Chapter Thirty-Nine

Cassie had booked the day of Bronte's funeral as holiday so she could watch the coverage from the boat. Naturally, the service at St Ioannas would be a private affair, but the funeral cortege and guests arriving was being live-streamed by a US-based online music and entertainment channel.

She wouldn't be watching alone though – she had an unexpected guest in the form of Ethan, who'd called to ask if he could come over.

‘Thanks for this,' he said as he took a seat in the cabin, and she was touched to see that he had shaved and wore a clean shirt, presumably to mark the seriousness of the occasion. ‘George would probably have put me on the list for inside but I wasn't about to give social media fresh meat – you know, "evil junkie boyfriend attends funeral of his victim".' Taking the cup of tea she handed him, he added, ‘And I didn't want to be on my own.'

As she sat beside him, close enough to feel the warmth of his arm, she realised that her crazy little crush on him had totally evaporated. Ethan had edgy good looks and charisma by the bucketload – but even she could see that he ought to come with a relationship health warning tattooed on his forehead.

What had she been thinking? A lot of it had been their shared connection with Bronte, heightened by Cassie's guilt about the bullying at school. And it wouldn't be the first time that she'd jumped into a new relationship in a bid to paper over her feelings about the previous one. She did still wonder if she'd done the right thing, calling time on her and Archie.

The streamed footage stood in stark contrast with her memories of the Amy Winehouse funeral, back when she'd still been at school. Although she'd been a far bigger star than Bronte, that had been a low-key affair, with only a modest gathering of respectful fans and well-wishers who had kept their distance. This time there was a noisy scrum of spectators and the police had thrown a ring of steel barriers around Agios Ioannis fronted by officers in hi-vis jackets to keep them at bay, and she saw four TV cameras and a bunch of other press in a kind of pen off to one side of the church entrance.

Seeing the funeral cortege arrive, flanked by two motorcycle cops, Cassie lowered the volume so they didn't have to listen to the inane chatter of the presenters. A sea of arms went up from the crowd to capture the moment on their smartphones. ‘Look!' she told Ethan, pointing to a neon pink head at the front of the crowd filming herself as Bronte's hearse drew up in the background.

‘Oh yeah!' he said. ‘That's that Charly girl whose post got me a kicking, right?'

‘What happened about that?' asked Cassie.

‘She took the posts down.' He shrugged. ‘If I could afford a libel lawyer I'd be a few hundred grand richer by now.'

‘Do the cops still think you had something to do with it?'

‘Nah,' he said. ‘I had to give them the name of the girl I was with that night' – he sent her an awkward look. ‘She's the girlfriend of our drummer. So as you can imagine I'm persona non grata with the band, but hey, she dumped him and we're legit now.' He sounded more resigned than thrilled by the outcome.

‘But you're not watching this with her?' Cassie asked lightly.

‘She wouldn't like it.' He gave a half-shake of his head. ‘You cared about Bronte. And put yourself in danger to try and find out what happened to her.'

The back of the hearse was so full of flowers you could only catch glimpses of the dark wood coffin within. The report cut to a close-up, filling the screen with the words ‘Goodbye Baby Girl' spelled out in red roses on a background of white lilies. The limo directly behind, which presumably carried George and Chrysanthi, had heavily tinted windows protecting the privacy of its occupants.

As the hearse turned into the churchyard entrance a shower of flowers thrown by the crowd fell on and around it, some getting crushed under the wheels.

Once the cortege of cars was inside, a couple of church flunkies came and shut the gates. Cassie threw a look at Ethan and was shocked to see tears spilling from his eyes.

‘Oh Ethan,' she said, putting a hand on his arm.

‘I'm all right.' Taking a breath, he put up a hand. ‘I know I was a totally shit boyfriend but, you know, I really did love her.'

She filled two shot glasses with iced vodka from the freezer.

Raising her glass, she said, ‘To Bronte. One of the brave ones.'

‘To Bronte,' he echoed, and they both knocked back their drinks.

*

After Ethan had left Cassie couldn't relax, her mind constantly circling back to her suspicion that Chrysanthi could have been a lifelong abuser, poisoning Bronte since childhood to cause her ‘stomach problems'. What if she had contaminated one of the many home-cooked meals she delivered to Bronte after she'd left home? Not with a toxin this time, but with something she had discovered her daughter was seriously allergic to? Even a tiny trace of allergen, hidden in a stew or similar, could have been enough to trigger anaphylaxis.

Then all she had to do was fail to call an ambulance – and suck up the sympathy that would be lavished on a mother who'd lost a second child – the child she was no longer able to control. Bronte heading out to the balcony in a desperate bid to get air wasn't in the script, but the stronger and taller Chrysanthi would have been more than capable of tipping her over, especially with her daughter in the throes of an anaphylactic attack.

Cassie spent the rest of the day down an online rabbit-hole exploring every conceivable known allergen. In addition to the hundreds of foods and flavourings that could cause a serious reaction in the vulnerable, she discovered you could be dangerously allergic to coins, sunlight, textiles, any number of different insect stings – even to your own sweat. Given that anaphylaxis had been incredibly rare until recent years, it was clear that something in the modern lifestyle was scrambling the normal programming of the human immune system.

Cassie wished she'd hung around when Curzon had opened Bronte's stomach in case the contents had held any clue. Then she remembered the crime scene pics that Tina the CSM had printed out for her right at the start. Where were they .?.?.? Half an hour later she'd unearthed them from the Jenga tower of paperwork stood on her bedroom chest of drawers.

She'd been totally focused on the balcony images before, but now she flicked impatiently past them to find the interiors.

Plucking one out, she murmured, ‘Tina, you're a star!' It showed what had clearly been the contents of Bronte's fridge lined up on the kitchen worktop. Flattening the printout on the table she looked for any Tupperware or foil container, the type of thing that might hold the remains of a home-cooked meal. But there was nothing like that – the only containers being jars of mustard and salad dressing, and an ice cream carton. She sighed: remembering Chrysanthi saying that before the police finally called it as a murder she'd been allowed to take ‘mementos' like the locket from her daughter's flat, so could easily have removed anything she'd previously missed that might incriminate her.

Cassie wondered whether to call Flyte again, to try to persuade her, but was put off by her outright disbelief from last time. Her anger at Flyte's reaction had subsided. It was totally understandable that someone who had experienced losing a baby would find it near-impossible to comprehend a mother killing her own child.