Birds Of A Feather Episode 02
Jess’s chair screeched against the floorboards as she pushed it back. She crossed to the window and stared out as she struggled to hide her disappointment.
When she was at school, she’d hated sports days and school concerts. Hated the way the parents in the audience at a concert bobbed and weaved as they searched for their children on the stage.
She’d hated the little surreptitious wave when they found them.
No-one bobbed their head looking for her. She became good at pretending not to care. At burying the hurt so deep, she thought it had gone away.
But now, suddenly, here it was, as painful as ever.
Yet she’d been one of the lucky ones. She’d ended up being fostered by Sally and Tom Vennor, a lovely couple who’d turned her young life around.
Sadly, Sally had become ill while Jess was doing a jewellery design course at college and died before she graduated.
Jess and Tom were still good friends, particularly now he’d moved to Somerset and married her best friend, Maggie, but that didn’t fill this aching void deep inside her.
Now she was being advised to let it go. These were people who’d known and loved her father. People who could fill in some of the missing pieces in the jigsaw of her life.
“Miss Langton?” Harry’s soft words jerked her back to the present. “I’m sorry – I’m sure that was not what you wanted to hear.”
She held out her hand.
“I would like those details, please,” she said calmly.
He sighed.
“I can’t withhold the information from you. I just wanted you to be aware of the facts.
“I don’t have an address for Joe’s parents, Frank and Maureen. They move around a lot and that probably explains why, at the time of your parents’ accident, the police were unable to identify them.”
“The details. Please,” she repeated.
“OK. I have an address for Joe’s sister, Shauna. She’s married to a man called Ed Weston and lives in Glastonbury.”
“Thank you.” Jess took the paper he handed her and put it in her bag.
“Sit down a moment, please.” He leaned forward, his eyes intense. “Your grandfather was a good man. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“No, he didn’t.” She blinked and sat back in her chair, her eyes prickling.
Her grandfather’s killer was now serving a prison sentence for manslaughter. Justice had been done, but it didn’t make the loss any easier.
“Jess, if you insist on going to see Shauna, how about if I come with you?”
She looked up, surprised at his change of tone. Until now he’d kept everything strictly formal.
“Why would you do that?”
“Ed’s brother is living with them at the moment. He’s just out of prison.”
“Were you the one who put him there?”
He shook his head.
“After my time. Although I collared his dad on several occasions. Would you like me to come with you?”
She thought about turning up at Shauna’s house with an ex-policeman in tow.
It was hardly the best way to get to know her family, was it?