lift.”
Anya did know and was unsure whether to attend. She had no idea whether the Harts would appreciate her being there, or her presence would only upset them more.
“I’ll see how tomorrow turns out. I could be caught up, and I am still on call for the unit.”
Mary glanced over her half-glasses. “If you ever want to talk, you know where to find me. It’s worth remembering that carers need looking after too.”
Anya was already absorbed in the file and flipped to her summary. “Appreciate the coffee,” she managed as Mary closed the door behind her.
Nineteen-year-old Violet Yardley had presented on 30 October. As was Anya’s habit, notes of the conversation were scant, in order to protect the victim. If the assault ever came to court, even a minor difference between what Anya had documented and wording in a police statement could be used by a defense lawyer to discredit the victim.
She checked the address. The suburb wasn’t far. Turning back to her laptop, she pulled up the Whitepages website. The address existed, listed under a W and P Yardley. Anya dialed the number.
A middle-aged woman with what sounded like an Italian accent answered.
“Hello, I’m hoping to contact Violet Yardley.”
The woman readily explained that her daughter was working at a shelter, packing boxes of food. When asked if it was possible to meet Violet there, the mother didn’t hesitate to provide the charity’s address.
It always disturbed Anya how much information people naively gave away over the phone, especially to a female caller. The majority of people still trusted, which was why scams and credit card theft were relatively easy to commit.
The inner-city area had little parking, so Anya hailed a taxi from outside the hospital. Within minutes she was at an old warehouse. A rollerdoor was raised in front of a sign marked
Violet seemed thinner and more gaunt than before. The eyebrow piercing was gone, but her jumper and long jeans were still black. The young woman looked up and stopped loading a box when she saw her visitor.
“I’m taking a break,” she called to no one in particular, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from her bag on her way toward the open door.
Anya followed her outside. “I don’t know if you remember-”
“How am I supposed to forget?” She lit a match and struggled to light the cigarette in the breeze. Anya cupped her hands to shelter the small flame.
The young woman nodded in gratitude and inhaled. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”
“That’s understandable. I hope you don’t mind, but I rang your home and a lady told me you were here.”
Crossing one arm across her waist, she supported her smoking arm. “My mother thinks I should bring more friends home, so she would have been happy that anyone phoned for me.”
Anya smiled. “Mums care. It’s their job. Which partly explains why I’m here. You didn’t come back to the unit and I wanted to see that you were okay.”
Violet exhaled out the side of her mouth and watched the traffic. “What can I say? Life goes on.”
A table-top truck pulled up, beeping as it reversed into the warehouse doorway.
“That’s the leftover veg from the co-op,” Violet said, stubbing out the remains of her cigarette on a metal bin by the entrance. “We do food parcels for the homeless and pensioners around here who can’t afford to pay exploitative supermarket prices.”
“Before you go…” Anya managed. “Please understand this is all still confidential, but there’s an important reason I’m asking-were the men responsible for what happened to you that night named Harbourn?”
The young woman folded her arms and bit her bottom lip.
“I never told you that.” Violet searched Anya’s face for an answer. “How did you know?”
Anya felt a rush of hope. They could have another case to answer for. “Because you’re not the only one they’ve done this to.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, my life’s moved on.”
Anya handed over a card, which the woman reluctantly took and stuck in the back of her jeans.
“I know this isn’t easy, but it’s not too late to give a police statement if you decide you want to. The samples I took that night are still in the unit if you change your mind.
“Give me one good reason.”
“One of the girls they raped is now dead. The police think they could have killed her.”
Violet’s eyes flared. “That’s bullshit. I chose to go to their house. We all got drunk that night. They might have taken turns with me after Ricky and I had sex, but that was it. There’s no way the Harbourns are killers. God, Rick was the nicest guy I’ve ever known.”
The young woman pushed past the volunteers unpacking the truck and quickly disappeared inside.
In disbelief, Anya walked back to the nearest intersection.
Almost a year and a half later, a woman who had been raped by a number of men could defend one of them as a nice man. Violet Yardley sounded as if she blamed herself for the assaults, never mind the unforgivable betrayal by her boyfriend. The woman was in complete denial.
If she stayed that way, there was little anyone could do to ensure her attackers didn’t rape again.
11
After vacillating over whether or not to go, at the last minute Anya decided to attend Giverny’s funeral. The afternoon service went longer than expected, with four hundred people spilling out of the church and its grounds. Old school friends paid their respects along with former teachers, extended family and community members.
Eulogies were accompanied by slideshows of Giverny as a smiling baby, a gap-toothed face in school uniform, with the bag almost as big as she was. Like other mourners, Anya struggled to fight back tears. As a mother, she could not help share the parents’ grief, if only in the smallest of ways. Once the funeral was over, her life would go on pretty much unchanged. The Harts’ lives were irrevocably changed, for the worse.
A white coffin covered in purple irises and cornflowers lay beneath the screen. Bevan Hart sat with his wife in the front row, both wore large dark sunglasses to obscure their misery.
Anya had hoped to slip in the back without being noticed, but a newspaper photographer recognized her and his flash alerted security guards who quickly removed him.
Bevan Hart moved across and invited her to sit with the family, given that, he explained, she had tried so hard to save his daughter’s life and had been so kind throughout her ordeal.
Anya felt like a fraud, wishing there was something else she could have done to revive the teenager. It was her job to help victims like Giverny, nothing more.
Recorded songs filled the church, ones written to thaw the hardest heart. “Amazing” prompted more tears in the crowd, as did “Wind Beneath My Wings.” Eric Clapton’s tragic tribute to his late son, “Tears in Heaven,” concluded the service.
Mary waited in the floral garden. Around the perimeter, Anya noticed a number of detectives, including Kate Farrer and Liz Gould taking note of who had attended. People who had been outside were being funneled through a side entrance to sign a visitors’ book. Those who had been seated signed another at the exit.
Immediate family were the only ones going on to the cemetery, so Mary and Anya waited to pay their respects to Bevan and his wife. A woman who shared Val Hart’s prominent nose and small chin thanked them for coming.
“My brother-in-law and sister speak highly of you,” she said, “and all you did for our Giverny. Thank you for everything you did, right up until the last.”
Anya noticed Mary nodding self-consciously.
“We’re so sorry for your terrible loss,” was all the counselor could manage.
The relative took Anya’s elbow. “Is it true that the rape case against those animals has been dropped?”
