Forever Is Over

by Wade, Calvin

  When we discuss this now, Jemma argues that I had ample opportunity to stop Kelly leaving Coronation Park that day. All I would have needed to say was,

  “Kelly, I’ve got cancer!” and Kelly would probably have stayed with me then until my dying day. On reflection, I’m glad I didn’t say it. I’m glad Kelly left when she did. I am a firm believer in the butterfly effect, that every decision we make has a knock on effect on the next and so on and so forth, so if I had said or done anything different at any point, my children would not have been born. So, by letting Kelly go, it ultimately led to the creation of my children! I definitely did the right thing! The reason I kept quiet though, was not because of any sub-conscious passion for Jemma, nor was it exactly because I did not want to tell Kelly I had cancer (although it is linked to that). The reason I kept avoiding telling Kelly I had cancer was down to a fear that had sprung into my mind the second I originally felt the lump and had been exacerbated by my visit to the urologists that day. I had not heard a lot of what the urologist said after the cancer was confirmed, but three words he mentioned, three words I did not understand at first, were the words that scared me the most. The words were “radical inguinal orchidectomy”. In layman’s terms, this is the medical procedure to remove a testicle. I could not face telling Kelly I had testicular cancer, because I could not face her knowing that I may have to go through life with one ball.

  Even before my diagnosis and before I had read any books on cancer, I had an idea that a lump on my testicle might ultimately lead to the removal of said testicle. In my naivety, before reading the medical books, I presumed this could lead to a life without erections, a life without sperm and a life without children, so pre-diagnosis I always dismissed the idea of sharing this secret with Kelly. Once I had read the books, it became more of a cosmetic thing. I remember the childhood songs, sung to the tune of the Colonel Bogey March,

  “Hitler, has only got one ball,

  The other is in the Albert Hall,

  His mother, the dirty bugger,

  Chopped it off when he was small.”

  This conjured up the image of ugliness and a real stigma attached to having a testicle missing. So, I was scared a one-balled boyfriend may have been as unattractive to Kelly as a one breasted woman would have been to me. I was doing Kelly a disservice by thinking she would have been as shallow as me and to be fair to me, if Kelly had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had needed a mastectomy, I would not have stopped loving her for a second.

  Once Kelly ran away from the park that Thursday afternoon, I ran after her but I wrongly deduced at some point she would head back into Woolworths, so sat on a bench on Aughton Street, for an hour, before venturing into the branch in case I had missed her. Kathy on the CD counter was hurrying around trying to alleviate a mounting queue so I did not even have to ask if she was there.

  Only then did I head to her house on Wigan Road. I certainly have no recollection of a police van being there and I am sure if there was, I would have clocked it. Jemma had opened the door, anguish all over her face and she told me Kelly had packed some clothes and disappeared even before Jemma had arrived home. I walked back to Aughton and rang Jemma several times that day and again the next day, just in case Kelly had come home. Caroline, my sister, had a new boyfriend that she was very keen to have long, romantic telephone conversations with, so I had to bring her up to date with a basic overview about Kelly running off, packing a bag and disappearing, otherwise, if Kelly had tried to phone me, she would have had to contend with a constant engaged tone. I knew there was a sacrifice involved here, by telling Caroline, in all likelihood, the news would spread throughout the Billingham household, but the constant sympathy from Mum that followed was worth it, as I did manage to speak to Kelly the following night.

  When I spoke to Kelly, I assured her everything would be alright. Who was I trying to kid? Her or me! I probably said it with as much conviction as Clarice Starling did in Silence Of The Lambs when she arrived at the house of the serial killer alone and found Catherine Martin stuck at the bottom of an almighty pit!

  Kelly

  I had decided I was on my way home. I had spoken to Richie, pretty much every day whilst I was in Holland and my fears with regards to Mr & Mrs McGordon appeared to be unfounded. On the evening of the 2nd July, after speaking to Richie, I decided I was being completely ridiculous hiding in Europe. I was missing him and wanted to get back to Ormskirk for some serious making up! I decided I was going to surprise him. I knew he was a real romantic and without a doubt, on the 4th July, he would be there, on the “Sunny Road”, hoping I would arrive to run into his arms with mine outstretched. Without telling him, I decided that was exactly what I would do. I would head back on the 3rd, go back home, not tell Richie, then I would turn up the following day on the “Sunny Road”. He would be elated.

  In my absence from home, Jemma only knew that I was safe through Richie. I had once again forgiven Richie and was still eager to discover what he had been so upset about, but I was finding it harder to forgive Jemma. I’m not sure why, maybe it was because she looked so guilty when I turned up at Coronation Park. Whilst I was in Holland, I had not phoned her at all. Once I had bought my foot passenger ferry ticket that Tuesday morning, to go from Hook of Holland to Harwich, I had an hour to kill before I needed to get on the ferry, so I thought I would phone Jemma. Richie had told me that she had finished with Ray and left the job at the bank, so I presumed that she would be at home. I wanted to clear the air before arriving back. I could feel my heart pounding as the phone rang but luckily, I did not have to wait long before it was answered.

  “0695-402907”.

  Damn! Guilders wasted. I had rung the wrong number. It wasn’t Jemma, it sounded like an elderly woman. Then I realised the number the woman said was our number.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “What do you mean, who is this? You rang me! If you are a newspaper reporter, you might as well hang up, because I’m telling you nothing.”

  Now I knew who it was, it was Nan!

  “Nan, it’s Kelly!”

  “Kelly, where are you?”

  “I’m at the ferry terminal at Hook of Holland. I’m coming back in an hour. Why would newspaper reporters want to speak to you?”

  “Kelly, listen to me. Do not get on that ferry. Do you hear me, do not get on that ferry!”

  Nan was scaring me. My heart was pounding like crazy now.

  “Why Nan, what’s the matter?”

  Nan started whispering down the phone.

  “Look, I can’t speak for long. There’s a policewoman in the hall who’s just let me in and if she hears me I’m in all sorts of trouble, but do not come home. Don’t even come to England.”

  “Tell me why Nan, you’re scaring me now!”

  “They’ve arrested Jemma, love. If you step foot in this country, I guarantee they’ll arrest you too. She’s been charged with your Mum’s murder. Keep away, Kelly! Please just keep away!”

  The phone went dead.

  I was shaking. I needed to make a quick decision. I had forty five minutes to decide whether I should do the honourable thing, get on the ferry, go back to England and turn myself in or follow Nan’s advice and disappear. Impulse told me to ring Richie, see if he could shed some light on things, but then fear took hold. What if Richie pleaded with me to come home? I could spend the next twenty years in jail. Richie would never wait for me then. By the time I was out, I would be a middle aged woman. Either way I was screwed. God was definitely out to get me. The doors to heaven had been firmly shut.

  I started to think things through. Jemma was tougher than me. She would cope with it better. I wouldn’t cope, jail would kill me. It took me all of two minutes to rip that ferry ticket up and run. Back to Rotterdam, then later to Amsterdam and back to Schiphol airport. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t really know why, but that night I flew on a Singapore Airlines flight to Singapore! A week earlier, I had left Ormskirk thinking I could never forg
ive Jemma and Richie for what they had done. The tables were well and truly turned now.

  One thing was certain. My childhood was over. Life would never be the same again.

  Richie

  When Kelly decided to take a year out from her education after Fifth form, I jumped on the “year out” bandwagon too, deciding to work for a year too, once my “A” levels were completed. As I was two school years above Kelly, our years out had coincided. Amazingly enough! It made sense though. My Mum and Dad were permanently skint, mainly due to Dad’s gambling habit, so although I had managed to knuckle down to some serious last minute cramming and secured a place at Manchester Polytechnic, I thought a year at work would help finance three years at Poly so I deferred my entry. Mum and Dad did not try to persuade me to do otherwise, as they knew I was taking some of the burden off them. They had just funded Helen through her years at Lancaster University and they were probably cursing me for doing unexpectedly well in my “A” levels! They probably wished I had failed them all like Caroline had managed to do! Jim, who was probably a little smarter than Helen, would be heading to University too the year after, so I was reducing the double whammy by paying my way, to some degree anyway.

  Kelly had worked on the CD counter at Woolworth’s in Ormskirk, since she was fourteen, as a Saturday girl and I had always thought that job would be better suited to me, as my interest in music and knowledge of it, was far more extensive than Kelly’s. Problem was, there were no jobs going at Woolies, nor at the other record shop in Ormskirk, Quirks, even the bloke who had a small store in the ‘Indoor Market’ said he was unable to take me on, so I ended up applying to every other record shop I could think of in the North West of England! The pay was unlikely to be great and even less so if I had to travel to get there, but if I was going to have a year out working, I was going to find a job I enjoyed.

  I ended up landing a job in a place called Andy’s Records, on a road called Cheapside in Preston town centre. They were a reasonable sized independent chain that had grown from a market stall in Cambridge or Bury St Edmunds or somewhere equally far away to about twenty branches in certain pockets of the United Kingdom, the North West being one such area with branches in Bolton, Warrington, Southport and Preston. Andy’s prided themselves on having CDs in their stores that the major record retailers would not stock, so rather than having the odd CD by the likes of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Al Stewart, Billy Bragg and Jethro Tull, they had the whole back catalogue. I was in my element as I was working with like minded music enthusiasts and generally serving like minded music enthusiasts too. A female tramp once took a crap in there, but that was a one-off not a daily hazard and anyway, the assistant managed cleaned that up!

  The only drawback other than pay that I can think of about working at Andy’s Records was that you had to work near enough every Saturday. I threw the odd Saturday sickie due to having an Everton season ticket, but sometimes it worked well having a day off in the week. My urologists appointments, for example, were arranged for a Thursday as that was my regular day off.

  In the whole scheme of things, the fact that I worked at Andy’s Records in Preston whilst Kelly worked at Woolworth’s and continued to work there after Kelly ran off (my year sabbatical becoming a two year sabbatical!),would have no great significance but for one thing. That thing being fate. When Jemma was arrested and charged with her mother’s murder, where did the trial take place? You guessed it, Preston Crown Court! Two hundred yards from Andy’s Records!

  It was Caroline who had broken the news to me that Jemma had been arrested. She had heard on the Ormskirk grapevine, a form of communication that at times could spread news faster than the telephone. Initially, following her arrest, Jemma was taken into custody at Ormskirk police station. It had been an early morning arrest that had caught Jemma off guard. Apparently it had been her time of the month, but because everything had happened so quickly, Jemma had forgotten to take a change of tampon with her to the station. Perhaps she had thought she would only be there a short time. Jemma had telephoned her grandmother, who lives on the Wirral, broke the news of her arrest and requested a number of toiletries from her house, including the aforementioned tampons. Jemma’s grandmother did not have a key, as Jemma and Kelly had refused to give her one, so she went to the police station first, collected one from Jemma’s belongings and a policewoman went across with her to the house.

  As Jemma’s grandmother could not find the tampons, she popped into Boots in Ormskirk to buy some. In Boots, she ran into Amy’s mother who she had known for a number of years and whilst explaining to her why a woman of her age was purchasing tampons, her conversation was overheard by Janet Rimmer, who works as a Sales Assistant at Boots.

  Janet ran into Petra Sawyer at lunchtime and told her. Petra worked at H.Samuel, as did my sister, Caroline! The word was out!

  When I arrived home from Preston that night, Caroline was waiting for me, as soon as I walked in the porch.

  “Kelly’s sister’s been arrested!” she blurted out.

  “What?”

  “Jemma Watkinson! She’s been arrested!”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s all around Ormskirk! She’s been arrested for killing her Mum!”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Petra at work. She saw Janet Rimmer in Sayers at lunchtime and Janet had heard Kelly’s Nan telling Amy’s Mum in Boots. She was taking some tampons to Jemma in her cell at the police station.”

  I felt sick straight away. Physically sick. The world started spinning, I felt dizzy and had to brush past Caroline, into the downstairs bathroom, splashing cold water on my face. It was July 3rd. I had a horrible feeling Kelly may be heading back the following day, to meet me, on the “Sunny Road”. If she found out that Jemma had been arrested, she would confess to everything, I knew she would and that would mean Kelly would be heading to jail too or at least some sort of juvenile correction centre, where did under eighteens go? I had no idea.

  “Are you OK?” Caroline shouted through from outside the door.

  “I’m fine, Cal! I’ll be out in a minute. I just felt a bit sick on my way home. I’m OK though.”

  I came out the bathroom. Caroline wanted information from me. I felt like an adulterous pop star being pursued by a tabloid journalist.

  “Do you think Kelly knew?”

  “Knew what Caroline?”

  “That Jemma did it! That Jemma killed her Mum!”

  “She’s been arrested, Caroline, not sentenced.”

  “Yes, but the police must think she did it, that’s why she’s been arrested.”

  “Shut up Caroline! We don’t know what’s going on!”

  “I do! Kelly always said Jemma hated their Mum. I reckon she killed her!”

  “Caroline! I said shut up!”

  Caroline was annoying me now.

  “You’re a bit touchy, aren’t you? Why are you defending her anyway? You’ve always hated Jemma Watkinson!”

  “I don’t hate her. I actually think she’s OK.”

  Caroline did a double take.

  “Since when?”

  “Since recently.”

  “Well you’ve certainly changed your tune! You’ve always slagged her off! I can remember several times when you’ve been telling me how much you hated her! I can still remember the look on your face when you saw her at Nick Birch’s party! It was a look of disgust!”

  “I never used to like her, but now I know better. She’s OK.”

  “For a murderer!” Caroline added for good measure.

  “She’s not a murderer, Caroline!”

  “She might be.”

  “She’s not a murderer.”

  Jemma

  I was in prison for five months before my trial. Five long months.

  After twenty four hours at Ormskirk police station of intense questioning, I was charged with Vomit Breath’s murder. My solicitor argued that the police case was purely dependent on the statements they had taken from our elderly
next door neighbours, who claimed they had heard a lot of the commotion in our adjoining house that night. I protested my innocence, as I had every right to do, as I was innocent, but still felt like a Hollywood actress, as my argument was that I was asleep throughout. I feigned disbelief that I was being charged for a death that I slept through. I was charged though and I was transferred to Risley Remand Centre in Warrington.

  What can I say about Risley? It was no five star hotel. The year before I was there, a senior official in the prison service had allegedly described it as “barbarous and squalid” and “dirty and dilapidated”. He wasn’t wrong! Just weeks before I was sent there, there had been an uprising by the men in “D” Wing. Fifty four men stayed on the roof for three days to protest about conditions. There were over eight hundred men in a facility built for five hundred. I obviously never visited the men’s side of Risley, but I imagine the women’s side was on a par with the men’s. I managed to get nits within days of being there and in my five months awaiting trial, I was literally (to quote a Billy Bragg song of the time, “Rotting on Remand”, as I lost two stone in weight, as I thought the food was just about fit for pigs and rats.

  Only three people visited me during my time at Risley. Amy, bless her cotton socks, came twice, but she was a middle class girl from a lovely family and I think it was all a bit too much for her. Tut, who had always been as tough as old boots, so could cope fine with Risley. She used to come every week, sometimes even two or three times a week. Kelly and I had not liked Tut when we were kids but she was undeniably a good, strong woman and she was instrumental in sorting everything out for me, including my solicitors, Cooper, Taylor and Brighouse. I don’t know whether she thought I was innocent or not, but she certainly gave off the impression that she thought it was a miscarriage of justice, if I was jailed for killing Vomit Breath. My third visitor was Richie. I held out no expectations of him visiting, although I was obviously attracted to him, we hardly knew each other, so his visits were a massive boost. We did get to know each other better during the six visits he made and the more I got to know him, the more I liked him.