Chapter Seven
They hadn’t gone far when Clove rang.
‘Did you get my message?’ she asked, when Cristy answered.
‘We’ve only just left Megan,’ Cristy replied, putting the call on speaker and stepping back from the spray of a passing car. ‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘Jacks has managed to get a number for the friend, Becky Rawlings – she gave evidence in court, by the way – and as luck would have it, she’s at home now.
She has to go out at twelve, so I’ve bumped Wilson to one-thirty – I’m sure you can get to him earlier if you end up not needing so long with Becky.
Jacks is sending the address to Connor’s phone. How did it go with Megan?’
‘It was interesting. Definitely stuff we can use as part of the first episode. Great soundbites.’ She stopped as Connor raised a hand.
‘We’re going in the wrong direction,’ he told her.
As they turned, Cristy said to Clove, ‘Have you already briefed Becky Rawlings? Does she know what to expect?’
‘More or less. I’ll whiz over some notes, but basically, she hasn’t been in touch with Nicole or Maeve since before the trial – she told me the same as Megan did, that Nicole more or less dropped her local friends about a year before it all happened. She, Becky, was one of them.’
‘So she has no idea where Maeve and Nicole could be now?’
‘Her guess was with someone in Maeve’s family, but she doesn’t know their names or where they live.’
‘OK – seems we’re a ten-minute walk away and, joy of joys, it’s just started to rain.’
Twenty minutes later, boots in the corridor outside the front door and damp coats hanging in a cramped hallway that smelled of scented candles and something foodish, Cristy and Connor were seated on a sagging faux-leather sofa in a small sitting room.
The house exuded the same worn-down air as the woman they’d come to see.
Becky’s tired eyes were sad and shadowed, her lank hair fell randomly from a grip behind her head, and the exposed flesh between her crop top and baggy joggers revealed the kind of stretch marks most women strived to conceal.
She looked about as fed up with life as she surely must be with the clutter of toys and dirty dishes scattered about the floor.
‘Sorry about the mess.’ She sighed, sinking into a battered armchair and reaching for her cigarettes.
‘Do you mind?’ she asked, holding up the pack.
Before anyone could answer, she put it aside.
‘Of course you do, everyone does. Clove said you don’t pay anything for interviews.
’ She shrugged dejectedly. ‘Shame. I could do with a bit extra, so if you can see a way to changing your rules … ?’ Her eyes came to Cristy’s, and for a brief moment, Cristy felt the dejection coming off her in waves.
‘Thanks for seeing us,’ Cristy said, ‘and I’m sorry about not paying. It’s just that it could be viewed as a bribe, and we can’t allow ourselves to be in that position.’
‘Sure, I get it. Credibility and all that. Makes sense. So, anyway, you want to talk about Nicole? There was a time when everyone did – seems we’re there again. I guess it’s true she’s out?’
‘She is,’ Cristy confirmed, ‘but at this stage there will probably be certain conditions attached to her parole.’
Becky nodded absently. ‘So free, but not free,’ she stated.
‘Kind of like me, though I guess her situation has to have been a whole lot worse than the one I’ve been struggling through all this time.
God, who knew having kids could be so hard?
’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Maybe Nicole had the right idea back when she got rid of hers.’ Her eyes darted to Cristy’s.
‘I don’t mean that, obvs. Stupid thing to say.
It’s not their fault they’re pains in the backside and their mother has a lousy taste in men, is it?
I’m talking about myself now, not Nicole, although her taste was no better, was it?
He never stood by her, whoever the fuck he was – left her to cope on her own.
Sure, she had her parents, and mine are pretty good, but it’s not the same as having someone hands-on all the time, is it? Do you have kids?’
Cristy nodded, and realizing Becky wanted her to expand, she said, ‘Mine are grown now. Still a handful, but …’
‘Don’t tell me – they’ve got a great dad and more advantages than he’s got cash in the bank. What about you?’ she said to Connor, resentfully. ‘Any little chips off your old block?’
‘A daughter,’ he replied. ‘She’s just turned one.’
Becky pulled an upside-down smile. ‘So about the same age as Nicole’s twins when they … left the party, I suppose you could say.’
‘Do you mind if we start recording?’ Cristy asked.
Becky waved for them to continue. ‘Thought you already were,’ she said, staring at the mic although probably not really seeing it.
CRISTY: ‘Unless I misunderstood, you don’t sound convinced that Nicole really did harm her children?’
BECKY: ‘I’ve got no idea what she did or didn’t do.
All I can tell you is what I said in court: that she blew hot and cold about being a mother – loved them to bits one day, wanted her life back the next.
Much like all of us, I guess. Anyway, they found her guilty, didn’t they?
And now she’s admitted it, so I don’t understand why you’re asking. ’
CRISTY: ‘As far as we know, she still hasn’t said where the bodies are.’
BECKY: ‘No, that’s weird, isn’t it? But don’t look at me – I’ve got no idea where they might be.
Anyway, I wasn’t really seeing much of her by the time she had them.
None of us were. I mean, now and again, but she’d kind of moved on.
She had other friends she was really into who didn’t live around here. ’
CRISTY: ‘Did you ever meet any of them?’
BECKY: ‘No. They were student types: brainy, monied backgrounds, that sort of thing – I don’t know any of that for sure.
It’s just the impression we got. I think some of them were foreigners – not that I’ve got anything against foreigners – just saying is all.
They hung out in Redland or Clifton, that sort of area – up by the university, anyway.
She told me once that she was getting into all the intellectual stuff, learning things she couldn’t explain to us, but it was opening her mind …
I remember her saying that. It was opening her mind to a whole other world and way of living.
‘Hah! She was full of it, like you are at that age, I suppose. We’re all guilty of it one way or another, saying shit to try and impress.
She just had more of it about her than most, and I guess some of us were kind of in awe of her.
She was clever, you know, daring, and in a class of her own when it came to looks.
Plus, her parents weren’t short of a few … ’
She sat quietly with that for a moment, clearly gathering up old memories and impressions as they came back to her.
BECKY: ‘She had all these airy-fairy ideas of being some kind of dancer at the Moulin Rouge in Paris or an artist on the French Riviera. Like I said, she was full of it, although I think she might have tried it out, eventually, if she hadn’t had the twins and …
Well, we know how things turned out from there.
God, who’d ever have thought she’d end up the way she did? ’
She reached for her cigarettes, shook one out of the pack and put it back again.
BECKY: ‘I’ll tell you what I think might have happened – it’s just me who thinks it, right?
Or maybe others do too … I don’t know. Anyway, that set I mentioned – there was this bloke, he was part of it …
I never met him, or saw him, but I remember her telling me once that he wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met before.
She used to say that the rest of us wouldn’t understand someone like him, that no one did, apart from those he allowed to get close to him.
She was kind of besotted – do you know what I mean?
But it went deeper than that, like she …
I don’t know the right words for it, but she was seriously into him. ’
CRISTY: ‘Did she ever tell you his name?’
BECKY: ‘If she did, I don’t remember it, but I can check with some of the other girls if you like and get back to you if one of them knows.
‘You’re going to ask next if he was the twins’ father, aren’t you? So here’s what she told me when I asked … She said, “They are in a world of many fathers and are loved by them all.” Now if that’s not weird, I don’t know what is.’
As her mind drifted again, Cristy let the silence run, knowing better than to interrupt when Becky was clearly and quietly on a roll.
BECKY: ‘You’ll have heard about the cult?’
Cristy nodded.
BECKY: ‘I honestly don’t know if there was one, but when she said stuff like that, it made you think there might have been.
How could it not? But then she’d say all sorts of stuff to make herself seem more interesting, more sophisticated than the rest of us, and we never knew how much of it was true. ’
CRISTY: ‘Did you ever hear of her being raped?’
BECKY: ‘Yeah, I did, in Bethalls Park. I never knew anything about it. None of us did, and I can’t see her keeping something like that to herself, so we always put it down to more BS.
There was so much of it back then, in the press, you know – stuff none of us had ever heard about, but hey, maybe some of it was true. ’
CRISTY: ‘We’ve heard mention of a local vicar? And an older man, living in Wiltshire? Possibly married.’
BECKY: ‘Hah! Vicar Robbie Williams? You’ve heard about him.
His real name was Nick Hopkins – or it might have been Neil.
Yeah, that’s right. Neil. He was a nice bloke, too good-looking for his own good, if you ask me, but do I think he was the one who knocked her up?
No, I don’t. For one thing, she never seemed as interested in him as the rest of us, and for another, he was too clever to get mixed up with a bunch of teenage girls.
‘As for the older bloke in Wiltshire … I know someone mentioned it back then, but I can’t tell you who he was, or even if he really existed.’
She glanced down at her phone as it buzzed, read the message and sighed while putting it aside again.
BECKY: ‘This is what’s always bothered me …
If she was telling the truth about burying the cat …
Well, first up, what the hell happened to it after – that’s what I’d like to know?
But second – and here’s the thing no one’s ever answered – if someone came into the house when she was down at the woods, how the heck did they get a couple of year-old babies out without anyone seeing?
‘You know where the house is, right on the main road, and there was two-way traffic back then. Cars and buses would’ve been passing, neighbours coming and going, so surely someone would have spotted something …
Plus, how did they know no one was in the house when they went in?
OK, they could have been watching, waiting to seize their chance, but you can’t see the back from the front, so how did they know when she went down to the woods? ’
Cristy watched Becky blink slowly, sadly, clearly puzzled by her own thoughts.
BECKY: ‘Maybe she’d arranged it with someone to come in and get them so she could say they’d been stolen, but even if that’s true, how come they found blood in the house?’
CRISTY: ‘There was only mention of traces in court …’
BECKY: ‘I know, and most of it belonged to animals. Really weird that, don’t you think? Takes you straight back to thinking about a cult. Or it does me, anyway.
‘And now tell me this: if she was as innocent as she claimed at the beginning, how come she never appealed against her sentence? If it were me, I’d have fought tooth and nail for my liberty – wouldn’t you, if you hadn’t done it?
But she never did, and now, according to the news, she’s finally confessed to it, so what’s going on there? Answer me that.’
CRISTY: ‘We agree things aren’t adding up, but without being able to talk to her … Do you have any thoughts at all on where she might be?’
BECKY: ‘Me? Not a clue. The person who could probably help – if they’re still in touch that is – is her cousin, Lauren. Those two were pretty thick back then. She’d be able to tell you a lot more than I can.’
CRISTY: ‘Do you know where we can find her?’
BECKY: ‘After all these years, wouldn’t even know where to start.’
CRISTY: ‘Was she Maeve’s sister’s daughter? Or from Ronnie’s side?’
BECKY: ‘I never asked, but at a guess I’d say she was Maeve’s sister’s kid.
She was younger than Nicole by a year or two, looked up to her, you know, wanted to be like her – hah, didn’t we all with those looks?
No, Lauren’s your best bet if you want a more inside look at what went on back then.
I’m not sure if she was part of the “Clifton set” – that’s what we called them – but it’s likely she was, given how close she was with Nicole and how she’d do practically anything to please her.
‘Sweet girl. You’ve got me thinking now, I wonder what ever happened to her.’