Looking for JJ Read Free

he’d whispered hoarsely but she had shaken her head and pushed him off. He’d been good-natured about it but underneath she sensed a growing impatience.
    Would there be a day when he got fed up with her? Alice thought about this as she cleared the tables in the smokers’ area. Some of the daily newspapers provided by the coffee shop had been opened up and left on various tables. She tidied them up, catching the eye of the man in the leather jacket as she did it. He held his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and nodded pleasantly at her. When he finally left, Jules cleared his table and came walking back to the counter with a piece of paper flapping in her hand.
    “That fat bloke with the ponytail? He must have left this behind. Keep it behind the counter. He might come back.”
    Alice took it. It was covered in scraps of writing and some doodles.
    “It was on the opposite chair. Most probably it slid off the table. Look, there’s a couple of phone numbers on it. He might miss them.”
    But Alice wasn’t looking at the phone numbers. At the top there were three names written out and several lines drawn under each of them.
     
    Jennifer Jones
    Michelle Livingstone
    Lucy Bussell
     
    Alice folded the paper in half and half again. From behind she could hear Pip and Jules talking, but she had no idea what their conversation was about. She folded the sheet over and over until it was a tiny fat rectangle, the size of a biscuit. Then she shoved it in her pocket and took her apron off.
    “I’ll have my break now,” she said.
    Jules and Pip were unloading the trays of lunchtime baguettes and packed sandwiches and hardly gave her a look. She walked out of the coffee shop, along the high street and turned off into the road that led to Rosie’s flat. It was only five minutes away but she quickened her step, wanting to get there, to be on her own before something inside her exploded.
    In the street there was a small white van parked in front of the house. The back doors of the van were wide open and so was the front door of the downstairs flat. Alice stopped for a second. A couple of bags and a suitcase were in the hallway and she could hear the inside doors opening and closing. Someone new was moving in downstairs. She got her key out and quickly opened Rosie’s door, walked inside and shut it tightly behind her. She did not want to meet the new neighbour. She had no time for small talk now. She leaned back on to the door. She was only small and she didn’t weigh a lot, but for a few moments she pushed against the heavy wood with all the willpower she could muster. As if that was good enough to keep someone out.
    Then she ran up the stairs into the kitchen. With trembling fingers, she got out the piece of paper and flattened it on to the table. The three names stared back at her . Jennifer Jones, Michelle Livingstone, Lucy Bussell. Three children who had gone up to Berwick Waters on a spring day six years before. Names that had been plastered over the newspapers for many months. Only one name had remained famous. JJ. Jennifer Jones.
    Why had the man in the leather jacket written them out? What was it to him?
    She rang Rosie. Her fingers rigid, she jabbed at the telephone and asked to speak to Rose Sutherland, and said it was urgent. Rosie’s voice, when it came, was slow and steady. She listened to Alice’s stuttering explanation and didn’t rush to speak. When she did speak her words were considered. She tried to calm Alice down. It was nothing, just somebody’s scribbles. Possibly he was a writer or a journalist. So what? There was nothing for him to find out. This was something she had to be prepared for, would always have to be prepared for. Now that the media knew that JJ had been released there would always be people willing to try and find her. Alice nodded. She had had this conversation many times with Rosie. She knew that Rosie was right.
    Replacing the telephone receiver, she seemed to pull herself