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‘If you’re thinking my mother is a very unsubtle, in fact shameless, matchmaker,’ Robert commented as he drove himself and Cristy out of Monksilver, heading for the coast, ‘then I can only apologize if she embarrassed you as much as she did me.’
Cristy had to laugh. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I’d read it correctly. I mean, aren’t you married?’
‘I am, but that never stops her. She keeps hoping I’ll meet someone here, in England, preferably Somerset, get myself a divorce and move back to be closer to her.’
Blinking in surprise, Cristy said, ‘I hardly know what to say to that. A mother wanting her son to divorce.’
He laughed. ‘Obviously, she knows it isn’t going to happen. It’s just a little fantasy she has and would probably have let go of a long time ago if she felt warmer towards my wife.’
‘Ah, so they don’t get on?’
‘Let’s just say that being on opposite sides of the world works for them both.’
As he slowed to turn onto the A39 Cristy checked an incoming text and choked back a laugh when she saw Connor’s message, Will I ever see you again?
Deciding that no answer would suffice, she quickly pulled up her emails, found nothing urgent, and returned to the conversation. ‘So how come you’re in England now?’ she asked. ‘Is this a regular visit to your mother – don’t tell me you flew over just to be here for the interview.’
He laughed. ‘I arrived in the UK about a month ago, always with the intention of visiting Mum , of course, but I’m also researching a paper on emergency cardiothoracic surgery. Currently, I’m working with colleagues at the Bristol Heart Institute, so I wasn’t far away when she rang to tell me you’d been in touch.’
Cristy nodded thoughtfully as she took this in. ‘So we’re very lucky to have you. Although, of course, we could have probably got you on Zoom if you were elsewhere in the world.’
‘Probably, but where would be the fun in that?’
Finding herself OK with the flirtation – safe given he was married – she said, randomly, ‘Have you ever been to Dunster Castle?’
Glancing up to where it was nestled amongst the trees on the hillside, he said, ‘Many times. I used to take my children when they were younger and we were over visiting. They loved it here, I guess because it’s so different to where they lived, and happily, they always adored spending time with their grandma. Still do.’
‘I can understand why. So how many children do you have?’
‘Three. Two girls and a boy, all very grown up now. The eldest is going to be thirty this year, and is actually working at the Bristol Children’s Hospital. Like her mother, she’s a paediatrician, and like her father, she fell in love while on a gap year so she’s ended up living on the other side of the world. Her being here played a big part in my decision to approach colleagues at the brI.’
‘So are you staying with her?’
‘God no, I don’t think either of us could stand that. I’ve based myself in a small flat in Clifton for a couple of months; she and her husband have a house in Westbury Park, so we’re close, but not in each other’s space.’
‘Does she have children?’
‘Not yet, so the joyful experience of becoming a grandfather still awaits.’
Cristy smiled, while realizing soberly that she too was old enough to be a grandparent, although in her case it would surely be another ten years or more before it happened. ‘And your other two children?’ she asked.
‘My son is twenty-seven and living in Sydney where he’s doing amazing things in advertising, or so he tells me. And the youngest, she’s twenty-four, the darling of everyone’s hearts including a whole slew of inappropriate boyfriends. Career-wise, she’s still considering her options.’
Laughing, Cristy said, ‘I have a sixteen-year-old son who sounds just like her. His name is Aiden, he fancies himself as a free spirit one day, a mentor the next, a great sportsman, a talent-spotter, astronaut, world peace advocate … My boy’s ambitions know no limits, and would you believe he seems to sail through his exams as if he’s worked himself to a standstill all year when he hasn’t.’
‘I’m liking the sound of him,’ Robert responded warmly. ‘And your daughter? Hayley, is it?’
Cristy turned to him curiously. ‘So you really did look me up before coming,’ she said, not sure how happy she was to know he’d gone into so much depth. Although, she had to admit, it was pretty difficult to miss the shitshow of her personal life, thanks to Matthew and his affair turning her into a byword for rejected middle-aged mothers to be more pitied than respected.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I’m sure you understand that your children weren’t the objects of my search, they just came up. I hope you’re not offended.’
Realizing she was being too defensive she relaxed and shook her head. ‘No, not at all. My ex-husband’s story is not how any of us hoped to achieve fame, but here we are. It’s one of the first things anyone learns about me if they’re looking me up. Not that I’m a journalist, or a podcaster, or even a woman with feelings. Just that I’m the wife Matthew Jennings walked out on to be with an actress barely older than his daughter.’
‘It must have been a difficult time.’
‘It certainly wasn’t the best, but if you knew what was happening now you’d probably … Actually, you’d probably laugh it’s so ludicrous, or you’d tell me I was making it up.’
‘I’m a good listener,’ he said dryly when she didn’t continue. ‘And I always love a human-interest story with elements of the bizarre.’
Deciding they were getting too far from the point of why they were heading into Minehead, she said, ‘Maybe another time. For now, if you don’t mind, I need us to focus on Janina and Lukas, the Winters sisters and maybe even Butlin’s.’
‘Of course, and I’m sorry if I seemed glib just then, or to be getting into things that are none of my business.’
‘It’s fine, honestly,’ she said, and it was, because, why shouldn’t it be?
Eventually they turned into the tree-lined stretch of Minehead’s main street, full of cafés and bars, niche boutiques and colourful beach shops. Many were closed for the winter, although the blazing sunshine today made it look, if not feel, more like mid-summer than mid-winter.
On reaching the seafront Robert took a left into the harbour and just after the Old Ship Aground he pulled into a small car park. As he went to pay at a machine, Cristy organized her recording equipment ready for the great outdoors. It wasn’t cumbersome, or difficult, it was simply so bitterly cold – close to freezing – that she had to try to find a way to operate it while wearing hat, scarf and thermal gloves. Still, at least there was no wind and thanks to the glorious sunshine it felt a complete joy to be here.
‘I was thinking,’ she said from inside her woollen muffler as they headed off to join the start of the South West Coast Path, ‘that maybe you could do the intro to this piece.’
‘Me?’ he cried in astonishment. ‘What does it involve?’
‘You simply have to tell us who you are, why we’re here and describe the surroundings.’
‘Oh, is that all? Nothing major then?’
‘Give it a go,’ she encouraged. ‘I have a feeling you’ll be a natural.’
His eyes narrowed suspiciously as she handed him a mic.
‘You’ll need to clip it to your collar,’ she told him, ‘so no scarf, I’m afraid. Do you think you can bear the cold on your face for a while?’
‘Ah, so that’s why you’ve given me the job, so you don’t have to get your face out of that thing. Well, lucky for you I’m feeling chivalrous.’
After a few sound tests to make sure his voice was coming through loud and clear, she gave him the cue to begin.
ROBERT: ‘My name is Robert Brinkley, I’m the son of Gita Brinkley who was housekeeper to the Winters sisters for a short spell back in the year 2000. I’m about to start walking the first mile or so of the South West Coast Path to where the sisters were staying when Sadie first joined them.’
He glanced at Cristy for approval, and receiving it, pressed on.
ROBERT: ‘It’s a truly spectacular January day with more sunshine flooding down on us than we get in the middle of an Aussie summer, although sadly none of the warmth. In fact, it’s literally zero degrees, but the way the light is sparkling across the iron grey waves of the estuary and throwing itself onto the wooded hills ahead of us makes them more inviting than chocolate.’
Cristy snorted a laugh.
‘It was the first thing that came into my head,’ he protested. ‘What do you think it should be?’
She thought, gave a few suggestions which managed to be even worse than chocolate, and in the end they were laughing so much she had to cut the recording.
‘I think you should do it,’ he told her. ‘I’m just making an idiot of myself.’
‘No, no, you started off so well. Let’s just lose the analogy and say something like “The way the light is throwing itself onto the wooded hills ahead of us makes it no wonder the region has inspired so many poets.”’
‘Now, why didn’t I think of that?’ Then, ‘Who are the poets?’
Though certain she was being teased, she said, ‘Coleridge, Wordsworth, Robert Southey …’
‘Didn’t Southey write Goldilocks and the Three Bears ?’
She grinned. ‘He also wrote some stunning descriptions of the walk between Dunster and Minehead.’
‘Great. Do you know any of them?’
Having to confess that she didn’t, at least not by heart, she offered to google them, but he was already quoting from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner .
‘“ At length did cross an Albatross, Through the fog it came, As if it had been a Christian soul … ’”
‘Brilliant,’ Cristy exclaimed. ‘It has absolutely nothing to do with why we’re here, or what we’re doing, but it’s definitely Coleridge. So now, perhaps we should skip naming or quoting and just keep it general about inspiring poets.’
‘Got it. Are you going to interview me after I’ve finished waxing lyrical?’
‘Of course. It’s the main reason we’re here.’
Apparently happy with that, Robert repeated his intro as discussed and added a few extra lines about the spectacular clarity of the South Wales coastline on a close horizon, along with how very blue the sky was, and salty the air.
ROBERT: ‘We’re now properly into the start of the coast path. The sea is to our right and to our left is the children’s play area where I first saw Janina sitting on a bench with her little girl. There’s no one here today – as glorious as the weather is, apparently no one is venturing out in the cold. Back then, it was spring so the trees would have been in blossom and there would certainly have been a lot of children’s noise coming from the swings and roundabouts. I think this was the bench – there’s a pink bobble hat on it today, presumably dropped by a little girl while here playing recently, and if ever there was a sign this has to be one, although of what, I can’t be sure.’
CRISTY: ‘To keep going?’
ROBERT: ‘You mean, like we’re on a treasure hunt? OK, sounds good.’
CRISTY: ‘Shall we sit down for a moment?’
ROBERT: ‘Yes, we probably need a rest by now.’
As they’d come all of fifty yards she had to laugh. Then joining him on the bench, she said, ‘Does being here bring back any other memories of Janina for you?’ She signalled for him to speak his answer into the mic.
He sat quietly for a moment and Cristy watched him as his mind travelled back in time, searching for memories that might have been lost but were still there somewhere waiting to be found.
ROBERT: ‘It’s kind of sad to think of her now, wondering who she really was … What happened to make her leave as abruptly as she did? More crucially, why didn’t she take her daughter with her?’
CRISTY: ‘Did she ever say anything to make you think that she might be planning to leave the child, even for a short time?’
ROBERT: ‘No, nothing – at least not that I remember. In fact, I still find it hard to believe that she did.’
CRISTY: ‘I don’t have it with me, but the note the sisters found in Sadie’s pocket said, “Please take care of her until I can come back for her.” Do you have any thoughts on that?’
ROBERT: ‘I guess the first question for me is, why did she need to leave her? What kind of situation was she in that meant she couldn’t take her child wherever she was going? And did she ever come back? I guess we have to assume she didn’t given that Sadie is still with her aunts all these years later – or one of them at least.’
CRISTY: ‘Another big question for me is why did Janina put her child into the protection of strangers? It seems so … drastic.’
ROBERT: ‘Except we can safely say that she chose the protectors carefully – two wealthy women with reputations for doing well by children, and who might not be quite as inclined as some to contact the authorities. It was a big risk, but presumably she took it because she didn’t want the child carried off by the state. If that happened she might never have got her back.’
CRISTY: ‘But she didn’t anyway, which means she either decided to leave her where she was to have a better life than she could provide. Or maybe she did go back and the sisters paid her a huge sum to go away again. Or something else altogether happened.’
ROBERT: ‘Keeping in mind that she was probably from somewhere in Eastern Europe, there has to be the possibility of her being deported, or worse. Trafficking was pretty big back then – still is, of course – and once in the hands of those guys, there’s no knowing what might happen to a girl, especially one as beautiful as she was.’
CRISTY: ‘I’m finding it quite disturbing to think she could have been caught up in something so … evil and dehumanizing. But she seems to have moved around quite freely, if we go by the times you saw her.’
ROBERT: ‘Indeed, so maybe there wasn’t any kind of gang control going on.’
CRISTY: ‘What about her brother? If he left the area at the same time she did, and he seems to have, what would that have been about?’
ROBERT: ‘You’ve circled me back to trafficking with that … Maybe they were both trying to escape some sort of servitude or tyranny and felt it was too dangerous to take a child with them.’
CRISTY: ‘So leaving her with the sisters would seem like a safe option? I guess I can see that, if we’re on the right lines, and there’s nothing to say we are. We need to be in touch with Butlin’s to find out what they can tell us about someone called Lukas circa 2000.’
She was looking back along the coastline to where the holiday camp’s flashy conical domes were gleaming brightly in the sunshine.
ROBERT: ‘I shouldn’t think you’d find it open today.’
CRISTY: ‘Even if it was, we wouldn’t be knocking on the door for information. We’ll have to start by going through official channels, at which point we’ll almost certainly run up against data protection, but that’s for later … For now, shall we walk on?’
ROBERT: ‘I hope you’re ready for a climb, because just along the trail we’re going to run into a pretty steep one.’
Half an hour later, still breathless from the seemingly endless scramble up an insane incline to a – thank God – much friendlier trail with magnificent sea views, Cristy was trying not to be annoyed by how effortless Robert had made it all seem. Still, at least he hadn’t laughed at the way she’d lunged about like an idiot trying to gain purchase on tree roots and impacted rocks, or commented on the frequency she’d had to stop to calm down her heartbeat. He’d simply waited patiently, ready with a hand to haul her up over the cruellest terrain, while not slipping once or managing to stick his ass out like a baboon, or get his scarf snagged by a rogue bramble that had almost throttled her. He was, she reminded herself, a seasoned hiker, at least according to his mother, and this adequately proved it.
‘Most people can’t do that in one go,’ he told her, as they strolled on through a leafy glade towards, she presumed, the sisters’ hillside holiday place, ‘but you managed it.’
‘If you discount the several times my ambition and dignity were stuffed by the need to take in oxygen. You made it seem like a walk in the park, so I can only conclude that you’ve done Everest, Kilimanjaro and Mont Blanc, probably all in the same week.’
He gave a laugh. ‘I admit to Kilimanjaro, and the foothills of Everest, but many of the places I’ve hiked aren’t generally that well known. It’s something I do, if I get time, when I’m working in Africa, or Asia. It helps to calm the mind and bring a more spiritual perspective to an otherwise terrible world.’
‘You’re talking about the work you do with Médecins Sans Frontières ?’ she asked.
He stopped to gaze out across the grand expanse of the Severn Estuary. ‘It can be harrowing, sometimes to the point of driving you mad … You see so many things that should never be possible, that one human being should never inflict on another. And you hear so many promises from the so-called civilized world that sound good for their electorates, for those with a social conscience, but that all too often end up meaning very little to those who are suffering.’ He turned to look at her and smiled. ‘It makes you appreciate the simplicity and beauty of moments like this.’
‘How often do you go to war zones?’ she asked.
‘They’re not all war zones, some are just parts of the world in desperate need of medical care that they can’t get any other way. And not as often now as I used to, is the answer. I’m afraid I’m not one of the superheroes of the organization who’ve made MSF their full-time career. I just go to help out where I can for as long as I can, but I can tell you it plays hell with your mental well-being.’
Easily able to imagine that, she said, ‘The rest of the time you’re a heart surgeon in Melbourne?’
‘Correct. And you’re an investigator who’s trying to find answers for a young woman in need of knowing who she really is, so let’s go and have a look at the house she was taken into at the age of two. It’s quite close now.’
Quite close turned out to be another half-mile at least along the track, but it was mostly easy going through random scatterings of winter-bare elder and beech trees, and leafy green tangles of alkanet, brambles and ivy each side of the path. Silently naming the grasses was a habit she’d acquired from her mother who’d loved wild plants and flowers. David’s mother was the same, it was one of the first things she and Cynthia had talked about when they’d met, right here on Exmoor, albeit several miles from this particular spot. Naturally, thoughts of Cynthia turned to wondering about David, and how he might be feeling following their break-up. Was he actually feeling anything? She had no idea, only knew that she wished she hadn’t thought of him. However, being here today, with Robert, someone so different and fortunately attached, was certainly distracting, and actually quite uplifting.
Coming to a stop beside him as he paused at the top of a vast green field flowing gently down to the water’s edge, Cristy looked to where he was pointing and felt a jolt of surprise. Some fifty yards below was an old wooden stile only partly visible through a cluster of trees.
‘Is that the stile mentioned in Lottie’s story?’ she asked. ‘The one Mia saw someone running away from?’
He seemed confused. ‘I didn’t know about that,’ he replied, ‘I was just pointing out the footpath that you can see in the grass that runs from the stile to the beach. It’s almost certainly the one that was used to get Sadie there.’
Following the barely visible tilting of the long grass to where the invisible trail disappeared behind a tangle of hawthorn to end on the gravelly shoreline, so bleak and uninviting in spite of the sunny day, Cristy tried to imagine leaving one of her children there, at any age, and shuddered at the horror of it. How desperate Janina must have been to do such a thing to her two-year-old daughter, presuming she was the one who’d left her, and it was hard now to imagine that she wasn’t.
‘She presumably retreated to the stile to watch until the sisters came to the child’s rescue,’ she said. ‘Lottie wrote about Mia seeing someone … How could Janina be sure the little girl would be found?’
‘I don’t suppose she could,’ he replied, ‘but if she was watching she’d have known if the child was in any danger.’
‘How on earth did she get her down there without being seen?’
‘Well, the house isn’t visible from here, and there’s nowhere else around, so actually there was no one to see her.’
‘So she somehow managed to get her child to stay there alone and wait … It’s beyond heartbreaking to think of how confused and frightened she must have been. Both of them, actually, mother and daughter.’
‘Maybe it’s a measure of how afraid Janina was.’
Nodding agreement, she said, ‘We need to record what we’ve just said.’
Minutes later, with their surmising captured, she kept rolling as they walked on towards a curve in the path. It was strange how moved she was now feeling about being here, as if time was warping in some undefinable way to make her footsteps connect with those of long ago. Janina would have walked this path, would have known what was ahead, if not in her life, then at the end of this trail … If she’d been in her mid-twenties back then, by now she’d be the same age as Cristy, and thinking of the older Janina made Cristy feel somehow closer to her.
Robert stopped alongside some steps carved into the hillside, pointing ahead and speaking quietly, almost as if not wanting to wake ghosts.
ROBERT: ‘There it is. It’s been much improved since the sisters were here, but this is the place they rented for the summer of 2000.’
Remembering that she needed to describe it for listeners, Cristy lifted her collar mic closer to her mouth.
CRISTY: ‘It’s a long, low stone-built house with a steep red-tiled roof, a porched front door looking along the track towards us, and there’s a large wooden terrace facing the sea. Someone seems to be at home – there’s smoke rising from one of the chimneys – and I can just make out a car through the greenery at the back. Is there a road? I guess there has to be.’
ROBERT: ‘It’s a narrow lane that runs kind of parallel with the path we’re on, and eventually takes you down to the Old Quay.’
CRISTY: ‘Which is where we parked? So we could have driven here?’
Robert arched an eyebrow.
Rolling her eyes Cristy went back to her study of the house, trying to imagine the sisters coming and going, Lottie descending the field on her way to rescue Sadie, bringing the child back up again and handing her to Mia …
CRISTY: ‘I wonder if it’s worth asking someone inside if they remember the Winters sisters?’
ROBERT: ‘It’ll be a long shot if it’s still a holiday let.’
CRISTY: ‘But who comes here on holiday at this time of year?’
ROBERT: ‘Maybe the people inside … One of whom is coming to find out why we’re not climbing higher up on the path to continue our walk.’
With the recorder still running, Cristy walked forward to meet the portly man whose bushy moustache and ruddy face marked him out as a drinker, and probably a hunter.
‘Can I help you with something?’ he called out before reaching her.
CRISTY: ‘I was just remarking what a lovely spot this is. Do you mind me asking if you live here?’
PORTLY MAN: ‘We just rent it during the season.’
Ah, a hunter!
CRISTY: ‘Not stags, I hope, or foxes.’
PORTLY MAN: ‘You one of the saboteur lot, are you? If so, we don’t want any trouble. There’s no law-breaking going on around here, and we don’t welcome trespassers.’
CRISTY: ‘Understood, but would you mind telling me how long you’ve been coming here? I’m doing some research into someone who rented the place back at the beginning of the Noughties.’
PORTLY MAN: ‘You’ll need to speak to the landowner’s agent about that. His name’s Frank Fox, has an office in Taunton and another in Bath. You’ll find him online.’
CRISTY: ‘Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.’
The man grunted as he turned to go, raising a hand in a dismissive farewell.
ROBERT: ‘You handled him well.’
CRISTY: ‘I got the information I wanted.’
ROBERT: ‘Which I could have told you, if you’d asked.’
Laughing as she elbowed him, she watched the hunter disappear inside the house and spoke into her mic.
CRISTY: ‘It’s quite possible Janina hid very close to the spot where I’m standing right now to watch the sisters, maybe even her own daughter playing outside the house. It’s also possible that she went right up to the front door, early one morning, to deliver the envelope that so unnerved the sisters.’
She took a long, last look around, trying for another sense of Janina’s presence. It was fanciful, of course, and she really didn’t expect to spot some sort of ghost flitting through the trees, or to hear a whisper drifting down from the moor. However, she did get the feeling they were in the right place, that it really had all started here.
‘Next stop Frank Fox,’ she said, turning off the recorder. ‘Do you know him?’
‘No, I’ve just heard that he still rides to hounds and to hell with the law. So you should get along well with him.’
*
An hour later Cristy and Connor were driving back up the M5 towards Bristol, having left Robert to return his mother to her residential village, before making his own two-hour journey north. Frank Fox, who indeed managed Hilltop Lodge – his assistant had soon worked out which property Cristy was calling about – would be getting back to them sometime tomorrow when he returned from an extended Christmas break.
‘I was honestly beginning to think Cristy had abandoned me,’ Connor was telling Jodi on the phone, as if Cristy wasn’t there. ‘She was gone way longer than I expected, and now I’m so deeply in love with Gita Brinkley I think we might have to adopt her.’
As Cristy laughed, Jodi said, ‘Tell me more about Robert. Is he as drop-dead in person as he is online?’
‘You’ve looked him up too?’ Cristy cried. ‘Honestly, you’re as bad as Meena.’
‘No one’s that bad,’ Connor retorted. ‘And let’s put it this way, babe, he’s so good-looking he even makes me swoon.’
‘He’s married,’ Cristy put in quickly, ‘and I am so NOT looking for a man … Jesus, how can you even think it when you know what’s going on in my life?’
‘It could be just what you need.’
‘Maybe if he weren’t married, but he is, and he also lives on the other side of the world. So can we get ourselves a reality check here and talk about serious things such as the real reason you’re calling?’
‘This is it,’ Jodi responded chirpily. ‘To find out how your day went. Oh, and to get an idea of what time you might be back? Would you like to join us for supper and maybe give Aurora a bath?’
Cristy turned to Connor. ‘I think she means it,’ she said quietly.
‘She does,’ he confirmed. ‘It’s a great honour.’
‘Then I can’t possibly turn it down.’
‘Yay!’ Jodi cried. ‘I’ll text Aiden, find out what he’s doing in case he’d like to come. Should I try Matthew?’
‘Maybe not,’ Cristy responded.
‘I get it. You don’t want him thinking we’re encouraging his bid to win you back. Gosh, all these men, Cristy. What is to become of you? Have you heard from David, by any chance?’
‘Not since we broke up , and I don’t expect to. Now, I’ve got a call coming in on my phone that I need to take.’
‘Is it Robert?’
‘Actually, it’s Sadie, so bye, Jodi,’ and leaving Connor to end the call with his wife she clicked on before Sadie could ring off. ‘Hi, how are you?’ she asked.
There was a moment before Sadie appeared fully in focus on the screen. Eva Marie Saint , Cristy immediately thought, and, yes, she could see it.
‘I’m daring to hope you found out something helpful today,’ Sadie said, raising a hand to show crossed fingers.
‘Well, here’s one thing I think you’ll like,’ Cristy smiled. ‘Your mother’s name is Janina.’
Sadie’s eyes glistened as she pressed a hand to her mouth. ‘Janina,’ she whispered. ‘It’s so pretty.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Cristy agreed.
‘Do you know anything else about her?’
‘Some, but it’s probably best that you listen to the interviews, then you’ll hear it for yourself. It won’t be long before we’re back at the office, I can sort it out then.’
Still close to tears, Sadie said, ‘I know it might sound silly, but just knowing her name … I can’t describe how it feels …’ Then, ‘I expect you’d like me to try, for a recording?’
‘When you’re ready.’
Sobbing a laugh, Sadie said, ‘Thank you. This means so much.’
‘There’s still a way to go,’ Cristy reminded her gently, ‘but we’ll get there, I’m sure of it.’
Sadie nodded, showing how keen she was to believe that.
‘Tell me about Mia,’ Cristy said. ‘Is she ready to commit to an interview yet?’
‘She’s still saying she is, she just won’t give me a time, but I’ll keep on it. Anyway, the other reason I’m ringing is that I’ve found more of Lottie’s story, and it’s … pretty explosive.’