Page 48 of Forever is Now

[Sounds of the door opening and closing, amid a third person entering the room]

Adelaide James: Let’s welcome Mary Smallridge. Say hello to her, Ms. Taylor-Braddon.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: Hello, Mary.

Adelaide James: It’s been quite a while since the two of you met, has it not? Well, I’ll get straight to the point. Mary was best friends with Ms. Taylor-Braddon’s sister when the two were at Okehampton College. It’s got to be about twenty years since the two of you left, right?

Mary Smallridge: Yes.

Adelaide James: I must admit, Mary, I was very intrigued when you got in touch with me. You gave a wonderful interview back then, but I was never entirely sure what I wanted to do with it. I wrote up articles, but my blog just didn’t seem like the right platform for that. What you told me felt too big.

But when Ms. Taylor-Braddon invited me onto this project, well, I couldn’t believe it. All my dreams just came true—just like that! So, Mary, if you’d like to tell the tape recorder what you told me before, that would be wonderful.

Mary Smallridge: I’d rather not speak in front of Summer.

Adelaide James: Would you leave, Ms. Taylor-Braddon?

Summer Taylor-Braddon: No, I will not. And this is my project, and you cannot force me out of this. Mary, go ahead though. I’m certainly intrigued about what you could possibly say.

Mary Smallridge: It’s about your sister. Matilda. We were friends.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: I know that.

Mary Smallridge: We were sixteen, I think. When... when it happened.

Adelaide James: Whenwhathappened, Ms. Smallridge?

Mary Smallridge: When Matilda told me that Summer was the most important person in her life. And that she’d do anything to protect her.

[She gulps] We were... we were a little drunk at the time. In my bedroom. “This Love” by Maroon 5 was playing really loudly. My parents were out. Me and Matilda, we were lying on my bed, and we’d been talking a lot and she just blurted all this out—how she’d do anything to protect her sister.

And I said to her, I asked her, “Like what?”

And Matilda just said, “Like murder. I’ll kill anyone who ruins my sister’s life.”

Adelaide James: Thank you, Ms. Smallridge. That’s all we need to know. Would you like to leave the studio now?

Mary Smallridge: Yes, I would.

[Sounds of Mary Smallridge leaving]

Adelaide James: So, Ms. Taylor-Braddon, let’s talk about this. You and your sister, and your sister’s apparent ease of planning murder.

Summer Taylor-Braddon: That wasn’t what Mary just said.

Adelaide James: You personally described the woman that you saw stab Mia Wilson as blonde. Yet in all the photos, the woman who was detained and convicted was brunette. But your sister is blond, is she not?

Summer Taylor-Braddon: If you’re suggesting that Mattie had anything to do with Mia’s death, you’re completely wrong. That is just ludicrous.

Adelaide James: Only I have been trying to find your sister, and Matilda Taylor is proving a little allusive to find. Which is strange, given that she’s normally very much in the public eye. What with her job and all that. All those tasteless photographs.

Yet, she hasn’t updated her social media since the day before Mia Wilson was killed, has she? And she hasn’t taken on any new modeling jobs—in fact, her agency told me she’s left. No one seems to be able to contact her, so where is she, Ms. Taylor-Braddon?

Summer Taylor-Braddon: If you’re suggesting that my sister did this—just... wow.

Adelaide James: I’m suggesting more than that. I’m suggesting that you were also involved. What was it that you yourself report the murderer as saying? Were the words, “I told you I’d sort it?”

Summer Taylor-Braddon: My sister did not kill Mia. We know who did. The woman is in prison.

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