Free A Nice Place to Die by Jane Mcloughlin Page B

recognized the familiar pattern of their arguments and refused to resort to the usual personal abuse.
    â€˜You’re right,’ she said, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘That’s what it was like for me, and I’m afraid of you ending up the same way. No one would ever be jealous of me, would they? I’ll tell you one thing, if I could go back to when I was your age, I’d do everything different. I love you, Jess, I’m your mother, I want things to be better for you.’
    Donna wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but she wasn’t crying. She meant what she said too passionately for tears.
    Jess was staring at her as though she had never met her before. ‘What’s got into you?’ she said. ‘If you want things different from the way they were, that means you wish I’d never been born. Is that what you’re saying? Screw you, Mum. I’m not you. You go on about how you’re unhappy, well, tough tit, there’s nothing I can do about it, even if I cared. It’s all over for you and it’s time you knew it. I’m what counts, I’m young.’
    Donna looked at Jess’s angry contorted face. She remembered herself at Jess’s age, how she too had taken for granted that her mother existed only to do what she could to make her happy. Donna thought, it’s no good, she doesn’t know, she’s too young. She doesn’t understand. I can’t help her.
    Upstairs, the baby started to cry.
    â€˜That’s all we need,’ Jess said. ‘Bloody kid.’
    Donna forced herself to wait for Jess to do something.
    But Jess knew her mother would give in first. She pretended not to hear the baby.
    To avert Donna’s attention, she changed the subject. ‘About that old freak at the top of the road watching us all the time,’ she said, ‘you know she spies on us, don’t you? You’d better watch your step or she’ll report you to social services for child cruelty, saying things like that to me.’
    Donna stiffened. She gave Jess a hard look, trying to decide if the girl was winding her up or not.
    â€˜Do you think she does? Watch us all, I mean?’
    Jess said, ‘What else is there for her to do? Of course she spies on us. But who cares what someone like her thinks?’ The baby was still crying. ‘What’s that old woman going to do to us?’ she added. ‘We could get Kevin to give her a warning.’
    â€˜Do you think Kevin knows she spies on us?’ Donna said.
    She remembered how it had felt that day the young vicar was killed, turning into Forester Close and seeing Kevin and Nate and their friends kicking at what looked like a heap of clothes on the ground. For a moment she’d thought they’d got hold of a bag of cast-offs left out for the binmen and she’d been annoyed with the kids for making so much mess. But then she’d realized what they were doing and she remembered how it had flashed through her mind that she was scared of them. And she was their mother.
    She’d kept quiet about seeing what they did. She’d even warned Kevin that if any of his friends were involved, to tell them to lie low for a bit. She was careful to pretend she had no idea that he was involved.
    â€˜Do you?’ she asked Jess again.
    Jess was moving to the music on the iPod. ‘Do I what?’ she shouted.
    Donna reached over and turned off the iPod. ‘Do you think Kevin knows Alice Bates watches us?’
    â€˜Hey!’ Jess said, ‘so what if he does? What’s she going to do to him, for fuck’s sake?’
    Jess turned the iPod back on and began to sing along to the music to shut out her mother’s questions.
    â€˜It’s what he might do to her if he knew what she might’ve seen,’ Donna said, and as she said it, she was glad that Jess couldn’t possibly hear her.
    The girl was climbing the stairs, going at last to see to the