When I look back now on the five months that followed I can’t help thinking of spring, because that is how it felt at the time. That fresh smell of renewal and opportunity. Seeing things that had lain dormant coming into bud and then flowering. Warmth. Relief. Walking on sunshine. That’s how it felt. With a child, a beautiful, beautiful child whom I grew to love and treat as my own. Aged 40, I had a child to love too. We both did. How long would it have lasted?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
So now I want to write about something else. I have deliberately kept it from this story so far because, if anyone does ever read this, I want them to know the truth, if there is such a thing and I want to put things in context. Even now, after everything that has happened and the endless talking that Josh and I did about the previous lives that we had both led, I still need to record the truth as I see it and, in a strange way, this bit is much easier.
I have tried to show the life that Catherine and I had together and to paint as clear a picture as I can of how things were, even though it is a million miles from where I am now. That’s why I have tried to recover conversations that we had, even if at times I have had to reinvent them. I want to recreate the feel and the possibilities of life as it was then. I want there to be no stone left unturned about how much Catherine and I thought that we meant to each other, how much we had both been through, how much Martha meant to us. How different everything could have been.
Why? Because this, now, is directed at you, Brian. Because, whatever else I do, I am going to email this story to myself so that there will always be a copy of it floating around; it will be there forever. And I am going to email it to one other person, to Jennifer. And I am going to write to you to tell you what I have done and to tell you that I have emailed the story to someone else but I won’t tell you whom and I won’t send you the story either. So, there will be another version of what you did and you will never know if anyone will ever read it or do anything about it. I hope it haunts you into the grave.
It is different to the media stories that came out, slagging off Catherine. I want to put the record straight. And I want to ask you this - imagine you had not done what you did. Imagine if you had left Catherine alone and behaved like an adult should to a child. What would she have been like? Where would she and Martha be now?
And I will tell you how I know the truth, despicable though my own behaviour has been. Because, with all the vagaries and shades of truth that I know and understand so well – probability, certainty and all the rest – I know that what Catherine told me was the truth. How? Because of this. Because one night, after we had been living together for about three months, I came back from work. I stood behind Catherine in the kitchen, hugged her, massaged her breasts and undid my trousers and lifted her skirt, hungry for sex. She was excited too. She laughed and pushed back towards me, arousing me more. And it was in that state that I pressed against the divide of her bottom, separating the cheeks. That’s when she spun round and slapped me round the face as hard as she could.
‘Don’t ever do that again.’ Then she burst into tears.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked.
‘You were pushing me against the work surface. It hurt.’ I wasn’t. She was nowhere near the work surface.
‘Catherine, I’m sorry. I would never want to hurt you.’
‘Just leave it.’
She straightened her clothes and went into the bathroom. When she came out about ten minutes later it was as if nothing had happened.
‘Catherine, I am so sorry. I just got carried away.’
She went to the fridge, took out some wine and poured us both a glass. Then she took me by the hand.
‘Let’s do it properly this time’ and she led me to the bedroom. And looking back on that now, knowing everything that I do now, that is horrid, really, really appalling. How could I have done that? How could I have carried on with sex after that? How could I not have asked what was happening? Why didn’t I get sad, protective, kind, loving…even angry? Why couldn’t I sense that there was a chasm that had to be bridged? Well, I didn’t and sorry is a useless word. Maybe I’m just as bad as you, Brian. We each have excuses, explanations, sorrowful stories to tell, I am sure. But the actions of grown up people have consequences and only they are responsible for them. Like you are. Like I am. And it is other people who suffer. Like Catherine did. Like Martha did.
And within my own torment I have asked myself over and over again – why didn’t Catherine speak out against you years ago? Why didn’t she tell me before? Why did the past have to come out in the way that it did? And I know the answer to that. Because it is what happens when children are mistreated as you mistreated her. And as they grow older, other people mistreat them. And abandon them. As I did.
So, that’s how I know. That, and what happened next. In a relationship you know the truth about your partner and you feel it instinctively – innately. And I am going to explain how it unfolded. Then, perhaps, what happened here will be more understandable.
When I was in India, drinking myself into stupor at Kovalam beach, I used to fantasise about returning to England and killing you, Brian. I pictured using a knife to replicate how you used your penis. Digging it deeply into your body for my own pleasure. Driving it in and out of you. Hurting you as I felt you deserved. Watching blood ejaculating from the tip of my knife. Hearing you scream out loud as she must have done silently in her head. I even tried to draw it, while I was sitting on a veranda of the tea plantation in Coonoor watching the mist over the Nilgiri hills. But, do you know, I am not sure whom I hated most – you or myself.
I have no wish to kill you. I have seen far too much death for that. I do not wish for anyone’s death and, what’s more, this is much more efficient as a means of putting things right. My life has moved on, changed I hope, since then and I would never, ever, have come here if things had been different in England. I would never have met Josh – I have had no relationships with women since Catherine and could not dream of doing so – and I would never have found the faith that I claim as my sole remaining refuge. I have tried to make things better, to redeem myself, but that does not undo Catherine’s pain, my sin, when I ran away. My failing was her abandonment. I know that.
At least this way the story of what you did – and I did – is enduring. I once described what you did as emotional avarice. I am not sure if avarice is the right word. It may be. But it is better if I put it this way. I have seen the most extreme hardship and deprivation over the past four years. I have seen death, birth, ruination, loss and grief. I know them all. But if I ever think of the word filth I think of you. Privileged you may be. Powerful too. But you traversed all that. You lied – over and over again. You manipulated. You cheated. You hurt a child.
And I want to put it into imagery. Imagine a monstrous octopus with tentacles that stretch and wave in different directions, searching for an unsuspecting prey and then latching on to it, drawing it into its beak where it mutilates it, slowly and without emotion before discarding what is left. That’s what you did. That, Brian, is you. You are like that octopus. If there is such a thing as evil then your headstone will be ‘the evil men do lives after them.’ You deserve it. Others can decide about me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
This, then, is how it all unravelled. Catherine and I had both shut the case out of our minds and had never spoken of its detail, only its effect. It was as if the judge’s decision had established the truth, even though we both knew that, on the papers, the case could have gone either way – a different judge, a more skilled opponent or different nuances from the evidence and who knows what would have happened. But shutting things out of your mind doesn’t work at 3 a.m. in the morning when you wake, search in your thoughts for what is bothering you and then lock onto the problem, missile-like. It’s as if sleep and the passage of time filter your thoughts. At least, that’s how it is with me.
I kept fixing onto small things that I couldn’t work out. Like when it dawned
on me one evening that, if ever I tried to talk to Catherine when she was working, she would have her earphones in and would be listening to music.
I didn’t think twice at the time and just said to her jokingly ‘you are always listening to music on that bloody thing.’
‘Yeah, well I don’t want to wake Martha and I always listen to music when I work.’
It was only when I woke in the middle of the night that her reply began to gnaw into my consciousness. How had she heard Martha stop breathing on the second occasion involved in the trial if she always listened to music when she was working? I knew that she had not been working on the first occasion and that there had been the alarm on the third but she had always said that she had been working on the second occasion and there was no alarm then. I dismissed my concern on the basis that she could well not have been listening to music on that particular occasion and, anyway, by then she was hyper alert after the first event and could not have listened to music 100 per cent of the time. Further, now I was present in the flat and there was another pair of ears, music might make it easier for her to concentrate on work with another person around. So, I just observed to see if she ever did work without listening and I saw her routine when settling at her desk - earphones in, music on, concentrate on court papers; I had to wave or reach out a hand to her in order to get her attention. Also, there was no way that I could hear Martha breathing when I was in the flat; again I thought that was just me being neurotic but it festered in my mind.
It was in August that things fell apart. My birthday, 8 August, was on a Friday. My birthday the year before – my 40th – had been a complete wash out and we planned to go away for the weekend to make something of this one. I had booked us into a hotel in Cornwall and we were going to go down there on my motorbike. Helen agreed to have Martha while we were away; by then Martha was used to being with Helen and her four-year-old daughter, Sally, liked having a baby to fuss over. Catherine and I had been together for eight months and I planned to ask her to marry me that weekend. I had bought the ring.
But on the Thursday night, just after we had packed, the phone went.
‘Bugger! That was Helen. Sally has got chicken pox. She’s had to cancel.’
‘Shit. What do you want to do about Martha, then?’ I asked stupidly.
‘We’ll have to take her with us.’
‘What on a motorbike?’
‘Of course not. We’ll have to go somewhere else.’
‘Oh, come on. This is the first time that we have gone away together on our own. Why can’t your parents have her?’
‘I am not leaving her with them. You know that I don’t want to do that.’
‘Yeah, but why not. They had her for five months.’
‘Yes. And that’s why I don’t want them to have her now. I want to look after her. Not them.’
But I didn’t leave it there. I went on and on. Martha would be perfectly alright. I did not understand why she was trying to cut her own mother out of Martha’s life. Her step-father had spoken up for her at the court hearing – how could she be so ungrateful? What was she doing preventing Martha from knowing her own grandparents?
‘You’re just being selfish,’ I said, really bugged by being fenced off by Catherine.
‘Simon stop. You don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘Well tell me, Catherine, tell me what’s going on. We can’t go on like this forever. You’re going to have to face this sometime.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You can’t pretend your parents aren’t there. They only live a mile up the road. What happens when Martha is older?’
And that’s when the bomb dropped and blew everything apart.
‘He raped me.’
‘What do you mean “he raped me”?’
‘Brian. He abused me.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘Yes, you do. He abused me. You do know what that means.’
‘No I don’t understand. I don’t understand at all. You can’t just drop a bomb like that into the conversation. What sort of abuse are you talking about?’
‘Don’t be so stupid. Sexual abuse. You know what I mean.’
‘How could I know? I can’t believe what you’re saying.’
‘Simon, it’s true.’ She was already crumpling. But I didn’t stop.
‘When?’
‘When I was a child. A number of times.’
‘But, hold on. You said that he was a good father to you.’
‘When?’ I can picture her face as she spoke. Flushed, grasping for a way out.
‘At the court hearing. You called him as your character witness. I was there, remember?’
‘I was fighting for my daughter. You know that and I know that.’ There was a pause. I was way, way out of my depth. We both were.
‘But Catherine, you left Martha with them for five months. You told the judge what good parents they were to you. How could you do that? How could you lie like that?’
‘What would you expect me to have done? Tell the truth? Are you that stupid? Why should I? It’s not my fault. None of it is.’
She burst into tears. ‘I’m never going to escape what he did to me, am I? Even with you.’ Then she ran into the bathroom and threw up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The headline that I saw was simple. ‘The mother of all lies.’ That’s what it said. Brian had been charged with sexual assault and this was his criminal trial in which Catherine was the main prosecution witness, the complainant.
Catherine had been ripped apart in the witness box by the silk that defended Brian and the prosecution had thrown its hand in at the end of her evidence. It was obvious from the start that Brian would never be convicted but no one had been brave enough to take the decision not to prosecute. The Crown court had a transcript of the evidence that she had given in the family case and every inch of it was picked over by both sides. The press had a field day and reported chunks of her evidence in the newspaper articles. It is all still over the internet, even now.
Jennifer took time off to support me during the trial and so was able to sit in court and watch events unfurl. As a potential witness I had to sit outside. After the case ended Jennifer explained exactly what had happened in court. Part of it went like this:
‘You gave evidence on oath in the family court, didn’t you’?
‘Yes.’
‘You told the social services that you had a very secure and happy childhood.’ The defending silk had then read out a passage from the social services assessment of Geraldine and Brian where Catherine had said how well they looked after her as a child.
‘Was that true?’
‘No.’
‘Why did you say it then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well can I suggest you do know? You said it because you wanted to get your way.’
‘That’s not so.’
‘Yes it is. And that’s what you’re doing right now.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘You said to the family judge, on oath, that your step-father had given you a good and happy childhood, didn’t you?
‘Yes.’
‘Now you are saying, again on oath, that he didn’t, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lying on oath is perjury, isn’t it – you know that don’t you? You’re a barrister.’
‘Yes, I know that.’
‘Well, one way or the other, you’ve lied on oath, haven’t you? Either here or in the family court.’
‘I lied in the family court.’
‘Why should this jury believe you?’
‘That’s up to them.’
‘Well, as you know, the jury are going to hear from your mother and your step-father that you are lying right here and right now. In this court. They’re right, aren’t they?’
‘No, they are not. Why should I invent this now?’
‘Because you want your daughter to yourself.�
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‘That’s not the case.’
‘It is the case and you know it. You set this hare of an allegation running and now you can’t face admitting that it’s all a lie. Isn’t that what has happened?’
‘No.’
‘But let me ask you a question along the same lines. Why should both of your parents have given evidence for you at the family hearing if what you say is true? They would not have gone anywhere near the case, would they?’
‘That’s your opinion.’
‘Well, you look at the jury and tell them why you think your parents chose to run the risk of giving evidence on your behalf in the family court?’
‘Because I told them they had to.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I told them that if they didn’t I would say what had happened.’
‘What, you told them to lie too?’
‘Yes.’
‘And, you say, they did lie?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, it comes to this. You say that you and they conspired to commit perjury and they then did just that, as you did?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s an awful lot of lies, isn’t it Ms Warrenberg? All on oath.’
The defending barrister was like a fox in a chicken run. As each head presented itself he bit it off. Having seen Catherine giving evidence in the family court and knowing her as I do it is all too easy for me to imagine her in the witness box. I did nothing to protect her. Or Martha. By that stage Catherine had no one.
I had been due to give evidence for the prosecution as the next witness, the person to whom Catherine had made her first complaint. But it never got to that point as the case had already collapsed by then. Catherine had taken the full brunt of the bombardment on her own.
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