Stone Cold Red Hot - [2]

“Yes. And I want to find her. Whatever went on, all those years ago, it had nothing to do with me. I was eight years old, I lost my sister. But I’m not a child anymore, I want to know where she is and how she’s getting on. I can remember feeling scared. I thought that maybe I’d done something to make her leave. And then I was cross, for a long time: she didn’t care about me, never even sent a note. After that I suppose I got used to the idea, forgot about it more or less. But this last couple of years I’ve been wondering about her, it’s become important. Not just because of mother but for me.” His eyes flicked up at me and away. “We don’t need to carry on as we have been. She’s all the family I have – once Mother’s gone.” He reddened as he concluded. There was no self-pity in his tone; instead I could hear determination, bravery too.

“OK. I need as many facts and figures, names and addresses as you can dredge up. Neighbours, friends, teachers, relatives, boyfriends. Get a photo as well-that’s very important. When I’ve got all that I’ll start by talking to her old friends, try and establish which university it was, try doing a document search there. They may have a record of where she went once she left. Sometimes an ad in the local paper is all it needs.”

He grinned, delighted at the prospect of hope.

“But then after twenty-three years, she may well have moved around… If you come back in, what…two days time with those details? For now I need her full name.”

“Jennifer Lesley Pickering.”

“Date of Birth?”

“Same day as mine; 4th March 1958.”

“You had the same birthday?”

“Yes. And after she’d gone it felt so weird. I’d be opening my presents and it was so obvious that she was missing but no-one referred to it.”

“She never sent a card?”

“No,” his shoulders slumped slightly.

That seemed cruel. Or had his parents intercepted mail?

“Had you been close?”

“Not really. It was such a big age gap. She played with me when I was little but then she was busy with school and friends and I suppose I had my own friends.”

“Tell me about her – what was she like?”

He sat back in the chair for the first time since he’d arrived. “I can’t remember a lot. She was lively noisy I suppose. I can remember her arguing with my father at the tea table, getting sent to her room, going on about what a mess the world was in, teenage stuff like that. She was full of energy That was why it felt so quiet when she’d gone. If she was in a good mood she’d let me sit in her room while she got ready to go out or if she was just messing about. She always had the radio on. Radio Caroline,” he smiled suddenly, “she told me it was a pirate station and I’d this image of Captain Pugwash and Long John Silver playing music. I couldn’t figure it out. She had friends round sometimes but she went out more, I think their places were probably more easygoing.”

“Friends from school?”

“Yes. Oh, and there was a big place, I can’t remember the name, I’ll check it for you, it was a banqueting place, they did conferences and dinner dances and weddings. Jennifer used to waitress, there was a whole crowd of them did it at the weekends.”

“What was she studying at university?”

“English, I think.”

That hardly narrowed it down.

“And she left home in the autumn?”

“This time of year,” he agreed, “For the new term, I suppose. I don’t know if it was September or October. I was back at school. I wanted to go see her off on the train but one day I got in from school and my mother said she’d left for university. I felt so disappointed. Mainly about the train,” he said ruefully.

“And it was sometime after that they told you she’d left the university?”

“Yes, I think I must have kept asking about her and that’s when they told me that and said she was a disgrace.”

“What do you think happened?”

He took a breath. Looked across at the large, blue abstract painting on my wall. “I think she got pregnant. I can’t think of anything else that would have made them cut her off like that.”

Oh, I don’t know – coming out as a lesbian maybe or moving in with a boyfriend might have had a similar effect on the narrow minded – we were talking nearly a quarter of a century ago. Pregnancy seemed a pretty good bet though, good as any at this stage.

He carried on. “My mother still has a bee in her bonnet about marriage. I’ve friends at work who aren’t married and have children and she thinks it’s appalling.”

“Is she very religious?”

“Yes. She doesn’t get to church anymore but she keeps in touch. Her father was a lay-preacher. Very puritanical. Their church was connected to the Methodists but they were much stricter. All about rules and the proper conduct of a respectable life. ‘The right and proper way’,” he quoted. “They had a hill-farm up in the Yorkshire Dales, I think most of the surrounding farms joined the church. Like a separate community in a way.”

“And your father?”

“That’s how they met. He’d been to university and studied accountancy. Then the war broke out and he joined up. He was an officer. He returned to one of the army camps up in Yorkshire and got involved with the church, met my mother there. After he left the army he set up as an accountant in Manchester and they got married. They established a congregation here, he became the leader. He was very conservative. He thought we should still have National Service, wanted to bring back hanging and preserve the Empire.” He laughed nervously. Speaking ill of the dead? “It wasn’t all stern lectures though. He loved to garden. We’d help him. It was the one time we all seemed to be happy together.”