Free Finding Jennifer Jones by Anne Cassidy Page A

You did that, Kate. Whatever set of mitigating circumstances your barrister offered, it was still you who took that girl’s life away. Nobody else.”
    “You don’t have to tell me that…” Kate said, blinking back tears.
    “So don’t ask me to apologise. Never ask me to apologise to you!” DI Heart said, her face pink, a slight quaver to her voice.
    DI Heart walked over to the door and held it open. Kate went past her and scurried along the corridor. She’d come this way before; she knew her way out. She heard someone from behind call the officer’s name and heard her stop and talk. Kate walked on and burst out of the exit door into the car park. She stood very still feeling the warmth of the early-evening air after the chill of the air conditioning inside the station.
    As she walked back to the bus terminal she cringed at the things DI Heart had said to her. No, she didn’t think of what Michelle Livingstone’s life would have been like. Not because she didn’t care. Not because she was trying to forget what had happened. She would never forget that day. She could not bear to picture Michelle at university, getting married, having babies, becoming a doctor or a teacher or even a policewoman. If she ever allowed herself to think of Michelle, it was as a ten-year-old girl. For Kate Michelle would always stay that age and as she grew older, as her life went on, she would forever turn a corner or glimpse a child crossing a road and see the ghost of the girl she killed. Eternally ten years old.
    The bus came and she got on it.
    Now she was feeling angry. Why did DI Heart think she could speak to her like that when she’d done nothing wrong !
    This is your life now! the policewoman had said.
    She’d been Kate Rickman for two years. She’d taken the identity they had given her and tried to live a decent life. But at any moment someone might find out who she was and then she would pack everything up, like she did before, move on, start again, somewhere else. When people realised who they’d been working with, living with, being with they would be shocked. She seemed so normal, they might say. Who’d have guessed? You don’t expect that kind of thing to happen here, in Exmouth.
    Kate thought suddenly of the detestable DC Simon Kelsey. What was to stop him dropping a hint to a journalist? Then she would wait day by day for a phone call from Julia Masters to tell her that her new identity had been exposed.
    She would start over again. They would choose somewhere new for her, inform her of her new name and give her yet another fictional background. All lies.
    She didn’t want that. She wanted to be in control of her own life – but she kept being told she’d given up that right. Was she always to be some kind of puppet, her strings pulled by the authorities? We’ve freed her , they might say. We’ve rehabilitated her. We’ve allowed her to resume her life! But all the while they controlled what she could do. Would she have ever paid enough?
    She got off the bus and strode along, her indignation propelling her along the street. She turned into her road and found that she was talking in a low voice, under her breath. She was upset. Now she was talking to herself? Was she going a little bit mad? She was already taking antidepressants. What else would she have to take to cope with this life of hers? Scrabbling about in her bag she pulled out her front door keys and opened the door.
    The house was quiet. She was alone. She sat on the bottom stair.
    What if she were to leave? Get on a train out of Exmouth. Buy a one-way ticket for somewhere of her own choosing? Decide on a new name for herself?
    That would finally be an identity that no one could take from her.

PART TWO

NORWICH

Twelve
    Jennifer Jones stood looking down at the dead girl on the ground.
    She was shaking uncontrollably. Through her tears she could see that her hands were filthy. She’d been scrabbling in the dirt searching around at the place where