‘So you believed in the sacrifice thing?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure what I believed, given what a weird headspace I was in. But nothing was ever found to substantiate the claims, so that’ll be why it never got mentioned in court. The rumours, though …’ She cut herself off and gestured to the mic, ready to begin again.
CRISTY: ‘Nicole always insisted they’d been abducted, and she was taken seriously in the first few days. The trouble was: no one ever came forward to say they’d seen or heard anything to make a case for abduction, and then everyone was thrown off-course by the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London. After that, almost immediately, every force in the country was focusing on the chance of repeat attacks and the hunt for terror suspects. There was hardly any space for anything else, until suddenly we learned that Nicole had been charged with the double murder.’
CONNOR: ‘On what grounds?’
CRISTY: ‘It was the blood, apparently. They said it waseverywhere, all over the house, although I think the accounts were exaggerated, quite often by the press, especially the tabloids who like nothing better than a gory story. In the end, it turned out that most of the blood belonged to birds, rodents, all kinds of creatures, but there was also some from one of the twins. That’s when it all really kicked off and the rumours of ritual sacrifice got going.’
CHAPTER FOUR
It was Friday morning, two days after Cristy’s return to 42 Randall Lane for the first time in nearly twenty years. Since leaving the house, she’d experienced a few unsteadying moments when it had felt as though the past was trying to draw her back into a dark and threatening place and hold her there. Of course, it was easily escaped: she had only to remind herself that she was no longer her thirty-year-old self, that she was in fact a very different person today, albeit hormonally challenged for rather different reasons.
What a joy the run up to fifty was turning out to be.
Whatever, pregnant or peri-menopausal, it was definitely unsettling to find herself so fixated on the case again.
Right now, she was at her desk in theHindsightoffice, a large, high-ceilinged room full of original character at the front of a classically Georgian house a stone’s throw from the SSGreat Britainand the busy harbourside. The usual sounds of construction and footsteps on the cobbles just beyond their small car park were muted by the closed sash window – or, more accurately, drowned out by the hammering rain. There was no doubt the bad weather outside made it seem cosy and safe inside, especially with everyone around her.
Clover St Jean, dressed in an electric-pink polo neck that matched half the beads in her lively dreads, was in front of the whiteboard she’d already begun for the Ivorson case,while Jackson Cain, with his trendy ponytail, wispy goatee and gold-rimmed specs was, as usual, stuck into something on his computer.
Harry and Meena Quinn, the trusted business brains behind the podcast – and Cristy’s dear friends of many years – were seated comfortably on the battered leather sofa as they listened to a playback of the recording Connor had made at number 42 on Wednesday. They were intrigued; she could see that as clearly as she could Meena’s beautiful Indian heritage and Harry’s charming public-school Englishness – and who wouldn’t be when the Ivorson case remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of its time.
As Connor clicked off the recording, Meena’s eyes remained on the whiteboard, where Clove had attached headshots of Nicole, Noah and Abigail Ivorson – the three figures at the centre of it all. Here, Nicole was still only nineteen and was so like a Millais muse, with her luscious, coppery curls and creamy pale skin, that she could surely inspire any artist of any generation. She was a true beauty, with wide, cerulean eyes, a perfect heart-shaped mouth and the look of a child in the process of becoming a woman.
Her babies, with their erratic caps of golden curls and innocent blue eyes, were as strikingly similar to each other as they were to their mother. In his shot, Noah was full of smiles, showing his sweet little teeth and a dimple in his left cheek. In hers, Abigail was gazing curiously at the camera as if trying to figure out what it was.
Cristy could sense how unsettling Meena was finding it to look at the children, to be reminded all over again of how those tender little souls might have met their end. It had disturbed everyone when these very photos had first been made public, especially after Nicole’s purported attachment to a cult had come to light. And there was no doubt that all the murmurings of evil, demonic practices and curses that had swirled around the case at the time were beginning toresonate again all these years later – not only in the press coverage of Nicole’s parole and the ongoing mystery of what had happened to the twins, but right here in this office.
Turning to Cristy, Meena said, ‘Does Matthew know you’re looking into this case?’
‘What on earth has it got to do with him?’ Cristy replied, startled.
Meena’s eyes were resolute as she put down her coffee. ‘I remember how much it upset you when it was happening, especially around the time Hayley was born and you went through a crazy period of thinking you had to give her up because she was Abigail really and didn’t belong to you.’
Stung and embarrassed, Cristy tried not to notice the others’ curious glances as she cried, ‘That was nearly twenty years ago, and I thought itonce,when I was still drugged up after a very difficult birth.’ She was furious with Meena not only for mentioning it but for humiliating her in front of her friends, her colleagues, the team who looked up to her. She was tempted to ask her to leave or at least to apologize. However, sensing that would only make things worse, she forced herself to say, ‘As my state of mind twenty-odd years ago has no more bearing on this meeting than what my ex-husband might think about anything, shall we get to confirming that this is going to be our next series?’
‘Already on it,’ Connor announced, throwing a scowl at Meena.
‘I’m all in,’ Jacks piped up.
‘Me too,’ Clove said, gesturing to the board.
Meena shifted uncomfortably as she turned to her husband.
‘That makes you outnumbered,’ Harry told her, ‘but if you want my input, this case is tailor-made forHindsight,and no one’s going to tell the story better than these guys. Hell, knowing them, they’ll turn up all sorts of stuff that didn’t come out at the time …’
‘Please don’t say they’ll probably end up finding the twins,’ Meena warned. She turned back to Cristy, making a better show of hiding her concern this time, although Cristy knew it hadn’t gone away. ‘Is that what you’re hoping for?’ Meena asked. ‘To discover them alive somewhere, living a whole other life that no one’s ever known anything about?’
‘It would surely be better,’ Clove interrupted, ‘than finding their bodies.’
Halted by that, Meena sighed as she sat back and said, ‘OK, so talk us through the detail of what Nicole said happened the day her children …disappeared.’
‘Her story at the time,’ Cristy replied, keeping an edge from her voice, ‘was quite simple in its way. Apparently, the family cat had died that morning, so she waited until the twins were having a nap and went down to the woods to bury it. When she got back, they’d gone.’
Harry nodded, as though remembering. ‘Just like that. Two kids vanished into thin air, and no one saw a thing. Did anyone ever find the cat?’
‘No,’ Cristy replied. ‘They dug up the woods, but there was no sign of it.’
