Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy Page A

be patient. She and Rosie had the whole evening to talk.
    She walked into her bedroom, pulling her T-shirt off, intending to have a shower. Beside her bed, on the floor, was her carry-all bag, partly packed for the trip to Brighton to stay with Frankie. She’d pulled it out the previous weekend and chucked a couple of things into it but hadn’t got any further. Now it would be a rush, making sure that the clothes she wanted to take were washed and ironed. It didn’t matter. The main thing was that she was going. She sat on the bed and peeled her jeans off. Lying back, stretching her arms and legs, she thought of Frankie. He had rung her every day since he left. He missed her and loved her, he’d say and she’d felt mildly embarrassed at his words.
    How lucky she was. She had Rosie, Frankie, a place at uni. She had a bag to pack and a trip to Brighton to look forward to. She was even thinking of going to Majorca to stay in Kathy’s apartment. How normal was that? Her new life fitted her comfortably, like a favourite chair that she could curl up in.
    And yet the past was there. It always would be. You can’t change what happened , Patricia Coffey had said over and over. No matter how much you think of it or cry about it you can’t change a single second of it. The only thing you can change is the future.
    I don’t deserve a future, she had said. I can’t go on and live my life normally when I took someone else’s life away. How can I do that?
    You’ve got to. Otherwise two lives have been wasted. You have to go on now and make a good life for yourself, to make up for what you’ve done.
    Is this what she meant by a good life? Alice wondered. Is this enough? To go to work every day? To have friends? To become educated? For what, in the end? To become a wife, a mother? Would it be better if she went abroad and worked among the hungry and the desperate? If she could prevent others from suffering and dying, would that make up for what she did six years before on Berwick Waters? Would it then be a life for a life?
    Alice turned on her side pulling her knees up to her chest. Feeling her insides harden up, she closed her eyes and let the day come back into her head. In May it was, cold but sunny, and she had to keep shielding her eyes with her hand. The other two up ahead, chatting away to each other, their jumpers tied round their waists. Three of them out for a day’s adventure. On their way into the reservoir Michelle told Lucy to be careful of the cats. They hate people , she said, in her know-all voice. They blame people for flooding the land and drowning them. Don’t look straight at them because they might scratch your eyes out.
    Alice reached out and pulled the corner of the duvet towards her. She was too warm by far but it didn’t matter. She let the feral cat creep into her thoughts. The memory of it uncurled in her head. Its face was bony, its skin stretched across its skull. On that day it had appeared from nowhere and sat on the ground staring heavily at her. She’d backed away, startled by its glare. It had seen everything and hadn’t flinched. Just raised its paw and started to clean itself, ignoring everything else, not even glancing over at the girl’s body on the ground.
    She choked back a sob and pulled the duvet over her face. Three children who went out for an adventure. Only two came back. The knowledge of it would always drag her backwards in time. No matter how many years passed it would always be there, attached to her by some invisible thread. She tried to curl herself up into a ball, to cover herself completely with the stifling duvet. At times like this she wanted to disappear and no amount of hugs from Rosie or text messages from Frankie could change that.
    She should have died on that day. Perhaps, in a way, she had.
     
    Later, after a long cool shower, she put the ironing board up in the kitchen and started to sort out her clothes. She heard the front door open and waited for Rosie’s