Pippa Fitz-Amobi EPQ 26/09/2017
Production Log – Entry 20
Transcript of interview with Jess Walker (Becca
Bell’s friend)
[We talk a bit about Little Kilton, about how the school has changed since she left, which teachers are still there, etc. It’s a few minutes until I can steer the conversation back to my project.] Pip: So I wanted to ask you, really, about the Bells, not just Andie. What kind of family they were, how did they get on? Things like that.
JessOh, well I mean, that’s a loaded question right there. (She sniffs.)
: Pip: What do you mean?
JessUm, I don’t know if dysfunctional is quite the right word. People use that as a funny :kind of accolade. I’d mean it in the proper sense. Like they weren’t quite normal. I mean, they were normal enough; they seemed normal unless you spent a lot of time there, like I did. And I picked up on a lot of little things that you wouldn’t have noticed if you didn’t live among the Bells.
Pip: What do you mean by not quite normal?
JessI don’t know if that’s a good way of describing it. There were just a couple of things :that weren’t quite right. It was mainly Jason, Becca’s dad.
Pip: What did he do?
JessIt was just the way he spoke to them, the girls and Dawn. If you only saw it a couple of :times, you’d think he was just trying to be funny. But I saw it often, very often, and I think it definitely affected the environment in that house.
Pip: What?
JessSorry, I’m talking in circles, aren’t I? It’s quite difficult to explain. Um. He would just say :things to them, always little digs about how they looked and stuff. The total opposite of how you should talk to your teenage daughters. He’d pick up on things he knew they were self-conscious about. He said things to Becca about her weight and would laugh it off as a joke. He’d tell Andie she needed to put on make-up before she left the house, that her face was her money-maker. Jokes like this all the time. Like how they looked was the most important thing in the world. I remember when I was over for dinner one time Andie was upset that she didn’t get any offers from the universities
