Read Online The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers - Free Book Online Page B

Jessie. Let me undo those stupid locks.’ I’m still waiting for him to see how completely mad this is. Today, surely, he’ll give it up.
    Yes! Sunlight hits the top of the leylandii, a fantastic glowing reddish-orangey-green against the purple sky. I stare and stare, as gradually the sky lightens, and the sunlight pales to watery whiteness and it all turns ordinary. I waft my arms up and down and wriggle my shoulders to ease the stiffness. Today, surely, this will end.
    After Baz told me he was leaving YOFI, I decided to leave too. The bubble burst. I remember sitting in my room and feeling as if I was sitting in the ruins of my life. Why was I trying to get Mum and Dad to compost their potato peel and give up their flights? What difference would that make to anything? Greens had been campaigning for decades, I knew that perfectly well, and what did they ever achieve? Why on earth did I imagine a bunch of kids under the leadership of a perve like Iain might suddenly change the world? Everything I had been working for and believing in collapsed into dust, and I couldn’t make sense of anything anymore.
    I remember I thought about dying then; but in a childish, furious way. Since everything was going to rack and ruin and nothing could be done to make any of it right, the most ecologically useful thing anyone could do would be to die. Then at least you’d stop consuming resources. I wished I was dead. I thought about Iain creeping up behind me, his hot breath on my neck, and I was boilingly angry. What right did he have? And then saying, ‘Not a good idea’–like it was me who’d suggested it! I should tell the police. What if he tried it on someone younger?
    Slamming stuff around in my room I managed to smash the clay owl mask that Mandy made me for my 10th birthday. It shattered into crumbs, it couldn’t be saved.
    I was in a rage at all the time I’d wasted. But looking back, if I hadn’t done all that–the meetings and arguments and petitions and demonstrations, the hours hunched over the computer–if I hadn’t done all that in good faith, and then been so totally frustrated–then maybe I would never even have found the next thing to do. If I’d never felt the thrill of imagining we could change things–perhaps I wouldn’t have looked for it again.
    It’s light enough now to crawl to my table and chair, and write there. But I don’t want to go into all that, how I felt when I left YOFI–bad, stupid, hoodwinked. I remember telling myself only an idiot would dream of trying to make anything better. I was angry with everything. Stupid YOFI. Iain. Baz. Myself. I wished I was a giant so I could stamp across the town, smashing their little houses to smithereens.
    He’s tapping on the door. He’s locked me in, and he’s tapping on the door! ‘Jess?’
    â€˜Yes?’
    He doesn’t open it, he just talks through the wood. ‘I’m sorry. What would you like for breakfast?’
    I pause to think. ‘A boiled free-range egg. Brown toast and damson jam.’
    â€˜Tea?’
    â€˜A glass of milk.’
    â€˜OK.’
    I hear him going down the stairs. And then out of the house. Good, I feel easier when he’s not here. And good! A lovely breakfast. But he wouldn’t go out to buy me breakfast if he was planning to release me. The opposite. He’s trying to win me over–to bribe me with food. Fine: he’ll soon see how well that works!
    It was soon after I left YOFI that the bad thing happened to Sal. I can see now that was the turning point for me as much as for her. But it turned her one way and me another. It turned us in opposite directions, friend against friend. Oh Sal. Because it helped to set me on the track that led me here.

Chapter 8
    It was Friday night and I was already fast asleep when my mobile rang. It was Sal’s phone but she didn’t speak, there was a jumbled noise like