After everyone was fully dressed, well fed and ready to go, they decided to stop putting it off and head down to the local police station. Jody was, quite obviously, extremely nervous. She kept clinging to Zoe as if she was going to lose her, even though she wasn't. On top of her nerves, she felt guilty. Really guilty. She felt bad that she should care about Elizabeth at all. She felt worse knowing that Nick and Zoe knew she cared. Unbeknown to Jody, Nick and Zoe didn't mind in the slightest, they knew it was quite natural, given the age she was when they adopted her. They expected her to miss her parents. What they hadn't expected was their current situation. They pulled up at the police station and got out of the car. Immediately, Jody took hold of Zoe's hand and began clinging to her even more.
"Jody sweetheart. You're cutting off the circulation in my right arm." Zoe said, gently. Jody blushed and released her grip a little.
"Sorry." She murmured.
"That's okay baby." Nick took hold of Jody's free hand, offering her more support and security, as they walked into the police station.
"Hi, how can I help you?" Said a friendly police officer from behind the main desk.
"Um, yeah, hi. We've got, an interesting case to report." Nick said to him.
"Okay, if you just take a seat, another officer will be with you shortly."
"Thank you." Nick replied, going over and sitting down next to his wife and child. Zoe looked at Jody, her usually bubbly and happy child looked like a mere shadow of herself and it worried her.
"Jody sweetheart, relax. It will be fine." She said, Jody just nodded, but her big blue eyes were drained of all their usual fire.
"No it won't. I already know she's going to be dead, I can feel it. What I can't understand is why I care! It's not like she gave a damn about me. You don't get as underweight as I was in a mere fortnight! Actually no, I don't really care. I just feel so guilty that someone died at my hands!" Zoe couldn't believe her ears.
"Jody. It was not your fault what happened. You couldn't have changed it, you hear me? Look at what he did to you just because you got upset that she was hurt, imagine what he would have done if you'd tried to save her. It was not your fault." Just as Zoe finished, a tall, muscly man came over to them.
"Hello, DCI Darryl McKillion. Would you like to follow me please." They nodded, stood and followed the officer to a small room that only had one window, a recorder, a table and some chairs. It was really quite depressing.
"Have a seat." He said in a very thick, Scottish accent. They sat down around the table, Darryl set up the recording device and hit record.
"Interview started at 12:07pm. Okay, what was it you wanted to report.
Zoe looked at Jody, now she was in a terrible state, shuddering shaking, unable to lift her eyes from the floor. She had pulled her sleeves down over her hands and was chewing on the end of one of her sleeves in a desperate attempt to calm herself. She couldn't explain anything. So, instead, Zoe turned to Nick. He knew by her face what she was asking. He cleared his throat and spoke up.
"Okay. Well, this is our daughter, Jody." The officer nodded. "We adopted her two years ago after meeting her in our ED, Holby City ED that is. She was brought into the ED severely underweight and she had a bad injury to the back of her head. She told us she had been the house for two weeks by herself as her parents had gone on holiday and never returned. She also said that the head injury happened because she fainted and hit her head on a table. Both stories made perfect sense. However, yesterday, my wife and I learned that neither were actually true." He paused for breath.
"Okay, so what actually happened?" Jody found the courage to speak and decided to cut nick off and take over.
"Well, she-"
"My biological parents, Elizabeth and Dean, they never got on, ever. He was a drunk, he beat her every day. They were terrible parents really. They often forgot to feed me, forgot to take me to school and things like that. I had to stand on my own from the age of five. I used to come in from school and go into the living room where he'd be drunk, again, and he'd be half way through beating her up. She'd scream at me to go to my room but I'd still hear it all. I didn't know what to do, I was only little. Anyway. The last time I saw them was when I caved because I'd been in my bedroom, listening to the screaming and the constant, sickening thuds of him hitting her when all of a sudden, the house fell silent. It was eerie and it scared me. So I caved, I went back to the living room and walked in. The first thing I saw was him, in his arm chair, smiling and downing yet another bottle of beer. The next was her, she was lying down under the radiator. She was naked and completely covered in blood. She was bleeding so bad I actually couldn't see what part of her was bleeding. I screamed. He didn't like me showing her pity, so he smashed the bottle on the back of my head. I was out. When I woke up. The house was empty and they were gone. I stayed on the same, blood covered bit of carpet under the radiator for two weeks. I was young and petrified, I thought if I stayed where she'd been, she'd come back. It was stupid, but anyway. I finally got up and went to the ED. that's where I met Nick and Zoe. I've never told anyone where the house was. There was no need to, as far as everyone knew, my parents were off in another country living the vida loca. I was convinced she was dead, so I didn't tell anyone. I'm sorry about that. It's just the guilt was nearly killing me! It made it easier to push them to the back of my mind and forget it all. Sorry." She looked up at the officer, wet tear trails staining her perfect cheeks. He was saddened by her story and sympathised with her.
"It's okay, none of this was your fault. Okay, the process now is quite large. You need to tell me their full names, ages, birth dated etcetera. I'll need the address of the house and some pictures of them would help too."
"Well. Their names are Elizabeth and Dean Watson. Her birth dat is the 17th of January 1974 and his was the 27th of August 1970." Even though she was being recorded, darryl was writing down all of this information. "The address is 12 Summer-dale road, Holby, um, and you'll find pictures in the house." He nodded.
"Thank you. Now, if you two could just leave your contact details," he slid is pen and book over to Nick and Zoe. "You're free to go and we'll ring you with regular updates.