The Flower Girls

by Alice Clark-Platts

  The learned counsel spoke at length in his opening speech, reeling in the jury and the others packed into the courtroom like reams of nets packed and jiving with the silvery skin of fish. He spoke of wickedness, of pure and unadulterated violence. He spoke of cruelty and torture and the desperate cries of a mother when she realised that her child was missing. Of little Kirstie, and how she did not deserve her fate. How her end was all the more shocking, perpetrated as it was by someone who should still be innocent, beyond the realm of such atrocities.

  How was it? he pondered aloud. How was it that such depravity could exist in one so young? Was it a sign of our times? An indication that this new generation had bewilderingly embraced unfathomable violence? Had exposure to violence on television and film meant that the mind of a ten-year-old child could become addled, tainted with poison, until she could no longer see straight, could no longer discern the difference between right and wrong? Or was that all an illusion? Was that merely a puff, an excuse? Here, Counsel paused and half-turned behind him, towards the occupants of the gallery straining to follow his words.

  Or was it, instead, that Child X was very simply, very plainly, wicked?

  Wasn’t that the most likely explanation? Because how could one quantify the effect of violent films or games on a brain? Scientists grappled with this problem on a daily basis, and perhaps the equation was within our grasp in the course of our lifetime. But not today. Not as Child X sat in this courtroom. Only she could explain the dark forces that must have been at work inside her when she decided to kidnap Kirstie and take her by the hand down onto the canal path. Only she knew why she had beaten and tortured her. Only she knew those secret places where her thoughts lay within her, tangled like weeds.

  It is not, he said, for us to try and understand. It is necessary only to agree that she is indeed guilty. That she, with malice aforethought, did take the life of Kirstie Swann. A chilling and abominable intention indeed. One that very few of us in this world will ever be able to understand. Even she – and here he pointed at Laurel, her head dipped low – even she does not accept the evil inside of her. She claims to be not guilty. She says she did not kill Kirstie and yet she offers no other explanation for the little girl’s death. She suggests it was a mistake, but she will not tell us in what way. After this explanation – counsel’s disdain for it was clear – she is silent. She will not be drawn on that afternoon. That beautiful summer’s day when a child’s innocent life was cruelly, and violently, robbed from her.

  Counsel reached the end of his speech, his voice hoarse from the passion with which he had spoken. Laurel’s head remained bent. She avoided the laser stare of Joanna Denton, the slow hot tears of Debbie Swann. She stared down at her hands in her lap, feeling her buttocks numb beneath her, her expression frozen. She had been sitting on her hard chair in the dock for four hours.

  Tomorrow her barrister would begin her defence.

  Laurel did not listen as the judge explained this to her at the end of the day.

  She had not been listening for hours.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Lying in her cell, Laurel links her hands behind her neck and shuts her eyes for a second. She thinks back to the conversation she has just had with her uncle, to the staccato pleasure in his voice as he excitedly fired information at her about the court hearing and how they had won. Laurel sniffs, unable to take the news in. She’s annoyed with herself that, on the phone, she had felt seeds of hope take root in her. Now she concentrates on angrily telling them to fuck off and die.

  Her pulse has finally slowed from where it had ratcheted when she first heard the news and now she is back to her normal self. She’ll put that information somewhere else in her head. She’ll think about it later when she can believe that it will mean anything for her future.

  Now, though, she’s focusing on what else Toby had told her. As she lies there, dwelling on it, Fritz shoves her head round the door.

  ‘Fucking Cags has broken the fucking remote and it’s stuck on shit-balls Bargain Hunt. I cannot take any more of that orange wanker.’

  Laurel licks her lips and squeezes her eyes shut, tries to stay with one foot in the past and keep from bringing herself back to her present.

  ‘L?’ Fritz says. ‘D’you hear me? Cags again. I swear, this is the last time . . .’

  ‘Piss off,’ Laurel snaps.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Fuck off, I’m busy.’

  Fritz falls silent. Laurel raises her head, seeing the hurt in her friend’s eyes. Her only friend, if you don’t count Toby, which she doesn’t most of the time. Fritz and she have been together since they were fifteen when they both wound up in Oakingham. Fritz was locked up for breaking into a house on her own estate, tying up a seventy-year-old woman in her armchair in the lounge for six hours while Fritz ransacked her cupboards, ate the contents of her fridge and watched an Alfred Hitchcock DVD. When she had finally left, she had stuffed a pair of flesh-coloured tights into the woman’s mouth before letting herself out by the front door, her pockets filled with the woman’s pension. It was only when she was arrested that she learnt the victim had suffered a stroke whilst Fritz had been busy watching Rear Window. She was now entirely paralysed down her left side and reduced to living in a care home for the rest of her days.

  Fritz had attached herself to Laurel from the first day she’d met her. She had never mentioned the murder of Kirstie Swann and Laurel never asked her about the old woman. They bumbled along together, watching telly, playing cards and sharing jokes that nobody else seemed to get. Fritz is long and lanky with a greasy mullet haircut that renders her face even thinner. She has deep green eyes and focuses them reproachfully on Laurel as her friend tells her to get lost.

  ‘What is it?’ asks Fritz, folding her arms, her voice petulant.

  Laurel sighs, her face bunched in a tight, unhappy scowl. ‘My sister,’ she says.

  Fritz says nothing for a second. Then: ‘Rosie?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘What about her?’

  Laurel leaps up, rubbing a palm across her face and pushing past Fritz as she leaves the room. ‘Nothing,’ she says as she goes, ‘forget it.’

  They swing into the recreation room, which Laurel crosses before smacking the television into oblivion.

  ‘You’ll regret that,’ Cags remarks from her corner, hunched up in a saggy blue chair. ‘You’ll be back cleaning the bogs now, I’ll bet.’

  Laurel straightens, rubbing her fist where it smarts from its contact with the TV casing. ‘Lucky it wasn’t you instead, eh? What’s that?’ she says, whipping round, her stomach convulsing at the sight of the spittle at the edges of Cags’s mouth, the crust of green around her nostrils. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing.’ The girl shrugs and gives a mean little smile. ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘Well, don’t fucking say, right?’ Laurel walks over to where Cags’s legs stick out straight in front across the stained carpet. She looks down at the girl’s slippers, the folds of her tracksuit bottoms, and wrinkles her nose at the smell of stale sweat, a sweet and fertile odour, emanating from the other girl. ‘Don’t you ever wash, Cags?’ She kicks at one of her ankles. ‘’Bout time you cleaned yourself up, I reckon.’

  From her sentry post in the doorway, Fritz gives a low chuckle.

  Cags’s smile freezes and a pink hue rises up, mottling her chest and neck. Laurel leans down and sniffs theatrically. ‘You fucking reek.’

  When the guards arrive, Laurel is sent to the toilets with a toothbrush. As she scrubs the tiles and, later, when she is back in her room, she still struggles to get her head around what Toby had told her.

  Rosie wants to visit her, in here?

  Laurel hasn’t seen her sister since the night she was taken away from her parents. For nineteen years, apart from one drawing right at the beginning of her sentence, she has heard nothing from her although Laurel thinks about Rosie most days.

  The request from Toby thrums in her he
ad, pouring into the room along with the shaft of sunlight that floods through the high window, hot against her legs. She remembers her sister’s face. Her dark hair, the tiny mole on her earlobe, her brown eyes, quick and watchful. The way she hummed as she moved, unaware of the music that danced through her, tapping her fingers against her thighs. Laurel focuses on the edge of a crack in the wall, the way it fragments the light, splits it into two when she half-closes her eyes, watching the colours fracture through her eyelashes.

  Her eyes open wide as she suddenly articulates the thought that has been beetling around inside her head since she’d spoken to Toby.

  Every bone in her body knows that Rosie should not come here to prison. Knows that she should not look her sister in the eyes. That her life – such as it is – should remain untouched and unscathed.

  Setting scorpions running across her toes with visits, court applications . . . all talk of these should be banned from between these walls because hope is never welcome here.

  But she is battling with another emotion just as strong.

  She loves her sister.

  Laurel is shamed by it. Has tried to kill it in all the cells she’s sat in, through all the loathing she’s faced.

  But there it is.

  And she cannot help herself from seeking to find out if that love is returned.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Jonny brings the roast to the table with that air of bashful pride so common in those who cook well. The beef is pink and fulsome and Max salivates, fingering the stem of his wine glass. Hazel is sitting next to him. Evie’s absence isn’t mentioned and hovers in the corner with the other elephant in the room: the articles spread all over the recent papers. Evie’s interview with a journalist has been repeated ad infinitum, pouring petrol on the bonfire that is Hazel’s public persona. The mainstream media directly links the unsolved disappearance of Georgie Greenstreet with Hazel’s presence at the hotel.

  As Max read the papers, his heart had fluttered more violently than usual, ambition mixing with frustration inside him in a slurry of panic. The vultures were flying ahead, rushing information out and causing a perfect storm of anger, fear and visceral hatred towards Hazel. The timing of the story too, happening just as Laurel Bowman’s appeal against the parole board is being heard in court, has whipped the public into a frenzy. The Flower Girls are all anyone is talking about, from print media, to morning television, to the radio. Max’s mind is whirring as he bends his head closer to Hazel, listening to her talking without really taking in the words. This is his story, he keeps telling himself. He found Hazel. It is up to him to show the world Rosie Bowman.

  If only he can persuade her to meet her sister.

  But he must breathe. Drink his wine. Take things slow. He doesn’t know how he’s going to get Hazel to that point because she has yet to be persuaded actually to do anything. This lunch will be crucial to that end. Because if he gets Hazel into that prison with Laurel then he has won. Any deal he’ll make will blow the rest of the scavenging journos out of the park.

  ‘This looks delicious,’ he says, moving to pick up a serving spoon. ‘Good enough to eat.’

  Jonny grins and sets down a china dish of parsnips. ‘Try the gravy. It’s a family recipe. You’ll like it.’

  ‘Jonny is a fabulous cook,’ Hazel says with a smile although her hand trembles a little as she pours Max more red wine. ‘One of his many qualities.’

  They begin to eat, a soft silence settling around them with the aromas from the food and the wine. Jonny’s place is bigger than Max had expected: a mansion flat in West London. He’s obviously doing well for himself. It has high ceilings with ornate dado rails and floor-to-ceiling windows. As Max gets to know Jonny better, he understands that the man has two levels of energy: high and higher. He can’t stay still. Even sitting with a plate of food in front of him, he is constantly checking Hazel and Max with his eyes, roving his hands across the table like a conductor, offering, serving, never motionless.

  By contrast, Hazel has an air of childlike serenity about her, despite the stress she must be under at the moment. Her smiles are warm, her touch is kind. She seems to know exactly the right time to offer a second helping, or a top-up of wine. Max can discern a clear tension underneath but she seems to be coping well and, he’s pleased to see, is responsive to his suggestions.

  ‘I saw,’ she begins tentatively. ‘I saw that Laurel won her hearing. Does this mean she will be released from prison?’

  Max shakes his head. ‘No. Not yet at least. I’m no lawyer but, from what I’ve read, it means that the parole board will now have to argue in front of a judge that they’re right to have decided she needs to serve more time, that she shouldn’t be released yet. Whereas she’s saying their decision is unreasonable and irrational.’

  Hazel nods. ‘But she could get out eventually?’

  ‘I would imagine so. She’s served eighteen years, Hazel. I’d think they’d struggle to keep her in for the rest of her life. She was so young when she killed Kirstie.’

  Hazel bites her lip and reaches for the remote control to turn up the music. ‘Sorry,’ she says abruptly. ‘It’s hard for me to talk about.’

  ‘I understand,’ Max says, patting the tablecloth as if it were Hazel’s hand. ‘What is this music?’ he asks after a moment. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘ “Dido’s Lament”,’ Hazel replies. ‘Jonny hates it. It’s so sad. I love it, though.’

  Jonny raises his eyebrows. ‘I’m more of a guitar and drums sort of a guy. A bottle of wine and this kind of stuff and I’m fast asleep.’

  Max lifts his head towards the Sonos system fixed in the corners of the dining room where they sit around a mahogany dining table. He falls silent as Jonny moves the conversation on, listening to the notes floating high above them. As the lament ends, he is bewildered to discover that he has tears in his eyes.

  ‘ “Remember me,’’ ’ Hazel murmurs to him, causing Jonny to halt mid-sentence. ‘ ‘‘But forget my fate.’’ ’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  Hazel averts her face as she thinks, half-closing her eyes. ‘Dido lost everything she had ever loved. She was betrayed by the person she most trusted. So, I think she’s asking for her place in history but to be remembered well. Not as a victim, but as a woman who loved.’

  Max watches Hazel as she speaks, the music rising above them. The wine is warm in his stomach and he is suddenly deeply and completely content.

  ‘Max . . .’ Jonny’s voice cuts in, scattering his thoughts. ‘We need to talk about Evie and what she’s done. Talking to that journalist. All the things she said about my relationship with Hazel. I can’t believe she spoke like that.’

  Max raises his shoulders along with his glass. ‘Ah, yes. The shame of it is that we didn’t control it ourselves, prep her to say more positive things. At this stage of the game, people will read into absolutely anything. Or nothing.’ He drinks from his glass.

  ‘Well, I’m hugely concerned. All that attention on Evie is really not good. It’s interfering with her schoolwork. I don’t understand how her mother could ever have let this happen.’

  ‘We don’t blame Evie, of course,’ Hazel interjects. ‘The poor thing was tricked by the journalist, it’s obvious. She’s only fourteen, after all. Something should be done about these papers. They’re out of control.’ She dips her head as her voice falters. ‘They’re trying to take photos of me, out on the street. No one’s protecting me, everyone knows who I am. All these years I’ve been someone else, and now it’s all out in the open. I don’t understand why they don’t stop them, put a ban on it. You don’t know what it’s like, reading things about yourself that are so untrue. So vile. The other day,’ she looks from Jonny to Max, ‘I had to go to the chemist to get a prescription. The doctor has prescribed me some anti-anxiety pills,’ she explains softly. ‘And as I went in, someone actually spat at me. It landed on my sleeve. I’m not Laurel.’ She wipes her eyes and a smear of mascara stains the top
of her cheek. ‘I’m not her.’

  Max shifts in his seat, sensing his opportunity. ‘I agree that things have been blown up out of proportion,’ he says. ‘As I warned you down at Balcombe Court, once the press got wind of who you really are, Hazel, they were bound to run with this story. That’s why I want some damage control. I want to try and rein this in before it becomes something beyond any of us.’

  ‘Isn’t the damage already done?’ Jonny reaches over to wipe away the mark on Hazel’s face. ‘After what Hazel’s just said? Added to which, she’s getting more letters, more hate mail.’

  ‘From the same person as before?’ Max asks.

  ‘Maybe.’ Hazel’s voice trembles. ‘I’m not sure. The ones I had before New Year were . . . different. They all had the same quality about them. These ones seem . . . erratic. As if they’re coming from all kinds of nasty people. And there are photographs of . . . terrible things.’ She presses the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other. ‘They say they want to kill me. Make me pay. Accuse me of taking Georgie. Even though she’s been found!’

  Hazel puts her hands over her face, her voice becoming muffled. ‘Of course I didn’t hurt her,’ she says desperately. ‘I was so relieved when she was brought back safely.’ She releases her hands and stares wildly at Max. ‘I am NOT Rosie Bowman! I haven’t been for nineteen years. I am Hazel Archer. THAT is who I am. Not that child . . .’ she begins to cry gently ‘. . . not that child. I’m not her any more . . .’

  Jonny gets up quickly and comes to stand behind Hazel, leaning in over her chair to put his arms around her. He buries his face in her hair, whispering, ‘I know, I know . . . I know you’re not, my darling.’