Faith - Lesley Pearse [183]
Once again she reinvented herself too. Not with lies this time, but by making a conscious effort to be a nicer person. She took the trouble to talk to the older guests, ran errands for them, admired the snapshots of their grandchildren, and made them feel welcome. One evening she even babysat a fractious two-year-old so her parents could go out to dinner on their own, and she volunteered to do many jobs for Janet and Carlo to make their lives less arduous.
It felt good to be genuinely liked. She could see then that the people she’d mixed with while making her films hadn’t been friends at all, they just sucked up to her because she was calling the shots. Finally she had her hair cut and bleached honey-blonde in a salon, and losing the long dark hair she’d had for so long softened her face and made her eyes brighter. She also abandoned the strong colours she’d worn most of her adult life, and bought cream, white and pastel clothes. Janet hugged her one night and said she was beautiful. Laura just hoped all her efforts had made her beautiful on the inside too.
‘I suppose I hadn’t completely paid back my debt,’ Laura murmured to herself as the last rays of daylight vanished over the hills. ‘I can’t have done or I wouldn’t have ended up here.’
∗
‘Surely someone must have thought of finding out who Jackie’s solicitor was?’ Stuart said irritably to Patrick Goldsmith. ‘Any legal work he did for her just before her death might have been relevant to the case.’
He and David had arrived at Goldsmith’s office at nine and demanded to see him the moment he came in, knowing that he’d probably be in court with one of his clients later. But Goldsmith seemed to have no sense of urgency, and showed precious little excitement at the new developments they had told him about.
‘We would expect another solicitor to volunteer any information he had in a case like this, but some firms have thousands of clients, they can’t be expected to remember every single one, and connect them with a murder they may or may not have even heard about,’ he replied tersely. ‘As I understand it, Mrs Howell produced her sister’s will, and the solicitor who drew that up agreed that to his knowledge there wasn’t a more recent one.’
‘She made that years ago when she was in London,’ Stuart said heatedly. ‘Her husband, quite incidentally, claims he has a more recent one too, but that doesn’t appear to have been checked out either. Now come on, Patrick! Surely she would have got a local solicitor once she moved up here? Who handled the purchase of Brodie Farm?’
‘I don’t know,’ Goldsmith admitted ruefully.
Stuart opened his mouth to shout, ‘Find out then’ at him, but a warning glance from David stopped him.
‘We really do need to find him,’ David said calmly. ‘It might transpire that Jackie changed her mind and destroyed the document. But in my experience people usually explain why that is. So this solicitor’s evidence could be important to our appeal.’
‘I shall look into it.’ Goldsmith began shuffling papers on his desk as if their time was up. ‘I’ll also consult counsel about the question of the second white Golf, and Mr Baxter coming forward as a witness. I will be in touch as soon as possible.’
Stuart looked at David and rolled his eyes with impatience.
‘Thank you for your time, Patrick,’ David said, holding out his hand. ‘But could I just remind you that for every day Laura spends in prison for a crime she didn’t commit, she dies a little. Time is running out for myself and Stuart too. We must have justice, and soon.’
‘Well said, David,’ Stuart said as they left the solicitors and walked down Great King Street. ‘I can only hope Goldsmith took it on board.’
‘It isn’t just down to him, it’s the whole legal system.’ David sighed. ‘It grinds very slowly.’
‘Maybe I’ll try to speed things up a bit then,’ Stuart retorted.
David looked sideways at his friend and saw his grim expression. ‘I hope you aren’t thinking of doing something harebrained,’ he said.
‘Not