School was torturous for me, though the torture happened long before I became a mirror image of the modelling industry. One day – my memory tells me it was in the first year of secondary school, but that may be fuzzy – I accused Thomas D’Arcy of punching me on the arm, just so the teacher would move him away from me. I hated sitting beside him; he smelt. I punched myself in the arm repeatedly, until it bruised, then walked into the classroom, sat beside Thomas and raised my hand. ‘Miss, Thomas just punched me,’ I said, forcing some tears out of my eyes. My plan worked. I was moved. But because Thomas was more likable than me, the students took his side. I was left alone in the playground for pretty much the next six years until I got secondary school out of the way.
I pull open the door of the ladies, the noise of the music causing me to tut. I’m sure somebody’s turned the volume up since I’ve been to the loo. I suck my lips, take in every face before me, searching for the guy who’s in to Formula One, who’s into Will Ferrell movies.
‘Wow,’ says some guy, standing back a bit so he can take all of me in. I just purse my lips at him in an almost sorrowful way, then walk on by. Turning lads’ heads isn’t a thrill for me; it never has been. I thought being good looking was a blessing when I was younger, only because it would help in my ambitions to become a model. But it genuinely isn’t any advantage whatsoever. Anyone who thinks being good looking is advantageous is one of two things; either they are an idiot or they’ve never been good looking themselves.
Amanda and I are perfect examples of looks not counting towards happiness. We’re both genetically blessed; both miserable at finding love. Sure take the hottest women on the planet: Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron… All hot as fuck. All miserable in love.
I’m pretty sure being good looking is a disadvantage because if you are good looking then that almost seems enough for most guys. They don’t need to look past that initially, they don’t need to go deeper. Once the novelty of the good looks wears off, which it inevitably does in every relationship, then the guy who hasn’t bothered to get to truly know you doesn’t know why he’s dating you anymore. If it can happen to Halle Berry – constantly – then it can happen to anyone. I’d love to trade my looks for a better personality. I’d love to lighten up, be more outgoing. My new job is helping me come out of my shell, though. I’m getting better at it. I feel more confident now than I’ve ever felt in my life.
I rub at my palms. They always get a bit sweaty moments before I have to approach a target. They’ll stop sweating once I’m talking to him. That’s always the way; like an actress waiting backstage before she goes on. She shits herself behind the curtain, is cool as a cucumber as soon as that curtain rises. It’s just adrenaline clamming my hands up. I’ll be fine. I always am.
‘Lookin’ for someone, love? It’s not me, is it?’ some fat guy asks me. I just smile at him. Walk on to the end of the bar. And that’s when I see him. Niall Stevens. Taking a sip from his pint, before continuing a conversation with his mate.
I take a deep breath and think through my plan. I’ve got this.
I mutter the words ‘excuse me’ as I brush between a couple talking and make my way to the bar leaning into it beside Niall.
‘Non-alcoholic red wine,’ I say to the barman. I notice Niall has already clocked me. He took a peek over his shoulder after his mate pointed me out. I pretend not to notice. Then, after another deep breath, I knock into him — jarring my elbow into the small of his back just as he’s taking a sip of his pint.
‘Shit… I’m so sorry. So sorry,’ I say, holding my hand up to my mouth. Then I reach out and brush my fingers through his shirt as if I’m trying to wipe away the beer he’s just spilt.
‘Please, lemme buy you another drink,’ I say.
19:50
Jason
Li leads us down the stairs. He seems overly keen to get out of here; thinks it’s too busy. He says he wants to have a talk with us, somewhere quieter. That’s nothing new. Li likes to open up, values the opinion of his two best mates. Especially me. We’re almost like brothers, Li and I. We share everything. Zach’s a bit more insular. A bit reluctant to open up.
When we’re half-way down the steps I notice her. On the far side of the bar. I turn to Zach, just to try to block him from seeing her. I pull him in for a headlock, keeping his eyes down.
‘C’mon Zach, cheer up, mate, this is gonna be a great night.’
‘I’m alright, I’m alright,’ he says into my armpit. ‘Lemme go, for fuck sake.’
I only let him go after we’ve both reached the bottom of the stairs, Sabrina out of sight. Another bout of ‘Boom, boom, boom… lemme hear ya say Jayo,’ sounds out. I acknowledge it by holding my hand in the air, but head straight towards the exit without stopping to shake anyone’s hand or signing another autograph. I turn to my two best mates as soon as we get outside.
‘Hang there one more sec, will ye lads?’ I say. ‘I told a bloke in there I’d sign a quick autograph for his son before I left. He’s just at the far side of the bar. Won’t be long.’
I jump back inside. The chant starts up again, but I keep my head down and pace towards Sabrina. I can’t let a girl like her go. But it dawns on me quickly that I have to. She’s talking to some other guy. Probably her boyfriend. I watch as she laughs at one of his jokes. Damn it. I shudda known.
I turn on my heels, head for the exit again.
‘Jason, can I have a quick pic—’
‘Sorry man,’ I say, rushing by.
It’s unusual I’d snub a fan. But he just caught me at a wrong time — in a moment of self-pity. Those moments seem to come to me more often these days.
‘Right!’ I say, rubbing my palms together as soon as I get back outside, trying to gee myself up for a rare night out with my two besties. ‘Where we off to?’
‘Your call, Li,’ Zach says as he lights up a cigarette.
‘I just fancy a nice quiet Irish pub, somewhere we can sit down, have a chat. I thought it’d be quiet in there,’ he says nodding back at the Hairy Lemon.
‘Jaysus… a quiet chat? Are you sure this is not about… y’know, The Secr—’
‘It’s not about The fuckin’ Secret,’ Li snaps back at Zach.
My stomach turns itself over. It’s been ages since any of us have talked about that. At least a couple of years since the subject’s even been broached by any of us. Not that it’s out of our minds. Jesus no. All three of us still live with it most days, I’m sure. I pray about it every night; offer my apology to God and thank him for his forgiveness.
The three of us agreed years ago that we’d stop letting it consume us; that we’d stop talking about it with each other. It was over half our lifetime ago now. Twenty years ago this summer in fact. It happened just a couple of months after I’d signed for Cherry Orchard. I’d been putting in great performances for the Bosco for five seasons. Either me or Zach would end up with the Player of the Season award every year. In fact, I won it three times, him twice in the five years we played together. A few scouts from bigger teams around Dublin started to turn up at our matches. It was obvious they were looking at us two. Cherry Orchard offered both of us a trial, the chance to play in the highest divisions of schoolboy football. A chance to be spotted by proper scouts — scouts from England’s biggest clubs.
They ended up asking me to sign for them. But not Zach. I had to lie to Zach. Tell him that the only reason the Cherry Orchard coaches didn’t want him was because they already had too many strikers and didn’t need another one. He couldn’t understand it. Couldn’t quite get his head around the fact that I’d leapfrogged him; that I was playing at a standard much higher than he was.
We were fifteen at the time. There’s only two weeks between me and Li. Zach’s four months younger. Me and him had to stay disciplined at weekends if we wanted to make it in football. But Zach started to slide. He felt we needed more fun; that we needed to let our hair down at the weekends. He started drinking and smoki
ng. Li gave in to the pressure, started drinking himself. But I didn’t. I had no intention of throwing away the opportunity I’d been given at Cherry Orchard.
Zach used to wait till his dad went down to the Marble Arch for his usual Saturday night drinks before stealing his car keys and taking the three of us out for a joy ride. We’d head to the coast, out towards Howth, just for something to do. The two lads would be swigging back warm cans of cider. Zach would drive out, I’d normally drive back. But it didn’t happen that way this night. Li took the wheel. He just said he fancied it. And I let him. Even though he’d downed about four cans.
Though in fairness to Li, she appeared from out of nowhere. We genuinely didn’t see her. Not until the car skidded to a stop.
4
Brian holds his palms flat to the wall and pushes his left calf back to stretch it as if it’s half-time in a football match. The judge did tell the jurors they would receive five-minute breaks ‘to stretch their legs’, but it’s not supposed to be taken so literally. It certainly can’t be literal in Number Three’s case because she doesn’t have the use of her legs. She’s wheeling her wheelchair up and down the corridor, humming to herself while most of the other jurors have huddled themselves into different corners of the corridor, talking. Not about the trial — they’re all staying loyal to the rule that they can only discuss the trial when all together — but about their lives. Weirdly, although they don’t know each others’ names — for the most part — they know an awful lot about each other.
‘Okay jurors,’ says a young man dressed all in black, opening the door to the jury room with an overly-big bunch of keys. They file back in one-by-one, Brian deliberately standing at the door and motioning with his hand that everybody should enter ahead of him again. He read about this approach in a self-help book about how to treat the general public and felt it would help him become a more popular politician.
‘So…’ Number One pauses, gazing down at his notes. ‘We… eh… move on to … yes, Copper Face Jacks. Did Sabrina or did she not—’
‘Hold on for one second… if you don’t mind me interrupting you, Number One, sorry everybody,’ says Number Twelve. ‘I just found a small flaw in the way we are deliberating. If we are going through the night in chronological order, then we are missing some of the picture. We’re missing out some of the background of these four people. Some of the eh… the…’
‘The character witnesses,’ says Number Ten.
‘Exactly,’ Number Twelve says, sitting more upright. ‘Like the photographer and the journalist. The fella who testified against Sabrina, and the other fella who testified against Jason and Zach. This kind of evidence – if you can call it evidence – gets ignored if we are just talking about the night in question.’
‘Good point,’ Brian says. ‘We should discuss the character witnesshes at some point. What do we even think of the first photographer teshtimony – about Sabrina?’
‘Yes… a Mr Patrick Clavin. Does anyone even find his testimony that pertinent?’ Number One asks nobody in particular. It’s been one of his biggest flaws as Head Juror — he doesn’t direct his questions at anyone specifically. He just thrusts them out there, to the middle of the conference table.
Patrick Clavin has had a photography studio on Thomas Street in Dublin since the late eighties. He started off photographing weddings, communions, confirmations, that kinda thing; made quite a few quid for his troubles. But as he evolved his business, he evolved his clientele and has been working with top talent agencies for the past decade. He is a genuinely nice guy, never once even considered cheating on his wife and their four kids, though he still gets a kick out of photographing pretty actresses and models for a living. He testified on behalf of the defence that Sabrina Doyle had been a client of his back in 2012, seeking nude shots. He proved to be a very honest witness, certainly amongst the jurors. But some wondered if his testimony was even worthy of being heard during the trial. The defence, doing their due diligence in search of some dirt on Sabrina, contacted a number of people she had worked with over the years, many not able to help their cause. Nobody had anything bad to say about Sabrina Doyle, aside from the fact that she could be a bit moody every now and then. But Clavin let slip that she had done some nude modelling for him six years prior and suddenly they pounced on him, believing his testimony would paint an image in the minds of the jurors that Sabrina was in some way fascinated with both sex and celebrity.
Clavin believed he was just following protocol by agreeing to confirm this information at the trial, but as he sat in the stand giving his evidence, he began to feel really guilty. He looked at Sabrina, knew he had been spun by the defence into painting a negative picture of the claimant. And he actually liked Sabrina. He just answered the questions coming at him as honestly as he could and then kept his head down as he exited the courtroom. Sabrina insisted his testimony was ‘mostly made up’ when she was called to the stand. ‘I did indeed attend Patrick Clavin’s studio in August twenty-twelve, but I never posed nude,’ she said. The jurors were perplexed by this, couldn’t understand why Clavin would lie. Unless, perhaps, he was coerced by the defence. It was an argument worth raising.
‘I don’t know,’ says Number Eleven. ‘He was definitely nervous on the stand, but I just got the impression he was telling the truth. Let me hold my hands up now and say I am genuinely leaning towards guilty — I think those lads took advantage of Sabrina that night, raped her. But I actually feel she might be lying in this particular instance. I don’t know what it is… I believe her every time she speaks, but not here… not about the nude photos.’
‘Clavin’s testimony was believable,’ agrees Number One. This also went against what Number One believed overall — that Jason, Zach and Li were all guilty of raping Sabrina Doyle. But he too found it difficult to dispute the photographer’s testimony; didn’t believe the defence were evil enough to ask somebody to just make a story up in order to discredit a claimant. Number One’s real name is Albert Dwyer, a fifty-five-year-old car mechanic from Rathcoole in Co Dublin. He looks wise – sports glasses, wears his thick head of silver hair neatly split from left to right. It was on appearances alone that led to his fellow jurors electing him over Brian as Head Juror. But Number One hasn’t been great in this role at all. He’s too indecisive, and lacks the balls to keep everybody in line. Another example of appearances being deceiving.
Number One found himself feeling the defendants were guilty pretty early on in the trial. He couldn’t bring himself to believe a beautiful young woman like Sabrina Doyle would consensually have sex with three men in one night. Number One is married with two daughters. It had been advised by the judge that personal experiences shouldn’t enter the consciousness of the jurors when considering a verdict, but that’s impossible advice to curtail. Number One’s daughters aren’t far off Sabrina’s age. He sees them in her. Her in them. For that reason, more than any other, it would be extremely difficult to persuade him into the not guilty camp. He’s adamant that Jason, Zach and Li deserve to do time behind bars.
One of the big question jurors find themselves stewing over their mind when it comes to rape cases is the difficult-to-comprehend notion that a woman would cry rape when in fact she hadn’t been raped at all. Jurors find this more difficult to morally accept than they do actual rape. For some reason, crying rape when you haven’t been raped constitutes as a harsher crime than actual rape in the mindsets of the general public. It’s bizarre. Sabrina’s case is a fascinating one to consider under these terms: what does she have to gain from claiming these three men raped her? Is she after Jason’s money? Or – as is the question most jurors morally ask themselves when examining trials like this – did Sabrina have consensual sex with all three men and then only afterwards feel she was raped? Number Nine raises this point to the room.
‘It’s possible,’ Number Eight answers first, staring straight ahead.
‘Yeah, I think that kind of thing is a big possibility,’ Number Twelve follows up
with. ‘A girl feeling guilty the next morning for the… y’know… whatever happened the night before.’
‘You can’t rule it out,’ says Brian. ‘Ugh… I don’t know. I just… I genuinely think we have to find them not guilty. There jusht isn’t enough evidensh—’
‘Hold off, Brian,’ scoffs Number One. ‘We aren’t having a bloody verdict vote at the minute… we’re not saying what we think overall.’
He sits more upright, elbows on the table, staring down at Brian. He’s almost sporting a grin as if he has something in his armoury that will bring Brian down a peg or two.
‘So you think not guilty overall, yeah?’ he says, swinging one of his hands as if he has adopted a teenage attitude. ‘So do you believe Sabrina Doyle is lying about not approaching the three men initially in the Hairy Lemon?’
Brian nods his head slowly, sits back in his chair, almost welcoming the test.
‘And you believe she is lying about the nude photos… about the handjob… about going to that nightclub Copper Face Jacks?’
Brian nods again, shrugs his shoulders too.
‘You believe she’s lying about the rape too, yeah? Lying about everything?’
She Said, Three Said Page 6
