Well, she wasn’t about to put herself through that, Meredith decided. She’d phone the main station but that was all. Then she would take matters into her own hands. She knew that something was going on out there and she had a fairly good idea where to begin digging to find it.
To do this, she needed Lexie Streener. So she made her phone call to the graphic-design firm where she herself was employed, talked about a rotten summer cold that she didn’t want to pass on to the other employees, and after offering a few artificial sneezes so that Cammie would not suffer damage from this brief exposure to her mother’s prevarication, she set out to fetch Lexie Streener.
Lexie hadn’t needed the slightest persuading to take a day off from the hair salon, where her future as the Nicky Clarke of Ringwood wasn’t exactly arriving on the wings of Mercury. Her dad was off selling coffee, tea, biscuits, and such from his caravan in a lay-by on the A336, and her mum was slipping tracts on the fourth beatitude under the windscreen wipers of cars waiting for the Isle of Wight ferries on Lymington Pier where, she reckoned, she had a captive audience who needed to hear about what constituted righteousness in the current world situation. Neither of them would have any way of knowing that Lexie had done a runner from work-not that it mattered much to them anyway, Lexie groused-so it was no big deal for her to ring Jean Michel’s hair salon, groan her way through an excuse of sicking up all night long after a bad beef burger, and then ring off with a “lemme get meself sorted” to Meredith.
Getting sorted consisted of decking herself out in platform shoes, lace tights, a very short skirt-she definitely wouldn’t want to be bending over, Meredith thought-and a blouse whose empire waist suggested Jane Austen films or maternity wear. This last bit was a nice touch, indicating that Lexie had somehow worked out Meredith’s intentions.
These were devious but not illegal. Lexie was to play the role of a girl in dire need of serious mentoring, one whose elder sister-that would be Meredith-had heard of a programme being run by a very nice young woman recently down from Winchester. I can’t do a bloody thing with her and I’m that worried she’ll go off the rails if we don’t take steps was the general line Meredith planned to take. And she planned to take that line first at Brockenhurst College where girls just Lexie’s age took themselves after leaving the comprehensive, in the hope of learning something there that would lead to future employment rather than to the dole.
The college was just beyond the Snake Catcher pub, on the Lyndhurst Road. Lexie’s role called for her to smoke and sulk and generally act uncooperative, at risk for everything from pregnancy to STDs to rampant heroin addiction. Although Meredith would never have mentioned it to the girl, the fact that her short-sleeved blouse revealed several cutting scars on her arms lent credence to the story they were concocting.
She managed to find a shady spot to leave the car, and together she and Lexie made their way across the baking tarmac to the administrative offices. There they spoke to a harried secretary who was trying to meet the needs of a group of foreign students with limited English. She said to Meredith, “You want what?” And then, “You need to speak with Monica Patterson-Hughes in Nursing,” which suggested that she didn’t quite understand what Meredith was driving at with regard to her “younger sister’s situation.” But Monica Patterson-Hughes being better than no one, she and Lexie went in search of such a person. They found her demonstrating nappy changing to a group of adolescent girls who had the distinctly attentive look of future nannies. They were quite intent upon a worn-looking Cabbage Patch doll that was being used for the demonstration. Evidently, anatomically correct artificial infants were beyond the limited funding of the organisation.
“We use actual infants in part two of the course,” Monica Patterson-Hughes informed Meredith upon stepping aside to let the future nannies loose upon the Cabbage Patch doll. “And we’re encouraging the use of cloth nappies again. It’s all about bringing up baby green.” She looked at Lexie. “Are you wanting to enrol, my dear? It’s quite a popular course. We have girls placed all over Hampshire once they finish up. You’d have to rethink your appearance-the hair’s just a bit over the top-but with guidance as to dressing and grooming, you could go far. If you’ve an interest, of course.”
Lexie looked surly, without prompting. Meredith took Monica Patterson-Hughes aside. It wasn’t that, she explained. It was something quite different. Lexie here has gone a bit wild and I’m the responsible adult in her life and I’ve been told that there’s a programme for girls just like Lexie, girls who need to be taken in hand by someone who sets an example for them, takes an interest, acts like an older sister. Which I of course am: her older sister, that is. But sometimes a real older sister isn’t the thing a younger sister wants to listen to, especially a younger sister like Lexie who’s already been in a bit of trouble-“wild boys and binge drinking and such,” Meredith murmured-and who doesn’t want to listen to someone she frankly considers a “bloody preaching cow.”
“I’d heard of a programme…?” she repeated hopefully. “A young lady down from…I believe it was Winchester?…who’s taking on troubled girls?”
Monica Patterson-Hughes frowned. Then she shook her head. There was no such programme associated with the college. Nor did she know of one in the process of being set up. Girls at risk…Well, generally they were dealt with at a younger age, weren’t they? Mightn’t this programme be something more likely to come from the New Forest District Council?
Lexie, apparently getting quite into her role, cooperatively snarled that she wasn’t having “nought to do wiv no fooking council,” and she brought out her cigarettes as if she meant to light up there in the classroom. Monica Patterson-Hughes looked suitably appalled. She said, “My dear, you can’t-” to which Lexie informed her she’d damn well do what she bloody liked. Meredith thought this might be smearing things on a bit thick, and she got her “younger sister” out of the classroom posthaste.
Lexie crowed once they were outside. She said, “Tha’ was great fun, that,” and “Where’re we off to next?” and “I’ll talk ’bout me boyfriend at the next place. What d’you think?”
Meredith wanted to tell her that a wee bit less drama would serve them better but Lexie had few enough diversions in her life and if this little jaunt of theirs had the potential of supplying her with some excitement in the absence of such from her Bible-thumping parents, that was fine by her. So at the New Forest District Council offices-which they found in Lyndhurst in a U of buildings called Appletree Court-they put on a performance of such conviction that they were immediately ushered into the presence of a social worker called Dominic Cheeters, who brought them coffee and lemony ginger biscuits and seemed so eager to help that Meredith felt a nagging sense of guilt that they were lying to the man.
But here, too, in the council offices they learned there was no programme being established for girls at risk, and definitely no programme being established by one Gina Dickens from Winchester. Dominic, helpful to the core of his being, even went to the trouble of phoning round various of his “personal sources,” as he called them. But the result was the same. Nothing. So then he went further afield, phoning the local education offices in Southampton to see if they could be of help. By this time, Meredith reckoned she knew that they could not help and such was the case.
The enterprise with Lexie Streener ate up most of her day, as things turned out. But Meredith considered it time well spent. She now had proof positive, she decided, that Gina Dickens was a flaming liar about her life in the New Forest. And Meredith knew from personal experience that where a person told one lie, dozens of others existed.