Page 35
TWO MONTHS LATER
BONUS EPISODE
‘OK, recording,’ Connor announced. ‘Over to you.’
CRISTY: ‘Hi, it’s Cristy.’
CONNOR: ‘It’s Connor, and welcome to this bonus episode of Who’s That Girl. ’
CRISTY: ‘A lot has happened since the series officially ended, but I’m afraid we haven’t been in a position to share anything with you until now.’
CONNOR: ‘Legal reasons, you understand.’
CRISTY: ‘All will soon come clear, but for now, we’re going to start with something we don’t normally do.’
CONNOR: ‘It’s very popular on other pods and because we’ve had so many requests to do the same, we’ve decided, for this episode only, to share an update on what’s been happening to us since Sadie Winters was charged with murder. Should you not be up for hearing our personal chitchat, and no one can blame you for that, please feel free to fast forward now. If you are, here goes: Cristy, you’re much more interesting than I am, so why don’t you take it away?’
CRISTY: ‘Ha! Not true that I’m more interesting, but one of us has to set the ball rolling. So, what can I tell you that you haven’t already read about in the press?’
CONNOR: ‘For those who somehow managed to miss the blitz of tabloid fascination with Cristy’s love life a couple of months ago, she is now happily involved with the extremely eligible and disgustingly photogenic David Gaudion. You might remember him from our series Nothing to See Here in which he was proved not to have committed a triple murder. Great guy, who’s helped us quite a bit with Who’s That Girl. ’
CRISTY: ‘I have to admit it was much easier, and even more enjoyable, being the focus of a new romance than it was being the pitied victim of a broken marriage, as I was for so long.’
CONNOR: ‘Speaking of Matthew Jennings, which we kind of were – FYI he’s Cristy’s ex, also known as husband of actress Marley Dukes and anchor of TV news – I guess most of you are aware that he became a father again at the beginning of the year.’
CRISTY: ‘It was a boy, his name’s Bear, and he’s currently in the UK bonding with his dad and half-brother, Aiden.’
CONNOR: ‘Have you seen much of the baby yourself, Cristy?’
CRISTY: ‘Now and again. He’s very sweet – aren’t all babies. In fact we took him to Guernsey a couple of weeks ago where we all – Matthew, our daughter Hayley and Aiden – spent some time with David and his family.’
CONNOR: ‘Amazing. So everyone’s good friends and the past is in the past where it belongs?’
CRISTY: ‘Something like that. Actually we had some extremely welcome news while we were on the island – Aiden, who is sixteen, is NOT about to become a father. Any parent who’s been through similar angst with a teenager will know what a relief it was to find that out.
‘You know, Con, I’m really uncomfortable with that, so let’s edit it out. No one needs an update on Aiden’s careless attitude to sex.’
CONNOR: ‘Got it. Noted – and … moving on. There was something else going down with you during this time, Cris, do you want to tell us about that?’
CRISTY: ‘Yes, I was the victim of a phone stalker and it really wasn’t pleasant. In fact it was downright scary at times … We’re considering giving much more coverage to this truly despicable way of menacing people, even hounding some to their deaths, during a future series. For now I’ll just say that in my case, Jacks, one of our researchers, managed to track the stalker down. It turned out to be someone Jacks himself had long trusted to carry out deeper dives into phone and technology issues for the series.’
CONNOR: ‘Apparently the guy had some sort of unhealthy fixation on Cristy and Jacks was so upset by it all that he offered to withdraw from the series. Fortunately, we’ve managed to talk him out of it. He’s a fantastic and highly valued member of the team, as is Clover, our other researcher, who will also be on board the next time Hindsight sets sail.’
CRISTY: ‘So, how about your news, Con?’
CONNOR: ‘You know, I reckon we should get into mine at the end, because what everyone out there really wants to hear about now is what happened to Sadie Winters after she was charged with murder.’
CRISTY: ‘Sure. Your turn to take it away.’
CONNOR: ‘Actually, you have the first link.’
CRISTY: ‘Ha! So I have. OK, well, almost as soon as Sadie was remanded in custody for murdering her aunt, we were inundated with requests for as much inside intel as we could share. Most particularly, you wanted to know if we at Hindsight had played any part in helping to answer the question of “Did she jump, or was she pushed?”’
CONNOR: ‘An electrifying question if ever there was one, and it got so much debate going on our social media channels that for a while there they looked in danger of going into meltdown. Well, the mystery is now solved and we’ll be bringing you details later in this episode of Hindsight ’s role in proving the case against Sadie Winters. It didn’t happen in quite the way you might think, and there are others who deserve far more credit than us, namely Mia Winters, and the god-of-mobile-phones. But we’ll come on to that.
‘For now we’re going to address as many of the other questions you’ve been firing at us as we can. Starting with: “Where was Sadie held in custody?”’
CRISTY: ‘The short answer to that is Guernsey Prison – and this is probably a good time to explain, for those keen to know about the island’s legal system, that it is basically the same as ours in England. There are a few anomalies, and some different terminology, for example criminal cases are generally presided over by a judge of law – aka bailiff – with between seven to twelve jurats, aka the jury. If you’d like to find out more about the Bailiwick’s composition of the court you’ll find several helpful links on our website.’
CONNOR: ‘I’m sure that most of you will know by now that Sadie entered a plea of guilty to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. Were we surprised by that? No, not at all. We’d already heard that it was going to happen, and whatever you might think when we play you the evidence we submitted later in the episode, you’ll probably agree that there was a plausible case for temporary insanity.’
CRISTY: ‘So she avoided a mandatory life sentence and received fifteen years instead with no recommendations, which means she could be out again in less than ten, maybe even sooner than that. We were in court to witness the judgment, and we were also able to record a short interview with her father and uncle after she was taken away. Before we share that with you, let’s talk for a minute about Sadie’s demeanour during the passing of her sentence: did she show remorse? Shock? Was she emotional? Did she look at anyone? Did she speak at all?’
CONNOR: ‘The answers are, yes she appeared quite stricken by what she’d done and shocked, kind of bewildered actually, to find herself where she was. She didn’t speak to anyone, and the only person we saw her look at was Cristy.’
CRISTY: ‘It was a surreal moment, almost as if time was shifting somehow leaving just the two of us in a space that … Well, let’s just say it was weird and it still feels weird.’
CONNOR: ‘We need more, like what do you think her look was saying?’
CRISTY: ‘Actually, nothing at first, it was just … empty, and then – I’m still quite blown away by this – she seemed to be feeling kind of sorry for me, as if I was the one to blame for her actions, and she was sad that I was making her pay for them. That’s what she made me think, so you see why I say weird.’
CONNOR: ‘So she didn’t come over as angry, or vengeful, or even a little bit pissed off that you’d caught out her lies?’
CRISTY: ‘Not in that minute, no. It was only later, when her lawyer delivered her note, that we got confirmation that she really was – or is – on some other planet. I’ll read it out for you.
‘“Cristy, I realize now that I should never have trusted you, but we all make mistakes. Being as vulnerable as I was at the time I came to you with an overwhelming need to find my true family, I was perhaps more prone to making them than most. I can see now what easy prey I was for you, and how I continued to be throughout the making of your series. As I begin to serve a sentence for something you know I didn’t do, it will be for you to decide how to live with your conscience. Perhaps you don’t have one, so there will be no inner struggle for you. Can I pre-empt any request you might be considering for an interview with me by saying: without trust there can be no further contact. Sasha.”’
CONNOR: ‘Wow, kind of powerful, definitely delusional – and if she didn’t do it, why plead guilty to manslaughter? I guess she’ll have some sort of an answer for that, and I’m sure what I’ll want to say in response is “ See how you like it .” These are the final words she spoke to her aunt before she pushed her to her death.’
CRISTY: ‘We’ll play you an actual recording of it in just a few minutes. We’ll also be hearing from Sadie’s father and uncle about how she is justifying her actions to them.’
CONNOR: ‘But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we thought it would make sense to play you some selected highlights from all six episodes of Who’s That Girl to bring ourselves back up to speed. We’re going to start with the pages, written by Lottie, that kicked the whole thing off when Sadie brought them to Cristy. Incidentally, we only saw a few chapters of that story, Cristy. Do you think there was more, or was the scene when Edwin came to the house as far as Lottie got with her memoir?’
CRISTY: ‘If it’s true that Mia had all Lottie’s computers returned to factory settings after her death, then my guess is this: Lottie could have written more, the entire story even, but then she died and Mia took drastic action to make sure nothing ever saw the light of day.’
CONNOR: ‘So Mia knew what Lottie was doing?’
CRISTY: ‘It’s certainly possible. For all we know Mia wrote some of it herself. She definitely gave the impression of that the first time I spoke to her. What I doubt she knew was that Lottie had printed out the early chapters and hidden them in random places, either to edit, or to make sure a copy still existed if Mia ever went nuts and tried to sabotage things.’
CONNOR: ‘Does that lead us to wonder if it was Mia who tampered with Lottie’s meds?’
CRISTY: ‘It’s hard not to wonder that, but we’ll never have an answer to it, so we need to edit that last bit out, and get back on script. Pick up with Sadie reading Lottie’s account of finding a child on the beach and how it led to all that came after.’
As the pre-prepared insert began to play Connor sat back in his chair to listen, while Cristy and David, finally in Marrakech, did the same poolside. They’d arrived four days ago, and had so far only ventured out of their very private and exotically luxurious pavilion-piscine suite for the occasional meal, or an evening stroll. At the moment, in the lazy heat of the mid-afternoon, they were lying out on their loungers, hands loosely linked over the sound equipment Cristy had set up just before Connor had connected for this bonus recording.
The sun was dazzling, and the heady scents of orange blossom, musk and incense infusing the air seemed to add a sense of unreality to the many voices that had gone into making up the series. Robert and Gita Brinkley; ex-DS Catherine Shilling; Edwin Prosser; Natalie Irwin; Lottie’s publisher, Felicity Green; Gabe and Lukas; Mia Winters, even Lottie in her way – and of course Sadie.
Cristy was once again considering, as she had many times over the last few weeks, the words Lottie had written when she’d read the note Mia had found in two-year-old Sadie’s pocket. She’d experienced a confliction of feelings and this perfectly described Cristy’s own response each time she thought of Sadie. There was still anger and despair over what the girl had done, but this was followed all too quickly by a sense of betrayal in itself underpinned by compassion. Sometimes she found herself recalling only the affection she’d felt for the girl, the empathy that had allowed her to connect with her confusion and need, that made her want to turn back the clock and make things right. Without even knowing it she’d developed a maternal sort of feeling towards Sadie, with all the complexity and challenges that entailed.
Now, almost as if it were Hayley at the heart of her confliction, Cristy could feel the confines of Sadie’s prison, the shutting down of a young life, the terrible, pointless stifling of so much. And through it all, erupting like sudden tides on a calm day, came surges of guilt, harsh and unforgiving reminders of the part she’d played in putting Sadie where she was. Never mind that she’d had little choice, it wasn’t ever going to feel good or satisfactory, or even right, to know that justice had been served when Sadie, her start in life, her upbringing, her motives and her reasoning, were so much more complicated and multi-faceted than the law allowed for.
Cristy guessed all this emotional turmoil was going to be with her for some time, haunting her, testing her conscience and her heart in ways that would serve neither her, nor Sadie. It would simply be a part of who she was going forward, until like all forms of grief it eventually began to lose the power of its hold.
She watched David get up from the lounger, wearing only shorts that he didn’t actually need given the privacy of their pool area, and releasing the difficult reflections she took a long, desirous moment to admire his newly acquired tan. It was only when he returned, bringing a pitcher to refresh their cocktails, and regarded her askance, that she realized Connor was cueing her to begin the next stage of recording.
‘Yeah, I’m here,’ she said, pressing a finger to her earpiece. ‘Are you going to lead us back in?’
‘Sure thing.’
CONNOR: ‘So there you have it, the series in a dozen or more soundbites, but what you still don’t have are the so far unshared extracts of Lottie’s journals. They are crucial to just about everything and at last we have clearance to use them.’
CRISTY: ‘So here they are, read by Sadie herself. Lottie’s account of what happened the day Janina, a tragic young mother desperate to reunite with her child, left St Peter Port to make a rendezvous with Lottie and was never seen again.’
Here Sadie’s voice took over, conveying tenderness, passion, angst, confusion, horror, as she lifted Lottie’s words from the page, and Cristy could only wonder why they hadn’t connected sooner with what a gifted actress she was. In her ear, Connor said, ‘How didn’t we see this? She could be red-carpeted for this kind of performance.’
Cristy didn’t respond, simply listened until the insert came to an end, feeling as far away from knowing Sadie as she ever had.
CONNOR: ‘So, now you know what most of you guessed anyway, that Mia, according to Lottie’s journal, was responsible for Janina’s death.’
CRISTY: ‘This is something Mia strenuously denied when Sadie read the journals to her … Take a listen to this …’
As Connor played in Mia’s distraught, terrified voice insisting that Lottie was twisting everything, Cristy’s eyes closed and for the next few minutes she found herself transported to the room where Sadie had confronted her aunt. It was as though she was watching, and even believing in something she’d never actually seen: Mia’s panic, shock and helplessness; Sadie’s steely determination to finish reading, before outrage and fury had made her trash the place.
‘Ready?’ Connor asked in her ear.
‘There,’ Cristy confirmed, moving her script into the shade.
CONNOR: ‘Pretty dramatic stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree, and frankly, after many listens on our part, Mia still sounds pretty convincing to me.’
CRISTY: ‘So you think Lottie purposefully lied in her journals to cast Mia as the villain of the piece?’
CONNOR: ‘That’s the trouble, I’m not sure I do believe that.’
CRISTY: ‘On this, I tend to agree with Sadie, that to whatever degree, they were both responsible. I can’t say it goes as far as falsifying journals for me, but Lottie hasn’t tried to get out of her involvement. She writes about sending Janina to Sark View House, and she clearly knew about Janina’s death at the time it happened, so she’s every bit as guilty as Mia.’
CONNOR: ‘OK, so it was both of them. I think we can all get on board for that.
‘Let’s move on to what came next, something neither of us will ever forget: that horrifying scene when we went into Mia’s house to find the kitchen and sitting room trashed and her sat right under a noose. Jesus, that’s an image I don’t think will ever leave me.’
CRISTY: ‘We couldn’t record any of it, Mia refused to allow it, but we did describe it in episode five, and made it pretty clear there that Mia wasn’t flying with many feathers in her wings by then, if she ever really was.’
CONNOR: ‘And I think we can conclude that Sadie reading out the journals pushed her aunt even closer to the edge. Did she know that would happen? It seems reasonable to conclude that she did, at least on some level, given how well she knew her aunt, and her various eccentricities, as she called them.’
CRISTY: ‘So we move closer to Sadie’s decision to make her aunt pay for her mother’s death with her own life – and in the same way.’
CONNOR: ‘She could, of course, simply have handed the journals to the police and let the law take its course – God knows prison, or a secure mental facility, would have been a severe enough punishment for Mia. It would have been the end of everything for her, and Sadie, would well deserve to take control of the Winters’ fortune, in the court of public opinion at least.’
CRISTY: ‘But – and it’s a really big but here – for as long as Mia remained alive there was always a chance she could be deemed fit enough to change her will and cut Sadie out completely.’
CONNOR: ‘Meaning Sadie would lose out on upward of forty million quid. Nice if you can get it. So, to make sure Mia didn’t even think about doing anything silly, Sadie acted – it could have been spur of the moment, or maybe it was already planned. We know the court has accepted the former. See what you think as you listen to this next clip. I should point out that it’s the recording of a pocket-dial from Mia’s phone, so it’s not always as clear as we might like. But the salient points are, I think you’ll all agree after hearing it, that God, or fate, or the universe can move in just as swift and decisive ways as Sadie Winters managed that night.’
CRISTY: ‘A quick warning before we play it, it is distressing. So please, either choose not to listen, or, if you feel in need of support after you can go to our website where you’ll find appropriate links.’
Not wanting to hear Mia’s pathetic and helpless cries again, or Sadie’s gentle coaxing and horrendously vengeful words at the end, Cristy removed her earpiece for the next few minutes. But even as she gazed up at the palm fronds, and listened to their rhythmic rustle, she could still hear the disturbing echoes of that final scene.
David reached for her hand, and as she turned to him she watched him listen until he signalled it was time for her to plug back in.
CONNOR: ‘“It’s for the best, Mia.” That’s what she said. And then those deadly words, “See how you like it.”’
CRISTY: ‘As we mentioned just now, if you need help dealing with what you’ve just heard, please go to our website and click on one of the links we’ve put there to guide you.’
CONNOR: ‘So, you now know why Sadie didn’t opt for a trial. She’d never have been able to win if she entered a plea of not guilty. So, diminished responsibility won it for her, if you can call fifteen years a win.’
CRISTY: ‘There’s a very good chance she’ll still be under forty by the time she comes out. Will she then be able to pick up her massive inheritance, and rejoin her family, and get on with her life?’
CONNOR: ‘The answer to that is no, she won’t. Whatever’s left after the other beneficiaries have been paid out will go to the Crown. Although I imagine it’ll be the subject of countless lawsuits before that happens, and maybe, in the end, once the lawyers have claimed their share, something will go to her.’
CRISTY: ‘So, the bottom line is she will not be able to profit from her crime, or certainly not in the way she presumably hoped to. Or did she? I never got the impression she was driven by money, but there again, with so much at stake I don’t think we can rule it out. More likely there was a whole slew of complex and conflicting emotions playing into her motives that probably even she couldn’t identify if asked. Anyway, I don’t think we need to worry about her financial security. I’m sure she’ll find herself a book and TV deal somewhere down the line, and as we know, her father and uncle aren’t exactly broke. Quite the reverse in fact.’
CONNOR: ‘This is true, but it isn’t their wealth that makes them stand out for us, and it certainly has nothing to do with why we’ve kept their interview to the end. It’s how hurt they have been by all this that’s probably moved us the most. And how determined they are, in spite of everything, to stand by Sadie. Here’s what they had to say the day after she was sentenced.’
This time Cristy listened as the insert was played, staring at the gently rippling pool in front of her, glazed by sunlight, sprinkled with blossom. She wondered what Gabe and Lukas might be doing now. Were they still in Guernsey, or had they flown back to Florida for a while?
CRISTY: ‘Thanks for agreeing to talk to us. I realize this is a very difficult time for you, and not at all what you were expecting when we came to you back in February with the news that Sadie – Sasha – was alive and looking for you.’
LUKAS: ‘I won’t deny that the events of the past few months have delivered us a number of terrible blows. We were so happy to have found our dear Sasha, and to start making plans for a future with her. We are still making those plans, and we shall continue to for as long as she is compelled to stay where she is. She knows, and we would like your listeners to know also, that we have no intention of abandoning her. She is Gabe and Janina’s daughter, my niece, and as such she will always have our love and loyalty – and our full understanding of why she was driven, in a moment of utter despair and confusion, to act as she did.
‘I know the recording you have paints her in a damning light, but that is because most people won’t understand what was happening to her at the time. What had been happening for years under the influence of her aunts. They were a malevolent force in many ways, iron fists in velvet gloves, master manipulators of truth and lies. So much so that after discovering the journals Sasha found herself unable to think straight …
‘You know yourselves that Mia was suicidal, and the most likely reason for that was guilt. She knew what she’d done was a terrible, wicked thing and no matter how much she gave Janina’s daughter she could never make up for what she and her sister had taken from her. It was tormenting her, crushing her from within, and to hear Sasha speak about it it’s clear it was doing the same to her. She was stifled by her aunts’ deceptions and constant refusal to tell her who she really was, and by the threats they repeatedly made to cut her out of their wills if she didn’t stop trying to find out about her past.
‘I ask you: how can anyone be relied on to behave rationally when they’re under so much pressure and for so long? When all they want is to know the truth and it is always denied? Sasha has a good and kind heart, she is like both her parents in that respect; it was only in Mia’s final moments that nurture overcame nature and made our dear Sasha behave like one of her aunts.’
GABE: ‘We are intending to relocate to Guernsey to be close to Sasha until such time as she can join us in the States.’
CONNOR: ‘Will it be possible for her to get into America as a convicted felon?’
GABE: ‘If it isn’t, we will all stay here.’
CONNOR: ‘So there you have Sadie’s father’s final words to us on the subject of his daughter, her uncle’s, too. Whether or not you believe she deserves such loyalty is up to you. Personally I think it reflects very well on them, and I’m sure, in the long term, it will go some way towards reducing her sentence if it’s known that she has a loving family who’ll be there to help with her rehabilitation.’
A lengthy silence followed, until Connor said, ‘Cristy? Are you still there?’
CRISTY: ‘Sorry, yes. So, that brings our bonus episode of Who’s That Girl to an end. Thank you for listening. Please join us for a new series in the coming months.’
CONNOR: ‘Are you serious? That’s how you’re going to end it?’
CRISTY: ‘What’s wrong with it?’
CONNOR: ‘A bit abrupt, don’t you think?’
CRISTY: ‘Please feel free to rephrase and say whatever you feel is right.’
CONNOR: (after another pause) ‘OK, I get what’s happening. You’re on the Marrakech Express?’
CRISTY: (laughing) ‘Something like that.’
CONNOR: ‘Slow on the uptake, or what? So, have a good one guys, and see you in a couple of weeks. Meantime, I’ll record a decent end to the series, complete with credits and sponsor beatification. Iz will be proud of me. I’ll also fill everyone in on my news, although I don’t suppose anyone’s interested now. Whatever, don’t you worry about us over here in the cold and wind and rain, we’re coping.’
He waited for a response, certain it was going to be droll.
CONNOR: ‘Are you still there?
‘You’re not even going to say goodbye?
‘Nice.’
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