by Nick Stone
‘I didn’t want it to go that far, believe me,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t have a choice.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘What? Take it back? Have you been listening to a word I said? I wanted you out of my life.’
‘You got me kicked out of Cambridge.’
Anger flashed across his face and his eyes narrowed to shiny black slits.
‘No, I didn’t, Terry. You know why you got sent down? It wasn’t for stealing my non-existent diary. They wouldn’t have cared about that. You got kicked out because you failed your exams. It wasn’t because of me or anything I did. It was because of you and everything you didn’t do.
‘And that was work. You never did any the whole time you were there. I kept on telling you. I kept on warning you. You didn’t listen. You didn’t want to know. You were too busy going down the pub. All those essays you never wrote, or when you did, you dashed them off an hour before they were due. You just couldn’t be arsed. Life was a drink and you got drunk.’
I didn’t answer. I had no answer.
I was angry and I was disgusted. Disgusted with him – even if he was fundamentally right in everything he’d said.
Yes, I had thrown my life away then. I’d messed up an opportunity people like me barely even catch a glimpse of. And for that, I deserved what had happened.
But that didn’t make it all right. Not one bit.
And I hadn’t even mentioned Melissa.
Over the past few months, working on his appeal, talking to him regularly, I’d managed to separate the person he was now, from the one he’d been. It had been easy. The man across the table from me had been sent to prison for a crime he hadn’t committed. He wasn’t a person, he was a cause. I even started to like him…
Not any more.
I sensed those old wounds that had finally started healing starting to open again.
I sensed that dormant anger turning over, opening an eyelid.
I suddenly wanted to bring up Rodney’s murder and the alibi… Kev Dorset’s story never did run in the Chronicle. The riots and their aftermath had ensured VJ’s conviction wasn’t even news.
But right then I heard Karen’s voice, loud and clear, ringing around my head like church bells tolling across a flat, frozen meadow:
‘You can’t cheat karma.’
Over and over, like a mantra.
You can’t cheat karma.
She was right.
VJ hadn’t cheated karma.
All my life I’d wanted him to pay for what he’d done to me.
In a roundabout way, he had.
My life had been damaged by a lie he told. And his life had been ruined by a frame-up – a different kind of lie, but a lie all the same.
You can’t cheat karma. No one can. It’s not instant, but it always gets you in the end.
I could have pointed that out to him, but what would have been the point?
He’d be a free man tomorrow, sure. But what would that freedom look like? He’d lost his business. Melissa was divorcing him. And everyone knew what kind of person he was. He’d get back on his feet, without a doubt, but he wouldn’t stand quite as tall, nor be looked at the same way. And yes, there’d always be someone who thought he was a killer.
‘If you’d known about the diary, would you still have helped me out the way you did?’ he asked.
Good question
Very good question.
Would it have made a difference?
I thought about that.
The person I was on March 17th, 2011, wouldn’t have raised a finger to help him.
The person I was now would have helped him regardless.
‘I’m not a lawyer yet,’ I said. ‘But I started becoming one the minute I got given your case. The law is founded on the abiding principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial, irrespective of who they are and what they’ve done – to others, or to yourself.’
He chuckled.
‘You hate me, don’t you?’
‘No.’ I shook my head. And I meant it too. For the very first time. I didn’t hate him at all. Not any more. We were even. Life had redressed the balance. I saw that now.
‘I had a friend, a long time ago,’ I said. ‘He was a good friend. My best friend. We were really close, like brothers. Then we grew up and went our separate ways. I never saw him again. I don’t know where he is or what happened to him. Chances are, if we passed each other in the street a month, a year from now, I wouldn’t even recognise him. But you know what? That’s OK. Because this way I’ll always remember him for what he was, not what he became.’
With that, I stood up and went over to the cell door and banged on it for the guard. Seconds later the door was opened and the sounds of the prison came flooding in, the machine of confinement running off its trapped souls.
I didn’t even turn round to look at him. I was never going to turn round again, never ever look back. From now on I was moving forward.
‘I’ll see you in court, Vernon.’
Acknowledgements
Thanks to:
Seb Stone, The Mighty Bromfields, Tony & Roma Greenway, The Bents, David Shelley, Lucy Icke, Jane Gregory & Co., Clare Oxborrow (Mrs Smith!), Frank & Mark Canavan, Angie Robinson, Sophie Earle, Bill Pearson, Natasza Tardio, Edwidge Danticat, Danny Laferrière, Tony Burns, Tomas Carruthers, Chris McWatters, Mitch Kaplan, The Guyatts, The Kanners, The Kaufmanns, Darrell Davis & Lynette, Allen George, Roger Guenveur-Smith, Emma & Tony, Sam Sotudeh, Kevin McHale, Thor De Grammont, and Steve Purdom.
With extra special thanks to: Jan & Michael Eldridge, Andrew Holmes, all the hardworking staff at the Old Bailey, Westminster Magistrates’ Court (formerly at Horseferry Road), and The Falcon, Clapham Junction.
