We all helped make Sophie a footnote to Bailey’s lust for infamy

WE were as guilty as the next group of giddy, superannuated girls who spent some of their downtime in lovely West Cork.

When it was just the two of us, myself and my great friend who has made the area her home, we talked about Ian Bailey soberly, forensically, after the event. We had both devoured the West Cork podcast – a trailblazer in the true crime genre – and like an awful lot of other people, we were obsessed. Across countless extended weekends over almost a decade, we caught up on our news, our lives, our kids – and Ian Bailey.

But when two or more of us were gathered, dear God, we were embarrassing. I am not proud to say that there were times when we were like a macabre travelling circus that had come to town. Celebrating one of our roundy birthdays down there, there was pink champagne and a present of a signed book of Bailey’s poetry, which elicited squeals of delight and hysterical impromptu readings through which we laughed at the writer’s apparently bottomless narcissism.

The first time we encountered him in Schull, we were all stuffed into a single car and when we spotted him, two of our number raised their phones. I don’t really know why I stopped them taking his photo, but I did. But really, I was as complicit in this embarrassing gadflying as the rest of them.

I am not proud of any of this. And I mention it now only because of a vague sense of safety in numbers – because there was an awful lot of it going on. It would not have been possible to buy a signed copy of Bailey’s poetry in a bookshop in Bantry if it were the only one on sale. The less festive local people of West Cork were, certainly in my experience, generally embarrassed by Bailey’s continuing, hulking presence in their community and found the whole business quite distasteful. My friend, with a foot in both camps, laughed at the poetry book but when requested, resolutely refused to bring that packed car to look at Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s house.

Is it fair to say Bailey asked for it? Certainly, on my later fleeting encounters with him, there was nothing of the shrinking violet about the man.

Even if it hadn’t been for his notoriety and suspected involvement in one of the most brutal murders in the history of the State, he cut a deliberately striking figure. Nobody can help their size, but Bailey’s decision to dress his huge body in quirky clothes and that distinctive Daniel Boone hat made him an easy beacon to pick out.

When I passed him in the market, sneaking a furtive look, he responded with strong eye contact that seemed an acknowledgement of his extraordinary, unparalleled small-town celebrity. On another occasion, I walked past a hotel when Bailey was on the phone at a table outside, right out at the passing pedestrian traffic, talking loudly about lawyers. It didn’t seem like the sort of conversation that most people would take outside.

In relation to the murder, we didn’t think he did it. Does that excuse our breathless, laughing fascination with this brooding man who 100% had assaulted other women?

DO doubts over Bailey’s involvement in the murder of Sophie justify all the selfie requests to which he apparently willingly acceded, charging a few euro for the service?

Speaking to Claire Byrne yesterday, Philip Boucher-Hayes, who knew Bailey across many years, described him as, by turns, very entertaining and a crashing bore. Ultimately, he concluded the man was a ‘twit’, and said he doubted his ability to conceal a heinous crime for 18 years. It was an assessment, almost a dismissal, that rang true to my ears.

But it doesn’t even begin to cover the rest of us. It doesn’t excuse our breathless, bottomless, prurient fascination with a man whose claim to fame was appalling. And it doesn’t get any of us off the hook for failing to deliver justice for a young woman who came to our country seeking safety and sanctuary and whose brutal death has somehow ended up almost a footnote in another person’s story.

With the bells and whistles now silenced, it’s high time that the quest for justice for Sophie returned to centre stage.