Stone Cold Red Hot by Cath Staincliffe Read Free Book Online Page B

thought she was going to sound off at me but all she said was ‘no, she’s been fine,’ so I assume she hadn’t told them.”
    “After that I got really cross. The little shit had gone off without a goodbye or anything. It wasn’t my fault she’d got caught out but it felt like she was lumping me in with everyone else, wanting to leave us all behind. I called her all the names under the sun.”
    “Then I went off to Newcastle and I was so busy that Jennifer didn’t seem all that important anymore. But I didn’t just leave it. I rang her family later that term to ask how she was getting on and to check her address - I’d written a note to the Halls of Residence at Keele but I never got a reply. Anyway her Mum said she’d left the course and they’d no idea where she was. I said maybe they should report her missing and she said ‘she’s not missing, she’s just being very silly, throwing it all away, we’ll have to wait till she comes to her senses’. She said she’d no idea why Jenny had jacked it in. I wondered if she was keeping the baby, but she didn’t want to tell them yet or maybe she was going to have it adopted and felt that the less people that knew about it the better, sort of thing. But I was worried and I still couldn’t understand why she hadn’t written to me or phoned me, or left a message. Her parents, yes - but me, we’d been best friends.”
    She turned the bracelets round on her wrist, worrying at them. “I did actually go to the police you know, that first Christmas. I was back home, she wasn’t, no card had come. I’d this vision of her six months pregnant, squatting in London or something. So I smartened myself up and went to the police station. They listened for a bit but when I said the family weren’t particularly concerned they lost interest. They let me fill a form in but that was it. I didn’t know half the answers anyway, I wasn’t sure of her last address so I just put Halls of Residence Keele University, I didn’t know when she’d last been seen or what she’d been wearing - all those things.”
    “And she never wrote?”
    She shook her head. “I still don’t understand that. I think,” she hesitated, her assurance slipping for a moment, “I think maybe something happened to prevent her getting in touch.”
    “What sort of thing?”
    “An accident or...if she ended up broke in London, the options for earning money aren’t very safe, or problems with the baby...I don’t know, a breakdown?”
    “You’ve mentioned London a couple of times, did she talk of going there?”
    “Not particularly, Paris was our dream. London’s just where people went to escape - still do I suppose.”
    The big smoke, I thought, pig enough to get lost in, stay lost in.
    “If she had been hurt, if she’d died,” she spoke the unthinkable quickly,” could you find that out?”
    “If that had happened, her parents would have been informed,” I pointed out.
    “But what if she’d changed her name or they couldn’t identify her, something like that?”
    “Then she wouldn’t be on any records that I could find. There are General Records, you know, births, deaths and marriages but they won’t record people who haven’t been identified.”
    “And she might be happily married and living in Crewe,” Lisa replied.
    “Could be. If I don’t get a lead I may well be able to check out the records for marriages as a way of tracing her but before that I’m talking to people who knew her and checking with the university. Can you think of anywhere else Jennifer might have gone after she left Keele, anyone she’d ask for help?”
    “No.”
    “And she never contacted any other friends?”
    “Not that I heard. I haven’t seen the others for a few years now.”
    “Have you got a number for Caroline Cunningham?”
    “Yes, if she’s still there. Hang on.” She moved across to the shelves and flicked through a large leather bound book. Found what she was looking for and gave me