An unexpected invitation
Anne Perry, aka Juliet Hulme, turns 80 on October 28, and Joanne Drayton is one of a select few invited to her birthday party. Perry was the subject of Drayton’s 2014 bestseller The Search for Anne Perry.
In 1954, Christchurch teenagers Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker murdered Parker’s mother, fearing they were about to be separated. For years afterwards, media coverage portrayed the case as one with a cautionary link to homosexuality. After their prison terms, they left the country and did not see each other ever again. Hulme lived and worked in the UK under her new name, Anne Perry, selling millions of copies of her crime novels.
Her own, and Parker’s, crime was the subject of the Peter Jackson movie Heavenly Creatures. After several attempts, Joanne Drayton persuaded Perry to speak to her for the book.
“I wrote the biography without having any relationship with her other than a professional one, so I felt shocked to be invited to the party. I had wondered about what I represented to her – we spent a lot of time together and I spent a lot of time on the book.
“She is quite lonely at times and isolated. I rang her every now and then and she asked me if I would be her mentor. She told me, ‘You know more about me than anyone else in the world.’ I told her I couldn’t be her mentor, but I could be her friend. And so I am her friend, and I am going to her 80th birthday.”