1997
It was after nine p.m. and the sky was only just turning inky, the night reaching its dark tentacles over the houses, pulling them into blackness.
The pavement was filled with bodies, cameras round their necks, cigarette butts and empty coffee cups filling the gutter. The house they clustered around was in darkness, empty and cold. Outside, though, the air was hot with bursts of chatter like machine-gun fire. Either side of the house, people stood in their front gardens, staring at it, pointing and shaking their heads. A flock of birds flew over them as the sun finally set and the air began to cool.
An unmarked car slowed down, idled at the kerb for a minute before pulling off again and away down the street. As it did so, the crowd moved as one, sending their blinding flashes of light to chase it as it drove away.
‘Mrs Bowman! Mr Bowman! Have the girls been arrested? Have they been charged with Kirstie’s murder? Mrs Bowman, how do you feel as a mother? Just one statement for our readers!’
Feet slapped on concrete as journalists ran after the car, flailing their arms to gather speed, their breath raw in their nicotine-filled lungs.
Inside the car, all was very quiet. Rosie’s head lay in her mother’s lap, her eyes closed fast as Amy hid her face behind the collar of the shirt she had put on that morning when all was normal and fine. Her throat was parched and her eyes felt grit-smeared. She touched a lock of Rosie’s hair as it curled on her knee, then drew her hand back involuntarily. All she could see when she closed her eyes was Laurel’s face as they had left the police station. Something in her expression had frightened Amy. There was a coldness to it, as if she could see right through her mother.
Gregor had said he would stay overnight with Laurel before they questioned her again in the morning. And so Amy had stiffly got to her feet and pulled her handbag to her chest, holding out her free hand to Rosie, as she had done a million times in the ten years since she had had her girls. Rosie had taken it and they had been led to the car outside. Before she left, Amy had looked back and seen her eldest child standing framed in the doorway of the interview room.
Amy had left hurriedly then, dragging Rosie behind her, trying to force down that image of Laurel, somewhere it would be suffocated. Rosie had said nothing in the police station. They had interviewed her in what must have been a family waiting room with a mural of inappropriately jaunty cartoon characters peeling off sporadically around the walls. She had failed to answer a single question from the officers there. She seemed to sink lower and lower into the chair they had put her on until the social worker had said it was too late to continue, that Rosie should be allowed to go.
Social Services had arranged for them to stay in a cheap hotel nearby. One of the other police officers had picked them up some nightclothes and toothbrushes. Their own house was dangerous, they had been told. Their safety was compromised there. Amy hadn’t quite believed it, though. She’d wanted to see her home for herself. Now she realised, as the social worker’s car sped away, that what they had been told was true. They could not return to this place.
Since leaving the station, Rosie had maintained her silence, only nodding when she was offered a Ribena. Then, as they sat huddled in their seats in the car, waiting for the social worker to buy it in a petrol station, Rosie had turned to face her mother.
‘Will Laurel be OK?’ she had whispered, her pallor sickly under the harsh yellow lights.
‘Yes, of course she will,’ Amy had replied. ‘She’s going to be absolutely fine, Rose-Red. Don’t you worry about anything. Mummy’s here.’
Rosie had lowered her chin and tears had spilled onto the pale pink of her unicorn T-shirt. Fifteen minutes later, they were outside their hotel room with the social worker briskly telling them that she would pick them up at eight a.m. sharp and they should try and get some sleep.
Sleep, Amy thought as she stared up at the lights from the dual carriageway outside traversing the ceiling, the hum of traffic still constant even this late at night. She turned and looked at her daughter, lying next to her peacefully, her eyelashes dark on her cheeks. Sleep was very far away from Amy as she lay thinking about her girls. One so close to her, and one a thousand light years distant in the way she had always been.
Oh, precious girl, Amy thought, anger flaring and battling for purchase against the tears that threatened to fall.
Oh, silly, silly girl. What have you done, my precious girl?