I Came to Find a Girl

by Jaq Hazell

  The sea at Stowe was a milky topaz in the sunshine, and the pebbly beach was packed with locals making the most of the only thing their locality had to offer. A white-haired couple had opened up their beach hut for the day and come laden with cold meats, bread and a thermos flask. Close to the water’s edge, a toddler ran in and out of the cold surf while his young dad followed behind and his mum sat guarding the towels. A couple of teenage girls lay back topless, their tanned bodies suggesting this wasn’t the first time.

  I sat on the wall that edged the promenade. My head felt congested, hardly able to cope with another thought. Every day started the same way – Jenny is dead.

  I had to remind myself because in my dreams Jenny lived, filling my mind more than she ever had when she was truly alive. From time to time I would forget and think about something else. The slightest thing would then remind me. I could be chopping vegetables and think of Jenny because that was what Jenny so often did. Or it could be the straightness of somebody’s hair, just like Jenny’s, or anything to do with Jason. He was her boyfriend after all.

  The sky had expanded; I felt smaller and everything was meaningless. Every day I walked that concrete promenade, staring at the grey-blue sea, and sat for a while. There was nothing else to do. My old friends from school were all away.

  Donna called with a date for Jenny’s funeral, as her body had been released for burial. I need to get back to Nottingham. I wanted to be with people who had known Jenny and were happy to endlessly talk about her.

  It was a hard day. Jason drove Donna, Warren and me to a church not far from where Jenny was found. It was rammed with people spilling out of the door, and we were lucky enough to stand at the back. I cried throughout, and even though everyone was invited into the hall for refreshments Jason felt too uncomfortable to attend and we left and went on to a local pub.

  Twenty-four

  Summer gave way to September and my housemates returned ready for the final year at college.

  “It feels different this beginning,” I said as I sat on Tamzin’s bed watching her paint her toenails a shade called ‘Summer Fruits’ that looked more like ‘blood clot’.

  “How do you mean?” She didn’t look up.

  “It’s our final year – it’s all coming to an end.”

  Tamzin tutted as the dark colour leaked onto her toe. Her boyfriend was coming round. She was getting ready and didn’t have time to talk so I slunk back to my room and thought about calling Jason, but what would I say? I should leave well alone. He had obviously felt bad and I certainly did. Now I’d been away and let it all die down. It was a chance for a fresh start.

  I’d given my room a coat of paint, like that would help. I wanted that perfect bright gallery look though I hadn’t taken into account the imperfect plasterwork – every bump and blemish was highlighted by the stark brilliant blue-white paint – but it looked reasonable from a distance. You could stand back, squint and imagine you were elsewhere – not a bad idea considering...

  On the plus side, for the first time in ages I knew where I wanted my work to go. It would tell it like it is – what it is to be young and female. In the meantime I was concentrating on my dissertation, reading various texts I’d borrowed from the library: The Female Eunuch, The Feminine Mystique, The Blind Side of Eden and Ways of Seeing. “All feminist bullshit” according to Slug but a lot of it made sense, such as Germaine Greer’s tract about how beautiful women (or those perceived to be beautiful) are dangerous and to possess beauty is to tempt. I found a pencil on my desk and underlined a chunk of text.

  I put Germaine Greer aside and retrieved my latest sketchbook from beneath the pile of papers on my desk along with a black pen and began to draw. Moving quickly, the lines spread creating a likeness of my face on the page. It looked like I was in meltdown. I ripped the page out and started again, including joke breasts topped with Cherry Bakewells. It reminded me of Sarah Lucas’s Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab, which brought back bad memories of what Flood had said. I ripped that out too and tried again. This time it was less extreme, more obviously attractive as I let my mouth fall open, supposedly wanton. ‘Hello boys’ I scribbled beneath. That was it. I’d base my final year project around advertising and magazine photo-shoots – a serious comment on how women are portrayed in the media and seen in society. It would be about how just being a woman means you’re considered a temptress.

  I drew more, trying to convey more brazenly seductive looks, then I switched to scraping my hair back and tying it at the nape. I took a shirt from my wardrobe and put it on over my jumper, buttoning it to the neck. I was after a severe, God-fearing, no-fun look. I sketched myself and scrawled across it: ‘She asked for it’.

  There was a knock on my door. It was Slug. “We’re all going over The Vine. You coming?” I turned him down without even considering it. “Your loss,” he said, and he was right I realised, a couple of hours later when I’d sat on my own for hours achieving nothing.

  Two in the morning, I crashed out after drawing several more self-portraits and flicking through every fashion magazine I could find. The photo-shoots showed innocent angels, women as predators, vain women and beautiful women that deserved to be punished. I was onto something and it was making my mind race.

  Lying in bed, my thoughts shifted between Jason, Jenny and Flood. I was fantasising about revenge and how I would let the world know what Flood was really like. What is he really like? Fear took hold and I lay perfectly still, convinced I could hear footsteps on the stairs as I imagined Jenny’s water-bloated remains rotting in the River Trent.

  I had to get up and lock my door. Back in bed, I forced myself to envisage all my worries going into a brown paper bag that I then threw away and tried to sleep.

  Up late, I decided to skip college and work at home, but I needed to shop and didn’t want to get caught in the supermarket in college hours. Maybe I should make an appearance after all. Let the two Mikes know there’s something happening creatively back at my place.

  I could have done with a wash but I didn’t have time. I had to get to the cafeteria for lunch, get myself some food and appear in the studio like I’d been there all day. I tied back my hair, applied a trace of eyeliner, packed my art folder and dashed out the door.

  At the college café I ordered what I always ordered: a cheese and coleslaw roll and I imagined the woman behind the counter rolling her eyes with the boredom of it all. The studio was empty. Am I missing something? Work was pinned up everywhere and there were palettes thick with paint and brushes cloaked in polythene to keep them moist over lunch.

  I came to my white, empty, unloved space. Do something fast. I took the magazine cuttings from my folder and sifted through them as I bit into my roll.

  Pins – I didn’t have any pins or tape or Blu-Tack. I wolfed down the remainder of my lunch and ran outside and down the road to the union building and the art shop. Drawing pins, Blu-Tack and tape, I bought the lot and papered my space in fashion photo shoots and glamorous advertising.

  Later that afternoon, Beth (the one with the flicky hair who spent the summer in New York) stopped abruptly at my space, obviously surprised to find anything there, let alone full wall coverage plus artist in residence.

  “Isn’t it a bit intimidating being surrounded by all these beautiful women?” She said, flicking her glossy red hair over her shoulder. “It would unnerve me. Are you coming to Emily’s meal tonight?” Emily was Beth’s best friend.

  “Yeah, I’m coming,” I said, even though I wasn’t bothered.

  “Mia, you’ve banished the white walls,” Graham, my studio neighbour, said.

  “I know where I’m going at last.”

  “Half the battle.” He smiled and unwrapped his brushes ready to work.

  “Nice.” Spencer nodded at a shot of a semi-naked Kate Moss. “What’s it for?”

  “I’m looking into how women are conveyed in the media.”

  “What you going to do?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not
sure yet. Watch this space.”

  It was nearly five o’clock and I was yet to pin up a single sketch. Somehow, that seemed a step too far. Anyhow, I needed a toilet break so I went off down the corridor to one of the cubicles. And there on the back of the door as if it were a sign placed specifically for me was a small, round, badge-like sticker bearing a number for a rape crisis helpline. I could use this – paint it up large... My phone had run out, so instead I scrabbled round in my bag, found a pen and jotted down the information.

  Emily’s birthday meal was at the Thai Orchid, at eight, though I didn’t see the point – none of us could afford to eat out so everyone ordered less than they actually wanted and then moaned about it.

  “Portion control,” I said, but Emily didn’t seem to know what I meant. “You have to limit the size of the portions to make a profit.”

  “I know that,” she said. “But this is ridiculous.”

  “Excuse me!” Beth said to the young Asian waiter, and then proceeded to complain while I slid down in my seat thinking the night couldn’t get any worse.

  “Normally people order more than one dish each,” the waiter explained.

  “We’re so cheap,” Kelly moaned.

  “Should have gone down The Vine. They do Sunday roasts all week now,” Spencer said. Beth made a face and said that reminded her of those footballers on the news.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Some footballers – I can’t remember which team – have been accused of raping a girl but they reckon she consented to sleep with all four of them. They call it ‘roasting’,” Beth said.

  “Like they’re stuffing a chicken,” Kelly said.

  “That is terrible.” I felt nauseous.

  We were supposed to be going to my favourite club, Lost and Found, but Emily had the casting vote and she chose Luna. I hated the Luna Bar – there was never anyone interesting there.

  “Kelly, come to Lost and Found?” I pleaded, but no, she was going to follow everyone else so I relented and did the same and we all walked in a big group past the barricaded pawnshops, bookies, crumbling pubs and kebab shops of Mansfield Road towards the city centre.

  There was no queue for Luna. They let anyone in and they didn’t make you wait in case you changed your mind. “Kell, I’m not going to bother,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I want to do some work.”

  “What – now?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got all these ideas going round my head. I don’t want to forget them.”

  Kelly wasn’t impressed but what could she do, I’d obviously decided, so I began to retrace my steps home, past shops and department stores and onto Shakespeare Street, past the YMCA where you could sometimes see pensioners enjoying a tea dance and of course my favourite bar, Ruby’s.

  I quickened my pace as the roads grew quieter and darker and my keys were already between my fingers as I turned right and headed uphill past the iron gates of the arboretum and the cemetery on the other side. My boots sounded loud as I pounded the pavement. Occasionally, I glanced behind pretending I needed to cross the road when really I was checking to make sure no one would jump me. There was a rustle in the undergrowth, behind the iron railings – a small animal fleeing my footsteps? I kept going on the right-hand side for as long as possible as it was well lit and then crossed over and went up Arthur Street, finally turning into Gedling Grove.

  A car slowed behind me, beside me. Too close – go away.

  The driver’s electric window slipped smoothly down. My heart raced.

  “You doing business, love?” Within the car’s dark interior I could see a light-haired, middle-aged man in a smart leather jacket. “How much, love?”

  What? “Fuck off.”

  “I thought – you...”

  “Fuck off – just fuck off!” I was right by my house and didn’t want the man to see where I lived so I paused and waited. Fuck off now, you disgusting creep.

  Finally he did, and I went inside, shut the door tight, and ran up the three flights of stairs to my room where I locked the door, intending to start sketching ideas. Snatching up my sketchbook, I flicked to the inside back cover where I’d copied down the wording of the rape crisis sticker from the college toilets in tiny script. I knew how I wanted to use the sticker in my art but now on a whim I picked up my mobile and tapped in the number. It began to ring and I almost turned it off, but they answered too quickly.

  “Hello, drug-rape help line, can I help you?”

  It really is twenty-four hour.

  “Hello, drug-rape help line, can I help? Are you okay to talk?” the voice said.

  It sounds like Julie Walters.

  “I know what you’ve been through,” she said, leaving a gap for me to fill. “You’re not alone.”

  I coughed. I couldn’t help it.

  “You know, it’s very common. There are almost a thousand cases of drug rapes reported each year,” ‘Julie Walters’ continued. “We suspect it could be far worse. Many women feel unable to report it.”

  “It happened to me,” I said.

  “It wasn’t your fault, sweetheart.” ‘Julie Walters’ wanted me to know that.

  I didn’t ask for it. I am not to blame.

  “No woman wants to be raped,” ‘Julie Walters’ said, as tears dripped down my face. “No woman asks to be raped.”

  “I went back to his hotel room of my own free will,” I said. “I hardly knew him. I was stupid.”

  “You weren’t to know, my lovely. Your only crime was to be too trusting and that’s no crime. You weren’t to know. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  I could picture Julie’s tawny head set sympathetically to one side with her deep-set eyes emoting.

  “And now my friend has been found dead...”

  “Oh.” Julie seemed taken aback at that and I so wanted to talk more, tell her all about it and about the mess with Jason when I heard the front door slam and then footsteps – someone’s back. I couldn’t risk being overheard.

  “I’ve got to go, but thank you.” I switched off the phone and climbed into bed fully clothed, my head under the covers, curled into a foetal position. In the kitchen below, I could hear Slug and Spencer crashing about making toast and whatever else they could find in the almost empty fridge.

  Twenty-five

  Saviour’s was subdued, and if anyone did smile or laugh they’d quickly check themselves. I wasn’t sure I could carry on working there. I still needed the money; more than ever due to the mounting costs of art materials for my final show, but it was bringing me down. Everyone was grieving and then there was the added threat that Flood could reappear at any moment, as well as my guilt over Jason.

  He was understandably angry and bitter. Angry that anyone could do that to Jenny, that the police hadn’t caught the culprit, and also bitter that he was a suspect. He had no alibi. He’d had a day off that fateful night and had simply stayed at home playing on his Xbox. His brother was away, so he saw no one and no one saw him. He had something to prove, so in a way it wasn’t a surprise when he approached me with another desperately weird idea.

  “The feds are getting nowhere,” he said. “I’ve got to do something. You know what I said about only two people knowing who did this...”

  I thought back to our last trip down by the river, to the place where Jenny was found, when we’d sat on the concrete steps and watched the amber water of the Trent flowing on regardless. “Yes, I remember.”

  “The murderer isn’t going to help obviously, we tried the Ouija board and that was no good, and I know it’s a long shot but...”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  “Have you ever noticed that spiritualist church near where Jen lived?”

  “Oh, Jase – the Ouija board was bad enough.”

  His blue eyes pleaded with me. “I know it’s freaky shit but it’s got to be worth a try and say Jen or some other spirit does come through with some information the police are never going to bel
ieve me. They’ll just think I’m trying to get myself off the hook. I can’t do this alone. I need a witness.”

  I looked away, wondering what I could say to get myself out of this one.

  “I’ll pick you up at seven, yeah?”

  “I dunno, Jase.”

  “Please, if not for me, do it for Jen.”

  The Spiritualist church was in a large four-storey Victorian villa on Park Road. It was shabby with cornflower-blue paint peeling from the doors and window frames and an overgrown front garden. By the pavement was a sealed noticeboard listing the times of meetings. Park Road was one of Nottingham’s premier streets, neat with topiary gardens and executive cars. I guessed the neighbours probably weren’t too thrilled to have this house of spirits in their vicinity.

  “Ready?” Jason said, as we stood outside.

  “No, not really.”

  He tugged at the old brass bell-pull, and a large woman with raven hair and a scarlet dress opened the door. “Welcome,” she said with an American accent. “Come on in.”

  Inside, it was like a bric-a-brac shop with instruments hung from the walls: violins, a trumpet, even a cello. There was a stuffed boar’s head, stag’s antlers and a huge stone bust on a plinth by the staircase that looked like Sir John Gielgud or perhaps Baden-Powell.

  “Marilyn Manson would love this place,” I whispered.

  “Old things – the spirits seem to like ’em,” the woman said. I stifled a sneeze and thought of that Hollywood actor, Billy-Bob Thornton, who said he was allergic to antiques.

  “The name’s Andrea, by the way,” she said. “Come on through... We have some newbies with us tonight,” she told the people gathered in the large front room. There were heavy, dark curtains, mismatched wooden chairs placed in rows, and a scattering of seated older people and a string of fairy lights in the window.

  Andrea leaned in and whispered, “Is there anyone you’re hoping will come through for you tonight?”