by Susan Lewis
“When you go away to make your deliberations,” he told the jury, “I would ask you not to forget at any point that an innocent young girl lost her life that day. I think this fact has been somewhat overlooked at times during the past few days, but it is why we are here. I will remind you again that the charge is joint enterprise, so it is your job to decide whether Amelia Quentin and Dean Foggarty conspired to cause harm to Daisy Bright that resulted in her death. But even if you decide there was no conspiracy, the fact that they were both present at the killing can render them each as guilty as the other.”
He’d said much more, but that was the part that had stayed with Jules and Kian. It had encouraged them to believe that the judge, at least, was on their side.
—
The jury came back into court far sooner than anyone expected. It was impossible to know whether this was a good sign or not, but Kian and his mother were optimistic.
Jules had no idea how she felt; all she knew was that no matter what the verdict turned out to be, it was never going to bring Daisy back.
It was only when the foreman declared them both to be “guilty as charged” and a buzz of surprise threaded through the court that she realized she was losing her grip on the world.
As Joe clutched her in an embrace she watched Dean sobbing and looking around for his parents. She saw them, hunched and broken, helping to hold each other up as they made their way to the door. They would probably be allowed a few minutes with their son before he was taken back to prison to await sentencing.
Jules’s heart was breaking for them; she didn’t want to believe he was guilty any more than they did, but there was no getting away from the Facebook page and all it implied.
Next to him Amelia was as white as a sheet and staring at her father in a state of abject shock. She clearly hadn’t expected this, and by the look of him, neither had he. They must have told themselves, had perhaps even been assured by their lawyers, that she would walk away from her crime, that because of who they were, with the contacts they had, the law could be made to work in her favor.
They knew now that when it came to taking the life of an innocent girl, they were no more special in the eyes of a jury than anyone else.
—
That ought to have been an end to it; the guilty verdict should have brought the closure they so desperately needed, and maybe it would have if the sentencing hadn’t made such a mockery of it, had even seemed to trivialize Daisy’s life.
For the premeditated—and in Jules and Kian’s book it had always been premeditated—killing of their precious only child, the judge, who they’d thought was on their side, had decided that Amelia Quentin needed only be sentenced to five years in prison.
The old boys’ network might not have achieved the verdict they’d wanted, but in the light of that failure the sentencing was no doubt being viewed as a triumph.
It was Dean’s punishment that came as the biggest shock. The judge’s comments were scathing as he accused the boy of plotting everything, most particularly the rape.
“Whether it was the intention to end Daisy Bright’s life after committing this appalling act we will probably never know,” he stated gravely, “but it did end, and so the sentence I am going to impose on you, Dean Foggarty, is for ten years.” Ten years, twice as long as Amelia.
Jules watched as they were taken away. She had no idea how Amelia was feeling; she only hoped the girl was feeling terrified, ashamed, and as guilty as she undoubtedly was. As for Dean, though she still couldn’t make herself believe that he’d deliberately harmed Daisy, she still couldn’t forget the Facebook page.
“Are you OK?” Kian asked as they left the court.
Jules shook her head. She had no idea how she was feeling. All she knew was that this wasn’t an end to it. It couldn’t be, because there was simply no way that they or their daughter had received proper justice from this court.
Amelia didn’t write to Jules from prison, which was just as well because Jules would have torn the letter to shreds rather than read a single word her daughter’s murderer had to say.
Dean wrote during the first week of his sentence, covering page after page with the detail of what had happened that day, swearing that everything had taken place the way he’d told his mother and the court. He was sure, he said, that Amelia had erased the text from his phone while he was holding Daisy after it had happened, sobbing his heart out and trying to will her back to life.
He wrote in a careful, almost childlike hand:
I loved Daisy more than anyone else in the world, she meant everything to me. That stupid Facebook page was all a front. Daisy knew about it, because we made it up together. I can see now that we got carried away and went too far, but it felt like a joke at the time. We had no idea it would backfire the way it did. She knew I was gay, she was the only one I ever told, and we thought, stupidly I can see that now, that if I made it easy for my parents to find the page they wouldn’t suspect how I really am. They have really strong views about homosexuals, and I was afraid of what they might do if they found out. Daisy said I should tell them anyway, that she’d come with me if I wanted her to, and if they threw me out I could always come and live with you.
I miss her so much, and I hate myself more each day for not being able to save her from the evil that calls itself Amelia. I deserve to be where I am just for that.
I swear I didn’t rape her, Jules, at least not in the sense everyone means it. I truly believed, so did Daisy, that if I made myself do as Amelia said, she’d let Daisy go, but it turned out she was lying. There’s something horribly wrong with her, as frenzied and out of control as she seemed while she was attacking Daisy, it was like she was enjoying it. I just know that she’d planned it all, from the lie about her mother, to getting me there, to trying to frame me for what she did. She’s a maniac, a psychopath, she shouldn’t ever be allowed to go free.
I hope this letter hasn’t upset you too much, but I feel desperate for you to know that you were never wrong about me. I always loved Daisy more than anyone, and I always will.
Jules had wept a lot over that letter. She still had it somewhere, but she hadn’t looked at it in a long time, although she’d answered it to let Dean know that she believed him.
I showed your letter to a detective we’ve become friendly with, her name’s Andee Lawrence. She gave it to a lawyer who wasn’t involved in the case, but apparently without any new evidence there can’t be a new trial. I know you weren’t asking for that, but I’m sure you must have been hoping. If anything changes, of course I will do my best to support you, and if it’s any consolation meanwhile, Kian believes you too, and so does the detective who read the letter.
He’d written again, telling her how much her words had meant to him, and letting her know that his parents, on the advice of their spiritual leader, had moved away from Kesterly. They were in Leicester, apparently, but Dean didn’t pass on an address and Jules didn’t write back to ask for one. She saw nothing to be gained from remaining in touch anymore; it would be painful for them all, and do nothing to help them move on.
—
And so here she was two years later, looking back on the time that had passed in a blur of grief, anger, despair, and such desperate longing for her precious girl that she often had no idea how she got through the day. Her life was so different now, so removed from the exhilaration of love and dreams she’d shared with Daisy, the highs and lows of a normal existence, that she sometimes wondered if she was still the same person. Perhaps she wasn’t. Maybe she really had morphed into somebody else; after all, she could no longer call herself a mother, or a wife. In truth she wasn’t sure what she could call herself, apart from a daughter, even though her mother didn’t always recognize her. And a friend, she mustn’t forget that. She still had Em, albeit some four thousand miles away, and now there was Andee too.
Andee had stayed in touch after the trial, ringing often and visiting several times after she and her children moved to Kester
ly when she joined the Dean Valley force. Eventually the demands of her new job had meant that she and Jules saw less and less of each other. Jules understood that, and in some ways she was glad of it, for Andee was a reminder of that terrible time.
It was after Kian’s first suicide attempt that Em and Aileen had persuaded her that it was time to move out of the pub.
“You don’t have to make a decision about selling right away,” Em had said gently. “Misty and Marco are more than capable of running things, but living here, surrounded by so many memories, is too hard, not only for Kian but for you too.”
So Jules, with Aileen’s help, had found the house she was in now, which was probably not far enough away from the pub or the coast, but it was as far as she’d been able to make herself go. It was crazy to think that she still needed to be on hand for Daisy, but it was how she felt. She simply couldn’t abandon everything and start all over again as though Daisy had never existed.
Oddly, one of the most heartbreaking parts of leaving the Mermaid had been forcing herself to let go of Ruby. Though there’d been no sign of her since Daisy had gone, no flickering of lights, random bursts of the burglar alarm, or mysterious movements of her little shoe, Jules still spoke to her in her mind while clutching the shoe to her heart. She truly believed that Ruby was passing messages to Daisy, doing all she could to keep them connected, and even if that wasn’t the case, it made her feel better to do it.
“Do you think I should take the shoe with me?” she asked Misty a few days before she was due to leave.
“Why not, if you want to?” Misty replied. “I think she belongs with you.”
“But this is her home. What if she doesn’t want to leave?”
In the end she decided to give the shoe pride of place on a mantelpiece in the library, and Misty had promised never to move it. So if it ever disappeared or turned up somewhere else in the pub, they would know Ruby was back.
Though Kian had agreed that moving was the right decision, Jules could tell that his mind was hardly on what she was saying. There was always a glazed, faraway look in his eyes these days, as though he wasn’t in the present, but constantly staring into the past. It made it all but impossible to reach him.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Jules the day before their departure, “but I won’t be coming with you.”
Jules looked up in shock, praying she hadn’t heard right, even though she’d half expected it.
“We can’t be together anymore,” he told her sadly. “We both know it, and it’s time to admit it.”
Going to him, her eyes swimming in tears, she cupped his face in her hands as she said, “I still love you, Kian.”
“I still love you too,” he said, “but things haven’t been…You know what I’m saying. It had changed before, and now every time I look at you all I can see is Daisy, and I know it’s the same for you when you look at me.”
She couldn’t deny it: it wrenched at her so painfully at times that she’d almost stopped looking at him. “So are we going to let Amelia Quentin destroy everything?” she asked brokenly.
His voice was toneless, resigned, not even bitter as he said, “She already has. So it’s best if I go to Ireland with Mum. We’ll help you to settle Marsha into the care home first, of course.”
Jules took a step back. “You’ve been discussing this without me?” she accused, hurt and shocked.
He shook his head. “You’ve known Mum’s plans for a while. I haven’t told her yet that I intend to go with her.”
Though she wanted to beg him to change his mind, to not give up on them and come with her to the new house, she knew in her heart that it had to be this way if they were going to stand a chance of surviving. So, resting her head on his shoulder, she said, “I don’t know if I can bear it without you.”
Wrapping her in his arms, he whispered, “It’s going to be hard for me too. You’ve always been my rock, the one I never thought I could be without, but now…Watching you suffer, knowing how terrible and hopeless you feel…I’m sorry, I wish I was stronger, that I could be here for you to lean on, but I’m not the man I was before this happened, and I don’t think I ever will be again.”
So she’d moved into the Risings and he’d gone with his mother to Ireland.
The second time he tried to take his life was on the third anniversary of Daisy’s death. Jules already knew from Aileen that he was still a long way from being able to pull himself together, since he barely spoke or ate, almost never left the house, or agreed to visitors; some days he didn’t even get out of bed.
Aileen had rung Jules as soon as she’d realized Kian was missing. She was hoping, praying, that he might be on his way to Kesterly to spend the anniversary with his wife, but if he was, he’d never mentioned the intention to Jules.
By the time Aileen rang off, the emergency services had already found him; someone had seen his car going off the road into a ravine and had immediately reported it. He was airlifted to the hospital and everyone agreed it was nothing short of a miracle that he’d survived.
Clearly he wasn’t meant to die, even if he thought he was.
“I don’t know when he started blaming himself,” Aileen whispered shakily to Jules as they sat waiting for him to come round. “He just started coming out with it one day, saying he shouldn’t have taken her to that house, that he should have gone back there to pick her up, that if he had she’d still be alive.”
Jules didn’t admit how many times she’d had the same thoughts, how often she ran them through her mind with happier, lifesaving conclusions, though not a part of her blamed Kian for what had happened. He couldn’t possibly have known what Amelia was doing to Daisy when he’d spoken to her on the phone; no one could, because no normal person’s mind worked that way.
Except hers had. She’d heard Daisy screaming, and she’d made herself believe it was her overactive imagination.
Since Kian’s accident—which everyone knew was a suicide attempt, though no one called it that—he had withdrawn even more deeply into himself. No one mentioned Daisy anymore. The way he flinched on hearing her name, as though they’d struck him, made everyone feel so bad that they’d decided it was best to respect his need for silence. Fortunately, one of Aileen’s neighbors was a GP who kept a close eye on him, and also put Aileen in touch with a psychiatrist. However, Kian didn’t want to engage with anyone. His only wish was to be left alone. He couldn’t even seem to help himself in order to relieve the strain on his mother, who had aged terribly over the past three years.
So had Jules. She could feel it in her heart and her bones, in the way she moved and even thought, and she could definitely see it in the way she looked. Her eyes were bruised and shadowed by grief; the droop of her mouth made her look as unhappy as she constantly was; the gray in her hair was a reminder of everything she needed to forget, yet would never be able to. Maybe, after more years had gone by, she would find it easier to smile again, or be able to go for hours at a time without thinking about her precious girl and wondering what she’d be like now, whether she’d be in the States with Joe, making it big as a director in Hollywood or New York, becoming a mother herself.
Knowing it was never going to happen had been the hardest truth to accept. She still hadn’t managed it; none of them had. Their lives remained in pieces while Amelia Quentin was being allowed to start hers all over again, or pick up where she’d left off—or choose some other unsuspecting, generous-hearted girl to befriend and butcher.
—
“Jules, is that you?”
The line was crackling, the voice was a long way away, but Jules knew instantly who it was. “Yes, it’s me,” she shouted with a rare smile. “How are you, Stephie? Where are you?”
“I’m on an island called Ko Lanta, just off Thailand. I caught up with my emails this morning. I can’t believe the bitch is being released!”
Sinking down at the table, Jules said, “I’m afraid so, even earlier than we expected. Your mum told you?”
“Yes, she did. Everyone did. This is all such an effing stitch-up! Everyone’s in on it, even the bloody parole board, it seems. It’s just not right, Jules. That nutjob is a total psycho. She’s not safe to be on the streets.”
Though Jules might agree, all she could say was, “There’s nothing we can do, apart from stay out of her way. Did you hear she’s going back to Crofton Park?”
“What! You have to be kidding me. Why the hell would she want to go there after…? Jesus Christ, she is seriously sick. Can you stop her?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m told she won’t be allowed to come near me.”
“Too bloody right she shouldn’t. So when does she come out?”
“This Friday, apparently.”
“That soon? But it’s OK, I should be able to get back by then.”
Jules’s eyes flew open. “What are you talking about? You’ve hardly been gone a month.”
“I don’t care. No way am I letting you stay there on your own while that psycho bitch is around. What the fuck is everyone thinking, letting her go back to Crofton Park?”
“It’ll be fine, Stephie, I promise. She doesn’t scare me, so please, you mustn’t break off your trip.”
“Have you been in touch with Joe? Does he know about this?”
“Yes, he does. He starts his European tour in a couple of weeks, so he’ll be here.”
“That’s great. I’ll message him as soon as I’m off the phone. And what about Kian? How’s he taken it?”
“No one’s told him yet. His mother and I thought it was best that he didn’t know. It won’t help him.”
“Mm, maybe not. Jesus Christ, if that bitch only knew the damage she’s done…Even if she did, she wouldn’t care. I bet Kian’s family have had something to say about her early release, which is why I don’t get her wanting to go back to Crofton Park. She’s met Danny, she’s got to know that no one wants her around….I guess she doesn’t care about that either. Anyway, I’ll text or phone as soon as I’ve booked my flight.”