The Girl Who Came Back (25 page)

‘Everything OK?’ Andee asked, looking from Jules to the reporter and back.

For some reason Jules couldn’t think what to say.

Taking her arm, Andee threw a knowing look Heather Hancock’s way and led Jules along the echoey marble hall. ‘I saw her follow you,’ she said quietly, ‘and guessed you might welcome a rescue.’

‘Thanks,’ Jules murmured. ‘They’re everywhere. You wouldn’t believe how much money we’ve been offered by some of the nationals …’

Andee’s eyebrows arched. ‘I probably would,’ she said sardonically.

Jules looked on down the corridor to where a couple of gowned barristers were talking quietly to a woman in a pink suit. She didn’t know what to say or do; was still finding it hard to connect with the fact that she was even inside this building, never mind playing such a major part in one of its dramas.

‘Would you rather be alone?’ Andee asked softly.

Jules thought about it and shook her head.

Leading the way back to the cafeteria, Andee ordered two coffees while Jules found a corner table with no windows and no one else seated nearby.

It surprised her afterwards to realise how easily she and Andee had fallen into conversation, talking about things that had nothing to do with the trial, as if they’d somehow disconnected from where they were and why. They were like old friends doing no more than catching up. They discussed where in Kesterly Jules was from; where Andee’s family lived; the fact that Jules’s mother had Alzheimer’s; how Andee’s children, both younger than Daisy, had appeared as extras in one of Daisy’s films. Jules admitted how worried she was about Kian, and Andee confided that her children’s father – the mayor’s son – had left her two years ago to go and live his own life.

They’d bonded over that time in a way that pleased Em no end when she heard about it later. She was constantly worrying about how lonely Jules seemed in spite of their regular phone calls, and being surrounded by family and friends. She never really talked to anyone, apart from Em, but Em couldn’t be there all the time. Jules needed someone closer to home; better still, Andee was someone who hadn’t known and loved Daisy as they had, so she could be detached in a way that was rational and necessary.

Anton Quentin was called to the stand on the second day.

Jules was once again sitting with Em one side of her and Joe the other. The night before she’d held Joe in her arms as he’d wept like a baby, wishing she could find a way to comfort him, but what could she say?

‘I’m getting counselling, back in the States,’ he’d confessed. ‘Dad thought it would be a good idea, and I guess he’s right.’

‘Is that why you came, because the counsellor thought the trial would help you to gain closure?’ Jules asked softly.

He nodded. ‘But I wanted to be here anyway. It would seem wrong to be so far away while it was happening. I know it won’t bring her back, nothing’s ever going to do that, but it makes me feel closer to her to be here, with you, and I just can’t stand the thought that after this trial I won’t have a reason to come any more.’

‘You’ll always be welcome,’ Jules assured him, while knowing that in time he would move on, find someone else and build a new life.

How it made her heart ache to think of that, to imagine what might have been, should have been, and now never would. Daisy had been so brutally cheated. It simply wasn’t right that she was no longer in the world, able to pursue her dreams and live her life. No one had the right to take that from her, and yet Amelia Quentin had decided that she did.

Unlike Joe, the rest of them wouldn’t be able to move on or find anyone else; there would never be any replacing Daisy, or forgetting, or creating new dreams. There would only be the lives that had been shattered that day and still lay in forlorn, hopeless pieces around them.

Now, she glanced past Joe to Kian, who was murmuring something to Gordon, Em’s husband. Aileen looked her way and gave a watery smile of encouragement. Aileen was surrounded by her sisters, nieces and nephews – the whole clan, who’d love nothing more than to take justice into their own hands right now and dispense with the lawyers. Misty was back at the Mermaid taking care of Marsha. They’d decided to close the pub during the trial.

Jules desperately wanted to be sitting with Kian. Though they hardly touched, or even spoke much about what was happening, she needed to feel him next to her, to take what strength she could from the love that still existed between them, even though it couldn’t seem to find its way through to where it should be. She wondered if he felt as desperate to sit with her. If he did, he was showing no sign of it.

‘Mr Quentin, did your daughter know that her mother was dead prior to the text she sent to the deceased on July 14th?’ Dickon Bruce asked.

With no hesitation, Quentin said, ‘No, she didn’t.’

Jules’s eyes flew wide with shock. Beside her she felt Em and Joe tense. How could that abominable man, a lawyer himself, take an oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, then stand there and lie?

‘So her mother had been dead for twelve years and during all that time your daughter believed she was still alive?’ the barrister asked incredulously.

Quentin touched a shaky hand to his forehead. ‘I didn’t realise until all this happened that Amelia had rejected the truth and created her own story.’

‘I see. So you told her, when she was nine, that her mother was dead?’

Glancing at his daughter, Quentin said, ‘I admit, I might not have used that word, which I realise now was a mistake.’

Allowing a moment to pass, the barrister said, ‘Can you explain why your daughter claimed to have found her mother in the text she sent to Daisy Bright?’

Quentin’s eyes flicked to the defence team, as though expecting an interruption. When none came he said, ‘She’d found a woman with the same name and age as my wife, living in Cornwall, I believe.’

The barrister nodded. ‘So Amelia assumed this person was her mother?’

‘I think it was what she wanted to believe. She’s an only child who’s missed out on a mother’s loving care. The loss created a very big gap in her life.’

Much like the one your daughter’s created in ours, Jules wanted to shout into his lying face.

Feeling Em’s hand slide into hers, Jules gave it a squeeze and kept her eyes on Quentin.

‘Sir, can you tell us where
you
were on July 14th last year?’

‘I was in Italy with my partner and her children.’

‘On holiday?’

‘Correct.’

‘But Amelia wasn’t with you?’

‘She didn’t want to come.’

‘Do you know why?’

‘She said she wanted to sort things out with Daisy, and try to become friends with her again. She’d always been very fond of Daisy, had come to think of her as a sister in a way, and she adored Daisy’s mother. I saw a difference in her when she started spending time with them. She seemed happier, more light-hearted, as if she’d finally found what she was looking for. It’s why she was so heartbroken when they told her she was no longer welcome in their home.’

Jules didn’t look at the jury; she didn’t have to to know how effective those words were.

‘Would it be correct to say that your daughter fell into a depression after she was rejected by the deceased and her mother?’

‘Yes, it would.’

Dickon Bruce turned to the defence team as he asked, ‘Do we have any medical records to back this up?’

Appearing slightly strained, Quentin answered the question. ‘My daughter didn’t want to see anyone, and I wasn’t inclined to force it.’

Bruce nodded, as though he’d expected as much. ‘And would you say that she was still in a similar state when she sent the text to Daisy, saying she’d found her mother?’

A defence barrister objected, ‘My Lord, the witness isn’t qualified …’

‘Quite …’ the judge responded.

Unperturbed, Dickon Bruce said, ‘Did you have any idea what excuse your daughter was going to give to get Daisy to see her?’

‘No, none.’

‘But you did know she was intending to contact Daisy?’

‘I did, because she’d told me. Not only that, she’d asked if she could bring Daisy to Italy with her should things work out. Of course, I said Daisy would be very welcome.’

Jules was feeling sick. Beside her Joe was muttering through his teeth, ‘I don’t believe this BS. Daisy was coming to the States, for God’s sake. No way would she have gone to Italy.’

The fantasy, fabrication, ambiguity and outright lies spun on and on throughout the day, until even Jules began to wonder what she believed.

‘Mr Quentin, will you please tell the court how your wife died?’ Dickon requested towards the end.

‘Relevance, my lord?’ the defence demanded.

The judge waved the prosecutor on.

Forced to answer, Quentin said, ‘My wife drowned in a boating accident.’ A moment passed before he added, ‘We’ve never been sure whether or not it was suicide.’

As a murmur of shocked sympathy threaded around the room, Jules and Em looked at one another. Had Quentin added that as a genuine concern of the time, or to paint his daughter’s loss in a more tragic light?

‘I don’t understand,’ Jules said to Andee later, ‘why the prosecutor let Quentin off so lightly.’

Andee looked baffled too. ‘All I can think is that he has a strategy,’ she replied.

The following day, or perhaps it was the day after that, it was hard for Jules to be sure about everything now, Dean was called to the stand. His voice and hand shook so badly as he was sworn in that Jules felt sure each and every juror was finding it impossible not to be moved. For her part, all she could see was the small boy who used to tell jokes that weren’t funny in front of an audience of strangers, who all laughed simply because he did. The boy who came alive when he was with them and shut down when she drove him home. The boy who’d loved Daisy like a brother, and who’d quietly accepted her relationship with Joe when they all knew he was in love with her himself.

She desperately didn’t want him to be a monster, someone who had tricked and deceived them all over so many years … That couldn’t be him. He was no rapist who’d added to Daisy’s suffering at the end.

Dean began by explaining how Amelia had sent him a text on July 14th inviting him to her house where she had a big surprise waiting. He texted back to remind her that he didn’t have a car, and he wanted to know what kind of surprise. She didn’t tell him, but she did offer to come and pick him up. It was around five o’clock by the time they got to Crofton Park, but when Amelia drove in through the gates instead of taking him to the house she drove on through the grounds for about half a mile, until they reached a dilapidated barn where she parked her car. After closing and padlocking the barn doors she led him over to a stable block, so he assumed she was about to show off a new horse.

‘And that was when you came upon Daisy?’ the lawyer prompted.

He nodded and sobbed on a breath.

‘Can you tell us how she was when you found her?’

‘She – she was … half lying, half sitting on the floor, crying, and tied up by her hands to a metal hook in the wall.’

‘What did you do when you saw her like that?’

‘I started to run to her, but Amelia jumped in front of me with a knife. I asked her what the hell she was doing. I told her she had to let Daisy go, but she said if I came any closer it would be the worse for Daisy. I couldn’t believe she meant to harm her really, but when I went forward she jabbed the knife into Daisy’s cheek. Daisy started crying again. She couldn’t speak because of the tape on her mouth, but she could make sounds and I knew she was begging me to help her. I wanted to, more than anything, but I was afraid if I went to her that Amelia would cut her again.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘It went on like that for what seemed like ages, me begging Amelia to let Daisy go and Amelia telling me to shut up or I’d spoil the fun.’

After allowing that to settle, the lawyer continued. ‘OK. Please tell us what happened when Daisy’s father rang to offer her a lift home.’

Dean’s eyes went briefly to Kian. ‘Amelia got her to answer the call and to make sure she sounded normal when she told him she’d get a lift later.’

‘Is that what Daisy did?’

He nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Amelia had the knife next to Daisy’s eye. She said she’d cut it out if Daisy didn’t do as she was told.’

Jules froze inside.
Had she cut Daisy’s eyes out?
She didn’t know, and nor did she want to know in case it was true. She looked along the row to Kian, but his head was down. He’d gone to the mortuary; was the fact that she had no eyes what haunted him so cruelly?

It couldn’t be. That sort of detail would be known to everyone by now, there would have been no escaping it. The press would never have let it go.

‘Tell us about the rape, Mr Foggarty,’ the lawyer said. ‘How did it come about? Was it something you and Amelia Quentin discussed beforehand, making it a part of the plan?’

‘No, no it wasn’t like that at all.’

He looked so stricken, so ashamed and terrified as, in his description of the rape, he used the very words his mother had when she’d come to see Jules, that it truly wasn’t hard to believe him.

Aware of Joe sitting next to her, and how hard this part must be for him, Jules tucked his hand through her arm. What kind of effect was this going to have on the rest of his life? On everyone’s lives?

Dean’s cross-examination took up most of the afternoon, and by the end of it Jules had to wonder if even his parents still believed him.

Dickon Bruce took apart everything he’d said, from the text Amelia sent asking him to come because she had a surprise – where was the text now, he’d never been able to produce it – right through to the rape itself.

‘It was what you’d always wanted, wasn’t it?’ Bruce accused scathingly. ‘We know this, because we know you were obsessed with Daisy Bright. You even had a Facebook page dedicated to a delusional romance with her.’

Dean hung his head in shame.

‘My Lord, members of the jury, you will see on the screens in front of you a sample from the hundred or more postings detailing romantic assignations the accused claims to have had with Daisy, or Danni, as he calls her here. We can all see who it really is. There is no mistaking the deceased in the thousand or more photographs also posted on this page.’ To Dean he said, ‘Some of them date back to when you were small children together. Many of the more recent shots, which are on the screens now, were originally of Daisy looking very happy and in love with her real boyfriend, Joe. However, we see no sign of Joe, because his image has been very cleverly replaced with shots of Guy, as the accused chose to call himself on this site. Some attempts, as we see, are rather amateurish, but others could almost be the genuine article.’