she couldn’t, for the life of her, work out how.

AS THEY STOOD THERE, at the back of the jewellers, looking incredibly suspicious in their all-black ensembles and concentrated expressions, a siren began wailing. It was coming closer.

‘Where is Chelsea? She should have parked the car by now?’ Rita’s and Hailey’s senses were obviously on overload, what with the approaching police car, and needed Chelsea’s bolshy reassurance that they weren’t in danger. But the head BIB had gone to stash the car somewhere safe – a task Jessica didn’t understand because the further they were from their car, the more likely it was they’d get caught.

Not that Jessica was planning to get caught. Gerry had told her he would text when the cops were due to make the bust, and she could slip away and escape capture. That’s why the siren didn’t concern her – it wasn’t part of the plan, and there was no text yet.

She’d met the rest of the Club members at Chelsea’s and they all rode down in her Range Rover. Ronald was looking after the kids, after Jessica told him he had no choice but to be home on time. It felt good, getting tough with him, and although he had blustered about having loads of work and how inconvenient it was that she was off enjoying herself on a school night, he was home before seven thirty, and Jessica had actually made it to Chelsea’s just after Frieda and before Hailey and Rita.

Jessica went straight up to the Norwegian and asked how she was feeling. Right after their last meeting, Frieda had called on Jessica and insisted that she was having a crisis of confidence. ‘I don’t need the money, and it is such a big risk.’ Knowing that one way or another, poor Frieda was going to be caught by Gerry and his subordinates if she didn’t give up her ‘job’ or ‘hobby’ or whatever she called it, Jessica told the Norwegian that perhaps it was time to give up stealing for, say, a job in John Lewis. But Frieda said that there was no thrill in working for money, and somehow, the conversation reassured her to such a degree that she thanked Jessica for bringing her back on track.

Now, however, Frieda looked scared shitless, and Jessica longed to tell her to run. If Chelsea, Hailey and Rita were caught, Jessica would find it difficult to feel too upset, but Frieda? Frieda was another matter.

‘That siren can’t be for us, we haven’t even done the job yet.’ Rita looked baffled.

Jessica was thinking exactly the same thing. But it gave her an idea. Now was the time to get them all out of here, before they were caught. She could tell Gerry that they got spooked by the sirens. It was a legitimate reason for running.

No exactly a wonderful plan, Jessica. Gerry will just throw you in jail instead.

She’d have to risk it. At least she had the money for an independent lawyer now.

‘I think I just saw a cop, they’ve busted us. Let’s get out of here,’ Jessica whispered, and giving Frieda, who couldn’t quite believe the abrupt ending to their many hours of planning and plotting, a shove towards the car park, they began to run. After a moment or two, Rita and Hailey followed.

Only Jessica saw Chelsea Jordan, strolling towards them swinging her car keys, and the round ‘O’ her mouth made as she saw them run, and clocked the approaching siren. She tried to wave at her, but Chelsea was on the phone and didn’t notice. Cool as a cucumber, that was how to describe Chelsea Jordan.

When they were safe in a small, dingy café that offered kebabs and fresh juice in a dusty, filth-encrusted environment, Rita spoke the words that they were all thinking.

‘Where the bloody hell did Chelsea go?’

Jessica didn’t answer because she was wondering how to answer the frantic texts of DCI Courtauld. They all basically said the same thing: ‘Where did you all go?’. Rita coughed an order for some coffee and led them into a booth at the back of the store.

Astonishingly, the Gods were once again smiling on Jessica, and the three women got the totally wrong end of the stick.