That Night

by Gillian McAllister

  But what is the truth? That is what I am thinking as I enter the witness box, looking out at the courtroom. It is more mundane than I expected from the grand exterior, and from television and films. The seats are foam chairs covered with a teal wool. The room has the quiet atmosphere of an office on a weekday in January. Hard working, reflective, slightly dreary.

  In the public gallery, Dad’s hands are on the wooden bench in front of him. There is something assertive about the gesture, like we’re here to sort out a load of nonsense. And maybe he does think that, I don’t know. He won’t take my calls, not since it all ended, not since it blew up on that August night.

  All truths are different, and mine is different to Joe’s. I look down at my feet in tight, new black shoes, take a breath, and meet the jury’s eyes, one by one.

  ‘Ms Plant,’ the barrister says, exactly as Jason said he would. ‘If you don’t mind, will you take us through the afternoon leading up to the – to the incident?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, my voice clear in the courtroom.

  Jason catches my eye, drawing my attention towards him, back towards the process, I guess. The reason we’re here. He’s my solicitor, but I am questioned by a barrister, who is old and male. Way past retirement age. Lithe, tanned, big ears, a large nose, wild eyebrows under the wig.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he says nicely to me. My eyes dart to the jury, the judge, back to him.

  ‘We were on holiday, in Verona,’ I say. ‘We had been over many times, mostly in the summer. We own a villa there.’

  ‘And is that villa in your three names?’

  ‘Yes, we bought it collectively, me, my sister and my brother, Joe,’ I say, staring ahead, not letting my eyes stray to them again. ‘Now sold.’ I glance at Joe as I say this, who looks away.

  ‘Okay. So talk me through what happened, then, in Verona.’

  ‘It had been a normal holiday.’

  ‘Completely normal?’

  ‘Until that point, yes. Just – you know. We’d been enjoying the sun and seeing the sights nearby. Cooking together, drinking.’ I pause, wishing I could take back that word.

  ‘Okay, and where were you, exactly, on the afternoon before the death of William McGovern?’

  ‘At the market,’ I say. I can’t help but give a gulp. My digestive system betrays me, my guts clenching against my will. ‘Shopping together,’ I say softly. And, for a moment, I am in the before. Just me and my siblings, on holiday. In a phase of our life, a past phase, when we all lived in one row of houses together, in and out of the others’, looking after Paul, a little community. Working together at the vets’. It’s all gone. It’s all gone.

  Tears move up through my body, carried on a tidal wave of sadness. ‘We were at the market. It was a normal day,’ I say thickly. And now what? My cottage is under offer. The vets’ practice disbanded. Calls unanswered. Facebook pages defriended. Estrangement.

  I try to distract myself. There are four rectangular windows along the top of the courtroom, the kind you might find in an old school hall, and I stare up at them, those four little boxes of light. The March sun seems to have finally come out. They’re bleached completely white.

  I tell the courtroom about the market. The barrister waits patiently, then begins to probe.

  ‘So, then – after that,’ he says carefully, ‘the rest of your afternoon was uneventful, but your evening was not, is that right?’ He folds his arms across his body, disturbing the line of his black gown.

  ‘Yes. It was late.’ I wince. ‘Sorry,’ I say, trying to breathe, trying to collect myself. Trying to remember, here, for this courtroom, and to forget, all at the same time. The car. The body. The blood. That first unknowing step away from everything. Our homes. Our business. Our family dynamic. It was dysfunctional, sometimes, like everyone’s, but it was ours.

  ‘Can you talk us through it – please? Minute by minute?’

  ‘Okay,’ I say in a small voice. Jason told me this is exactly the way the questioning would go, but, now that I am here, it feels hostile. Like everything I will say will be met with scepticism.

  I look across at the jury. Twelve completely ordinary men and women. Some in suits. The man on the far left surely will become the foreman – he has on large gold-framed glasses and a navy-blue expensive-looking suit, complete with waistcoat. Otherwise, an amorphous mass. The general public. These people who vote in elections and work in offices and shop in supermarkets and watch soap operas. A mainstream group who will take a view – guilty or not guilty – on the events in Verona. Only I have no idea which. I have no idea how it’s going to go. Will they go home and talk about us – my family, me – like we are villains? Corrupt, self-serving? Or like how it was? The desperation, the panic? The accidental cover-up. The cover-up that has its roots in something beautiful, in love, that turned sour, like curdled milk.

  I blink, and look straight at the barrister. What is going to happen to me? After all this is over?

  I close my eyes against it all, just for a second. I hear somebody clear their throat and I know it’s Joe without even looking. I know because of the tone of it, the pitch, the length of time on the uh before the huh.

  I open my eyes but look down at the wood of the witness box, the white plastic cup of water. Anything but look at him.

  Jason is seated behind the barrister, encouraging me with his eyes. Unblinking, solemn, reassuring.

  ‘As carefully as you can, will you take us through it?’ the barrister prompts. He flicks his eyes to me, then back down at his notes, a hint of irritation beginning to creep in. We could be rattling through this, I am sure he thinks, much more efficiently than we are.

  I nod, again. ‘Yes,’ I say. I take a breath and let it out slowly. ‘Okay,’ I say.

  ‘Shall we start at, say, one o’clock in the morning? Is that right?’

  It is as though a trapdoor to hell has opened up in me. It’s hard to describe unless you’ve been through it. Trauma, I guess. Goosebumps break out across my shoulders. Something starts off in my gut, a constant, rhythmic pulsating, like a generator making enough energy in order to release something horrible. I swallow a few times, knowing that everybody’s eyes are on me in the silent courtroom. The silence is weighty now, like before an important press conference or solemn announcement.

  I raise my eyes to the barrister but say nothing. The generator is still going, but it’s started to make panic, which sweeps over me like a sandstorm. All our mistakes. Everything we’ve lost. The walls look like they’re tilting.

  ‘Okay?’ he says. ‘Ms Plant?’

  ‘Yes, yes, okay,’ I say.

  Think. Think. That night. Before. And then after: the strangely calm, methodical days after it, the happy moments, even, until everything fell apart.

  I can’t do it. My hands are trembling so much that the jury’s eyes follow them as I reach to tuck my hair behind my ear. ‘Can I – sorry – can I take five?’ I say, directing this question to Jason. He snaps to attention, springing to his feet, my lawyer, my protector.

  ‘Your Honour, I know I may not have the right to speak but –’ he starts, but the judge waves a hand.

  ‘Adjourned,’ he says softly. ‘Jury out, please. We’ll break for five minutes, Ms Plant.’

  I nod my thanks at him, saying nothing.

  Jason comes for me and leads me out to a bench adjoined to the wall of the courtroom. It smells nice out here. Of central heating, of coffee, of that very specific smell people carry on them, having just got out of a warm car in winter. Frost and the synthetic scent of dusty heaters. The comforting stuff of normal life. I can sit and pretend I am here for bad reasons but not horrible ones. A driving offence. An assault, even.

  My family haven’t filed out of the courtroom. They’ve chosen to wait in there for me to resume, an expectant, judgemental decision, I think.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Jason sits next to me, closer than other lawyers to other clients, I imagine. Tears squeeze
at my throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again.

  ‘It’s fine, it’s fine,’ he says, in the tone of voice I sometimes have to use with Paul when he gets overtired. His voice is low. ‘Technically legally speaking, we shouldn’t talk.’

  ‘Since when are you about technicalities?’

  ‘True. I have even dealt with jurisdictional conflicts for you … to get the trial here.’

  ‘I knew it would be hard. I thought I was –’

  ‘You are ready,’ Jason says, chewing the skin on his lips, which are dry. He’s staring down at the floor and not at me. ‘Look. I’m not going to lie to you. You have to be ready.’ He looks at me and I realize that, while it isn’t a threat, it is a command. The strong arms of the justice system are around me now, and there is no choice in this, no freedom, not really.

  ‘Okay,’ I say in a small, sad voice. ‘How long have I got?’

  ‘We need to make some progress before lunch-time,’ he says. He gets out the blue folder with my name on it and taps it.

  ‘You aren’t going to your evening appointment today,’ I say, trying to buy time, trying to buy some normality too, to let my heartrate return to normal.

  Jason throws his head back and laughs, grey hair catching the dim courtroom lights. A couple of barristers turn to look at him, but he doesn’t acknowledge them.

  ‘You want to know what it is,’ he says, looking sideways at me.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘All right, but only because you’re mid-trial,’ he says lightly. ‘I don’t trust just anyone with this level of intel.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say softly. I look at the door to the courtroom.

  ‘Is the barrister good?’ I say.

  ‘Not bad,’ Jason says. ‘It’s AA.’

  ‘What’s AA?’

  ‘Where I go. I am an alcoholic.’ He says it as though he is remarking on the weather, sips his coffee and looks at me.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So there you are. I am afraid you are represented by a madman.’

  I let a little laugh escape. ‘We all have our vices.’

  ‘I’ve been sober ten years.’

  ‘And you go every day?’

  ‘The alcohol masks the problem.’

  ‘And what’s the problem?’

  Jason finishes his coffee. ‘Oh, a whole host of them. Getting obsessed with stuff. Filling the voids, you know. Like you say’ – he glances at me – ‘we all have our vices. Anyway – I’m very glad to say I’m quite level these days, and more than capable of being a good lawyer … technicalities or not.’

  I feel a rush of hope, right there, in the courtroom, halfway through a murder trial. That, when this is over, I might regenerate too. A phoenix in the ashes. That there is hope for damaged people, for people who have made massive, massive mistakes.

  ‘I’m rooting for you,’ he adds.

  That’s all it takes. A little glimmer. Of support, of coffee, of warmth. I can’t see the road there, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Jason can see it for me. I get to my feet. ‘Okay,’ I say, the two syllables tumbling out in one hot breath. ‘Okay.’

  Jason gets to his feet again and follows me in, leads me to the witness box, past the empty jury seats, past the empty judge’s bench. The courtroom gradually fills up again.

  ‘Okay, Ms Plant,’ the barrister says in a bored tone. ‘We won’t redo the oath but can you please reconfirm your name for the courtroom record?’

  I nod, ready this time. I turn directly to the jury. ‘Catherine Plant,’ I say.

  42.

  Then

  Cathy

  Tom has been texting. And now – just like that – he has called.

  ‘At work,’ she says, in response to his asking where she is.

  ‘You work a lot,’ he says. ‘Like – a lot. Want to come out with me instead?’

  She closes the screen on her computer, where she’s been researching Italian planning. She can’t seem to find an answer on how long they have until they start digging. Weeks, months, years. Italy concerns itself less with bureaucracy and timescales than England.

  ‘That’s the job,’ she says, then clears the history on her computer, turning her attention to him.

  Cathy has never been on a second date in her life. She can’t believe he wants to. She could leave work, she thinks, looking around the back office. She could leave that prescription. She could hand over that German shepherd to the night nurses …

  ‘I know,’ Tom says now, a long, drawn-out noise, a pleasant one. ‘I could come to help. I’m a brilliant vets’ assistant, I promise. I’m unflappable.’

  Cathy lets a laugh escape. ‘That must be nice.’

  She walks into the empty reception, still on the phone. Frannie’s gone home now – she works three long days per week, when Paul goes to nursery and their parents’, and two short.

  Rain moves down the plate-glass frontage so fast it looks like it’s shivering. Wheat will soon be harvested in the field opposite. Autumn is almost upon them, this weird, awful summer soon to be in the past, in the season before, and then in the season before that.

  Who knows how long they’ve got left before they find the body? How many seasons – two or three maybe? They’re on borrowed time. It makes her fatalistic.

  ‘Come be my assistant,’ she says to Tom.

  ‘Already on my way,’ he says, and Cathy hears the chink of his keys in his hand.

  She goes into the staff room and, right there on the table, as though it’s a message from above, is Frannie’s ASOS parcel, still not yet posted back. She hesitates, then carries it into the toilet cubicle, undresses, unwraps the dress and slides it over her body. Her hair has become static where the dress touched it, and she smooths it down, looking at herself. Where the dress swamped Frannie, it flatters Cathy. The sleeves are billowy, the dark material swirling around her feet. It’s casual but chic, a deep, almost-black patterned with autumn leaves. She pulls the ochre drawstrings around the middle and – ah – there she is. A Cathy with a waist emerges from the depths. She takes a photo of herself and sends it to Frannie, saying, Can I keep it? Frannie replies immediately: Of course! It’s on me! Stunning. Cathy stares at those texts, those sisterly, generous texts, and at herself in the dress, and tries to grasp and keep hold of these relics of normality.

  Tom’s smile is broad when he arrives. He rocks back on his heels, looking at her, Cathy thinks perhaps flirtatiously. ‘In the back is a spayed German shepherd,’ she says, ignoring his expression. ‘She had a pyometra.’

  ‘Right, boss,’ he says. ‘Nice dress. Strange attire for a vet.’

  ‘I changed.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘We need to check her obs.’

  ‘Okay,’ he laughs.

  He’s in a pale denim shirt, sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. She pauses, standing by the door to the recovery room. He stands right next to her, body heat emanating off him. He doesn’t kiss her, but his hand comes to her waist and his index finger curls around it, just for a second. ‘Okay,’ he says again.

  She pushes open the door. The German shepherd still has the oxygen tube in, is lying on her side in her cage. ‘Looks worse than she is,’ Cathy says over her shoulder to him.

  ‘God,’ Tom says, looking shocked for the first time.

  ‘She’s really fine.’ Cathy kneels down and puts on a pair of gloves, easing the blue tube out of the dog’s mouth. ‘Right, then, Thomas,’ she says over her shoulder to him, ‘please can you get me a syringe out of’ – she points – ‘that drawer there.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ he says easily, springing to his feet and passing it to her. ‘Next?’

  ‘That’s all for now,’ she says with a laugh. She draws up and injects painkillers and anti-inflammatories. The dog moans softly, and Cathy cups her face gently. ‘Okay, let’s give her a few minutes. Prescription duty for me. You – keep an eye on Bella.’ She points to the dog.

  ‘Absolutely, dog sitting,’ Tom says, settlin
g down cross-legged in front of the cage. ‘The best job in the world.’

  Cathy checks the prescription pile in the backroom and authorizes them one by one, but she keeps sneaking a look at Tom. She can see him through the little window, sitting diligently, intermittently stroking the dog’s head. He doesn’t check his phone, never looks around, never noses through their things. Just sits stroking the dog, exactly as she told him to.

  He leans back on his hands the way he did at the baggage claim and Cathy’s heart turns over in her chest.

  The prescriptions are almost finished, but she wants to go now. ‘All set,’ she says through the door to the recovery room.

  ‘Bella is in fine spirits,’ Tom says easily. ‘We’ve been chatting about all sorts.’ He dimples as he turns around to look at her.

  ‘Good,’ Cathy says, smiling back. She stretches out her hands to him to pull him up and suddenly his body is right against hers in the dimness of the recovery room. She leans back slightly, tilting up her head to him, wanting nothing more than to be completely enveloped by his smell, to have those lips on hers.

  ‘Cathy,’ he says, a note of mock admonishment in his voice. ‘What will Bella say?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Cathy says, discarding every single thought about Verona, about how she shouldn’t get close to somebody new.

  ‘Okay, then,’ Tom says, and he brings her body towards his, but he doesn’t kiss her, not yet, just whispers something incomprehensible but nice, his words travelling from his mouth, right into hers, until their lips meet.

  ‘Wait, there’s two more,’ Cathy says, as they go into the backroom to get her bag and collect Macca after a few minutes. ‘Two prescriptions of Joe’s,’ she says. ‘Then we can go.’ He leans his elbows on the desk right next to her, peering at what she writes.

  ‘Joe’s thyroid cats,’ she says. ‘Two lots of methimazole. One is tablet form, one a cream.’

  ‘A cream?’

  ‘You wipe it on the flap of their ear,’ Cathy says.

  ‘Nice.’