Ciara Porter

Ciara Porter is a model and one of Lula Landry’s closest friends, accompanying her through much of the day Lula died. She is both a witness to Lula’s last hours and a survivor of their shared public image: photographed with Lula in a famous fashion campaign, she later attends the funeral alone and struggles to accept that her friend is gone. Her account of Lula’s intention to leave everything to her brother becomes a significant detail in Cormoran Strike’s investigation.

Identity and Public Image

Ciara is a model described as very tall and pale, with long fair hair. She and Lula were photographed together in an advertising image for designer Guy Somé, posed with angel wings and handbags. The picture became one of the best-known images of Lula’s career, and Somé reused it after Lula’s death, prompting criticism that he was profiting from her death. In the image, Ciara’s stillness and pallor set off Lula’s commanding presence; the campaign’s public meaning was therefore contested, even as it preserved the two friends together in a striking tableau.

Ciara also appears among the mourners at Lula’s funeral. In a photograph of the service, she walks alone, wearing a black net-and-feather headpiece. The solitary figure contrasts with the campaign image, in which the friends had been arranged together for public view. Their shared image continued to circulate after Lula’s death, but Ciara’s appearance at the funeral registers her as a mourner rather than a model in a designed composition.

Lula’s Final Day

Ciara was with Lula for much of her last day. On the morning of January 8, Lula visited her mother; afterward, she went to a boutique, returned to her flat, and spent the afternoon with Ciara and makeup artist Bryony Radford. Ciara and Lula left together at about 7:15 p.m. to go to dinner and then to Uzi, where they met Evan Duffield and others. The group stayed at the nightclub past midnight. When Lula and Evan argued, he tried to keep her there, but she left alone. The argument led many people to suspect him, although his alibi was later established as conclusive.

The account of the afternoon differs depending on who remembers it. Bryony recalled Lula and Ciara as excited about Deeby Macc’s imminent arrival; Lula had been looking forward to meeting him, and the conversation among the women was light. Ciara, by contrast, later told Strike that Lula had not been herself, describing her as low and anxious and unwilling to discuss what was troubling her. The divergence does not resolve Lula’s state of mind, but it makes the day’s apparent happiness less simple: excitement about a celebrity visit and private unease could coexist.

Earlier that evening, security guard Derrick Wilson recalled seeing Lula leave with Ciara. He also remembered Freddie Bestigui entering as they were going out and saying something to Lula. Wilson did not hear the words, but thought Lula looked offended. His observation supplies a brief, uncertain detail from the building’s entrance; it does not establish what was said or how it affected her.

Friendship, Memory, and Grief

The friendship appears throughout the surviving photographs from Lula’s laptop. Among 212 images were pictures of the two women hugging in bars, dancing in clubs, and laughing together on a sofa in a crowded flat. Ciara was not simply a colleague sharing a campaign image: the snapshots place her in Lula’s ordinary social life, alongside the more formal photographs and celebrity associations. In a group picture, Strike also recognizes Rochelle Onifade, while Lula’s driver Kieran Kolovas-Jones appears at the edge, making the photographs useful to the investigation as well as records of friendship.

After Lula’s death, Ciara says she keeps expecting her friend to call. She cannot bring herself to delete Lula’s number, repeatedly intending to do so and then stopping. She has gone over the final day again and again, struggling to comprehend how someone who seemed happy could be dead within hours. Her grief gives emotional weight to her recollections, while also marking their limits: repeated remembrance has not made the abrupt change intelligible to her.

Ciara recognizes Cormoran Strike as the son of Jonny Rokeby, whom she knows through an invitation to a Greatest Hits launch. She says she had also met Strike’s brothers and knew they had an older brother in the army. This recognition briefly connects the investigation to celebrity culture, but her attention returns to Lula and the difficulty of speaking about her death.

The Inheritance Remark and the Investigation

A crucial part of Ciara’s witness statement is her memory that Lula said she wanted to leave “everything” to her brother. Strike raises the statement with John Bristow, who responds without enthusiasm, as though the detail is already familiar to him. It matters because it gives the apparently casual remark a possible bearing on Lula’s intentions and inheritance, although Ciara’s first account contains no explanation of what prompted it.

When Strike questions Ciara, she supplies the circumstance. Guy Somé had sent Lula handbags from a new range, including a white Cashile bag with a detachable silk lining and a custom African-print interior. Ciara joked that she wanted the bag. Lula answered seriously that she was leaving everything to her brother, but thought he would let Ciara have whatever she wanted. The specific exchange explains why the remark arose, while preserving its unsettling force: a conversation about a handbag unexpectedly turns to the disposition of Lula’s belongings. Ciara appears frank as she recounts it, but the words alone do not establish whether Lula was expressing a settled plan, making a serious promise, or speaking in some other frame of mind.

Ciara’s testimony therefore contributes both an intimate recollection and an investigative clue. Her account does not solve the circumstances of Lula’s death. Instead, it makes the final day more difficult to reduce to a single mood or interpretation: Lula could be excited about a visit, visibly troubled to her friend, and serious about leaving everything to her brother. Ciara’s role is to preserve these distinctions—between public image and private friendship, between apparent happiness and anxiety, and between a remembered sentence and what an investigator can responsibly infer from it.