Stone Cold Red Hot - [34]

“Jenny would come over through the back, climb over the wall and come in our back door. We even had a code,” she laughed, “if I was going out I’d close my curtains so she’d know not to call.”

“She always came to yours?”

“Yes, her family were pretty old fashioned, it was easier at mine,” she shrugged. “That summer Jenny was working up at The Bounty and I was just messing about. I’d got a place at Manchester University. Jenny and Lisa went off to Knebworth, I don’t know why I didn’t go, short of cash I suppose. I went up to the Lakes with my family for a week. When I got back Jenny came over. She told me about the baby.” She looked at me to check my reaction, had I known? I nodded, it wasn’t news to me.

“Did she say whether she was going to keep it?”

She shook her head, her expression clouded. “We didn’t talk about it much. I was pretty anti-abortion then, Jenny knew that. We had a lot of visits from LIFE at my school, gory slide shows.” She sighed. “So, I told her places she could go, have the baby adopted, but she was very mixed up. After that we skirted round it, really. I was pretty blinkered back then. You know how teenagers can be, everything’s black and white, we all think we know it all. I think I’ve mellowed since then, I hope so. When I got to university I got involved in the Catholic Feminist Society.”

Something of a contradiction in terms I thought to myself.

“It was all very radical, certainly opened my eyes. We wanted to reform the position of women in the Church and challenge a lot of the dogma. I suppose my position changed but I never saw Jenny again.”

“Can you remember the last time you saw her?”

The baby wailed, a loud, harsh cry as though the world had suddenly ended. “Shush, shush, come here,” she turned him over, cradled his head and body in one arm while she lifted the corner of her top with the other and slipped him onto her breast. “You’d think he hadn’t had a feed for hours,” she commented. The baby was quiet immediately.

I had a flash memory of the sensation of breast-feeding, breasts tender and heavy with milk, the initial buzz almost painful as Maddie latched on, the relief as she sucked, the other nipple leaking in sympathy. I’d had my share of problems, two bouts of mastitis when it felt as though someone had poured hot concrete laced with acid into my breast but apart from that I’d loved it.

“I couldn’t tell you what day it was, or anything, but I remember it because Jenny got upset and I wasn’t sure if I’d said something, you know, something stupid…”

“Go on,” I encouraged her.

“We’d been in my room, it was early evening but it was still hot. My room was stifling and we decided to go out in the garden. I got a rug and the radio, pop, that sort of thing.” She stroked the baby’s legs and squeezed his feet all the time she was talking. “Jenny was a bit low really, most of the time she was so sparky, tons of energy but she was on edge. I probably did most of the talking. It got late and she was all ready to go. She climbed up the wall and then she came back. I thought she’d forgotten something but she pushed past me and went off down the side. I ran after her, asked what was wrong, she rounded on me, told me to leave her alone, said I’d no idea – something like that. She was crying. I felt awful.” She chewed at her lip. “I tried ringing later but the phone was engaged.”

“What do you think upset her?”

“I don’t know, something I’d said, maybe me prattling on when she was so worried? There was I lounging around not a care in the world, and she’s pregnant and confused. Plus she can’t even confide in me because she knows how I feel about abortion. Or maybe it was the thought of going home, maybe she just couldn’t face them.”

“Had she told her parents she was pregnant?”

“No, I don’t think so. Lisa said that Jenny wanted to decide what she was going to do before she said anything. So she’d stormed off and I phoned the next day, it was Caroline’s birthday do, we were going to go into town together, but there was no answer. I felt awful. I thought Jenny had not come because she was cross with me. I got horribly drunk. I did try to ring a couple of times after that then when I finally did get through her mother said she’d gone to Keele. I couldn’t believe it. I rang Lisa and she told me it was true.”

“Why was it hard to believe?”

“She never said goodbye – not even to Lisa. And she never took her mascot, it was still on her windowsill – that’s why I thought she was still at home. We all had them, little troll things, peculiar really. We took them into exams for good luck. Jenny had kitted hers out in this glam rock outfit and drawn make up on it.”

I felt an unpleasant undertow of apprehension. It didn’t add up. Jennifer had been a gregarious teenager with a circle of close friends. She’d left without so much as a goodbye. Without her lucky mascot. None of them had ever heard from her. She hadn’t even sent her little brother a birthday card on the day they shared. Had she run away? Had something happened to her that meant she couldn’t keep in touch with her friends?