Kill For Love (28 page)

Epilogue

November 16:

The funeral for Donna Hallsden
took place in the white painted Church
of Jesus in Romsey, New Hampshire,
at eleven o’clock on a cold morning, three months to the day after the picnic
shooting. There was early snow in the air. In the end the argument about
whether the girl’s life support system should be closed down had become
irrelevant. Her body had just given up.

Bill Hallsden had asked for
respect and consideration for his family on this day, but, in view of what had
happened in London,
the story was just too good. Romsey was hit once again by a minor media fest.

Donna’s friends, Jenny and Ali,
sat towards the back of the church. They were given no say in what music was
played. They hadn’t asked for it. The little service ended with the hymn
Morning Has Broken
, after which Donna
was buried in the church cemetery, about fifty yards from the grave of her boy
friend Rick Niemen. The Niemen family didn’t
attend the funeral.

THE
END

Also by Ray Connolly

Novels

A Girl Who Came To Stay

That’ll Be The Day

Stardust

Trick Or Treat?

Newsdeath

A Sunday Kind Of Woman

The Sun Place

Sunday Morning

Shadows On A Wall

Love Out Of Season

Let Nothing You Dismay
(anthology of short stories)

Other Books

John Lennon 1940-1980

Stardust Memories
(anthology of own journalism)

In The Sixties
(anthology of Sixties journalism)

The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive
(anthology of Beatles journalism)

Screenplays for Film and Television

That’ll Be The Day

Stardust

Honky Tonk Heroes
(TV series)

Forever Young

Lytton’s Diary
(TV series)

Defrosting The Fridge

Perfect Scoundrels
(TV series)

Documentaries

James Dean: The First American Teenager

The Rhythm Of Life
(co-writer TV series)

Radio Plays

An Easy Game To Play

Lost Fortnight

Tim Merryman’s Days Of Clover
(series)

Unimaginable

God Bless Our Love

About the Author

Ray Connolly has written widely
on popular music and popular culture. The award winning screenwriter of the
movie
Stardust
, he also wrote the
film
That’ll Be The Day
, the
television series
Lytton’s Diary
and
Perfect Scoundrels
, and wrote and
directed the documentary
James Dean: the
First American Teenager
.

A biographer of John Lennon, he
is also the author of ten novels. His most recent,
Love Out Of Season
(“…funny, charming and compassionate, successfully
transposes the conventions of Shakespearian comedy to the 21st Century” -
Mail On Sunday
) was adapted for BBC
Radio, while
Shadows On A Wall
, a
novel about an out of control film production on location with a ballooning
budget, was described in the
Sunday
Express
as “probably the best novel on movie-making ever written”.

As a journalist he has written
for the London
Evening Standard
,
The Times
,
The Observer
,
The Daily Telegraph
,
The Sunday Times
and the
Daily Mail
. He is married and lives in London.