Unforgotten

by Clare Francis

  ‘For God’s sake . . .’

  ‘I said I’d phone if there was a change.’

  ‘You said it was going to be Price,’ he repeated reproachfully.

  Tom had these little frets from time to time when events were crowding in on him and he was struggling to retain a sense of control. Hugh said reassuringly, ‘Much better to start the week with a key witness for our side. That way we get to restate our case before Price gets into the witness box.’

  Tom moved forward again, but cautiously, as if the day still had the power to spring further unpleasant surprises on him. ‘When will I be giving evidence?’

  They had been through this on the phone as well, but Hugh answered as though for the first time, ‘I’m not sure, Tom.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Umm . . . Desmond thinks, unlikely.’

  ‘But as soon as Price has finished.’

  ‘You know how Desmond is – he likes to see how things go.’

  Stopping again, Tom said hoarsely, ‘But you promised.’

  ‘No, Tom. What I promised was that I’d put your request to Desmond – which I did. I told him you were keen to counter Price’s evidence in person. Which he already knew from his last meeting with you. He’s really very clear about what you want. But at the end of the day we have to let him decide. He’s the advocate. He’s the expert. He knows how to play it.’

  Tom tipped his head back and held it there for a second or two before relenting with a slow expressive closing of his eyes, as if further argument would simply cost him too much in terms of nervous energy.

  At times like this, Hugh felt the impossibility of comprehending what Tom’s life was like, not just the battle to get through the day with its flashbacks and panic attacks, nor the nights with their jolting nightmares, but the fact that he was having to endure it alone. Two years after the tragedy Tom’s wife had left him, taking the two remaining children with her, and now lived seventy miles away with a new partner. To have lost his wife was bad enough, but to be separated from his children seemed unimaginable to Hugh.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked.

  Tom sucked in a long breath. ‘Yeah.’

  As they walked on, Tom returned to an old grievance. ‘I suppose there’ll be a whole lot more crap from the other side.’

  ‘Ainsley’s going to be a strong witness. I don’t think they’ll manage to beat him down.’

  ‘But they tied Munro up in knots, didn’t they?’

  It was partly true. Munro, a psychotherapist who’d treated Tom with cognitive behavioural therapy, had produced an excellent written statement, but under cross-examination had through inexperience or lack of confidence hedged his comments with so many ifs and buts that he’d appeared ponderous and uncertain.

  ‘His evidence stood up okay,’ said Hugh firmly. ‘But we always knew the other side was going to throw a lot of mud, didn’t we? It doesn’t mean it’s going to stick.’

  ‘But that’s all the judge gets to hear – crap.’

  Like many people encountering the adversarial system for the first time, Tom kept taking it personally. The opposition’s attempts to show that his troubles had started long before he witnessed his daughter’s death, that he’d been suffering depression and undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder since his military service in Bosnia, never failed to unnerve him.

  At the doors to the court Tom unhitched his rucksack and paused to straighten his shoulders and take a series of deep, snatched breaths, like someone who’s been taught relaxation exercises but hasn’t quite got the hang of them.

  ‘You realise Price may be sitting in court,’ Hugh said.

  Tom gave a tight nod.

  ‘Well, play it cool, eh? Don’t give him the satisfaction of letting him get to you.’

  ‘Sure,’ Tom murmured. Then, allowing the idea more room in his mind, rallying to this vision of himself as a man in control, he gave a more definite nod. ‘Yeah. Sod him.’

  His gaze had turned hard, his voice flat and unreadable, and for a moment he might have been the Tom Deacon of four years ago, sitting in Hugh’s office, asking him to take his case.

  It was the time immediately after Hugh’s old firm Dimmock Warrington had merged with the up-and-coming Marsh & Co. While Hugh hadn’t opposed the merger, he hadn’t seen much point in it either and had been judged behind the times for saying so. According to the forward thinkers, standing still was no longer an option; the firm had to grow or die. In the old set-up it had never been thought necessary to have a corporate objective; it was taken for granted that the firm would do the best possible job for its clients while providing a decent living for its partners and employees. But the newly formed Dimmock Marsh was made of more ambitious stuff and had rapidly acquired a mission statement, to become the top firm in Bristol and the West, or as the slogan-writers had it, The Best in the West. Specialisation and expertise were the new watchwords. Generalisation was regarded as a necessary but unprofitable sideline. Of the nineteen partners in the merged firm Hugh was one of only three not to answer the call to specialise, preferring to stick to the traditional hotchpotch of conveyancing, wills, probate, and contract: what he liked to call high street law, but which was now termed private client work. Under the new regime Annaliese was required to ask potential clients the nature of their business in advance so they could be directed to the appropriate specialist. But Tom Deacon had refused to disclose his reasons for coming to see Hugh, so, on welcoming him into his office that first day, Hugh was expecting to hear about some kind of dispute, with a neighbour perhaps, or a business associate, because in his experience it was confrontation that made people secretive; that or shame.

  Tom Deacon was about forty and painfully thin, his neck scrawny inside the over-large collar, his jacket swimming on jagged shoulders. But most striking at first sight was his face, the skin so tight over the bones that the course of the veins and sinews was visible beneath, while a sharp groove had formed under each cheekbone, as though the flesh had been sucked inwards and held firm by some invisible claw. When Hugh got to know Tom better, he wasn’t surprised to find he was a heavy smoker and hard drinker who ate little and badly. But his immediate impression was of a man being consumed from within, as if by some voracious parasite.

  Deacon sat down stiffly and, though the pristine steel-and-glass decor shouted of a rigidly enforced no-smoking policy, he pulled out a cigarette. ‘Okay, is it?’ he asked, very much as an afterthought.

  ‘Sure. I’ll find an ashtray . . .’ For lack of anything better Hugh emptied the papers out of his wastebin and placed it next to Deacon’s chair.

  Lighting up, Deacon fixed his intense gaze on Hugh. ‘I was recommended to you.’

  ‘Oh? Can I ask who by?’

  But Deacon wasn’t about to be drawn. ‘A couple of people,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘Well . . . I’ll try to live up to expectations. So what can I do for you, Mr Deacon?’

  Deacon stared at Hugh a while longer, as if making up his mind about him, before beginning to speak in the dull monotone Hugh would come to know so well. Until last year he’d had a good life, he said: a wife, two boys of six and three, a daughter of four called Holly, and a regular job as a joiner and cabinet-maker. Then one day when he was driving Holly back from a birthday party a car came round a bend on the wrong side of the road and crashed into them, sending their car down a steep slope where it landed on its roof. Knocked unconscious, he came round to the sound of Holly’s cries. He managed to unfasten his seatbelt and get out – the driver’s door had been thrown open – but as he went to free Holly the car burst into flames. The rear door was jammed tight, he couldn’t open it. By the time he got back to the driver’s door the interior was an inferno, he was beaten back by the flames. He was in hospital for several weeks, he couldn’t remember how long exactly. He had bad burns and a broken leg. When he eventually tried to get back to work he couldn’t hold down a job. The other driver, an eighty-year-old farmer, had suffered a heart attack jus
t before the crash, and died as a result of one or both. The insurance company had offered Deacon thirty thousand pounds in settlement, but if he couldn’t work again then it wasn’t going to be enough. He wanted to know if he could get more.

  He told his story without obvious emotion, gazing at Hugh in an unfocused way, as if looking through him to some distant world. Only when it came to the money question did his eyes sharpen again.

  Hugh said, with considerable feeling, ‘My condolences on your terrible loss, Mr Deacon.’

  Deacon gave a brief nod of acknowledgement.

  In a tone of sympathy Hugh explained why he couldn’t take the case. It required an expert, and he was a generalist without experience in personal injury. The man Deacon should see was Martin Sachs, a senior partner at Dimmock Marsh who was highly respected in the field and could advise him on the best way forward.

  While Hugh was speaking, Deacon’s expression darkened. With a shudder of tension or irritation, he stated bluntly that he’d come to Hugh on the recommendation of friends, that he’d chosen the man not the firm, and – showing a spark of the flint within – that he wasn’t about to be shunted sideways on to someone else.

  Hugh knew he shouldn’t hesitate to turn the case down. Quite apart from the gaps in his knowledge, which would need a crash course to fill, a case like this would carry a huge weight of responsibility. It was one thing to guide clients through the mundane transactions of life, when the collapse of a house sale was considered a major setback, and quite another to deal with the aftermath of tragedy, when you had the one shot at getting the compensation right. There was something else that bothered him, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on until he was showing Deacon out of the office. As they waited for the lift, Deacon said, ‘All I want is to get my life back.’

  Hugh should have pointed out there and then that the law wasn’t in the business of restoring lives, that all it could offer was money, and then generally far less than you were expecting. But something made him hold back, probably the same thing that had made him go against his earlier intentions and agree to consider taking the case after all. At home that evening, trying to explain it to Lizzie, he said he felt a duty to protect Deacon from the sharks who infested the personal injury pool, firms that promised the earth, took a fat fee, and delivered a rubbish job. He wanted to save him from Martin Sachs as well, for while his revered partner couldn’t be classified as a shark he had an aggressive bulldog style, all bark and worse bite, which would have been quite wrong for someone like Deacon, who would need support at every stage along the way.

  ‘So what’s worrying you?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘Whether I’m up to it.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you be?’

  ‘Lack of experience. Lack of speed. Having to fumble around in the dark . . .’

  ‘Would you do a worse job than Martin Sachs?’

  ‘No . . . No, I’d make sure I didn’t.’

  ‘There you are then,’ Lizzie said.

  ‘I’m still not sure . . .’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Partly Deacon’s expectations . . . wanting his life back. The responsibility of the case. And . . .’ It came to Hugh then, the concern he hadn’t been able to name. ‘The feeling that Deacon’s holding on to his sanity by his fingertips.’

  Hugh got a rough ride at the next partners’ meeting. Martin Sachs, sitting on a very high horse indeed, asked what point there was in having specialists if their expertise was ignored. Not only was it amateurish to use a non-specialist, but there was a considerable risk of mistakes being made, mistakes which, he hardly needed to remind everyone, could bring the firm’s name into disrepute. The chairman, an arbitrator by trade, suggested that Martin might act as an éminence grise for Hugh, guiding the case from behind the scenes, factoring his time into the fees equation. But Martin wasn’t having any of that. It would result in a dangerous blurring of responsibilities, he declared, and was therefore unworkable. There the matter might have rested if Ray Wheatcroft hadn’t come to the rescue. Ray, whose history stretched back as far as Hugh’s, to the old firm and beyond, and who had become his closest ally in the combative climate of the new regime, pointed out that it was surely better to have won the job on less-than-ideal terms than not to have won it at all, particularly when it was such an unusual case which was bound to create widespread interest.

  Hugh wasn’t convinced about the widespread interest argument, but it was enough to carry the day and permanently sour his relations with Martin Sachs, whose blood pressure rose visibly at every mention of the case, and didn’t get any lower when two psychiatrists confirmed that Tom Deacon was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, thus propelling the claim into a different financial ballpark, confirmed when Desmond Riley advised them to turn down an offer of three hundred thousand pounds and enter a fresh claim.

  So here they were, four years down the line, starting the last week of the hearing that would decide whether Tom was entitled to the full eight hundred and ninety thousand pounds he was claiming for injury and loss of earnings following the car accident and tragic death of his daughter. Passing through the second set of doors, the courtroom hush closed softly around them, barely disturbed by the voice of Edward Bavistock QC, leading counsel for the defendants – nominally the estate of the eighty-year-old farmer, but effectively his insurers – who admitted negligence but were contesting both the timing and extent of Tom’s psychological injuries.

  The court wasn’t crowded. As always in such cases, the judge sat alone without a jury, while the two legal teams barely filled the first two tiers of benched seats. In the third row was one man Hugh hadn’t seen before, but going by Tom’s lack of reaction it obviously wasn’t Price. They slid into the bench beside Isabel, who shot Hugh a relieved smile. The judge registered their arrival with a mild glance before returning his attention to Bavistock, who was making some kind of procedural application. Before Hugh had time to grasp what it was about, the matter was decided and the first witness called.

  Dr Ainsley looked every inch the eminent consultant psychiatrist. His finely drawn features, thick silver hair, well-cut grey suit and bow tie, slim pair of reading glasses which he perched on the end of his nose to read the oath, proclaimed distinction and authority.

  Desmond Riley stood up. ‘Dr Ainsley, you will find your witness statement on page fifteen in the bundle in front of you.’ A pause while Ainsley found his place. ‘However, as some months have passed since you made your statement, I would like to ask you a few questions about the intervening period.’

  Hugh noticed with relief that Tom seemed to have given up on the idea of writing Desmond a note. Having pulled a pad and pen out of his rucksack and written the date in large block capitals, he put the pad on the table in front of him and sat back in his seat, a fist pressed against his mouth, watching Ainsley.

  ‘Dr Ainsley,’ Desmond said, ‘you made your statement on the seventeenth of June of this year. In it you said you had last examined Mr Deacon one week beforehand, namely on the tenth. Have you seen Mr Deacon since that date?’

  ‘I have. On the ninth of October.’

  ‘That is . . . three weeks ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As a result of that consultation have you had any reason to alter your opinion of Mr Deacon’s condition?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you summarise your diagnosis for the court, please?’

  ‘In my opinion Tom Deacon is suffering from PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder.’

  ‘And has the seriousness of his condition changed, in your opinion?’

  ‘No. I would say it has remained the same.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Severe.’

  ‘And his symptoms – are they the same?’

  ‘Essentially, yes. I found he was still suffering vivid flashbacks of his daughter’s death, sometimes as often as once an hour, as well as debilitating panic attacks, insomnia, nightmares, acute anxiety, headaches a
nd a fear of strangers which amounted to paranoia.’

  ‘And during this period had any of these symptoms altered in severity?’

  ‘Well, some had got a bit worse – the flashbacks, for example, while some had improved a little – the insomnia. But fluctuating symptoms are to be expected in this sort of case.’

  ‘And these symptoms had persisted despite continued medication?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Desmond turned the pages of his notes. ‘Dr Ainsley, in your statement you say that Mr Deacon didn’t appear to have suffered any adverse effects from his army service. Would you say that is still the case?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No indication that he contracted any sort of stress-related illness as a result of his service?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘How have you come to that opinion?’

  ‘For one thing, Mr Deacon himself doesn’t see his army service as a problem. He never even thinks about the Bosnian War until something reminds him – a news item, or a film. Or when he hears a sudden noise – a firework or a motorbike backfiring. For another thing, he shows no signs of anxiety or distress or memory-avoidance when asked about it.’

  ‘Is it possible that his experiences in the conflict could be having a subconscious effect on him?’

  ‘You mean, in a damaging sense?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would say, unlikely. No, in my judgement Tom Deacon seems to have dealt with his war experiences in a mature, healthy way.’

  At Hugh’s side Tom gave an emphatic nod.

  ‘And the trauma of watching his daughter die – that couldn’t have activated a long-delayed traumatic response to his war experiences?’

  ‘Extremely unlikely, in my opinion. Because, as I’ve said, there’s no indication of any trauma from that time.’

  Desmond found another place in his notes, whose edges supported a rainbow of Post-it stickers. ‘Dr Ainsley, in the period between June and October did your prognosis of Mr Deacon’s condition change at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So the outlook remains poor?’