I am staring at Laurence so fiercely that it is only from the corner of my eye that I see Guy rise and turn. Then I see he has plucked a knife from the magnetic strip behind our hob and is holding the knife against Laurence’s throat. Laurence has frozen with his chin tilted upwards. He has both hands raised slightly from the table. His gaze bulges – pleadingly – at me. I stare at Guy in shock, but say nothing.
Guy’s voice is very calm. ‘What are you thinking now, Mr Walton?’ he says.
There is a silence. Laurence has clearly decided it would be a good idea not to respond.
‘Shall I tell you what you are thinking?’ Guy says helpfully. ‘Would you like to know what is going on, right now, inside your head, biologically, I mean?’ Laurence remains silent, and completely frozen – he doesn’t even gulp. Guy continues. ‘Here is how your brain functions in a situation of threat. I’ll give you the simplified version. In your medial temporal lobes, you have a group of nuclei known collectively as the amygdala. It’s part of the limbic system but let’s not concern ourselves with that now. In a situation of threat, the amygdala’s function is to tell you, as quickly as possible, to act in the way that will ensure one thing and one thing only, your survival. You also have a cortex, of course, that controls logic, but that doesn’t work as fast as the amygdala, as you are now finding out. Let me explain.’ Guy doesn’t even draw breath. It’s how he lectures, I’ve seen it, point by point without pause. ‘The logical part of your head knows there is not the remotest possibility that I am about to cut your throat,’ he continues. ‘A: lots of people know where you are. B: we are in my home and there would be blood everywhere. C: how would Yvonne and I dispose of your body? D: isn’t she in enough trouble as it is? The logical part of your head knows that I am only doing this to make a point. But your amygdala, the instinctive part of you, is saying, screaming in fact: freeze, just in case, do the instinctive thing that will save your skin. As I said, the amygdala works faster than the cortex, that’s how we’ve evolved. In a situation of threat, particularly a situation in which we are taken by surprise and there is no time to logically assess our chances of living or being killed, we are programmed to do whatever will ensure our survival. All we want to do is live, bottom line. In any situation where the level of threat is unknown, the amygdala will trump the cortex, every time.’
Guy stops speaking but does not move, and after a moment or two, Laurence slowly lifts one hand and pushes Guy’s arm away from his throat. ‘I think you’ve made your point,’ he says. Guy returns the knife to the right place on the magnetic strip and sits down.
Laurence the barrister looks at me.
I look back at him. I am damned if I’m going to apologise. Instead, I say, just gently enough, ‘You see, it’s one thing discussing this, professionally, the way you are I mean, but for us there’s a lot at stake, our whole lives.’ When he doesn’t look mollified, I add. ‘It’s been a very upsetting time, for both of us.’
Laurence lifts his chin, as if he needs to stretch his still-intact neck. ‘Yes, I’m sure it has.’
*
After Laurence has left, I lock the front door behind him, throw the bolts, put the chain on, even though it’s only mid-evening. Neither of us will be going out again tonight, after all, and no one else will be visiting. I turn and see that Guy is standing behind me. Our gazes meet. He says, ‘Let’s go up,’ and I understand from the softness of his voice and the expression on his face that, right at this moment, he can’t take any more. I nod. He turns. I watch him climb the stairs ahead of me, and I know by the slump of his shoulders that he has truly had enough, enough of being the strong one, enough of not asking questions, and quite enough of standing by me.
I follow him into the bedroom. He sits on the edge of the bed, facing me, and puts his head in his hands. I go to him, kneel down before him on the carpet, between his knees. I take his hands away from his face, lower them, and look down at them. I hold his hands between mine and all at once it comes to me that now I must ask him, beg him, for the one thing I truly need from him throughout what is about to fall upon us. I don’t know whether asking him in his momentarily weakened state is a good or a terrible idea but I know I must ask him now because it is so important and I may not get another chance. This, as it turns out, is prescient on my part. In two weeks’ time, the police will come to re-arrest me. I will be told that you attempted to send a note to me from prison – a quite innocuous note, apparently, but it’s enough to count as potential contact between us, which is a breach of my bail conditions even though I didn’t initiate it. A hearing will be held, without my knowledge, and my bail will be revoked. I will spend the remainder of it, and the duration of the trial, in Holloway Prison.
Even though I am looking down at Guy’s hands, held in mine, I know he is looking at my face. In all our years together, I have never begged him for anything. We have argued, I have requested things from time to time; could he hoover the stairs because I hate hoovering, could he be more patient when he is driving, could he try and understand I get bad-tempered when I have a deadline? Could he please, for both our sakes, finish it with his young lover, for once and for all…? But even then, I didn’t beg. I have never had cause to beg as I am about to beg now.
‘Guy…’ I say. We so rarely use our names to each other. What long-term couple does? Names are for acquaintances or strangers, signifiers for those who do not know us in the other more intimate ways in which there are to know someone.
‘There’s something I have to ask you.’ The tone of my voice is plain. He can be in no doubt of the seriousness of my request.
He doesn’t say a word.
‘I have to ask you, please, whatever else, please…’ My voice does not crack or tremble. I look up at his face. He is staring at me. I still have hold of his hands. ‘Please stay away, from the trial I mean, please. Don’t come to court.’ He stares at me, so I add, ‘There’s nothing you can do.’
At this, he pulls his hands free of mine in an angry gesture and rises, steps around me. I drop my head, thinking he is about to leave, walk from the house maybe, and my voice breaks. ‘Please talk to me about this Guy, please…’
He goes over to the chest of drawers and rests his hands on it, lowering his head. ‘I wasn’t about to leave the room. I don’t walk out on you when you are in trouble, remember?’
I stay kneeling by the bed. I don’t reply.
Eventually he says, ‘Jas said it’s important I’m in the gallery. It will show everyone that I am standing by you. The jury will notice. Her husband is standing by her.’
‘I know,’ I say, ‘I know that’s what Jas said, maybe it’s true.’ I take a deep breath, ‘but I can’t do this if you are sitting there, listening. The things I will have to say, the things they are going to say about me, about what happened.’ My voice is almost a whisper. ‘How will I bear it? How will you? It will finish us.’
I can’t risk Guy feeling exposed and humiliated. If I had my way, I would send him to South America for the next few weeks. All the people I love, I want them away from all this.
He doesn’t reply, so I say. ‘I can’t talk about it in court if I think – I can’t…’
‘You couldn’t talk about it at home either.’
‘No,’
He turns then, his face wide open, his eyes large and hurt, ‘Why didn’t you tell me!’ He makes a restless movement of a few paces, then back again. ‘Instead, you go to a virtual stranger, a man you hardly know, just because he works in security, a man you know so poorly that he goes and does this and now you’re involved, you’re going to be on trial with him. Sitting in a, in a…’ his voice breaks with frustration, ‘in a dock with him? You risked that, rather than tell me?’
‘I didn’t know he was going to kill him. I had no idea.’
‘That doesn’t explain why you went to him, not me.’
And it comes to me now that the truth is even worse than the lie I cannot tell. I have been saying to myself that I didn�
�t tell Guy about Craddock because I was having an affair, but now I know that I wouldn’t have told Guy anyway. I wouldn’t have told him because I was ashamed and I wouldn’t have told him because too much was at stake, our home, our happiness, our children. Worst of all – and here is the real truth of it – I knew that my affection for Guy might not survive an unsympathetic reaction. If he had said, for instance, ‘Why did you go up to his office?’ I would never have forgiven him. It would have finished us, not immediately, but two, three, four years afterwards. It would have corroded us beyond repair.
I have to say something, so I give my husband a partial reason for not confiding in him, a true one, but one that is no more than a small percentage of the truth. ‘I didn’t want it…’ I can think of no other word, ‘…tainting you.’
‘Tainting?’ He turns, his voice incredulous.
‘I know, I just,’ I have half-turned to face him. I lift my hands helplessly and drop them in my lap. ‘I just wanted to keep it away from you, that’s all, away from our home, away from the children…’ He gives a scornful huff, only partly convinced.
‘I want you to go away, abroad, until the trial’s over. I’m going to say the same to Carrie at the weekend, she can ask Adam, it’ll be better coming from her. I thought maybe even a holiday, maybe…’
‘I’m not leaving the country.’
‘Well maybe for them at least, if they’ll agree to go. Maybe Sath and Carrie would take Adam away, but it would be better if it was all four of you, I just want you all away from it, is that so difficult to understand?’
He looks at me. His voice is more gentle. ‘Even if it means it’s more likely you’ll be convicted?’
I look back and my voice is gentle too. ‘I won’t be convicted. I’m innocent.’
16
And so it begins; it begins on a Monday morning, and as I sit in the back of the van that takes me from Holloway Prison to the Old Bailey, as it chunters and bumps, stops and sways, through the London rush hour, what I feel, mostly, is an acute awareness of the ordinariness of everything – to everyone around me, I mean. For the people dealing with me, it is just the beginning of another working week.
Two guards from Holloway have come along for the ride but there are no other prisoners going to the Central Criminal Court that morning so I have the bench along one side to myself. The interior of the van smells of disinfectant, that pungent brand used in public lavatories, with a thick-sweet layer of vanilla on top, a scent so strong it makes me nauseous. The driver of the van brakes sharply at every red light or junction and guns the engine when we move off. I begin to sweat – travelling sideways isn’t helping. Around halfway through our journey, one of the guards on the bench opposite me notices my effortful breathing and, without speaking, uses her foot to push a plastic bucket across the floor of the van towards me. I turn my head away.
The high windows in the van admit little light but as we drive through the streets of London I glimpse patches of sky through the one-way glass. A little drizzle runs down a windowpane. Outside this van, office workers will be striding and weaving; some with genuine haste, others hurrying from habit. Someone will step in a puddle, and curse. Someone else will pause to buy a coffee, clutching their styrofoam cup as they stride off, and yet another person, or the same person, will step out into the road, to be woken by the angry yet indifferent blare of a taxi horn. The irritations of a Monday morning commute have never seemed more seductive to me. Will any of those people even glance at this van as it passes in the street, wonder who it might contain?
Eventually, the van drives down a ramp. We descend into gloom, halt. I am cuffed where I sit, on the bench, before I am allowed to rise and clamber down the steps lowered from the back of the van, one guard ahead of me and another behind. As my eyes adjust, I see we have parked in a cavernous holding bay, on a metal turning circle. I am taken into the bowels of the building.
Whatever grandeur the Central Criminal Court of the Old Bailey may possess does not descend to the area where prisoners are kept. There is a checking-in desk, similar to the one in police stations, where I am given an orange plastic bib with a number on it. I am to wear the orange plastic bib at all times except when I go up to court, so whichever guard is on duty can see at a glance which court I am to be served up to. As I pull it over my head, I reflect that I haven’t worn something like this since primary school. The guard behind the desk is an older black man with white hair and thick glasses sitting on the very end of his nose. He chats to me as he writes on his clipboard, his manner warm and welcoming. He is used to dealing with people in distress. ‘We will do your search in a minute, darlin’…’ he says. I smile at being called darlin’. He will call me darlin’ every day for the next three weeks. ‘Now, a lot of people manage to hide their tobacco even during the search but I have to tell you if there is any smoking I will smell it straight away and it is strictly forbidden down here, OK?’
‘I don’t smoke,’ I say.
‘Good,’ he replies, with an approving smile over his glasses, like a head teacher. He gives me a mock-stern look. ‘It is very bad for you.’
‘Are you here all the time?’ I ask. What I mean is, will you be looking after me? Can I rely on you?
He shakes his head. ‘All the time, I’m here, from seven in the morning till eight o’clock at night. I get here before you all start arriving and I’m here until the last one goes.’
When the formalities of my admission are completed, I am led down a low-ceilinged corridor. It is painted a creamy-yellow colour, like weak custard, the texture of rough brick visible beneath the emulsion. A sign says, This is a RED designated area, with the word RED in a red circle. Another sign says, You are now in the detention of Serco… I don’t have time to read it all as we pass but note the phrase at the end: All criminal acts will be reported to the police. This strikes me as faintly comic but the twist of amusement I feel is tinged with hysteria. ‘It’s hot down here,’ I say to the woman walking me down the corridor. I can feel my breath start to quicken. No natural light, the narrow walls, low ceiling, how do they work here, day in day out?
The woman is a wide-hipped white woman in her fifties, she walks with a slow sway, her breathing harsh. Emphysema, I think. ‘You should be here when it’s really hot,’ she says, breathing out through her mouth. She stops at the open door to a cell. ‘We have defendants wandering around with no clothes on. Don’t want to go into court looking all sweaty, do you?’ Unlike the man at the desk, this guard does not feel sorry for us, I surmise.
As I step into the cell, my heart constricts. It is a tiny, airless, windowless box. The walls are painted yellow and the floor blue in an attempt at cheeriness, but it is bare but for the concrete bench-seat at the end with wooden slats on top. I am underground, with no natural light or ventilation, wearing a plastic bib, in an area that will become stiflingly hot.
The door slams shut behind me. I sit on the wooden bench with my toes turned in towards each other, hands planted on knees, breathing in through my nostrils and out through my mouth, trying to stay calm.
*
My trial barrister, Robert, comes to see me later. I have been waiting less than an hour but it feels like days. I must get a grip, I tell myself over and over. I will be sitting here day after day, every lunch break, every morning and afternoon, every time there is a delay. This is so much worse than the prison. I have to be able to do it. I can’t do it.
I can’t do it.
It is the same non-empathetic woman guard who comes to get me. She leads me to a consultation room identical to the cell I have just left. It has a table screwed firmly to a metal frame and metal chairs which are part of the same frame. This, I guess, is to prevent prisoners from lifting up their chairs and either smashing them against the walls or breaking them over their barrister’s head.
Robert is already wearing his gown and wig. As he sits down uncomfortably on the bolted metal seat, the gown slips from one shoulder. It remains there for the rest of o
ur discussion and I have to resist a maternal desire to reach out a hand and hitch it up. Later, I notice that when he is on his feet in court, he allows his cloak to slip down his shoulder quite frequently. I come to regard it as an affectation on his part, a semi-conscious attempt to make himself appear rumpled in an endearing, avuncular kind of way. Don’t underestimate Robert, Jaspreet has said to me. He may seem a little disorganised but it’s a ploy. He’s a very sharp operator.
He has a huge file, which he dumps on the table between us. ‘Slight bit of bad news this morning,’ he begins, and I look at him. ‘They are arranging wheelchair access for the father.’ He goes on to explain that George Craddock’s father will be attending the trial throughout, accompanied by his police Family Liaison Officer – up to four of the victim’s close family are allowed in court. The only one coming for ‘our victim’, as Robert calls him, is his father, who is in the early stages of multiple sclerosis. Robert goes on to say that he doesn’t believe the man is wheelchair-bound the whole time but thinks the FLO has dropped hints that having him sitting in a wheelchair in the corner of the court throughout the trial, in the full view of the jury, will strengthen the chances of a conviction. ‘On the other hand,’ he says, ‘it’s the sort of thing you can bring up at appeal, elements of the trial you feel might have been prejudicial. There’s always a silver lining to every problem.’ I like Robert a great deal, on the basis of my brief acquaintance with him, so am a little taken aback at the cynicism of this discussion but I find myself nodding too. We haven’t even started yet, and I’m beginning to think like them. There is another thought that comes to me, although I try and squash it as soon as it arises: we haven’t even started, and he’s mentioned grounds for appeal.
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