Debbie is only three years older than her sister, but side by side the gap between them could be more than a decade. Debbie’s hair is grey and her face is scored with the grief of nearly twenty years. She cannot drink alcohol; she refuses even to take headache tablets. For her, the pain is what makes her daughter real. If she blocks it out, Kirstie will be gone.
‘She’d be twenty-two in September,’ Debbie says, a cigarette smouldering in an ashtray at her elbow. Joanna sits opposite her at the kitchen table, cups of tea in front of them. ‘So . . .’ Debbie sighs, looking down at her wedding band. ‘What does this latest court thing mean?’
‘It means,’ Joanna replies, ‘that Laurel Bowman has been given a chance to argue in front of a judge that the parole board were wrong to deny her release.’ She closes her eyes and exhales up towards the nicotine-stained ceiling. ‘I can’t believe it either. It never ends, does it?’
Joanna stops talking, her eyes fixed on her mug. After a moment, Debbie pushes back her chair with a groan and walks to the sink, keeping her back to Joanna.
‘Deb?’ she asks. ‘Are you OK?’
After a moment, her sister turns round and gives her a sad smile.
‘Yes. I’m OK.’
‘This is a shock, right? But let me tell you . . . we will not give up. We are not going to let this happen. We will honour Kirstie, we will.’
Debbie smiles again and lights another cigarette, breathing the smoke deep down into her lungs. She studies its lit end for a moment before speaking.
‘Nineteen years ago, when it first happened, I wanted to die. You know, you were there. Even though I was pregnant with Ben. Even then. I couldn’t see . . . I couldn’t see how I could go on without her. Without my Kirstie.’
‘Of course, Deb,’ Joanna whispers. ‘No one can imagine . . .’
‘Everywhere I looked there were reminders. The house. The garden. The street. The corner shop. All her toys everywhere. Her bedroom. The smell of her pillow, her clothes. Even Rob’s face.’ Debbie coughs, taking another drag. ‘She was the spit of him. So I couldn’t bring myself to look at him some days. He thought I hated him. Sometimes I do …’ She grimaces, leaning forward and stubbing the half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray.
‘But through all of it, my main thing was . . . like you said . . . to honour Kirstie.’ She looks directly at Joanna. ‘To keep her alive in people’s memories. To tell the world how beautiful she was, how innocent she was. How she should never have died.’
She nods a few times.
Joanna can’t breathe, can’t move.
‘And that’s what we’ve done, isn’t it? All these years. All of us. Me, Rob and Ben. And you. You’ve fought like a Trojan, haven’t you, Jo? More than anyone outside of here, outside of our home. And we’ve kept together as a family, haven’t we? We made it. Not many people would.’ Her eyes are bright blue and fierce on Joanna’s face in the winter sunshine coming through the window. ‘And I thank you for that. Really I do.’
It’s there in the room, Joanna can feel it as strongly as the warmth of the mug in her hands.
The but.
‘But sometimes . . .’ Debbie reaches for her pack of cigarettes again and sighs, her voice trailing off.
‘Sometimes?’
‘Sometimes I wonder if the memories of Kirstie are getting . . . tainted by all this fighting. Keeping that woman inside. Making everything about her. It’s all about Laurel, isn’t it? Not about Kirstie any more.’
Joanna swallows. ‘But it is, Debbie. It is about Kirstie. It’s about getting her justice. Why should Laurel be allowed to get away with—’
‘Get away with it?’ Debbie interrupts sharply. ‘She already has, hasn’t she? She has got away with it. She did the moment she killed my baby. I’m not getting Kirstie back, am I? What punishment can make up for that?’
‘The sentence . . .’ Joanna tries.
‘Ben’s having a baby. I’m going to be a granny,’ Debbie says, folding a tea towel and placing it on the counter. ‘There must be some happiness we can have, mustn’t there? Waiting for us in the future or even here now. Where we’re not always fighting.’ She comes back to the table and puts her hand on Joanna’s. ‘I want to remember Kirstie as she was. Not as a rod to use on someone else’s back. If we carry on, all the months ahead – more fighting – I don’t think I’ve got the energy for it, Jo. I really don’t. The only thing I care about now is Kirstie and my family.’
∗
The rhythm of the train back down to London feels like a cradle to Joanna, the sensations of rocking and speed lulling her into calm. Her breathing has lengthened from the agitated state she’d been in on leaving Debbie’s house and she watches the fog-covered, tawny outline of the Yorkshire Moors stretch past her with a growing sense of detachment. Here she is, about to witness Laurel Bowman’s release, and everyone around her has given up. They’ve all stopped caring.
But why does she care when even her sister is moving on?
Why can’t she let it go?
Joanna traces with her finger a bead of condensation falling down the window and brings a can of lager to her lips. Here she is again. The one on the outside. Even when they were kids, she would barrel into anyone who dared have a go at her sister. Debbie was always the popular one anyway. She was happy and easy, and people generally just seemed to do her bidding. Joanna would stamp her feet and demand that people did what she said, even though they never would.
When Kirstie was born, Joanna had held her in her arms and she had felt such a burst of love and of pride that this little girl was part of her, her family’s blood. And then to see that blood spilt on the ground …
But Debbie is the one who bore her. Debbie the one whose genes spiralled through Kirstie like strands of fairy dust. So why is she able to accept a future without her? How can she let her go when, for Joanna, it seems impossible?
Kirstie is dead. And Debbie’s right, nothing is going to bring her back.
So it’s not that Joanna can’t accept that Kirstie has gone.
But to abandon the fight against Laurel seems only to offer the prospect of a life without any kind of meaning.
God, am I that selfish? she wonders, resting her forehead on the glass. Has it all just been selfishness, a way to avoid her own failings? Without the fight to win justice for Kirstie, Joanna fears she will be untethered. Her anger keeps her on the ground. Without it to anchor her, there is only a void.
Suddenly Joanna feels cold, wrapping her arms around herself. Suddenly she feels very alone.
The train pulls into a station and someone sits down opposite, throwing their newspaper onto the shared table in front of her. There they are, the Flower Girls, captured for eternity in those two photographs.
Laurel and Rosie Bowman.
Joanna turns away and considers her reflection in the window as rain begins to spatter the glass.
What now? she thinks. What now?