Mo picked at some loose wool on the sleeve of her cardigan. She was lying down but didn’t need to be hypnotised. She knew the rest of the story well enough. ‘I saw less of Wes after the party. He lost interest in me after that. I should have been hurt, but by then, heroin was my new love affair, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Everything spiralled downwards after that. Jen stopped hiding the fact that they’d been selling my body all along.’
‘What about your family? How did they handle it?’ Ms Harkness scribbled down every word Mo spoke.
‘Mum took it pretty hard. Depression consumed her. She took her eye off the ball. That’s when the social got involved.’
‘You mean children’s social care?’
Mo nodded. ‘I’d stopped going to school. A report was made. They weren’t too impressed when they came to the house. One kid on drugs and the other so neglected that he was eating from the bin.’
‘Really?’
Mo nodded, noticing sympathy in her therapist’s eyes. ‘I’d just got home. I’d been out all night being shuffled around from one party to the next. To me, it was a way of getting high and not having to pay for it. I didn’t stop to think about Jacob. I turned my back on him. Back then, when he tried to wake me, I wasn’t able to move. My head used to feel like it was going to explode and every muscle in my body ached from the night before.’ Mo stared at the ceiling, the image of Jacob’s pallid face imprinted on her mind. She hadn’t noticed how the circles beneath his eyes had darkened. How he had grown yet stayed the same. ‘Underdeveloped for his age’ was what they had said. ‘He’d try to wake me in the mornings, but I’d be so far under, I’d hear him sobbing in my dreams . . . sometimes I still do.’ Mo sighed, wishing she could turn back the clock. She could see him, barefoot, wearing his tatty old pyjamas with the buttons done up wrong.
‘You mentioned children’s social care?’ her therapist said, moving things along.
‘It must have been two . . . maybe three o’clock in the afternoon. I was woken up by a terrible racket downstairs. Mum was screaming at the top of her voice. First, I thought my stepfather had come home. I wrapped a blanket around myself. I was still a bit out of it, which didn’t help her case. The social worker took one look at me and said she was taking action to have us both removed from her care.’ That day was burnt in Mo’s memory because it was the day Jacob was taken away from her. ‘Mum shouldn’t have let it happen.’ Mo blinked. ‘Betrayal like that runs deep.’
‘So, you were both taken into care?’
Mo swallowed the tight lump forming in her throat. ‘Because she was weak. I vowed never to be weak like her. Sometimes I’d run away from the home. Find some parties, score some drugs. But then everything dried up. I had to face the truth. The sort of people who mixed in those circles wanted younger girls than me. So, I thought, if I couldn’t beat the system, I could work it to my advantage. It was time for me to be the one on top.’
‘How do you feel about it now?’
Mo stared at the ceiling as the timer beeped to signal an end to their session. It was remarkable how far she had come. ‘I’ve come to terms with myself.’ She swung her feet on to the floor. ‘I am who I am, and I make no apologies for it.’
When she left her therapy session, she did so with her head held high.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Amy turned a corner as she entered the bowels of the station, crashing headlong into Bicks. ‘Sorry!’ she said, bending to one knee to pick up his files, which had slid to the floor. ‘That’s what I get for rushing.’
‘No bother.’ Bicks bent to scoop up the paperwork. ‘It’s ready for shredding anyway. How are you?’ he said, clutching the papers to his chest. ‘Making headway, I hear.’
A number of leads had come in during her absence and she had hit the ground running upon her return. Donovan’s meeting with the Leicestershire sex offender left them in no doubt of the nature of the seaside attacks. She was confident their latest drowning victim had not committed suicide.
‘Our victims were after more than candyfloss and doughnuts, that’s for sure,’ Amy said. Each crime was a double-edged sword, with vulnerable young people at its core. But thanks to Molly’s ingenuity, she had not only captured an image of one of the boys but was due to meet him tonight. April’s situation was a serious cause for concern. ‘The boy is a key witness. We’ll soon be making arrests. You’ve not seen Donovan, have you?’ Amy said, remembering why she’d been heading to CID in the first place.
Bicks jerked a thumb behind him. ‘He’s in the NPT office.’
The neighbourhood policing team office was a good place to be if you were after some peace and quiet. Its officers were proactive and usually out pounding the streets. Amy was pleased to find him sitting alone at a computer, but he did not return her smile. He looked sharp in his suit and tie, having come from the briefing half an hour before.
‘Sorry I missed briefing.’ Amy perched on the edge of his desk, presuming that was why he was peeved. The room
