My dearest Adam,
I think about you every day, every hour of every day. I have so little of you and want so much. I dream of the time when we can be together twenty-four hours of every day, when I don’t have to share you. Thank you so much for the diamond earrings for our fifth anniversary. They look beautiful on me. Adam, it’s such a shame that you cannot come with me to see The Marriage of Figaro, even though we planned it so very long ago. I offered your ticket to Rachel, though I am not sure she is a great opera fan. I shall think about you during the performance.
Your ever loving
M
(Surrey Police evidence docket XK4567/19 – letter dated September 2006)
Ian Ferguson was in the remand wing at Strangeways, a place full of the fidgety and anxious, constant new faces, short tempers and suicide attempts. His trial on a single count of wounding with a knife was due in a month, and he thought about little else. But the arrival of big Terry Bonner as his cellmate changed all that. Bonner, on remand for murder, GBH and various drug charges, took over the cell from the first minute. ‘These are the rules,’ Bonner said, standing over his cellmate. ‘You’ll now have the bottom bunk, I’ve got the top. Give me your pillow, because I need two. No using the toilet while I’m here, understand? Don’t speak unless spoken to, and anything you see or hear stays up there,’ he said, tapping Fergie’s temple. ‘Do what you’re told, and you’ll survive with both balls.’
With the man’s reputation, already being whispered from cell to cell before his arrival, Fergie was not going to quibble. In the following days, Fergie felt like an unwelcome guest in his own home. The cell became a royal court, where other prisoners came to pay homage to the gangster, and to offer tribute in the form of drugs or phones. One particular female screw was a regular visitor. Young and seemingly inexperienced, she was always nervous, as well she might be. Ferguson knew not to hang around while Bonner entertained. He assumed this was how Bonner got no less than three mobile phones, which he had been seen playing with on his bunk. The phones were farmed out to accomplices to store in their cells and returned when Bonner needed to use them. Curiously enough, the cell was never raided during the time Fergie shared with him. Bonner seemed to have it all sorted, except for one thing – a woman on the Out, the outside, who had something he wanted and couldn’t be found. Fergie overheard one phone call.
‘Where is she? You’ve had weeks. I don’t care how difficult it is, I want a fucking result. Get it back, understand? I chose you, mate, because we ain’t known associates. It’s your big chance. But if you let me down you know what will happen. Yeah, think on.’
Let back inside the cell after the call had finished, Fergie avoided eye contact with the big man, but it didn’t stop him demanding: ‘What the fuck’s up with you?’ After Fergie spent the next ten minutes apologising for whatever it was he’d done, he slid quietly onto his bunk, aware of the huge muscular calves of Bonner dangling over the side from above. The big man cursed silently to himself as he tapped away on the phone, presumably giving orders to various contacts on the Out. There was just one final comment that Bonner made out loud as he finished up on the phone.
‘You can run, bitch, but I’ll track you down. And I’ll burn your face right off. No one thieves from Big Tel and lives.’
It was Saturday morning two weeks before Christmas. Julia and Destiny were in Guildford town centre together on a charity shop clothing expedition, but with a first stop to pick up a reconditioned smartphone for Destiny, whose old one had virtually died. Things had changed. Julia was letting Destiny stay in her flat overnight and when she was around, but wouldn’t let her have the keys. Julia kicked her out in the morning when she went to work. The shed had been kitted out with a chair, a battery-powered light, a new sleeping bag and some pillows. Destiny could go there any time.
Destiny was still very nervous about being out in public, even though Julia thought she was well disguised. She was swaddled in a big white winter coat Julia had lent her and had the faux fur-lined hood up over a blue woolly hat. She had ditched her old trainers and was wearing some high heel boots they had found for three pounds in the British Heart Foundation shop. The boots had a paint stain down the back, but Julia reckoned a little white spirit would restore them. A second-hand pair of jeans, a zipped suede skirt, and child-size rugby shirt cost less than a tenner in total. New purchases, for less than twenty pounds in total, included a complete set of new underwear from Peacocks, along with a pair of pyjamas and some thick colourful socks.
When Julia picked up a pleated skirt at Age UK and held it to the light, Destiny said: ‘I’m not wearing that.’
‘It’s for me, what do you think?’ Julia held it against herself and sidled up to a mirror.
‘S’all right, I spose. Why don’t you buy new stuff?’
‘I can’t afford it, Dezzy.’
‘What do you mean? You’re a rich lawyer, aintcha?’
‘You might be surprised how little I earn. I did a trip up to Woolwich Crown Court a couple of weeks ago, for which I worked out I was paid forty-seven pence an hour, after expenses.’
‘Huh? That’s shit pay.’
‘The basic rate for a plea and mitigation is okay, but takes no account of overheads. It took me over four hours to get there and back, and I had to deduct my train fare.’
‘You should work in Tesco’s. The pay is better, and you can nick loads of stuff.’
Julia gave her a withering glance. ‘I went into this to uphold the law.’
‘I’d never bother to steal any of this crap,’ Destiny muttered, flicking through a rail of jumpers and cardigans. ‘When I was on drugs, me and Caz went up to London and did perfume. She did the distract, and I grabbed the stuff.’
‘Were you caught?’
‘A few times.’ She chuckled. ‘But generally it ain’t hard, most of the security guards can’t even run, big fat blokes about as nimble as a three-legged sideboard. By the time they caught me, I’d usually passed the gear to me butter—’
‘What’s that?’ Julia had heard a lot of street slang but this was a new one on her.
‘Butter wouldn’t melt. We always go in with someone who kept a big open bag that we could drop stuff in on the sly, as soon as possible after we filched it. You never talk to your butter, never look at them, but you have to know where they are. Caz’s gran was the best one we ever had. Nice little old lady, with a massive zip-up bag.’
Dear God, Julia thought. This is the girl I have invited to live in my house. ‘If you’re staying with me you have to go straight. I mean it.’
She shrugged and continued to flick through the rail. ‘Will you buy me lunch?’
‘Destiny, for goodness’ sake…’
‘It’s Dezzy. And you’re not me mum, okay?’
‘I’m not your bank either.’
After a long grumbling conversation that lasted for the next two shops, Julia gave in and took Dezzy to a cafe.
‘Can’t we go to Caffè Nero?’ Destiny said, looking at the slightly tired interior of The Coffee Pot.
‘No. The coffee here is just as good, and comes in a proper mug. None of that plastic that gets washed into the sea and ends up inside baby turtles.’
Destiny rolled her eyes. ‘Bloody hell, got a right one here.’
‘Don’t you care about the planet?’
‘I can’t get much beyond caring about me. Seeing as I’m gonna get murdered any time.’
‘If that’s really true, we have to go to the police.’
‘Forget it.’
‘Come on, Dezzy,’ Julia hissed. ‘Who’s going to protect you? I can’t.’
‘Can’t you? You don’t know what you can do, until you try.’
That evening, Rachel responded to Julia’s heartfelt plea and came over with Jack. Destiny seemed to be on her best behaviour and enjoyed playing with the three-year-old.
‘Where’s your teeth?’ the boy asked Destiny.
‘I lent them to a friend.’
The comment produced gales of laughter in the boy. ‘Did the tooth fairy pay you?’
‘Yes, she did,’ Julia shouted from the kitchen, where she and Rachel were deep in conversation.
Rachel looked out at the girl. ‘Honestly, she seems much nicer than I expected,’ she said, leaning in close to Julia’s ear.
The girl must have overheard, because she hugged the boy to her and said: ‘Haven’t killed anyone yet have I, Jack? No I haven’t.’ She continued in a singsong voice, swinging the child around. ‘I’ve been so good, haven’t I, Jack?’
Julia and Rachel exchanged an alarmed glance. ‘Perhaps leave him to calm down, Destiny?’ Rachel called. ‘You’ll make him sick.’
‘It’s Dezzy,’ she said, pressing her mouth against the boy’s cheek and blowing a loud raspberry, which sent the child into paroxysms of laughter.
They had eaten a large supermarket-bought tea, including cake and chocolate biscuits, and there was a thick rime of chocolate around the boy’s mouth. Julia could see that Jack was getting overexcited.
Rachel said: ‘Okay, everybody, I think we have to go now, because Jack’s daddy is coming to see us later on.’
‘Daddy!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘I want to see Daddy.’
Rachel and Julia rolled their eyes. Jack’s father Neil rated himself a hands-on dad, but since the divorce he had only sent money sporadically, despite promises. Last year he’d even forgotten Jack’s birthday until Rachel reminded him the day before. Certainly the ties between father and son seemed to be inexorably slipping.
Julia watched her friend. Habitually with one eye on Jack, Rachel was much harder to reach than she had been before his birth. Julia knew that her friend cared deeply about her, but calls that once would have been returned within half an hour now often took several days to be acknowledged, and thank yous for gifts that Julia had sent Jack only came by text, if at all. Rachel was stretched more and more, and Julia sometimes felt a little left out. ‘Rachel, I think I am going to try to get out of V&I—’
Rachel’s attention was elsewhere. ‘Dezzy, can you put him down please, and don’t do that.’
Julia watched as Rachel scooped up her child and turned away from Destiny. Jack was laughing and holding out one arm to the girl. ‘My chocolate.’
Julia saw the furious look on Rachel’s face, and mouthed to her the words: ‘What’s the matter?’
Her friend closed the kitchen door. ‘Did you hear all those slurping noises? She licked all the chocolate off his face.’
‘Oh dear,’ Julia said. ‘That’s a bit icky.’
‘God, I hope she hasn’t got anything. You know, infectious.’ Rachel said. She then made her way out of the kitchen and permitted Jack a quick kiss from Destiny as she hurried off to the front door. The high-pitched cacophony of gabbled goodbyes, all addressed to Jack, didn’t hide the tension in the atmosphere. While Julia and Destiny stood side by side waving them off, the departure of the vehicle left a dark silence behind.
‘She doesn’t like me,’ Destiny declared.
‘She does. But mums are a bit possessive, you know how it is.’
‘I’d love a kid like Jack,’ she said softly. ‘Always wanted one.’
This was the first crack Julia had noticed in Destiny’s emotional armour. Julia risked resting a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time for you.’
The young woman stiffened at the contact. She turned to Julia and said: ‘You can’t have ’em, can you?’ Her dark eyes were a little softer than usual. Sympathy. Somehow it got to her. Julia’s throat was thick with emotion, and she felt her face flush. ‘I’m a little old now,’ she said finally. It was half the truth. But the whole truth she had not shared with anyone but Rachel. No one knew the despair she had been through, least of all the man who had caused it.
Himself.
Julia turned away. When she next looked up Destiny was wearing the borrowed coat. It looked good on her, as did the smudge of eyeshadow and mascara she had put on earlier. ‘I’m just going out for a bit,’ she said.
‘Will you be long?’ Julia caught herself sliding into a fussy maternal role and expected Destiny would pick up on it.
‘Nah. Back soon.’ Maybe she had already got used to Julia’s fussing.
It wasn’t late. Only seven o’clock. As soon as the girl had gone, Julia started on the clearing up. In the time that Destiny had been staying with her, she hadn’t lifted a finger to help. She left wet towels on the floor, dirty clothing on the bed and plates exactly where she finished with them. There were few discernible signs of gratitude for anything Julia had done. This, particularly, made Julia seethe, but it seemed as pointless as getting cross with a cat for being a cat. Destiny was a product of the upbringing she had endured.
Julia caught herself wondering whether Destiny would now disappear for days like she had done previously, and she realised the concern she felt about that was partly for herself. Being alone. She realised she didn’t even have the number of Destiny’s new phone and made a mental note to ask her. In any case, the girl had to go, and soon. There needed to be a clear plan, and an objective.
The girl was back in fifteen minutes, sporting a litre bottle of Grey Goose vodka.
‘Time for a bit of a celebration,’ she said.
‘Where did you get the money for that?’ Julia asked.
‘Keep your hair on. I always keep a bit by for emergencies.’ Destiny made her way into the kitchen, unscrewed the top and poured a generous glug into two tumblers. ‘There you go, get that down you.’
‘You didn’t steal it did you? I told you. Any theft, and you’ll have to leave.’
The girl’s face tightened. ‘I bought it you as a present, but I shouldn’t have bothered, should I? Ungrateful bitch.’
Ungrateful? Me! Julia’s jaw hung open at the sheer brass neck of the girl. Destiny swigged down half her drink in one go.
‘Would you like some orange juice to go in it?’ Julia asked.
‘No. It ain’t one of the essential food groups.’
‘Yes, it is! You need vitamin C, vegetables, fruit.’
Destiny sat on the kitchen barstool, leaned back and chuckled. ‘You don’t half make me laugh.’ She took another swig. ‘The essential food groups are chips, saveloys, cider, ketchup and pork scratchings. Everyone knows that.’ She belched loudly.
‘You’ll have lost all your teeth by the time you’re sixty,’ Julia said. ‘Fruit and vegetables protect you against cancer.’
‘Who cares? I’ll be happy to get to me twenty-first.’ She took another glug. ‘Look. Do you think a greenfly cares about climate change?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I mean even if a greenfly had the brains of Einstein, he wouldn’t give a monkey’s about any of those things, would he? He wouldn’t live long enough.’ She leaned forward on her elbows. ‘I mean, does it bother you that in millions of years the earth will be swallowed by the sun? All them whales, fucking dolphins, koala bears and stuff. All barbecued. So why bother to save them now?’
‘That’s a very grim philosophy.’
‘Not really. Aren’t you lot going to demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament, get them to do something about it? Move the earth a bit further away or something?’
‘Destiny, I mean Dezzy, things don’t have to be as bad as you say. If you want children you have to believe in a good future, for them to live happily and enjoy.’
‘So why didn’t you have a child?’
Julia took a deep breath. ‘I was pregnant once. I was with a man I adored, my first love really. We had been seeing each other for nearly fifteen years, but things were very complicated.’
‘Married, was he?’
Julia was astounded that Destiny had such a finely tuned emotional radar. Offered the vodka, Julia slid her own glass across. ‘I shouldn’t, really,’ she said watching Destiny filled the glass halfway to the brim. ‘Whoa, that’s plenty.’ Julia sipped the vodka, then went to the fridge for some orange juice. ‘Yes, Dezzy, he was married, he is married, will always be married. For years he kept me on the hook, telling me that once a certain thing happened, he would leave his wife. First he wanted to get his son finished at junior school, then it was getting him past his GCSEs, then A-levels. Whatever it was, there was always some reason why he couldn’t break up his marriage quite yet.’
‘You’re a mug.’ Destiny offered her glass in acknowledgement. ‘To idiots and mugs the world over.’ They clinked.
Julia shook her head in regret. ‘Yes, I was a fool to believe him. But the time we had together was so precious, because it was so constrained. I didn’t realise at the time that seeing each other only once a week for a one or two hours made it so much more exciting. All the anticipation ahead of the big night, and then the longing and missing him afterwards.’
‘What happened to the baby?’
‘I was stupid. It was a few months before his son did his A-levels, and I told him. He said all the right words, made all the congratulations, but I could tell he was terrified. He felt cornered, because I’d used the big lever. Then he said: “Look, honestly Julia, now is not the greatest time. I can’t leave her now. Her mother has just died, and her father has Alzheimer’s. I need just a few more months. He’ll go into a home. If I tell her I have a baby by another woman, she might commit suicide. She’s threatened it before, and this time I think she really might do it.”’
‘So you got rid of your precious baby?’
‘I agonised about it for weeks, almost leaving it too late. Rachel, who never liked Himself, said I should have had the baby regardless. But what was I going to do if he didn’t give me any money? I was in my barrister training, and I was relying on him lending me some more money to finish it. He told me that if I blackmailed him about it, he would finish with me.’
‘Typical male bastard. I’d know what to do to him.’
‘I thought about it, believe me. Why should I get rid of my poor innocent unborn child, in order to save the embarrassment of a conniving manipulative married man?’
‘That’s it, you said it right.’ Destiny took another slug of vodka. ‘But you didn’t do it right, did you?’
Julia shook her head. The alcohol was really taking hold now. ‘I did the wrong thing. And it was my bad luck that I got pelvic inflammatory disease after the procedure and had to have a partial hysterectomy.’
‘Sounds shite, whatever it is.’
‘Well, it means I can’t have children at all now.’
‘Disaster.’
‘I should have had the baby, but I so much wanted to believe Adam. I couldn’t believe that having sunk fifteen years of my life into our relationship, he could treat me like that.’ She could feel tears pricking her eyes, but had enough sobriety left to realise she really didn’t want to be crying in front of this girl, this near stranger.
Destiny nodded sagely. ‘It’s like one of these frauds.’
‘What?’
‘You know, you get emails from these people saying they’ve got money they want to deposit in Britain. Lots of money, millions, and they seem stupid and bewildered. They’re in Nigeria or the Philippines or somewhere like that. My foster mum fell for it. You think to yourself you could do with some of that, seems easy money. But to get it, you have to wire some money, so they can afford the bank draft. It’s not much to start with, but there’s always more. Solicitors’ fees, all that shit. It’s psychology. You get so mesmerised by the imaginary sum at the end that you keep shovelling ever larger amounts of cash to them. And they sweet talk you all the time, keep going on about the golden hoard of cash at the end of it. They become your friends, and you don’t even realise how much you’ve been ripped off.’ She took a swig of her drink.
‘That’s advance fee fraud,’ Julia said. ‘I prosecuted a case last year.’
Destiny nodded. ‘Your bloke, exactly the same. Held out the dream of spending your life with him, and you fell for it. First you went out with him, then you let him shag you. Then let him do you every week, whenever he felt like it. Changed your life to fit round his schedule.’
Julia nodded. ‘Yeah, I never got cross when he didn’t show up. Never had a headache when he felt like sex.’
‘That’s right. All the time, you were making sacrifices and he was withholding the final reward. Because there never was any final reward. He never had any intention of leaving his wife. It was always a scam.’
Julia was feeling woozy, but not so woozy that she couldn’t see the brilliance of this metaphor, the clarity of the girl’s thinking, some hint perhaps of her own experience. ‘What happened to your foster mum?’
Destiny shrugged. ‘She got into debt, started drinking. Her old man blamed me. I got kicked out. Ended up on the streets again. Same old shit. I’ve not seen her for three years.’
Julia nodded. ‘Bloody men.’
Destiny looked up at the ceiling. ‘Sometimes I think I should grab a child from some pushchair. That way you know you could get a good one, one that isn’t always bawling its eyes out.’
‘I know you’re just trying to shock me. You wouldn’t do that.’
‘I might.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘You don’t know what I would do. If you had faced the aggro I’ve had to face, you’d realise that there’s always more possibilities than just the right thing to do. All the best options, the ones that feel right, are illegal.’
‘Give me an example,’ Julia said.
‘Right. I was sixteen, a runaway from the children’s home, and me and Caz were being kept in this filthy flat on Upton Terrace. They’d bring in these blokes; horrible old ugly guys. We were so off our faces on the drugs they gave us that we were hardly aware what they were doing to us. But every so often you get something, like a beam of sunlight through the window, and you can see it all clearly. You ain’t high anymore, but you ain’t so down that you are going to slash yourself up. And there was this moment, this opportunity, when I realised that Janille wasn’t my boyfriend like he said he was. Like a glimpse between dark curtains. Then I knew I had to get out.’
‘Who’s Janille?’
‘He was the zookeeper. That’s what they called him. And we were the animals. He had three or four houses on the same street with different girls in, maybe a dozen of us in total. All locked up, so you couldn’t get out easily, and he had to get round all of them, with food and the tablets we were all addicted to. He said the local copper was in his pay, so no use calling them. There were cameras, inside and out. He said they were monitored, all the time. We were too scared to attempt to escape, because this one girl, Siobhan I think she was, she tried and they caught her. We heard them knocking seven bells out of her in the next room. Then they did something to her that made her scream like I’ve never heard in my life. We never saw her again. Janille said they had called the chemist to deal with her, and after that he’d thrown her in the canal. But we never knew it for a fact.’
‘The chemist? You mean a pharmacist?’
‘No. He was the man who kept the hydrochloric. That’s what Caz had heard. When she was in another house, the same bloke came and burned the face off some girl for trying to escape.’
Horrific. Julia took a big slug of her vodka and orange. She couldn’t recall anyone having been brought to trial in such a charge. Could such a thing happen in Surrey? In the leafy Home Counties? She was appalled and fascinated in equal measure. Her heart and her legal mind were squeezed side by side on the same mental sofa, fighting to get the remote for the next episode.
‘So how did you get out?’
‘It wasn’t that hard once I had decided, once I had conquered the fear. That was the point, that was where the light came from. Like I say, Janille was out at one of the other houses. He had his own room in the house which was locked, but I just kicked the door down and ransacked it. I needed money and I knew he had it, but I also got something else that was very valuable, that he was looking after for Big Tel. I squeezed out through an upstairs window, shinned down the drainpipe and just ran.’
‘And is that why they are after you?’
‘Janille isn’t after me. He’s dead. Big Tel killed him and cut him up, for being too soft on us. That’s what Caz told me. I cried about that, stupid me. I met Janille when I was thirteen, introduced by another girl at the children’s home. He was a good-looking guy, with his dark skin and sharp haircut. He had a big fast car and took me and this other girl round town. He bought us some nice clothes and introduced us to some of his friends and to a private room at a club. If you live in a children’s home, it impresses you, believe me. I remember he took us to a Chinese restaurant. I had never been to a restaurant before, and he seemed to know the manager. It made me feel very special. He offered us wine. After the meal, Janille dropped the other girl off, and drove fast to a park in the countryside. It was the middle of summer, and there was a warm breeze through the leaves of the trees. He kissed me. He didn’t do anything else. Just kissed me and held me and told me he was falling in love with me.’
‘He swept you off your feet.’ Julia remembered having read the official report on the child abuse ring in Rotherham. It sounded identical. Easily impressed unloved girls from a children’s home, enslaved and trafficked.
Destiny nodded. ‘The stupid thing is, even after everything that happened, I still remember that fondly. It was one of the only times in my life that anyone was kind to me. He just held me for the longest time. I was absolutely desperate for someone who didn’t think I was a waste of space. And he was the first. He seemed to care.
‘He didn’t give me any drugs for the first week, just some wine, the odd can of cider. And on the Saturday he put me up in this luxurious flat, a penthouse in the centre of the city. There was champagne there, and flowers on the table, and he had this girl called Stacey dress me all up in a white dress and did my make-up. I was so happy, I thought it was going to be my first night with Janille.’
Julia watched Destiny’s hands gripping the glass so hard the knuckles showed white.
‘Janille went out, and came back with this ugly scary guy, big and muscular, no hair, but with a massive long black beard with a red stripe dyed in it. Stupid me, I didn’t know why he was there, but I later realised he was Janille’s boss, Big Tel. I had some champagne and then went very dizzy and faint. But I still remember what happened. First, Janille left, saying he would be back in an hour. Big Tel went at me like a starving dog at a bowl of meat. I was thirteen, and there was no private part of my body he didn’t use. He was rough and really hurt me.’
‘Oh, Dezzy, I’m so sorry for what happened to you.’
‘I was sore and bleeding for days. I never got to see the penthouse again. Most of the time after that I was back in the cage either alone or with one or two other girls. And I was too scared to say anything to them because some of them would snitch for privileges. But they’d all heard of Big Tel.’