Jess
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
The mirror image, in fact.
She almost memorialises this verge because it's the place where she believes her life begins.
She once sent me a photo of it with a heart emoji.
The fact that it's beautiful, and it really is, it matters to her.
But being at the verge that day has another effect.
It alters how she feels about the fact that she was abandoned.
It makes her feel something more like anger.
She's thinking perhaps whoever left her there didn't necessarily want her to be found.
And for the first time in all these years, she says it strikes her that if she hadn't been picked up that morning, she might not have survived.
As Jess leaves the Verge and says goodbye to Jean, Jean repeats her theory that only someone local could have known about that lane.
And then she drops one more vital clue.
For the police, this is an old case, long forgotten and largely mothballed after Jess was adopted back in 1988.
But I reckon there must still be a case file somewhere.
I begin making some inquiries of my own, and I send off a request to Suffolk Constabulary, asking to see any paperwork they have about the investigation.
And while I wait, I try to track down the police officers who were involved.
Their names aren't on social media, so I trawl the electoral register looking for addresses.
It seems they all still live in Suffolk, and I end up driving round the county, parking in unfamiliar streets and posting letters through front doors.
I assume it's going to be straightforward, that they'll be amused, flattered even, to dust off an old and puzzling case.
But I'm wrong about that.
The detective who's in charge of the case doesn't want to talk about it, and neither do the two other retired officers who also worked on it.