‘You gonna be a superhero then?’
‘Hardly. Just keeping fit and learning to defend myself,’ I said primly. ‘You never know who might be round the next corner.’
I didn’t tell her I’d also signed up to a ‘self-assertion’ course – to learn to speak my mind in the correct way.
It had taken me a long time to learn I had the right to speak. It was something that Scarlett would have to learn too.
It had taken me a lifetime to know it was all right to assert my needs.
* * *
Before Frankie returns to France to continue his job for a short while, we go to Brighton for a night.
I want to see the sea; he wants to visit his best mates.
After I drop Frank by the Pier, I drive past Seaborne on the way to Lewes for a drink with some old colleagues.
And I think I see Otto, in his green parka, cycling along the Downs.
My heart is in my mouth – but I don’t stop.
I always think I see Otto. Maybe it’s because I want to see him so much. He has such a pure soul, that boy – despite his dreadful parents and too much skunk. He needed a friend, and in the end that wasn’t me. I was his teacher, not a lover, not a mother, and I told him so. I sent him on his way – as you can see in the photograph. I’m sending him on his way.
Ah. You want to know what really happened, when the camera wasn’t on?
It was a mistake that could have happened, but I didn’t let it. And it was no one’s business – no one’s apart from Otto’s and mine.
We understood each other. He needed sanctuary; I took him in one night. He slept on the sofa. Two lonely souls.
He was so lost. But I didn’t see him like the papers said. I saw him like another child. Another lost boy.
I saw something in him I recognised. Because Marlena and I, we were the proverbial lost girls ourselves.
I saw myself.
Sixty-Six
Marlena
I’m striding down Chalk Farm Road, away from Camden, late (as usual), on my way to a gig, when my phone rings.
It’s DI Stevens.
‘Marlena? I hate to tell you – but forensics have confirmed it is Nasreen’s body that was found.’ He’s matter of fact. ‘I’m sorry.’
I take a deep breath.
‘The good news is we’ve arrested Lenny Jones.’
I bloody knew it. I knew it when they found the decomposing body of a young woman buried out in an Essex wood a few weeks ago. It’s been a long, hot summer and – it wasn’t good. They were going to have to run extensive tests – but the odds were high it was Nasreen.
‘His DNA’s all over her T-shirt – along with her own blood,’ the DI goes on. ‘It’s a no-brainer.’
I knew when there was no trace of her anywhere in Turkey or Syria that something wasn’t right, that that boy Lenny had made that ISIS bullshit up. Such a convenient way to cover his dirty tracks, sending everyone in the wrong direction. Rather imaginative for a youth like him.
But I’m not glad to have been right this time. Poor, sweet girl. Poor family. I feel gutted for them.
‘You can have the scoop, if you like,’ the copper’s saying. ‘We’ve ordered a media blackout for tonight. I don’t reckon we’d have got him if you hadn’t been so bloody annoying.’
‘Persistent,’ I correct tartly. ‘That’s the word I think you’re looking for.’
On the other side of the road, I see Levi standing outside the Roundhouse.
When he sees me he starts waving madly. I wave back.
‘Hurry up,’ he’s mouthing over Camden’s traffic.
‘Okay,’ I say to DI Stevens. ‘Yes, please. But can I come down in a couple of hours? I’ve got somewhere I need to be right now.’
I hang up, and I hurry across the road to meet my boyfriend. The word nearly chokes me – and I think I mentioned before he has a really dodgy QPR tattoo that I’m not very happy about – but I hurry over with a spring in my step.
I never thought I’d write these words – and I feel a bit embarrassed – but I rush into his arms.
And actually, it feels all right.
Sixty-Seven
Jeanie
3 September 2015
Jon Hunter’s on his way back from Tanzania, so I’m renting somewhere of my own, slightly further out of town: a sweet little place called Pear Tree Cottage. It’s very like Jon’s home. Red bricked this time, a little crooked, on the top of a dale. Well it is the Peak District after all.
It’s got an open fireplace and sage-green window frames. The doorways are low, and the floorboards are a bit creaky – but it’s too small to be scary, unlike Malum House.
Jon’s emailed me a lot recently; we’ve chatted back and forth. He says he’s looking forward to seeing me; he’s got so much to tell me about the kids in the orphanage.