Melvin Burgess

Sara's Face

Introduction

Just about everyone knows the story of Jonathon Heat and Sara Carter. It’s common currency, revealed to us through a thousand newspaper headlines, magazine articles, news bulletins, TV shows and an endless commentary on the radio. Heat’s sheer celebrity is one factor that made the story of such universal interest. While he still had one, his was perhaps the most famous face on the planet. We’ve been hearing about him for years but the strange nature of his crimes and his terrible fate have made this particular story his most lasting legacy to us.
  Sara is different. She comes down to us as a mystery, a figure without explanation. Her refusal or inability to speak have led to endless speculation about her, but the story of her hopes and dreams and her role in the terrible way they were fulfilled, remains elusive. How much did she plan? Was she in control the whole time, or was she just the innocent victim of Heat and his surgeon, Wayland Kaye? It’s the purpose of this book to try to cast some light on the girl herself.
  As someone used to trying to create an impression of truth, investigating actual truth has proved to be a tricky affair. Both Heat and Sara seem to have been master dissemblers themselves, with only very shaky ideas of who they really were or what they wanted to become. Heat, of course, is in prison. Sara’s fate is more open to speculation. Since her failure to come and give evidence in court, rumours have circulated widely; madness or death, or the terrible nature of her injuries, seem to be the most likely options, but, to this day, no one is really sure. I’m a novelist doing a journalist’s job, and my brief has been to get at what people thought and felt, and what their motivations were as much as simply to describe the unfolding of events. What goes on in people’s hearts is a notoriously tricky thing to know. I’ve done my best to understand rather than speculate, but, frankly, I’ve been amazed at how little positive truth you come across after even the most thorough investigation. Everything that happens is filtered through opinion and memory, and of course by how much other people want you to know. No two people remember anything in exactly the same way. I’ve done my best to verify everything before I came to write it. Most of all, I’ve done my best to be true to Sara.
  I’ve been able to speak to almost all the people involved in the events that took place in Cheshire in 2005, except of course the two main protagonists. Even with all the contacts in my hand, Sara has proved to be incredibly elusive. She told so many different versions of what was going on to so many different people, it’s as if she has done her best to extinguish her real self in favour of her own legend. Perhaps that’s the nature of her tragedy. Like a religious figure or a character from myth, it’s nothing she ever said or did, but her story itself that forces her on our attention and inspires our imagination. In that sense, she more than achieved her ambition of making fame itself a work of art.
  There is one great asset I’ve been given access to, however – the video diary that Sara kept on and off over the years, including her stay at Home Manor Farm. This may be the only chance we will ever have of hearing her speak directly to us again, so let’s start off with that right away. Here she is talking about her boyfriend, Mark, a few days before she went into the hospital where she first met Jonathon Heat.

Sara’s Face © Melvyn Burgess, 2007. Published by Puffin Books.