‘Hullo. Did you want me?’
‘Sorry, I just dropped in on the off-chance … Kayley!’
‘Oh my God, Jenna! Oh my God. I heard you were back but … Oh my God!’
They laughed at each other for a few moments, then Kayley unlocked the gate and led Jenna to the bunker, unlocking several more padlocks on the way.
‘I’m gasping for a cuppa – do you want one? So, what brings you here?’ Kayley set about boiling a kettle in a little kitchen corner of a room full of pool tables, gaming machines, computers and bookshelves.
‘Just a thought that I might start giving something back to the place that made me,’ said Jenna. ‘I want to make a donation to the youth club, maybe you’d like me to come in and give a talk, that kind of thing. Perhaps pay for recording equipment.’
Kayley turned around, beaming. ‘Seriously? Give us your hand, love. So I can bite it off.’
They laughed again.
‘This is like a dream,’ said Kayley. ‘We’ve been drained dry by successive local council budget cuts. We can only keep going because people volunteer their time and donate their old gear now and again. Seriously, hand to mouth stuff. A recording studio, wow! I can’t tell you how much that would mean to the kids we serve here.’
‘I want to help. I used to come here, when it first opened. It didn’t have all that amazing artwork on the walls then, though.’
Jenna looked around her, detecting the hand of Jason in at least some of it.
‘Yeah, we’ve got some talented artists.’
‘That one there – of the big foot coming down on the little antlike people …’
‘It’s brilliant, isn’t it? Lad who used to come here a few years back. Jason. He could’ve gone all the way, if he hadn’t got sucked into estate low life.’ She sighed and reached into a cupboard for a box of teabags.
‘Serious talent,’ said Jenna, almost to herself. ‘It can’t go to waste.’
‘Tell me about it. Crying shame. We’ve got a girl who comes here now, could be a professional dancer if she wanted, but she’s met some lad and she’s started going round to his place to smoke puff all night instead of coming here to rehearse like she used to. I don’t know. What can we do? We do our best. That’s about all we can.’
She brightened.
‘But hey, now you’re here, perhaps you’ll inspire her.’
‘I hope so. God, Kayley, I haven’t seen you in, what, seventeen years?’
‘Must be about that. Shit, shut up. I sound really old.’
‘If you’re old, what does that make me? I used to babysit you.’
‘You’d think working in a youth club would keep me young, wouldn’t you? The opposite. Look at this.’ She plucked at a silver hair growing amongst the brown.
‘Oh, I couldn’t even guess what colour my hair is now. It’s so long since I saw its natural colour. How’s your mum? And your crazy brothers? Thanks.’
She took the cup of tea and they sat down to discuss possible donations and projects for the club.
‘You know, those paintings are really brilliant,’ she said, looking around her at the evidence of Jason’s talent all over the walls. ‘It’s a real shame about that bloke you mentioned,’ she said, as casually as she could muster once the talk had lapsed a while. ‘Jason, was it? Isn’t there any way he could get back to his painting?’
‘Not now,’ said Kayley, briefly. ‘Unless they do art classes in prison. I think they do, actually.’
‘He’s inside?’
‘No, but if they get hold of him he will be.’
Jenna sighed. ‘Sad.’
‘Yeah.’