by K. L. Slater
It was the sort of thing she herself had loved to do as a child: walkover into bridge, cartwheels, back bends… to name but a few. She’d had a talent for it, been so flexible and strong.
When she watched Chloe move, Joan could almost whisk herself back to those young, carefree days that seemed so long ago.
Ray had taken three-year-old Corey out bug-hunting for the afternoon. Their youngest child had been a mistake after a rare boozy night out, although Ray hated to hear her say that. The child undoubtedly brought them joy, but he also brought exhaustion on a whole new level for Joan.
At thirty-nine years old when she fell pregnant, she’d been the oldest mother in her antenatal class, and still remembered the humiliation of the younger women sniggering behind their hands. It hadn’t done her anxiety much good, and with a fractious young baby to contend with, her peaceful house and stable mood had swiftly become things of the past.
She’d felt constantly bone tired, yet she was unable to sleep at night once she got into bed. She’d lost interest in everything around her, even her beloved reading and baking. Nothing gave her pleasure any more.
The girls and Ray adored the baby, but Joan just couldn’t seem to feel a bond with him.
Ray had begged her to make an appointment to see the doctor, but Joan steadfastly refused. The last thing she wanted to be bothered with was having to get ready and go down to the surgery. It was a small village, and the worst gossips worked behind the GP’s reception desk.
Then one day Dr Rahman had appeared at the front door. Joan had flown into a fury with Ray and stomped upstairs, but the doctor simply followed her up there and within a few minutes had diagnosed postnatal depression. He’d prescribed powerful antidepressants to help her cope, and Joan had been taking them ever since.
She had rediscovered her love of reading and baking, and had even taken up cross-stitch. They were all pastimes that required peace and quiet, and that wasn’t always easy to come by. But thanks to Ray, she had a little time to herself that afternoon, and once the girls had got their silly performance out of the way, she would be heading upstairs to bed to enjoy an hour reading her new Jilly Cooper novel.
She studied the two girls, who’d dressed in bright colours and tied ribbons in their hair for the occasion.
Of the two of them, thirteen-year-old Chloe was clearly the performer, as Joan herself had been. In her youth, she had nurtured a secret dream of competing in professional competitions, performing at national level as a rhythmic gymnast. So many people had said she was good enough to give it a go.
Her chest tightened as she remembered the cruel cackle of her grandmother, Irma, when, aged twelve, she had finally confided in her and asked if she could travel to London for a rare weekend of open auditions for the junior British gymnastics heats.
‘You’ve ideas above your station, my girl,’ Irma had snapped, her wrinkly mouth pulled into a tight knot. ‘You’ll never make anything of yourself. Mark my words.’
But Joan’s ambition had burned even brighter at Irma’s scathing words. She knew she was special, had always felt it. If her own mother, Tessa, had been alive, she would have supported her dream, she knew.
Now, all these years later, she was loath to admit that Irma’s prediction had come to pass. As far as her performing aspirations were concerned, anyhow. The most she had ever done was a short stint on stage during an amateur gym showcase at school.
It was meeting Ray that had put paid to her dreams. He’d promised her the earth and she’d taken her chances and ended up in this ramshackle little ex-mining village where nothing ever happened.
But sitting there watching Chloe cartwheel from one side of the room to the other, well, it brought back the feelings Joan had had herself as a young girl. The freedom, the joy of getting caught up in the beauty of movement… it felt almost as good as the real thing.
She was entranced as her elder daughter skipped and jumped, her slim fingers poised and toes elegantly pointed, enjoying the warmth of her mother’s attention.
Her heart beat a little faster when she began to consider just how far Chloe could go with this. Joan had been blocked from achieving her dreams, but maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t too late.
Absent-mindedly she rubbed the arms of the chair, her fingertips grazing over the worn, bare patches. It was entirely possible that with her help, Chloe could really excel as a gymnast, and Joan, her devoted mother, would naturally accompany her on the journey.
‘Mum!’ She was pulled out of her pleasant reverie by her other daughter, Juliet, two years younger than Chloe and forever trying to grab attention for herself. ‘Watch this, Mum.’ She performed a clumsy balancing posture in front of the mahogany sideboard. She had all the grace of a baby hippo, and Joan was forced to look away to conceal a snigger.
Juliet was academically bright. On the last day of the summer term, she’d come home proudly displaying a sticker on her pullover, given to her by the teacher apparently for coming top of her class in a maths test.
Maths! Joan thought disparagingly. Where was the glamour in that?
At the end of the girls’ little performance, their mother clapped enthusiastically.
‘Bravo!’ she called, like the ladies dressed in furs and pearls did in the black-and-white films she enjoyed watching.
‘We’ll try and get you enrolled in a proper gym class,’ she told Chloe when her daughter skipped over and perched next to her on the arm of her chair. ‘I can see you performing as a rhythmic gymnast, and I’ll be right there in the front row to cheer you on.’
‘And me too?’ Juliet prompted from the other side of the room.
Joan laughed. ‘Not everyone’s a natural mover.’ She stroked Chloe’s silky ponytail. ‘You’re better off concentrating on your school studies, Juliet.’
Chloe laid her head on Joan’s shoulder and watched as her sister’s face dropped.
‘I don’t want to go if Jules can’t come, Mum,’ she said.
‘Don’t be silly.’ Joan suddenly sat up so Chloe’s head slid away from her shoulder. ‘If you’ve got a talent for something, then you go for it, my girl. Don’t be weak and don’t let anyone get in the way.’
Thirteen
The village
As the coach pulled into the school car park, Tom drew up behind the other vehicles that lined the pavement outside the school.
He’d thought he’d left plenty of time for the journey here, but a lane had been blocked by a broken-down car on Annesley Cutting, resulting in a ten-minute delay, and now it was a few minutes past three-thirty and it looked like he was one of the last to arrive.
His heart was heavy from worrying about Maddy. It was a struggle keeping up the optimism in front of Juliet, but it was essential that he did so. He’d seen a decline in her ability to cope as the business had grown, and he’d supported the doctor’s decision to put her back on antidepressants. But if the worst happened with Maddy, it could finish her off.
Still, he felt a little brighter at the thought of seeing Josh and hearing all about his trip. He knew that a big part of his job was protecting his son from the fall-out from the situation. It would be a challenge, but he hoped to keep a least a little normality in Josh’s life.
Perhaps if he bumped into his best friend Leo’s dad, he could arrange for Josh to go there for a sleepover at some point. Just to help him deal with this initial period of utter chaos.
He jumped out and jogged up through the car park to wait with the other parents at the top. The coach was still reversing into its spot and the windows were slightly tinted, so he couldn’t spot Josh or Leo amongst the child-sized faces pressing up against the windows.
At the edge of the group of parents he spotted Nick, Leo’s dad, who he usually stood with at the boys’ after-school football matches.
‘How’re things, mate?’ He pushed his hands into his jeans pockets and nudged the other man. ‘Thought I wasn’t going to make it on time, but looks like I just pulled it off.’
&nbs
p; Nick looked at him coolly. ‘Come straight here from the police station, have you?’
Tom swallowed, taken aback at his unfriendly manner.
‘Yes, actually. That’s exactly where I’ve been.’ He glanced around him, realising that the low hum of voices had ceased. All eyes were on him.
The whooshing sound of the coach’s hydraulic brakes broke the silence and people shuffled a little.
Damn. Why hadn’t he anticipated this? He’d been too busy thinking about how, in between talking about the forest survival training and catching up with the footie scores, he could best explain to Josh what was happening to his sister.
‘Did they do it then?’ a woman’s voice called from the back of the group. ‘Has Maddy admitted murdering Bessie Wilford?’
Murder? Tom bristled at the word.
‘Course they did it!’ another mocking voice called. ‘Old women don’t just batter themselves to death. You should be ashamed, showing your face around here.’
The hum of voices started up again and the obvious disapproval and anger wasn’t lost on Tom. Maybe these people didn’t understand Bessie had been assaulted, not murdered. His phone was in his back pocket but he hadn’t checked it while driving. There was no way he’d take it out here in front of everyone, to check any news. This lot would be watching every facial twitch.
‘They should lock them both up and throw away the key for what they’ve done!’
Tom spun around and faced the crowd, trying to identify who’d spoken, but all the faces looked equally hostile.
There was movement to his side as Nick stepped away from him, leaving Tom standing isolated on his own little patch of car park asphalt.
His heart felt like a battering ram against his chest. He wanted to explode at them all, ask them how they’d feel if their own kids had been accused. The situation was bad enough without them exaggerating it to a possible murder charge. But he imagined Juliet’s horror if he did. She’d ask him what on earth had possessed him to lose it in front of the very people they had to see every day.
Maintaining a dignified silence took every ounce of his resolve, but somehow he managed it and held his tongue.
The stand-off was broken when the coach doors opened and a stream of pupils poured out. Soon the waiting parents were caught up in a sea of excited children clutching rucksacks and artwork with twigs and plants attached, all competing to be heard.
Tom caught sight of one of the teachers watching him from the back of the crowd.
The stream of kids thinned out and he walked closer to the bus, looking for his son. Finally a lonely figure came slowly down the steps. Josh.
Tom rushed forward and held out his hand to help him down. He didn’t have to ask how Josh was; his face told him everything.
The last person off the coach was Mrs Carrington, Josh’s class teacher. She paused on the bottom step to regard Tom.
‘Let me know if we can support Josh in any way,’ she said sympathetically. ‘Perhaps a couple of days away from school might do him good, help him adjust to what’s happening.’
She was right, he realised. He had to protect Josh from the animosity he himself had just experienced.
Behind him, he heard comments starting up again from the parents, and now kids’ voices were joining in too.
‘Better get back to the cop shop!’
‘Find another school to go to!’
Josh allowed him to slip the rucksack from his back, and they walked quickly through the car park and out onto the main road.
‘You missed a good footie game while you were away, champ. I’ve recorded the highlights.’ Tom’s voice sounded ridiculously jolly even to himself, but Josh remained silent. ‘I want to hear all about the trip. We can go to Annesley Woods and you can show me some survival stuff. How about that?’
Once they were inside the car, Josh looked at Tom, his face pale and fearful.
‘Is it true what they’re all saying?’ he asked in a small voice. ‘Is it true that Maddy’s a murderer?’
Fourteen
The police station
Driving to the police station, Dana purposely chose the long route around the village that would take her past Conmore Road.
Hordes of people were gathered at the end of it, clustered within inches of the blue and white police tape. Villagers, out-of-town rubberneckers, press… they were all represented there. They spilled off the pavement and into the road, causing the passing traffic to take a wide berth around them.
Predictably, the reporters and photographers had staked their positions closest to the tape. Dana spotted one or two local hard-nosed journalists she’d had the misfortune to meet in other high-profile cases she’d worked on with Neary over the years. Both women were the type who’d willingly destroy their own mother’s reputation if it meant getting ahead in their career.
Other reporters fiddled with their microphones, and photographers stood around tinkering with their cameras to ensure they were ready should an opportune moment present itself for a snapshot.
Dana’s chest tightened as she spotted faces from the village she recognised. Ordinary people with scowls and clenched jaws, huddled together over illuminated phone screens, waiting like coiled springs for updates.
She could sense the unrest even from inside her car, and it bothered her that their vitriol was reserved for two ten-year-olds who at this point in time had not even been charged.
An attack on a defenceless old lady, with children being questioned as suspects, was exactly the kind of story to bring the big boys over from the nationals. The muscle they had in terms of television coverage could be disastrous for the girls and their families.
Dana sighed as she continued her journey, leaving Conmore Street behind.
Rachel March had already given her a call to warn her they’d just heard that Bessie Wilford had died in hospital from her injuries, but she needn’t have bothered. The press were already on it, courtesy of Mrs Wilford’s family. Dana had scanned social media and caught an emotional video that Bessie’s fifteen-year-old great-granddaughter, Rose, had posted from outside the hospital.
The girl’s bloated, tear-streaked face had filled the screen as she pleaded with local people to get behind her family ‘to make that scum pay’.
Earlier, after she’d finished the phone call with Conor, Dana had spent the best part of an hour reading every last detail she could find about the case online. There was lots of it, and it had told her the extent of what was publicly known at that point.
But now, following Rose’s video, she sensed the mood of the posts becoming much darker.
In her capacity as consultant to the case, she had access to police information not yet disclosed to the public. Yet social media was proving very useful in getting a comprehensive angle on the case, particularly on the swiftly transforming mood of the locals.
And it wasn’t pretty. To compensate for the absence of police updates, the press had gone ahead and done what they did best: constructing headline-grabbing stories around sparse facts.
Now, with news of Bessie’s death leaking out, local news websites competed for attention with inflaming taglines accompanying reports that lacked any real detail or substance.
Local businesswomen’s daughters are now murder suspects.
Ten-year-olds suspected of beating local pensioner to death.
Dana noted with concern that the national press were already in on the act, online at least.
Echoes of Bulger killers in sleepy Nottinghamshire village, screamed the Daily Mail.
Breaking news: Wilford family demand justice was the Express’s take on the case.
The trial of Maddy Fletcher and Brianna Voce was already well under way in numerous online kangaroo courts. And it wasn’t looking at all favourable for the two girls.
Dana had closed her laptop at that point, suddenly grateful that she hadn’t time to peruse Twitter and Facebook again until later. She dreaded to think what was being said online, unmonitored and clo
ser to home.
She knew only too well from personal experience that the villagers could be brutal and unforgiving when it came to the mistakes of others.
With only the flimsiest of details known about her suspension in the Collette Strang case, she’d received threatening letters and was once spat at on her own street by someone she often used to say good morning to.
She passed the school and manoeuvred the car into the right filter lane to turn just as the light turned green. She did a double take when she spotted a man who was the spitting image of Maddy’s dad, Tom, with a young boy of about seven or eight who looked pale and upset.
She’d seen a family photograph of the Fletchers online and knew Maddy had a brother of about that age.
She pushed her musings aside and focused on the journey, arriving in Hucknall ten minutes later and parking on a side street. It took her just five minutes to walk to the police station, a huge concrete structure with blacked-out windows that faced the busy road.
As she entered the building and made her way to the front desk, she noted that the interior was in even greater need of a facelift than when she’d last been there. Flakes of pale green paint littered the edges of the tiled floor, and a thick grimy border ran along the walls level with the backs of the grey plastic tub chairs.
She didn’t recognise the desk sergeant as she signed the visitor book to document that she was here to see Neary, then took a seat as he asked. Thankfully, there was nobody else in the waiting area.
Before she got the job working for the academy trust, Dana had been employed by the local authority as a juvenile therapist. She’d worked all across the county of Nottinghamshire, supporting young people in police custody.
It had been a career conducted at the uncomfortable end of life. There had been plenty of times back then when she’d got home very late, too tired to eat, too emotionally drained to sleep. It hadn’t been the best foundation for a healthy relationship. Looking back, it couldn’t have been easy for Orla either. Dana didn’t want to make the same mistake again, even though it was still early days with Lizzie.