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What Would You Do: Perfect Little Children
183 Plays1 year ago
Brook and Sarah take a deep dive into Sophie Hannah's Perfect Little Children. What would you do if you saw an old friend after twelve years and her children hadn't aged?
Discussed
Perfect Little Children (2020) Sophie Hannah
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Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers – www.silvermansound.com
Transcript
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Transcript
Introduction to Clued In Mystery Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke, and we both love mystery. Hi, Brooke. Good morning, Sarah. How are you doing? I'm doing really well. How about you? Better now that we get to talk about mystery. And I'm so excited that we get to share that we are going to have a newsletter coming soon. Yes, this is going to be so great as a way to keep more in touch with our listeners.
00:00:41
Speaker
And so if anybody's interested in signing up for our newsletter, we've got a wait list that's on our website at cluedinmystery.com. And while you're there, you can also join the wait list for our paid subscription that will be coming in 2024 that will be filled with loads of goodies, including the opportunity to read early drafts of a project that you and I are planning to work on together in 2024.
Introduction to 'Perfect Little Children'
00:01:12
Speaker
Yes, it's going to be so exciting. So let's get started on our episode. Today we're talking about another What Would You Do story.
00:01:21
Speaker
Yes, we're going to be discussing today, Perfect Little Children by Sophie Hanna. And please remember that we will be doing a deep dive into this book. So if this is one that you haven't read yet, you might want to do that and then come back to the episode because it will be filled with spoilers. So let's just get started with a little intro to the book.
00:01:42
Speaker
Before you start with the overview, Brooke, I think we should also just have a really brief content warning. There is domestic abuse and harm to children in this book.
00:01:55
Speaker
Thank you, Sarah.
Beth's Curious Encounter with Flora
00:01:57
Speaker
Beth Leeson does what a lot of us might. She takes the opportunity to check up on her estranged best friend when she happens to be in the area for her teenage son's soccer game. But she's shocked when she spots her old friend Flora Braid outside her large home with two small children. Flora's kids should be teens like Beth's.
00:02:18
Speaker
Even more troubling, Flora calls these little children by the same names, Thomas and Emily. Beth is immediately intrigued. She has to know why these two children have seemingly never aged. They were even wearing the same clothing she remembers them wear all those years ago. Also concerning is the fact there were actually three brave children. Little Georgina had been born just before her friendship with Flora broke up. Where was she?
00:02:47
Speaker
Understandably, after this very strange experience, Beth begins to worry for her own sanity. Was she just imagining things? She tells her teenage daughter Zanna and husband Dom about what she saw, and they begin to brainstorm logical explanations with her.
00:03:04
Speaker
It's a humorous scene, as well as insightful. Well, Beth doesn't really find some of their theories very funny, especially when the two of them suggest that she's just confused about what she saw. But they're at least trying to be helpful. The next day Dom even accompanies Beth back to the house to hopefully put her mind at ease. Except a neighbor explains that the braids sold the house years ago. They no longer live there.
00:03:29
Speaker
Beth knows this is impossible. She saw her friend there just the day before.
Beth's Obsession with the Truth
00:03:34
Speaker
Dom locates the braids via social media. They're apparently no longer living in the UK, but in Florida. So Dom and Beth decide to call the braids. Dom is sure that this is going to clear everything up. But in fact, their old friends completely deny the possibility that Beth saw Flora in their old neighborhood. They claim their three children are healthy, happy American teenagers.
00:03:59
Speaker
Beth refuses to believe them, she trusts what she saw. She becomes obsessed in this self-proclaimed mission to discover what's going on in her friend's life.
Uncovering the Complex Situation
00:04:09
Speaker
She interviews school employees, she confronts the woman who's allegedly now living in Flora's house, she even visits Flora's aging parents, and eventually she flies to Florida to get the story straight.
00:04:22
Speaker
All the while, she's forced to consider the part she played in the rift that pulled the two women apart. Maybe she rushed too quickly to shut Flora out of her life, and maybe she could have saved her from all this. This becomes Beth's driving force. She regrets not being a better friend and resolves to discover the truth to rectify her negative actions from over a decade ago.
00:04:47
Speaker
In the end, Beth does save Flora from what is revealed to be this abusive, controlling situation with her husband. So Louis was angry at Flora for ever becoming pregnant with Georgina after he told her he did not want more children.
00:05:02
Speaker
Even worse, Georgina was born with mild birth defects, which were completely unacceptable to tyrannical Lewis. He kills the baby, blaming it on crib death to the officials. But he holds enough contrived evidence to make Flora look guilty if he wants to. And this is the way he lords over her this information that could send her to prison if he chose. So they live these strange separate mirror lives.
00:05:29
Speaker
He has the two older children in the U.S. while he continues to be married to Flora, and they have these two second children that they name the same names, and she's sort of punished to live with them in their old house.
Confrontation and Ambiguity
00:05:44
Speaker
Beth finally gets Flora to trust her, and they confront Louis, and in the ensuing melee, he ends up being accidentally shot by Beth with his own gun. But was it really an accident?
00:05:59
Speaker
I started saying that the story opens with Beth Leeson doing something that I could imagine myself doing. But along the way, she makes many choices that would be considered negligent, reckless, and even dangerous. Which makes this a great story to pose our fun question, what would you do?
00:06:19
Speaker
Oh, thanks Brooke. That was a great summary. And yeah, you captured kind of all of the high points, low points of the book. I'm not sure if it captures all of them because as we said before we started recording today, this is a wild, wild plot.
00:06:37
Speaker
it is and you know I as I do with all of the what would you do books I read it twice and I remember you know the first time reading it thinking okay this is gonna this could be a good what would you do story and then the second time I enjoyed it more which I think I've done as well with all of the previous what would you do books that I've enjoyed it more the second time around
00:07:01
Speaker
And maybe because I understood what the outcome was going to be and so and had a better understanding of her motivation for why she did the things that she did.
00:07:14
Speaker
I think that that's true in some of these types of stories along the way. You're just like questioning, why are you doing this? You know, but as you said, by the end of this book, you're really happy that she stuck to her guns and did what she did because she did save Flora and her children from a really bad situation.
Questioning Beth's Decisions
00:07:36
Speaker
So let's start at the beginning. I said, I could see myself taking the opportunity to drop in and eavesdrop on someone's life. What about you? Do you think that you would have done that initial scene where she goes to her old friend's house to poke around a little bit?
00:07:54
Speaker
Uh, so I don't know if I would drive to the house because that's what she does. And she says, I am I remembering this correctly that she says like, she hadn't looked her up on social media. She hadn't done any of those kind of what might have been a logical first step.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yes, true. The first thing she does when she's got this opportunity because her son has a football match that is in the area because this house is, I don't know, 45 minutes, let's say, from where she lives. Yeah, I don't.
00:08:31
Speaker
I don't know, but I understand her motivation to do that because their relationship just ended in such a strange and confusing way for her. And, you know, she just kind of wanted to see, is she happy without me in her life?
00:08:51
Speaker
So then she sees these kids that are like carbon copies of what the children looked like when she was friends with Flora 10, 12 years ago. And I understood that part where she was like, am I going crazy?
00:09:10
Speaker
I totally felt that. I truly believe that would have been probably my go-to rather than investigating the situation. I would have been like, do I need to go see a therapist because there's something middle-aged happening here with me.
00:09:27
Speaker
Well, she doubts herself, but then she also is pretty firm in her belief that this is what she saw, right? And this is what she heard, because that's part of that initial conversation that she has with her husband and her daughter is, well, maybe you misheard the names. And maybe they just look like those kids, but she's pretty firm. And you know what? They were wearing the same clothes that I remember those kids wearing a decade ago.
00:09:55
Speaker
Exactly.
Reflecting on Motivations and Relationships
00:09:56
Speaker
I don't know if I would remember necessarily what my friends' kids were wearing 10 years ago, but if they were the kind of friends that you saw on a very frequent basis, then maybe you would have a better recollection of their clothing.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good point. I had that thought too. Like I know that there are certain items of clothing from my own child that I would record. Like, oh, that's the cute little shirt that she just adored when she was 10 or whatever. But I don't know that I have those recollections from my friends' children. So good point.
00:10:37
Speaker
So Brooke, would you return to the neighborhood? You know, she and her husband decide, okay, we're gonna figure out what's what. And they go back, and they go back a couple of times.
00:10:52
Speaker
don't they? Because she goes back and this neighbor is like, what are you doing here again? And I think she was by herself for that visit. And then she and her husband go back, right? And actually knock on the door. So they do that after she has
00:11:12
Speaker
seen Flora in a parking lot. And then she gets into Flora's car and falls asleep in her car. Which is definitely something I wouldn't do.
00:11:27
Speaker
Agreed. That was a scene where I thought, no, I would not get in someone else's car. Perhaps if that was still your best friend, like this is somebody you're with all the time and you have an argument and you're like, well, I'm sitting in here until you come back. Okay. But she hasn't seen this person for a decade. And no, that was not believable to me.
00:11:50
Speaker
But she does. She gets in the car. And then she's confronted by another woman who's wearing the same clothes that she thinks she saw Flora wearing. So then when she returns home, her husband is like, that's it. We're going to knock on that door and we're going to find out what's going on. And this woman who confronted her in the parking lot and this man answered the door and they have explanations for everything. And yeah, I mean,
00:12:20
Speaker
I don't know if I would go back to that house so many times.
00:12:24
Speaker
Right. Right. I think that, uh, Zanna who she's what she's studying for her GSEs. So she's an older teenager and she, Zanna and Dom, I think pose some really logical explanations. And I feel like at that point I probably would have sided with my family and just been like, okay, whatever. I don't know what that was all about, but I.
00:12:53
Speaker
I've just got to go with these theories.
Examining Beth's Investigation Risks
00:12:55
Speaker
But we have that other layer to the story, which is she feels really bad about
00:13:05
Speaker
hurting potentially her best friend all those years ago. And so I think that if that part of the story hadn't been in there that she might've let this go. But she really feels like she needs to rectify that. And what had happened is she did not know about the pregnancy of Georgina. She didn't know her friend was going to have another baby. And she gets the family Christmas card and surprise, they've had another child and it hurts her so bad that she cut
00:13:34
Speaker
this little Georgina out of the Christmas card and then it keeps that. I don't know why you'd keep it, but she kept it. Well, Flora comes to visit and finds this cut up Christmas card and that's essentially the end of the relationship. So she has no idea why her best friend never told her she was having another baby. Then the best friend learns that she was clearly upset about it and they've never spoken sense. So she has this issue that she still
00:14:02
Speaker
has completely unresolved. I think that's something that is fairly believable, right? That you, you know, feel like you've done something to hurt someone sometime in the past. You've lost connection with them. You had a great relationship at the time and you miss having that person in your life. And so I can get how she was feeling that she, you know, wanted to somehow
00:14:31
Speaker
even if it was just to say, look, I'm sorry that that happened. Right. I was going through my own thing because she had herself. Beth had had a miscarriage around the time that Georgina had been born. And so I think she was.
00:14:49
Speaker
you know, it felt she was pretty raw. And so, you know, may not have reacted as rationally as she might have otherwise. And so I get that sense of wanting to just clear the air, even if they're never going to be best friends again, to just not have that hanging over that relationship.
00:15:15
Speaker
Right. And I think that this whole, you know, because clearly Beth knows that something's going on that the braids aren't admitting to because they're saying, Oh, no, we're not, we're not in our old neighborhood. Well, yes, you are. I saw you.
00:15:30
Speaker
So it's like another example of her not sharing her life or telling the truth to Beth, you know, just like she did with the pregnancy. She kept that a secret. She's obviously keeping additional secrets and that just bothers Beth so much. She feels like, no, I want to find out what is going on. Yeah. And I think that's a really great point that it just is that other feeling of, of her deceiving her. Mm-hmm.
00:15:58
Speaker
As you said, Zana, the daughter is, she's I think in her late teens, she'll be 17 or 18 years old, I think. And Beth kind of really involves her in the investigation. She brings her along on some of these conversations that she has with other people. So she speaks to another neighbor on the same street.
00:16:24
Speaker
as this house and learns a bit about the family. And then she takes Zanna to go and see Flora's parents. So I have two, what would you do is there? One, would you track down her parents and try and figure out what was going on? And two, would you bring your daughter along?
00:16:48
Speaker
So I loved the relationship between Zanna and Beth. I think this is something that Sophie Hannah did really, really well. And you can tell that she has teenagers because the way they talk to their mom and the way she talks to them, she's a great mom. That's something that's really established well is she's got a great relationship with her kids.
00:17:10
Speaker
So I loved that, but I don't think I would have taken her with me to do this stuff just because, and Beth was, I don't think for herself, thinking about how dangerous these trips were. And so certainly if she had realized that, you know, perhaps she also wouldn't have chosen to take Xana along.
00:17:32
Speaker
I do think it was an interesting choice to visit Flora's parents, but it was believable to me because they had been friends in college. So these were two, this was a couple that she knew, like they spent time together. She had been at their home. But again, Beth
00:17:51
Speaker
doesn't really, this is maybe a character flaw in her. She doesn't like have that foresight of what this means. She doesn't really anticipate the fact that they've aged considerably. And she also has no idea that they too have been estranged from their daughter. So it all goes horribly wrong. And then Zan is there to witness it.
00:18:14
Speaker
I too really liked that relationship between Beth and Zanna. And I liked the relationship between her and her husband as well. I thought they were both strong characters. And yeah, I'm not sure that I would bring her along because she was treating her more like a friend rather than as a parent and child relationship.
00:18:42
Speaker
Um, maybe as your children get older, they become more like friends and, and you don't play the role of parent as much. Uh, but as you say, there were some, uh, potential safety risks in, in bringing her along. And, and at one point, you know, Zana gets a little bit drunk because they, um, get served some, um, I don't know, I don't know what it was, the beverage, but it was, you know, some beverage that is laced with alcohol and, um,
00:19:12
Speaker
And Jana, of course, is eager to try some and so she ends up getting a little bit drunk. But yeah, and then she takes her as well when they visit the child's school. So and Beth tries a couple of, she kind of
00:19:32
Speaker
sits outside a couple of schools before she figures out which one they're attending, which is, you know, she's very committed to finding the answers about what's going on. And again, I'm not sure that that's, if I didn't see them at the first school, I'm not sure that I would then have gone to the next one.
00:19:53
Speaker
Agreed. The doggedness that she has about figuring this out, I don't think that I would have that. I do think that Dom, her husband, is such a good foil for her character. And I felt a lot of his decisions, I was like, yeah, that's probably where I would be. Because he's like, let's tell the police.
00:20:16
Speaker
Let's tell child services and then let's walk away because we haven't seen these people for a decade. What is it to us? Maybe they are living a weird life, but what is that to us? And I was like, yes, Dom, you go. Yeah. And I think you probably would always have the question of like, so what was going on with those people?
00:20:39
Speaker
But it would more be like, I don't know, a story that you would pull out and be like, guys, there was this really strange thing happening with these people I used to know, rather than something that you just become so fixated on. Exactly.
00:20:57
Speaker
So Sarah, did you ever suspect that this book would take a supernatural turn? Because we do learn that Lewis Braid is a scientist. And that kind of played in my mind. Is this going to be a twist of supernatural something?
00:21:15
Speaker
Um, so I didn't feel like there were enough clues to really make that a plausible explanation. So yes, he was a, he was a scientist. Um, and I think you, you know, it could have gone down that route, but there just wasn't enough to really take you, uh, to take you there.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, that would have been an unsatisfying ending for me personally. And so I grounded myself in like, that just doesn't seem like something Sophie Hanna would do. So Brooke, would you hop on a plane and go to Florida?
00:21:57
Speaker
I was just flabbergasted because she's been putting her work on hold. She's a massage therapist and she's been canceling clients left and right so she can run around and do all these investigative duties. So that was really surprising. Plus, I am not someone who does a lot of international travel, but I'm expecting that's extremely expensive.
00:22:25
Speaker
I imagine it would have been like a short notice flight like that, probably not a discount flight. I mean, it only would have been about five hours, I think, from the UK to Florida. So not, you know, not a super long flight, but long enough. Yeah, I actually can't believe that her husband was okay with that.
00:22:48
Speaker
And they had had an argument just before she left and they end up kind of exchanging some quite nice emails with each other where they kind of clear the air after that, after that argument where he had kind of drawn a line in the sand and said like, you cannot continue to do this. And then she hops on a plane and waits for Lewis outside his office.
00:23:20
Speaker
And he, like, Lewis is a pretty slick guy, right? He is not phased at all by seeing her. And he still kind of sticks to his story and then tells her a different one. And I can't remember if he tells her a third one, but
00:23:46
Speaker
I don't, as it turns out, it was a dangerous situation that she has put herself in by going to Florida. Yes, it's very dangerous. Flora is there too by this time, and this is when the whole thing begins to unravel. They, as you say, Louis tells several different versions.
00:24:08
Speaker
of the story all trying to get Beth to clamp onto one and be done with this. But she continues to push. And eventually, as I mentioned in the summary, she gets Flora to trust her. And so then they form an alliance against Lewis to get the truth to finally come out.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yeah, and as you said in the introduction, it ends with Louis being shot and Beth kind of alluding to that it wasn't an accidental death as she had told the police.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:24:51
Speaker
Yes, it's actually Zanna, the very clever Zanna who's been along on so much of this adventure with her mom who clues in and kind of realizes that Beth took matters into her own hands to free Flora from this terrible situation.
00:25:11
Speaker
Well, Brooke, thank you for this conversation about Perfect Little Children by Sophie Hanna. It was so fun. I love these episodes so much, Sarah, where we get to dissect a story. Me too. It's really fun to really think about if I was the character, what are the choices that I would be making? Absolutely.
00:25:33
Speaker
And thank you all for listening today to Clued In Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah. And we both love mystery. Clued In Mystery is produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers at Silvermansound.com. Visit us online at CluedInMystery.com or social media at Clued In Mystery. If you liked what you heard, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or telling your friends.