Petra stood up. ‘Objection, my lord. What is the relevance?’
‘Yes, get to the point,’ said Justice Smithson.
‘Did you have an idea of the sort of person you’d have liked Verity to marry?’ Xander asked.
‘No.’
‘But you wanted the best of everything for her, so surely that must have extended to her friends, her lovers, her partners.’
‘Of course we always wanted her to be happy.’
‘You were very pleased about her marriage to Angus Metcalf, I take it?’
‘Yes. He was a lovely man.’
Xander smiled. ‘But he was more than a lovely man, wasn’t he? He was rich and successful and could give Verity an amazing life.’
I followed Suzi’s eyes to V and saw she was sitting forward on her chair, her face white. ‘Yes, but that wasn’t why …’
‘Whereas Mr Hayes is a more troubling prospect, with his background.’
‘No. And if you’re going down that line, Mike is perfectly rich himself. And besides, Verity earns her own money, she’s very well paid.’
‘Yes, but neither of them are in the league of Mr Metcalf. Did you perhaps encourage Verity to leave Mr Hayes for Mr Metcalf?’
‘Objection, my lord,’ Petra shouted.
‘I’m struggling to see the relevance, Mr Jackson,’ Justice Smithson said.
Xander drew in a deep breath, making his chest puff out. ‘I’m not suggesting Mrs Walton is lying,’ he said, pausing. ‘Just maybe that her adoration of her daughter and her obvious obsession with wanting the best for her might have coloured her judgement of not just Mr Hayes, but also Mrs Metcalf’s involvement in this case.’
‘Objection, your honour,’ Petra shouted again. ‘There is no obsession in Mrs Walton’s wanting the best for her daughter.’
‘Sustained,’ Justice Smithson said, although there was a slight smile on his lips.
‘Sorry, my lord,’ Xander said, bobbing at the bench. He turned back to Susan. ‘What did you think about Verity asking Mr Hayes to her wedding?’
Suzi looked over at V again, her eyes darting. ‘I didn’t think it was a good idea.’
‘Did you argue about it?’
‘Not exactly, no.’
‘But you told her your views.’
‘Yes.’
‘And she did it anyway.’
‘Yes.’ Suzi almost raised her hand. ‘But she did it for good reasons. Like I said before, she was always overly concerned that Mike was all right. She felt responsible for him because of his upbringing, which is ridiculous because it had nothing to do with her.’
‘But we do feel responsibility for those we love, don’t we?’ Xander said conversationally, turning to the jury as if he was making a good point at a party.
‘I suppose so.’
Xander left a beat of space before his next question. ‘Do you think your daughter was still in love with Mr Hayes at the time of her marriage?’
The line between V and me tightened again. I remembered our meeting on the street just before her wedding, her body ready to run, her eyes searching for me.
Suzi looked like she’d been slapped. ‘Absolutely not, no.’
‘But she cared about him enough to feel responsibility for his happiness.’
‘That’s totally different. Verity is a kind, caring person.’
Xander walked towards the jury. ‘Did you know about this game, this Crave, your daughter and Mr Hayes played together?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘What do you think about it?’
‘I think it’s strange, but they were young.’
‘Did it surprise you that Verity should play such a game?’
‘I’m not in the habit of speculating about my daughter’s sexuality.’ Suzi looked down and I thought she might cry.
‘But, with that in mind, is it fair to say that you don’t know your daughter as well as you think you do?’
Suzi looked back up, her eyes angry and hard. ‘No, of course it’s not fair to say that. What you’re talking about is different. It’s not what matters.’
Xander nodded. ‘If you say so, Mrs Walton. Did Verity tell you that Mike was back in touch with her? Did she talk to you about the emails or going for a drink with him?’
‘No, but that’s because she didn’t want to worry us.’
‘Would you like to have known?’
‘I’d like to have been able to help her.’
‘So, when Verity came to spend the weekend with you, when Angus was away and after Mr Hayes had been to meet her from work, she didn’t mention anything about this to you or your husband?’
‘No.’
‘And on the Monday after that weekend, when Mr Hayes came to Verity’s house and she claims he assaulted her – did she contact you that night?’
‘No,’ Suzi said and her voice sounded shrunken.
Xander nodded. ‘Thank you, Mrs Walton. No further questions.’
We countered Suzi with Elaine after lunch, as Xander put it. He said the comparison would be brilliant. Naturally we all want to support the underdog, he said, but also our society is still riven along class lines. No one would support a posh, snobby woman with a cut-glass accent over a salt-of-the-earth, foster-care giver dressed in a second-hand coat. I didn’t tell him that Elaine’s coat was not second-hand, simply well worn, as I wasn’t sure he would understand the concept.
Elaine almost stumbled into the witness box, her eyes blinking and her face creased in worry. She smiled over at me and nodded and everyone could see she would have blown me a kiss if she could have. She spoke in a quiet, yet determined tone and she turned and looked at the jury and Justice Smithson, as if wanting to include them and be polite.
‘He was quite a handful when we got him,’ she said. ‘But I could see the sparkle in his eye and I knew it was just a question of chipping away a bit at the hard surface he’d had to build up to find the real Mike.’
‘And who would you say the real Mike is?’ Xander asked.
Elaine looked over at me and I smiled at her because I wanted her to feel comfortable saying anything. ‘He’s a lovely lad,’ she said. ‘He’s always been a bit of a loner, but he’s very clever and part of his anger when we got him, I think, was that all his intelligence was frustrated. You know, it took him a bit of time to learn to trust Barry and me, but when he did he was a pleasure to have around.’
‘I believe you had him for longer than any other foster child?’
Elaine nodded. ‘Yes and he stayed on with us after he turned sixteen.’
‘Which is unusual why?’
Elaine turned to the jury. ‘Sorry. The state stops paying foster carers when a child reaches sixteen. They’re supposed to get a place of their own, but there was no way we were going to send Mike out into the world to fend for himself then. Poor lad had spent his childhood looking after himself; it didn’t seem right to make him do it again so soon. Plus he’d have had to start working and it would have been criminal for him to miss out on A levels and university.’ One of the women in the back row of the jury nodded vigorously.
‘But you must have seen something pretty special in him to make you take that on?’ Xander asked.
‘We did,’ Elaine said. ‘He’s not really tough like some of the boys are. Sometimes when you’ve had an upbringing like Mike’s you become Mr Hard Man, which Mike did for a while at school. But I think his real response was to look for love, to work hard and to make sure he was never in the place of his childhood again. Barry and I had to help him achieve that.’
‘So, by the time Mr Hayes went to university would you say he seemed like a perfectly normal young man?’
‘Yes, quiet and studious, but well balanced, I’d say.’
It was easy to see that the jury loved Elaine. They’d talk about her afterwards and marvel at her kindness in taking on someone as fucked up as me. I balled my hands into fists and held them in my lap.
‘And he met Verity in the sec
ond year. When did you meet her?’
Elaine looked over at V and her face was open, but when I looked at V she had her head tilted down towards her lap. ‘We probably met her about six or so months after they started going out. We always loved Verity; she was a gorgeous girl and she made Mike very happy, which is all you ever want, isn’t it?’
‘And did Mike seem to love her too much, as Mrs Walton suggested, would you say?’
Elaine cocked her head to one side. ‘I don’t know how you love someone too much. He was certainly very keen on her, if that’s what you mean. There were never any other girls or anything like that.’
‘So you must have been surprised when they split up?’
‘In a way. But then again, relationships always change.’
And that is the problem with life. No one else ever really sees what you do. Even Elaine, even she hadn’t seen what V and I are to each other. Only V and I knew and that was the way it would always be.
‘How did Mike seem, after the split?’
Elaine shifted her weight. ‘He didn’t tell us when it happened. I rang him to say happy New Year in early January and he started crying and blurted it all out. About the other woman and everything. He sounded terribly unhappy.’
Xander glanced at the jury. ‘Yes, to be clear, Mr Hayes had a one-night stand in New York which he told Verity about and that was the reason she gave him for ending their relationship.’
‘Yes.’
‘Even though she had started seeing Mr Metcalf by then?’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘It was a very honourable thing of Mike to do though, wouldn’t you say? I mean, he could easily have never told Verity about the one-night stand and she would have been unlikely to find out.’
Elaine nodded. ‘That’s typical Mike, though. He always did the right thing. He’s very moral.’
Xander let the comment rest in the air for a bit before asking his next question. ‘I take it you kept in contact with Mike after that?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And how did he seem?’
‘He remained very upset for a couple of months, but then he started to recover himself and after a while I felt like he was back to normal.’
‘So, in your estimation, when he came back to London in May he was happy and over Verity?’
‘I would say so.’
‘When he got back did you talk about Verity at all?’ Xander tapped his hand against the wood of his table.
‘Only in relation to her wedding. I knew Mike was going, so I asked him about it and he seemed fine.’
‘No more questions, my lord,’ Xander said, beaming at Elaine and then the jury as he sat back down.
Petra stood and walked to where Xander had been standing. ‘I’m interested by your assertion that Mr Hayes seemed fine about the wedding, when Mrs Metcalf rung you to say she was worried about him.’
Elaine looked over at me. ‘That was after the wedding, when they got back from honeymoon. I rang Mike after Verity called me and he admitted he’d sent her some emails he regretted, but he said he’d sorted it out and everything was all right.’
‘Why did Mrs Metcalf contact you do you think?’
Elaine looked at Justice Smithson and Xander, almost as if she expected them to stop the question. ‘Because we’d talked about Mike over the years. She wanted to see if I knew what was going on.’
It made me feel strange to think of them discussing me without my knowing; how my name could be pushed into the air and not touch me; how I never, ever wanted anyone to decide anything about me again.
Petra looked at the jury. ‘Point fifteen in your notes.’ There was the sound of a shuffle of papers. ‘But perhaps I can read one of the emails Mr Hayes sent to Mrs Metcalf whilst she was on her honeymoon.’ Petra put on her glasses and looked at the paper in her hand:
‘Verity,
‘I don’t think this is fair. How many times do you want me to say sorry for what happened in America? It meant nothing. Less than nothing. If it were possible I would reverse time like Superman and never even speak to Carly. If it made you happy I would fly over there now and exterminate her, rid her from the world so she couldn’t infect us any more. But this is too much now. I shouldn’t have let it get this far. I should have stopped the marriage before it actually happened. Because it’s going to be so difficult to get out of now and I’m still not sure what you want me to do or how we’re going to achieve it. And all the time you are having to spend with Angus is ridiculous. Every second you are with him is like a dagger to my heart. I get it, a hundredfold I get it. But you’ve even gone on our honeymoon with him and that is something we will never get back. It doesn’t feel like you are teaching me a lesson any more, more like you are actively being cruel.
‘I love you, V. You know as well as I do the connection that exists between us. I would do anything for you. As ever, I crave you.
‘Your Eagle.’
There was a palpable silence in the court when she had finished and I was aware of Xander shifting in his seat.
‘I haven’t heard that before,’ Elaine said and I could feel her look over at me, even though I kept my eyes lowered. I felt frightened for the first time as this would be hard to explain to those who don’t know us.
‘Perhaps you then also haven’t read the email he sent Mrs Metcalf in January last year in which he details the ways he could exterminate Carly, the woman with whom he’d had a one-night stand. He mentions suffocation, poisoning, hitting her over the head. He says he’s sure no one would miss her.’
Elaine blanched. ‘No. But I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way.’
‘Would you say these are the emails of a rational person?’
Elaine looked up, down, her eyes darting. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t seen the emails.’
‘What did Mrs Metcalf say when she rang you?’
‘She said she’d had a couple of emails from Mike while she was on honeymoon and she was worried about his state of mind.’ Elaine hesitated. ‘When they were together we’d had a few conversations about how therapy would be good for him. He was deeply affected by his upbringing, as you’d expect. She wanted to talk to me about trying to persuade him to see someone.’
Petra nodded. ‘How would you say Mr Hayes’s upbringing affected him?’
‘It made him suspicious of people. He has a hard time trusting them, which is why he doesn’t have many friends. But then on the other hand, if he does invest in you he gives everything to that relationship. You know, it really matters to him.’ She paused for a moment. ‘But the worst part is how unlovable it used to make him feel, like he wasn’t really worthy of attention. It took him a long time to realise that Barry and I wanted the best for him and he never really got the hang of making friends. When he was younger I used to tell him to invite friends round for tea and stuff, but he never did. It used to break my heart thinking about him in that playground day after day all alone. I once asked him what he did at lunchtimes and he said he liked building things out of stones. Sometimes I’d look at the clock at one-ish and have a bit of a cry thinking about him.’
Something dropped through me when she said that, a bit like one of the stones had found its way back to me, its smooth shiny surface passing through my bones and blood, resting in the end in my internal organs.
Petra removed her glasses and tapped them against her leg. A muscle in her cheek was twitching. ‘But would you not say his upbringing also made violence seem commonplace? Would you not say his easy chat about exterminating Carly is very worrying and his thoughts about Mrs Metcalf’s marriage extend into a realm of fantasy?’
‘Objection, my lord,’ said Xander. ‘This is pure conjecture.’
‘Overruled,’ said Justice Smithson. ‘Although the jury would do well to note that Mrs Marks is not an expert, just someone who knows the defendant well.’
‘I think Mike loved Verity as much as he said,’ Elaine said.
‘Perhaps,’ Petra s
aid. ‘But wouldn’t you say there are parts of his correspondence with her which contain worrying things for him to have thought. The fact, for example, that he was convinced the marriage was a mistake. And that he was ready to rescue her at any time.’
‘He would have rescued her at any time, if she had needed it,’ Elaine said and I loved her at that moment.
‘Yes but she didn’t need rescuing,’ Petra said. ‘She was happy.’
‘I know,’ Elaine conceded.
‘Did Mrs Metcalf ever give you any reason to believe she wasn’t happy in her marriage or that she regretted splitting from Mr Hayes?’
‘No.’
‘Did she leave you with the impression that she wanted to meet with Mr Hayes or was thinking of restarting their relationship?’
‘No.’
I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see that V had dropped something which she was leaning down to retrieve from the floor. When she straightened I saw it was only a tissue, which she used to wipe at her nose.
I wasn’t annoyed with Elaine, because why should she understand the nature of our Crave? That was what made it so special, the fact that only V and I could decipher its intricacies. It was worth being misunderstood for, even worth going to prison for.
‘Would you say Mr Hayes is a fantasist?’ Petra asked.
Elaine looked over at me and this time I met her eyes. She smiled ever so slightly at me. ‘No, just confused.’ I smiled back.
Petra looked at the jury. ‘Very confused, some might say.’ I looked back again at V as surely it was impossible that Petra had just said some Oasis lyrics in the middle of the trial without being instructed to do so? I kept my eyes fixed on the side of V’s head, where her hairline was pulled into a tight ponytail, but she didn’t turn towards me. I willed her to, just once, so I could let her know I got it, I too understood that we are the only people ever to have felt the way we do. But her eyes stayed trained on her lap.
‘I believe, Mrs Marks, that Mr Hayes bought your house for you from the council eighteen months ago.’
Our Kind of Cruelty Page 21
