by Kate Helm
He’s slender, like a young David Tennant, flanked by two bulky prison guards. What stands out in this image are his nervous chalky-blue eyes. I remember how they’d dart around the courtroom, as though he was looking for something.
Until they settled on me.
We were both eighteen, the youngest people in the court. What he couldn’t have known was that I’d been alone in court too, once. I felt his fear. More than that. I felt unsure he was guilty. As he stood in the dock, he didn’t look capable of stealing a car, never mind killing his stepmother. And that is what I drew: a lost boy.
The reporter gave me a bollocking when he saw the sketch, and I thought my new career was over before it had begun. It didn’t fit the story, ‘having him look like butter wouldn’t melt.’
It only took a day for me to realise how wrong I’d been about Daniel. I hadn’t slept the night before Jim Fielding gave his evidence. I was terrified I’d screw up, because everyone already knew what the grieving hero looked like. His face had become synonymous with heroism. A local photographer had taken a picture of him moments after he rescued the children from a fire. It made every single front page.
I forgot my fear as soon as Jim stepped into the witness box. His evidence was so compelling I could almost smell the smoke and hear the hungry lap of the flames consuming his house. There are faults in my sketch, sure. It’s overworked – the chequered pattern on his chokehold tie is fussily drawn, his hair too dense. But still, I can’t take my eyes off the image of Jim reading out a Christmas card, tears falling down his cheeks.
I drain the wine, my ears already buzzing from the alcohol. Thirteen years on, and it’s still the most dramatic testimony I’ve ever witnessed.
The QC had asked the jury members to look at copies of a Christmas card written by Jim’s wife Tessa. It seemed manipulative to me, and I’d even shot Daniel a sympathetic glance.
‘Mr Fielding, would you read out the message written by your late wife?’
As Jim spoke, his fingers gripped the outside of the card, a huge, padded thing with a gilded fir tree and nativity scene. I caught a glimpse of the text on the front: Merry Xmas to the Best Mum and Dad in the World.
Jim took a deep breath, his fastened suit straining against his chest.
‘To Mum and Dad. Wishing you the very best Christmas ever, all of us together.’ Jim’s country vowels were soft and long and his voice never faltered even though he was already crying. ‘With lots and lots of love from Tessa, Jim, Amy – and baby makes four! Isn’t that the best pressie ever??? I’m pregnant! You’re gonna be grandparents!!!’
Jim held up a flimsy printout clipped to the inside of the card: a snowy scan of an unborn child.
I realised what it meant before the jury members did.
‘Did your son know your wife was pregnant, Mr Fielding?’
Jim sighed. ‘I’ve asked myself that question so many times. Whether he might have guessed and started the fire to kill both of them. We’d planned to tell him that evening, invited him back home, a second chance. But maybe he found out and that’s what made him do this.’ He turned to face the dock. ‘Please, Daniel. Tell me. Is that what made you do it?’
But Daniel stared straight ahead.
‘And did the police explain why your son is only charged with your wife’s murder?’
Jim nodded. ‘They said the baby didn’t count. That because he wasn’t capable of living outside Tessa’s body, that he couldn’t be murdered.’
‘It was a boy?’
‘Yes. They found out at the post-mortem. Tessa never knew. She’d wanted it to be a surprise.’
‘Baby killer!’ someone shouted from the gallery.
Two of the jury members were already in tears. But I felt wired – in that moment, I understood what my real job was. My hand zig-zagged notes across the page, as though possessed by something. Perhaps the same thing that kept dragging me back to the Bailey, even though being in court brought back terrible memories.
My ‘gift’ meant I could help the guilty get what was coming to them.
As soon as the court adjourned, I drew two fast images in succession: one of Jim, and then a new sketch of Daniel.
I look at it now, and remember how every line was designed to damn him. No longer a lost boy – he stands in defiance, not fear. His fists are balled, not in self-defence, but with a killer’s pent-up rage.
That’s the sketch the paper still uses, when they find some spurious reason to mention the case. I made sure that Daniel Fielding would not be forgotten. Sometimes I even wonder if that’s why he changed his plea: my picture showed him he couldn’t hide what he was.
‘The next station will be Brighton, where this train terminates.’
Already? I tuck the drawings back into the plastic sleeve, but an article falls out, onto the floor.
I pick it up: it’s the double-page spread from the last day of the trial.
The papers went to town when Daniel unexpectedly pleaded guilty on the day his defence was about to begin. There’s a photo of Tessa and Jim Fielding on their wedding day, the summer before she died. The picture has the sunshine filter turned up high, their faces bleached out by happiness. Jim’s daughter Amy, just about to shed her puppy fat, wears a pale-pink dress. She holds the hand of an adorable little bridesmaid, and at the edge of the frame is a pageboy, or rather half a pageboy, unable to keep still. The children are Jodie and Charlie O’Neill, the kids whose lives Jim saved only months later.
Daniel skulks on the edge of the family group, in the same baggy suit he wore to court, as uncomfortable as any teenager would be at his father’s wedding. To start with, the lawyers said, he tolerated his new stepmother. But he was harbouring resentment that turned into a terrible rage.
At the centre of the article, as always, is the photo that made Jim Fielding famous, taken in the moments after he rescued those kids. I barely glance at it as I pick up the clipping, but something catches my eye . . .
No.
I lean in close.
That’s not possible.
It’s like I’m seeing the image afresh. Jim Fielding is outside his house, flames filling the window behind him. He’s dressed as Santa Claus, but instead of a white beard, his face is sooty like a miner’s, his eyes scarlet. He has one child under each arm. One is the girl from the wedding photo, the bridesmaid, in a blackened sleepsuit with bunny ears.
But it’s the other child who transfixes me. It can’t be. Surely?
It’s Charlie, the pageboy. Half his face is obscured as he leans into Jim’s body, tears running stripes down his filthy cheeks.
He’s wearing Liverpool football pyjamas.
The back of his shirt has partly melted, so it’s hard to tell the fabric apart from burned skin. But I can make out the lettering.
11 REDKNAPP
9
I hold the image closer to my eyes. The newsprint dissolves into tiny dots, then sharpens again.
It is the child I saw on Brunswick Square, and outside the court.
The carriage is unbearably hot, completely airless. Struggling for breath, I scramble out of my seat, towards the doors, gasping, willing the train to stop now.
Breathe, Suzi-soo, breathe.
My mother’s voice in my head.
When the train finally stops, I jab at the door-release three, four times, and jump out. I run to the barriers, my hand shaking so much I drop my ticket. A ragtime rhythm fills my ears as I sprint past a man playing the station piano.
Out of the building. Down the hill. In the distance, the sea is turning purple. People block my path and I try to skirt around them, running, not looking at their faces, in case I see someone else who can’t really be there.
My breath gets shorter. My brain races. The boy I’ve been seeing is definitely Charlie O’Neill, the little kid in Liverpool pyjamas. Except he probably doesn’t hero-worship Jamie Redknapp anymore, because now he must be . . . what, seventeen years old.
Cars brake, horns blare
as I race across King’s Road. The sea is so close now. I don’t even know what I’ll do when I get there. I collapse against the railings for a moment, trying to catch my breath to cover that final four hundred yards. I grip the metal so hard that turquoise paint flakes off in my hands.
Run. Run again, across the shifting pebbles, to the shoreline. I rip off my shoes, step into the sea in my bare feet, needing the shock of the cold to bring me to my senses.
That boy can’t be real.
The water laps up to my ankles and my breath slows. Abruptly, I stop feeling hot, and begin to shiver, though the rose madder sunset is still warm. Part of me wants to chase it, past the lagoon, past the cranes and silos of Shoreham, the pier at Worthing. I never want to stop moving.
But you can’t outrun madness when it runs in your family.
Is this how it begins? I’ve tried so hard to protect myself and others from harm – turned my back on friendship, and love. Lived alone. Lived a lie. Obliterated all trace of the girl I was, to get away from what my father was and what he did.
I drop down onto the pebbles, my shins grinding against the cold stone. There has to be an explanation for this.
The water is lapping away, the tide going out.
I hear voices: a party of lads, splashing in the water next to me. Beer spilling out of open cans, the smell of weed drifting over. They’re the age Charlie O’Neill must be now. Getting drunk, pulling girls.
‘Fancy a puff, gorgeous?’ one of them calls out to me. The others laugh.
The menace has gone and everything seems normal again. Even me.
‘Does your mum know what you’re smoking?’ I say, and they laugh again.
I’m just . . . tired. From the night with the teacher, maybe. I got drunk, took a stranger home, lost sleep, felt discombobulated afterwards. And the portrait commission has made me look back at some of my bigger cases.
That’s all.
I scramble to my feet, seawater dripping from my trouser hems, feet stinging as I push them back into my sodden shoes. I turn away from the shore. This can’t have anything to do with my father, or what he did.
And if I am wrong?
The sea is only two minutes from my flat. I’ve always known what I have to do if I begin to lose my grip on reality.
They say drowning is a gentle thing, once you stop struggling.
10
As I walk to court next morning, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being followed.
I turn around to check: the first time, it’s a cyclist, scowling because I’ve strayed into the bike lane. When I get the feeling again, I don’t turn. There is nobody there.
The case continues. Oli calls one of Julie Tranter’s friends, to talk about why they’d gone to the hotel. A girls’ weekend, supporting a third friend who had just split up with her fiancé. The young woman paints a picture of pampering and early nights, titanium white robes, soft shoulders to cry on.
‘Miss Henry, you’re @proseccogal on Twitter, am I right?’ Cruella asks, when she begins her cross-examination.
The girl nods.
‘And can I just check, you’ve never suffered any hacking, compromising of your account, that sort of thing?’
‘Nope. I work in IT. Change my password every week.’
‘Good. So we can assume that all the postings and photographs from your account on the weekend of the alleged incident, were yours? Because I’d like to show you some of those.’
She reaches down for a file and passes a pile of papers across to the judge, the witness, the jury. I can’t read Oli’s face but his shoulders are hunched up, a sure sign of stress.
A sudden movement in the public gallery catches my eye. I glance up at the box suspended above the court. Today the double row of pull-down seats is only half-full: during a juicy murder trial, the public have to draw lots.
I recognise the footballer’s mother, his brother, his manager. But when I look past them, I flinch.
A child – it’s Charlie, of course – sits in the corner, legs swinging in the air because his bare feet won’t reach the lino. He’s yawning.
He’s not real.
So why does he look more alive than anyone else in court?
I blink.
Charlie has gone.
‘Did you post these tweets, Miss Henry?’ Cruella asks, as the judge and jury members study the papers.
I glance up at the public gallery again, holding my breath. Three people again. Mother, brother, manager. No child.
Thank God.
‘Yeah. But before it all went wrong for Julie. Before we knew what. . . he was capable of.’
‘That’s for the jury to decide,’ Cruella says, dismissively. ‘But perhaps we can look at each one in turn and you can tell me about the moment you took it. Let’s start with the one that reads: “look at who we’ve just seen checking in.” Can you read it out?’
The witness sighs. ‘”Look at who we’ve just seen checking in. Sam Carr. Our girlie weekend just got a lot more exciting. Things are looking up.” ’
‘And you took that picture? Of Sam Carr? Or to be more specific, of Sam Carr’s groin region in a pair of tight gym shorts.’
A wave of laughter passes through the court.
The witness nods and the footballer glances up at the gallery. Before I can stop myself, I look up again. Charlie is back, laughing, though he can’t know what this means. Perhaps he admires the footballer.
Stop it. He’s not real.
I blink. Make him disappear. He’s just there because Fielding and his story are on my mind.
Except I saw the boy before I knew the editor wanted me to focus on Jim.
As the witness continues, I can’t focus on her. I am too busy looking for the child who doesn’t exist.
*
Cruella destroys @proseccogal using the smiling selfies with the alleged victim, and the tweets about the mega bar bill they’re running up.
Oli doesn’t re-examine. It’s not a knockout blow, but it doesn’t help his victim’s credibility.
After the judge adjourns early for the weekend, Oli approaches me.
‘You got time for a coffee?’
‘Shouldn’t you be going off to paint the nursery or something? Take your mind off all this.’
‘We’ve had it ready for weeks. Organic eggshell in primrose spring, or possibly spring primrose. Imogen spent months mulling the paint charts. Now she’s busy stockpiling gadgets and nappy rash cream and God only knows what else.’
‘You’ll know what it’s all for soon enough.’
‘Maybe. Though we have a maternity nurse booked to help us out at first.’ He looks slightly shamefaced. ‘I’ll do the fun stuff though. Rugby training. Whether it’s a girl or a boy. Anyway, the traffic back into London will be hell so I won’t try to drive back yet. Manny’s after you’re done? Forty minutes?’
I shake my head. ‘I need some fresh air after that evidence. The pier? And make it an hour, I’m getting slower at drawing these days.’
In my sketch, I blur the witness as she looks down, and place the footballer in the foreground, so he’s bigger, more powerful. It’s as far as I dare go without risking making Toby or Neena suspicious.
Neena glances at my drawing as she mumbles her piece to camera, committing it to memory.
I wait. Has she seen through me, realised what I am trying to do?
‘Is the sketch all right, Neena?’
‘Yeah, I just . . .’ But she just sighs. ‘Forget it, I’m being picky. It’s been a long day, right, George? We’ll all be on better form once this week is over.’
11
Oli is standing at the entrance to the pier, framed by candyflosscoloured signs, and cascades of bulbs.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ I say, kissing him on both cheeks. ‘Last minute queries.’
‘It’s fine. I like staring at the sea. Enjoying the calm before the storm.’
‘Are you excited?’
He smiles. ‘
I’m utterly terrified. I can’t really admit it to Imogen. She’s the one who has to be in the trenches, as it were.’
As we pass through the entry gates, a sudden breeze hits us sideways. Oli puts out his hand automatically to stop me falling.
‘She’s probably guessed how you’re feeling.’
He nods. ‘I do have an awfully transparent face. So, how about you, Georgie? What news?’
I’m almost tempted to tell him about Charlie. My kind-hearted ex approaches every problem – in or out of court – with a mixture of critical thinking and empathy. He’d take my odd hallucination in his stride.
But he has more than enough on his plate.
‘All good. Getting lots of work. Crime still pays.’
The pier isn’t busy yet; the schoolkids haven’t arrived. Manic jingles get louder as we walk closer to the amusements. To our right, the burned-out West Pier glows copper, skeletal and elegant as an ageing catwalk model.
‘And it’s working out, being down here?’
‘I like it. The light is beautiful. And my neighbours are nice. I no longer worry that I could die all alone in my flat and not be discovered for several months.’
It was meant as a joke, but Oli gives me that look, the I worry about you one that floors me every time.
‘And you’re making friends?’
‘Oli, don’t fuss.’
But I smile, to show I don’t really mind. When I’m with him, I remember how much I liked knowing someone cared. Until I began to hate myself for all the lies I told.
‘I only want you to be as happy as . . .’ He stops.
‘As you and Imogen are?’
Oli shrugs. ‘Is that wrong?’
‘No. It’s nice.’
I walk faster, looking anywhere but at Oli, so I won’t splurge out everything that’s wrong with my life.
He catches me up. ‘I fancy doughnuts.’
‘You don’t want to get grease on your suit, Oli.’
‘I feel like living dangerously.’
There are white-painted benches running alongside this section of the pier, and I sit facing Kemp Town. Oli walks back towards me, cradling a large paper bag, oil from the doughnuts already bleeding through.