Free The Bad Things by Mary-Jane Riley

library.
    ‘You know, I was quite happy, in my own world. I even had a boyfriend.’
    Alex must have looked startled. ‘Surprised you, haven’t I?’ she said. ‘And it wasn’t Martin Jessop, whatever the papers might have said.’
    ‘Who was it?’
    Jackie Wood looked out of the window. ‘I didn’t say anything about him then, and I’m not going to now.’

    ‘Come on, Jackie. It’s been fifteen years.’ Alex could scent a good story here. A different story. She didn’t think she’d read anything about her having a boyfriend before.
    She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter who he was. He wasn’t involved, wasn’t around when it was all happening.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘Certainly didn’t want to know when I was arrested.’
    Alex sensed she would not open up about this mysterious boyfriend. Yet. It was a case of gaining her trust and confidence, and to do that she really had to put any negative feelings aside. ‘And then?’ She tried the gentle probing, concerned face, furrowed brow.
    ‘And then I was alone.’
    Jackie Wood stubbed out one cigarette, but not before lighting another from its stub. ‘When the children disappeared it was a dreadful day.’
    A dreadful day. Alex shuddered inwardly and wanted to tell the woman how her sister’s life had been destroyed that afternoon. How she had waited, not knowing what to do with herself while Jez hunted for the children, dreading Sasha’s return. Then, after what seemed like days but was only hours, a police car picked her up and took her to Sasha’s house. Jez white-faced, holding Sasha’s hand saying over and over again: ‘they’ll be back soon, Sash, they’ll be back soon.’ Sasha crying. At first great screams that tore the air to shreds, then silent gulps, her face running with tears and snot and saliva. More police turning up, wanting a picture of the twins. Sasha scrabbling in her bag. Finding that picture taken on a sunny day in a clearing in the woods. They were having a picnic: Sasha, and her, Millie and Harry. Who took the picture? Must have been Jez. Then a policeman asking questions while a young woman police officer sat by, her notebook out, pen poised. She didn’t take one note as far as Alex could tell. Endless questions. Questions she couldn’t answer. Alex, not looking at Jez, keeping her arm around Sasha, comforting her, telling her it would all be all right. Their parents driving over from Mundburgh to stay. Then the endless searches, the false sightings, the weirdos who wanted a piece of the grief. How, as the days went on and there was no news, Sasha grew thinner and smaller. Insubstantial. When they found Harry it was a sort of tortured relief.

    Then they found the clothes in Jessop’s rubbish bin. More evidence in his flat. Evidence linking Martin Jessop and Jackie Wood. And the guilt that settled on her, suffocating her. So, yes, Alex wanted to tell her how her sister’s life had been destroyed that afternoon.
    ‘Why did you do it?’ Alex looked at her properly then, for the first time. She looked past the scar and noticed how her eyes were dull, her skin lifeless. She had lines around her eyes – not so much crow’s feet as bloody great emu feet – and there were smoker’s lines around her mouth. Her forefinger and middle finger were stained yellow and her nails bitten down to the quick.
    She took out another cigarette from the squashed packet. Lit it. Inhaled deeply. ‘I told you, I didn’t kill anybody.’
    ‘You gave him an alibi.’
    She smiled, the scar down the side of her face rippling. ‘He didn’t do it. Funnily enough, he was in the library that day, researching something or other, I can’t remember what now.’
    ‘Nobody else saw him.’
    She laughed. ‘For one thing, hardly anybody came in that day, and for another, he was tucked away in a corner behind one of the book stacks. Unless you went round there, you wouldn’t see him. Anyway, I’ve been over that a hundred times. I was only