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When I come into our room after dinner, she’s waiting with her exercise book, twirling her pen in her hair. ‘If only my teachers could see me now,’ she says. ‘Well done, Deandra! A star, star, star!’
She’s also studying law through the Open University, so she can translate for lawyers and figure out how to screw her husband once and for all. I don’t know all the details, but I would characterise him as a giant walking penis.
‘What?’ she says, raising her eyebrows, taking in my wide grin.
‘I’m going to have a visitor,’ I say.
‘What? When? Who?’ She puts down her pen.
I shrug. ‘That’s all I know.’ My smile fades a little. ‘I suppose I should say I might have a visitor. Maybe.’
The guard told me that someone had enquired about how exactly one went about visiting this particular prison.
Who could it be? I hadn’t had a single name to put on my approved visitors list.
I wish I could say that I wanted it to be someone from my dark past, someone who could help bring me the closure I’d been searching for the day I took that rainy drive back to Port Emblyn. But not all of them are exactly accessible these days, hence my present abode, and, honestly, I don’t care about that any more.
All I want is Neil. I want his heavy arms and rough beard and the smell of his sandalwood shower gel.
The morning of the day Jenna went missing, I woke up in his bed. He was showering. Next to me he’d left a cup of tea.
I sat up and pulled the white duvet around my shoulders. Below the hiss of the water he was humming, of all things, ‘Mysterious Girl’ by Peter Andre. I sipped my tea and laughed to myself, breathing in the scent of him and me.
I had told him everything. Almost.
I had told him about my mother and father’s bizarre relationship. About what the Beaufort-Bradleys did to me, and how they had been responsible for the death of my mother. About the estrangement between me and my father. How I had been living. How at forty-six, this was my first real relationship.
I had even told him that I had come back to Port Emblyn with half-formed thoughts of revenge. I had told him that the moment I saw Jenna, I’d suspected she was struggling, and now I knew her, I was worried.
And he was still here and I was still here and the world still stood around me.
My omissions were small and necessary.
‘I know you’re only doing it because you care,’ he’d said. ‘But do you think maybe you should take a step back from Jenna? For your own mental health? We have a good safeguarding lead here.’
I looked into his dark eyes and knew he was right. I should have just told him about the bullying and walked away. He didn’t know it, but he was offering me a new life.
If only I had seized it. That was my moment; my one chance.
But that was the morning I saw Frances clock me at the school gates, and Jenna walked towards me with a face like thunder.
She had cut her hair. Just as I had once after a particularly dog shit day. I had told Jenna about it. I had said it made me feel like I was taking back control. When really it had made me feel like an idiot.
She was copying me. With her hair she was telling me she felt seen by me, that she felt what I felt: we were kindred spirits – echoes in a time warp salon mirror.
I had tried to beam strength into her with my smile and she had followed me to my classroom.
I waited and waited, but she said nothing.
‘Jenna?’
She shook her head.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I said.
She rubbed her face.
‘Only, it seems as though perhaps you’d like to?’
