No Further Questions

by Gillian McAllister

  ‘I really don’t know,’ I say, my eyes feeling watery. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I know when she’s lying, and I don’t think she is,’ he says.

  I tilt my head, looking at him. He never understood Becky like I did, at least, I didn’t think so. He was sometimes dismissive of her, in adulthood, referring to her whims and, occasionally, unfairly, her status as a single parent. His life was so orderly. The big legal job. His wife. Children in their near future, I thought. But he didn’t engage, would avoid even the most banal questions – ‘How are you?’ I would ask, and he’d wave a hand and say, ‘Same old.’ He could have no idea whether Becky had done it, because he didn’t know what Becky was about. Not like I did.

  I can picture her innocence completely. Becky, frantically calling 999. Becky who was hugely unlucky – wasn’t she always so unlucky? – all the evidence pointing to the aunt in the post-mortem results. Becky facing trial alone, without the full support of her cold sister, Martha, who merely watched from the public gallery, undecided.

  But I can see her guilt, too. That temper. That attitude she sometimes seemed to have. The self-destruct button. Consequences be damned.

  But what if there’s something else? Something beyond the unknown asphyxiation accident the defence alleges? What if it was an accident that she’s covered up, in that hasty, messy way of hers? What if she’s got in too deep?

  There was an entire evening on the night of October 26th. An entire evening during which anything could have happened. What if somebody else was there that evening? What if it had been them?

  17

  Martha

  My eyes don’t adjust readily to the dark of the courtroom foyer – it is that blueish darkness that follows sunshine – and I can hardly see as I am scanned and frisked and my handbag is opened for the fourth time in two days.

  And then, as I take a blinded step forwards, there is Becky. So real and so tall and so near to me that I can smell her perfume.

  I can feel Ethan next to me. Becky is in front of us. And here we are. The three of us. Two sisters and a brother, just as we have been for decades before this. Becky has Ethan’s green eyes. Becky and I have the same nose. We all have the same faces that look serious at rest.

  I brush past her, not acknowledging her.

  I can’t.

  In the courtroom, the jury files back in, and Ellen stands up for the prosecution.

  ‘An agreed statement will now be read out,’ she says slightly pompously.

  An agreed statement? I look sideways at Scott. He shrugs. Just beyond him, I see Ethan’s brow has lowered. He is scribbling on a blue legal pad which he passes to me. Has Becky got a conviction?? he has written.

  I almost scoff, silently, here in the public gallery.

  No, I write back.

  Ellen stands up and begins to read.

  ‘It is agreed that on the twenty-eighth day of April 2015 the defendant Rebecca Blackwater was convicted at Brighton Magistrates’ Court of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, contrary to section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986 and fined the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds.’

  The judge clears his throat and begins to speak.

  ‘The defendant’s previous conviction is something that you may take into account and weigh in the balance. But you must not convict her on the evidence of that alone or mainly on that evidence. If you give it any weight, how much weight you give to it is a matter for you. The Crown says that it supports their case because it demonstrates that the defendant has a propensity to lose control and commit acts of violence. The defence, on the other hand, submits that you should not give it any weight because it is a crime unrelated to the offence of which the defendant is accused. You can take it into account only if you consider it to be fair to do so.’

  I am staring hard at Ethan. He looks over at me and shrugs.

  What does it mean? I write on the back of a receipt to him.

  Ethan writes back to me. He passes the note to Scott, who holds it out for me between his index and third fingers.

  It’s road rage, he has written.

  He gestures for the note back, a flick of his fingers. It returns with more writing on it.

  It’s damaging because it raises the question: what might Becky be capable of?

  The parties say no more about the road rage. It is introduced, and left hanging, for the jury to decide upon. A secret from Becky’s past, unearthed, and shown to us, and then put away again.

  Road rage. I had no idea. When did she … what possessed her to … had she attended a hearing, and told none of us? How could she? I try to remember April 2015, but I can’t. I can’t find the day. It must have just been a normal day, for me.

  Road rage. Shouting at somebody in the street. My body chills with the shock of it. Jesus, what else was she capable of?

  Most of the time, with Becky, I can relate. Sure, she is impulsive. Sometimes she is temperamental, dramatic. But then sometimes, other times, she does things like this. Running into the sea with no regard for who was looking. Riding her bicycle into a car. Raging at another driver so seriously that she got convicted. Who is she?

  No, I tell myself. She’s Becky. This is just the justice system, shining a light on the worst parts of her personality. I never doubted her before all of this. I never thought she was capable of anything truly bad. I was never frightened of her. Never.

  ‘The prosecution calls Jasbinder Kaur to the stand,’ Ellen says. ‘Jasbinder is the defendant’s neighbour, and overheard a phone call on the night in question.’

  A woman with long, shiny hair is let in by the usher and sits down at the stand. Her large eyes dart around the courtroom, from the crest behind the judge to the jury to Becky in the dock.

  I stare at her. Yes. That’s who it is. It’s Becky’s neighbour, at the back. She’s a particular sort of young woman – fastidious about order and bin night – but that’s all I know of her.

  ‘And what happened on the night of the twenty-sixth of October?’

  ‘I overheard a phone call.’

  ‘Made by whom?’

  ‘The defendant.’

  Goosebumps appears on my arms. The night of.

  Until now, the witnesses have all been peripheral, like planets orbiting the sun; relevant but far removed from the event. These next witnesses: they were all there on that night.

  The neighbours.

  The paramedic.

  The doctors who couldn’t help her in time.

  The police.

  The case is closing, rushing towards its devastating conclusion, and I can’t stand it.

  18

  Jasbinder Kaur

  7.30 p.m., Thursday 26 October

  Eventually, the weeds got the better of her, as they always did. She couldn’t resist cleaning and tidying, these days. Since the miscarriage, anyway. The mess of it.

  Kev said it was getting worse, the cleaning, but she thought the house looked brilliant. Sometimes, she would sprint up the stairs, trying not to look at the carpet in case she saw crumbs, and not bother to brush her teeth in case she spotted the beginnings of black mould again in the bathroom.

  The security light clicked on, as she knelt down on the ground, legs tucked underneath her. The night was silent. That’s what she liked about Hove. Six houses overlooked her garden, but there wasn’t a sound from any of them. All she could hear was the spraying of the weed killer and the sloshing of the liquid. Spray, slosh. It was just like vacuuming or ironing: strangely satisfying. She squirted again, thinking of the weeds withering overnight.

  A patio door slid back, in the garden in front of her.

  ‘Yeah, she just won’t stop,’ a voice said.

  Becky, she thought it was. It was coming from the right direction. She carefully set the spray bottle on the ground, then sat back slightly, listening. It was nice to forget the cleaning for a moment. She closed her eyes. It was okay if she didn’t do it. She didn’t have to do it. If only that was true. How sw
eet life would be if it were.

  ‘No,’ Becky’s voice said, surprisingly loud in the clear night. ‘She’s not hungry. Definitely not.’

  Jasbinder reached a hand out and twirled the stem of a dandelion between her fingers. It was rough, like fine Velcro, sticking against the broken skin on her hands. She had always liked Becky. She was very real. Jasbinder often went to confide in people – to tell them about the miscarriage, to tell them about the cleaning – but always stopped herself. But Becky knew. She had told Jasbinder about her inability to conceive. They’d talked about how hard it was, together.

  ‘Inside,’ Becky said. ‘I’m in the garden. Having a break.’

  Jasbinder strained to hear. Yes, she could hear a baby’s cry, coming from inside. Who was that? Becky didn’t have a baby. She must be babysitting. Jasbinder felt her innards twist. The snug, warm weight of a baby. The tiny fat hands, gripping her thumb. Maybe she could go and visit. Pop over. Just to – to hold it, to smell it.

  ‘No. God, no need for that,’ Becky said.

  Jasbinder could hear Becky’s feet on the pavement as she paced. Was somebody offering to come over? Jasbinder thought that would be best: babies were hard work on your own.

  She held a tall weed in one hand as she squirted it with the other. As she looked at it, she thought perhaps it was actually quite beautiful: thick, ragged leaves, rough like goose-fleshed skin. Little purple flowers in the centre. It suddenly pained to her do it, but she squirted it anyway: weed, be gone.

  ‘Don’t,’ Becky said. ‘But will you be there? I don’t know. Just be on the end of a phone.’ There was a long pause. ‘No. I know. Don’t be silly. Of course I won’t.’

  Becky hung up shortly after that, and Jasbinder heard the patio door slide slowly shut behind her.

  19

  Martha

  No need for that. That’s what Jasbinder said Becky had said. No need for what? To come over? I sit back in the public gallery, my thoughts racing. What if he had come over? What if she had lied?

  ‘It’s not very easy to piece together half a conversation, is it?’ Harriet, Becky’s lawyer, says, as she rises to her feet. Her eyes are narrowed, looking carefully at Jasbinder. ‘I am surprised you can recollect it at all.’ Here she is: the defence lawyer, on the full defensive. She is small and slight compared to the hulking Ellen, but her voice rings out loud and true in the courtroom. ‘How clearly do you remember it?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘How do you recall so clearly what was said, when you only heard half of it?’

  ‘I could hear it very clearly. And then the next day I learnt that the baby had died, which made me reflect on it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Harriet says, holding up a hand. ‘But what I am wondering is … did this conversation sound out of the ordinary at the time? And not in retrospect?’

  Jasbinder hesitates. ‘No. Not really,’ she says eventually. ‘No.’

  ‘Were you worried that night, at all, for Layla’s welfare? Given what you’d overheard?’

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘So it was a pretty normal, non-alarming conversation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. Nothing further,’ Harriet says.

  Becky’s eyes are narrowed, in the dock. After this, if she’s … if she’s free. Will she move back in? Nod hello to these neighbours? Surely not. How could she? What is the way forward, from all of this?

  ‘The prosecution calls Devorah Friedmann to the stand.’

  I watch as a wiry, tiny woman with dark hair wound into a bun strides quickly over to the witness stand.

  ‘Mrs Friedmann,’ Ellen says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you remember about the twenty-sixth of October?’

  20

  Devorah Friedmann

  7.45 p.m., Thursday 26 October

  Devorah opened Candy Crush on her phone. She was on level 980.

  Her grandson, Ezra, was at her feet, playing with an old Lottery ticket.

  The bell above the door rang, and Devorah raised her head. Ezra looked up, too. He looked just like her husband, David.

  A tall woman walked in. Devorah ignored her, but got up off her old stool and turned Candy Crush off. The tinny background music cut out, leaving the shop in silence.

  ‘Sorry,’ the woman in front of her said after a few minutes. ‘Just these.’

  Devorah glanced down at them. Two bottles of Calpol Infant Sugar Free.

  ‘Six pounds, please,’ she said. She was glad the baby years were behind her. Lordy. She could drop Ezra back at her daughter’s, go home and actually relax.

  ‘Thanks,’ Devorah said as the woman handed over the exact money. At least she didn’t have to bother with change.

  ‘Baby won’t sleep,’ the woman said with a rueful smile. She picked up both bottles in one hand and left.

  21

  Martha

  ‘Two bottles?’ Ellen says, repeating what she has just been told. Her upper-class rasp rings out in the courtroom. I close my eyes against it.

  ‘Yes, two,’ Devorah says.

  ‘And she said the baby couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Wouldn’t, I think,’ Devorah says, looking thoughtful.

  ‘And tell me – was the defendant alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Members of the jury, please note. The defendant was in sole charge of baby Layla at this moment.’

  The jury nod, saying nothing. She left Layla alone. It thrums through me.

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘Seven forty-five.’

  ‘Nothing further,’ Ellen says. She pats the front of her robes and sits down heavily on the chair.

  ‘Devorah, if I may,’ Harriet says.

  ‘Yes.’

  Devorah looks nervous; small and slight in the witness stand. Her slender arms are drawn across her.

  ‘Were the bottles of Calpol on any sort of offer?’

  ‘Two for six pounds.’

  ‘Nothing further.’

  I can’t believe she left my baby alone.

  My throat feels tight with it.

  I start to count the faces in the room to distract myself. There are only women in this case. Me. My sister. My daughter. Two female barristers. The almost all-female jury. The witnesses. All women, so far. Mothers, daughters, friends. This tiny world seems to revolve around us. It discards the men. They are not expected to look after their children, and they are not blamed when they don’t.

  The barristers want to discuss something and the jury dutifully file out. The public gallery is permitted to stay, but we don’t. The legal arguments are lost on me. Scott suggests a coffee, and I follow him.

  We all come out of different doors – Becky, her lawyers, and the public gallery – but we all end up in the same place, like water being drained from a colander and into a sink. I stop, momentarily, not knowing where to go. Becky is just a few feet to the right of me. I can tell in the same way I can tell her mood from her stance – tense, today – and where she’s about to go – to the toilets. Our bodies have been so close to each other for so many years that they know each other, like two tennis players whose limbs can predict their opponent’s actions. She serves; I return it effortlessly.

  Except I don’t see the backhand coming: Mum crosses over to her and follows her in. ‘How is it?’ I hear her say before the dark wood door swings shut behind them.

  She left Layla alone.

  What if she has done it? What am I doing here? Panic rises up through me. I’m here, ostensibly supporting her, and she might have done the worst thing in the world to me.

  I try to calm myself down, snap out of it, but these days I know it’ll pass. In a few hours I will be back to feeling irrationally supportive of her. It is the way of it.

  I sit on a bench, ignoring Dad and Ethan and Scott hovering nearby.

  Ethan goes outside for a cigarette and I sit on a hard metal bench and watch him through the tinted glass windows. It’s warmer, today, the
sky a heavy white above us, like being trapped inside a dome. He has started smoking roll-ups, again, after five years off them, held between his index finger and thumb, and the gesture doesn’t suit him. It’s like seeing someone from work in their pyjamas, or a celebrity on the Tube. Becky always said Ethan hated everything about smoking except how it looked, but I don’t think that. There is pleasure in the way he closes his eyes when he inhales. Good for him, I think: life is too short anyway.

  Scott comes up behind me and catches my hand. His glasses mirror the fluorescent courtroom lights above us.

  ‘Think they will let us go?’ he says.

  ‘Early finish,’ I try to smile.

  He sits down next to me and I run my fingers down his arm. I read somewhere that every single skin cell renews itself after seven years, and so the arm I am touching is not the same one I was touching seven years ago. It feels just the same, to me.

  ‘Do you think it will be better, when we know?’ I say.

  ‘Maybe,’ he says, but a faint frown crosses his features.

  ‘I think so,’ I say.

  The frown deepens. ‘Marth.’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘I think you need to prepare yourself, for the verdict …’

  He has often tried to protect me in this way. Straight talking. I have always liked it. I never wanted to be babied. He seems to read my mind, as he has always been able to, because he pulls me close to him, just like he does in bed, at night. Our sides are touching each other, right down the length of our bodies.

  ‘Why?’ I say softly.

  ‘Because I think it’s going to be guilty.’ He rests his head against mine gently. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No,’ I say faintly. ‘She died of … she died of lack of oxygen. It doesn’t mean somebody did it. It doesn’t even mean it’s suspicious. It could have been an accident. The police thought it was, for ages, remember? And the doctors.’

  ‘Marth …’

  ‘She could have rolled over or leaned against a blanket and wasn’t able to … to pick up her head. Or it could have been a co-sleeping accident. We haven’t had the medical evidence yet. We don’t know for sure it was … it was definitely suspicious.’