She was in the car with Emma when her phone rang. She answered it over the loud speaker, hearing the automated voice tell her that it was a call from Wyvern Women's Prison. Jac pulled over immediately to the side of the road and grabbed the phone, answering and pulling it to her ear.
"Hello?" A familiar voice started, and it took every ounce of her being not to hang up immediately. "Jac, is that you?"
"What do you want, Fran?" Jac snapped, angry at the fact that she was even being forced to have this conversation. If she didn't, she knew that she would spend weeks regretting and wondering what would've been said.
"I've changed. I want to apologise. I was hoping you might come and visit me? I put you on my visitation list a while ago and you've already been approved," Fran offered in that needy, almost crying tone that she used almost all of the time to try and get what she wanted. "I really do want to make things right with you, if you'll let me. We could be friends. I can help you!"
Jac scoffed at that. There were many things she wanted from Fran Reynolds. On that extensive list, at no point was there any semblance of help.
"I don't need anything from you, Fran. I want you out of my life, not in it again. You've done enough damage. I'm not going to welcome you back into my world," she responded, and she was surprised with herself for not being crueller. All the words that she had for Fran were the truth, brutal as it may be. "I want to forget we ever even met."
Fran sounded as though she was crying on the other end of the phone, and it was nothing short of a miracle that Jac managed not to roll her eyes. It was hard to fathom that anybody in the world could be more emotionally manipulative than she had taught herself to be, and some small part of me almost admired it.
"You lost Jasmine, and I had a part in that, I know, Jac, I do. But she was family, and I'm family. I'm all the family you've got left. Apart from Emma and I don't think she's going to help you to grieve much," Fran sniffled out and the sincerity in her tone baffled Jac.
Emma was sat in the back seat, asking Jac why they had stopped the car and who she was on the phone to but Jac was ignoring her, shaking her head and shushing her daughter through the rear-view mirror.
"You are not my family, and you never were. You were some desperate little girl who wanted somebody to pay attention to you but nobody does, Fran, nobody does. My sister is dead, and you may as well have killed her," Jac bit out, ignoring the lump in the back of her throat. "Don't call me again and take me off your stupid list. You'll never hear from me again."
She hung up the phone before Fran had the chance to respond. Emma kicked the back of her mother's chair, trying to draw her attention.
"MUMMA! Who was on the phone?" she grumbled, on the verge of a tantrum as Jac turned in her chair to face her.
"Nobody important, baby," Jac answered softly as she stroked Emma's shoulder. "Home time, I think."
When they arrived at Fletch's house, Emma hurried off to find Theo as Jac made her way through to the kitchen to see him buttering bread.
"Alright?" he greeted casually, glancing up as she walked into the room.
"Fran Reynolds called and asked me to go and visit her in prison," Jac stated blankly as she flopped into a seat at the other end of the table. "I told her where to shove it already, but it was out of nowhere and it felt a bit weird to even hear her voice."
Fletch dropped the knife down onto the plate as his eyes shot up to look at Jac. She appeared fine, if a little subdued, but he knew that she couldn't be...not really.
"Do you want to go and see her? I know you said you didn't, but do you think you need the closure of seeing that she's never going to be in your life again?" Fletch asked kindly, rounding the table and dropping into the seat beside her.
"Seeing that she's locked away for now doesn't mean she won't worm her way back into my life in a few times. She's not in there forever, Fletch, she's not even in there for a very long time. 8 years, that's as long as I knew Jasmine even existed and I only knew her for less than one of those."
Everybody knew that Jac Naylor was a forget but never forgive kind of person. She wouldn't think about somebody for years as long as they weren't in her life, but the second they cropped up again, every bad thing they had ever done would return to the forefront of her mind and she would hold it against them forever. Fran was better off in prison where Jac couldn't ruin her life, the prison system was nothing compared to the wrath of Jac Naylor.
"I don't want to see her. I want to pretend that she never even existed. The only person from that part of my life that needs to be given a second thought is Jasmine, and I am not going to waste my precious time trying to turn the page on a book which I closed months ago," Jac finished confidently, letting out a breath she didn't realise she had been holding.
"Okay," Fletch answered simply, covering her hand with his own and squeezing it kindly.
Fran Reynolds was not her family, and she never had been. Jasmine was her family. Emma was her family. Fletch was her family. She had what she needed and Fran couldn't make her doubt that, not anymore.
