Hope to Die

Cam, Melissa and me were best friends right from our first or second week at school. They sat us alphabetically in the first year so we were all in a line together and that’s pretty much how it stayed. Then Cam said we should call ourselves the chameleon girls, you know, from Cam–Mel-Leon – she was always really clever about things like that – and the name just stuck, especially with that Culture Club song.

Intercut: footage of the three girls wearing T-shirts with chameleons on, and their names printed below. They’re singing, rather raucously, lines from ‘Karma Chameleon’: “Didn’t hear your wicked words every day / And you used to be so sweet I heard you say”.

And it was sort of fitting that Cam’s name came first – she was always the leader, always out in front. She just had that sort of personality. Everyone wanted to be in her gang. Not that we had gangs at Burghley Abbey – way too common – but you know what I mean. And Cam was the only one in our year who had a swimming pool. Mel lived in Shiphampton too and I was only three or four miles away so I’d bike over and we’d spend hours round the pool in the summer, just hanging out. And her parents were always very welcoming. I think they were concerned about her having lots of friends because she was an only child.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

You called her Cam just then. Did you always call her that?

LEONORA STANIFORTH

Oh yes – that’s what everyone called her, except her mother. That whole ‘Milly’ thing – the papers completely made it up. We kept telling them no one ever used that name, but they didn’t take any notice. They were just desperate to write a headline saying ‘Milly Liar’.

Cut to: office. A big sleek desk, shelves of legal books and framed certificates on the walls, views of the City skyline outside.

TITLE OVER: Melissa Rutherford, Camilla’s school friend

MELISSA RUTHERFORD

It was only after I left that I realised what an inward-looking place Shiphampton was. It was a real goldfish bowl – everyone knew everyone else’s business. I suppose that’s one reason why the whole Cam thing was such a bombshell. No one saw it coming, and they couldn’t believe something like that had been going on right under their noses and no one knew. And then there was the trial, and there were journalists crawling all over the place and people just closed ranks. They always call places ‘close-knit’ after something terrible happens, don’t they? I guess that’s why. I never thought of that before.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

So it was the sort of place where appearances mattered?

MELISSA RUTHERFORD

God, yes. All those twitching curtains and bitchy gossip dressed up as concern. There was a hell of a lot of keeping up with the Joneses. The Rowans really felt that, you could tell. I mean, there was no question that they were wealthy, but Dick Rowan was a self-made man, and some people were a bit sniffy about that, even in the 1990s. That’s why they had such high expectations for Cam – not so much academically but socially. It sounds like something out of Jane Austen, I know, but I got the impression there was definitely pressure for her to ‘marry well’.

(pause)

She had a lot to live up to. Seriously. I didn’t envy her.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

Did you know? About the pregnancies?

MELISSA RUTHERFORD

She never told me. She never said a word about any of it.

Cut to: Leonora

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

Did you know?

LEONORA STANIFORTH

No, I didn’t know.

Cut to: Marion Teesdale

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

Did you know?

MARION TEESDALE

No. No one at the school knew.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

You understand why people find that hard to believe?

MARION TEESDALE

Of course I understand. But that doesn’t alter the facts. And you need to remember she was a day girl. There wasn’t the same degree of proximity that there was with the boarders.

Clip of hockey match (actual footage).

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE

But it’s hard to comprehend, all the same. And you only need to look at this clip to see why. This footage shows the 1997 UK national under-18s hockey championships. After three days of play-offs, during which the teams have all shared changing facilities and dorm rooms, Burghley Abbey are in the closing moments of a hard-fought semi-final against Cheltenham Ladies College. Camilla has already been instrumental in creating one goal, and is about to score the clincher. Watch.