Free Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy

found. Her secret was out. It gave her a cold, clammy feeling, even though it was a hot day and stuffy in the flat. Frankie came out of the bedroom and gave her a long-suffering look. He made his hand into the shape of a mobile and held it at his ear. Who is it? he mouthed at her.
    But she was listening to Jill and couldn’t focus on what he was asking.
    “Good news, Alice,” Jill was saying.
    Good news . This was a phrase that Alice hadn’t heard much.
    “We’ve managed a clever decoy trick with the press. I don’t suppose you remember Michael Forrester, a support worker at Monksgrove? Probably not as you hardly had anything to do with him. Anyway, Patricia Coffey had information that he’d been meeting with a reporter. Obviously her first thought was to dismiss him but after a chat with me we decided to try something. We produced some fake documents that indicated that Jennifer Jones had been placed abroad, in Holland, with an English family.”
    Holland?
    Frankie had come up behind her. He was standing close enough to listen. She turned and put her hand up to fend him off. I won’t be a minute , she mouthed, trying to catch what Jill was saying.
    “Sorry, Jill, I missed that,” she said.
    Frankie gave a dramatic sigh and turned his back walking out of the room. The door closed slowly, as if in slow motion, behind him.
    “The idea is that Jennifer has been placed with an English family in Holland for three years. She will go to university there and live a quiet and private life. Afterwards she may stay in Holland or choose to come back to live in Britain. Patricia Coffey has phrased the whole thing to look as though it was part of an international agreement. The European Resettlement of Offenders Strategy . It’s very convincing.”
    She walked to the room door, holding the mobile at her ear. Frankie had gone back in the bedroom. She could hear drawers being opened and closed. Holland, for three years. It certainly had a ring of truth to it.
    “So these papers were left around when Forrester was in the office. Patricia engineered some kind of emergency and left him on his own.”
    Jill Newton’s voice was buoyant.
    “Guess who rang a couple of days later? A national newspaper! They wanted confirmation that Jennifer Jones was living in Holland with an English family. Patricia denied it of course, but we expect them to publish in the next couple of days.”
    “Publish?” Alice said, her heart sinking. “It’s all going to be in the papers again?”
    Her voice had dropped to a whisper and she walked to the corner of the room, as far away from Frankie as she could get.
    “This is good news, Alice. This is the end. Once the papers accept that you’re out of the country they will stop hounding you. This detective will go away. You’ll be able to relax and live a normal life. When you start university in September no one on earth will know that you’re anyone other than Alice Tully. Believe me, this is the best possible news.”
    After several more optimistic statements Jill rang off. Alice was perplexed. It was all going to be in the newspapers. Every detail would be dragged up again. She could just imagine the headlines. Berwick Waters Murder. Jennifer Jones Escapes Justice! Jill Newton was sure it would be the end. Once the press thought that JJ was out of the country they’d stop looking. They’d forget about it.
    Alice plonked down on to the arm of a chair. Forget. It was such a simple word; as if part of the brain could just wipe itself clean, delete information so that it was no longer there. The silly small things of life forgotten; a birthday card, a book to take back to the library, a tube of toothpaste from the supermarket. But the big things of life. They were ingrained. They lived in the fibres of the brain, in the tissue and the blood. They would always be there, curled up, sleeping in the unconscious, until something prodded at them. Memories that flickered into life and filled her head with