He wants to come over. To help. But I can’t let him do that. He can’t help me. I raise my eyes heavenwards and try not to think about it.
He gives some pat advice, about it not becoming my problem, but it is: it is.
I stand in the garden for a few more minutes, scrolling through the texts again. I’ll get her some Calpol. To calm her down. To numb any pain she’s in. And maybe then I will calm down, too.
A strange plan is forming in my mind, unwittingly, as though it is not my own; mental weeds growing, obscuring my home-grown plants. I could leave. Go to Londis. Buy the Calpol. That could be my breather. And then I wouldn’t have to put her in the pushchair, bring everything with me: the changing bag, the endless bottles.
It’s almost the same as standing in the garden and having a smoke and a cry. I’ll be less than five minutes. I put her on the kitchen floor yesterday, and she survived that. It’s not cutting corners: it’s survival.
I set her down in the Moses basket. Her crying doesn’t get any louder, and so, satisfied, I leave her, closing the door behind me softly. I lock it, too, to keep her safe.
48
Martha
Frannie is next. A curious woman who lives opposite Becky. I know her to say hello to, but then, I know almost everybody Becky knows, and vice versa. This is how our relationship was. Her oldest friend became my friend, and came on my hen do. We forgot how we knew the people in our lives, only that they were tangled up in the web of me and Becky.
Frannie’s very fair, and very serious. Becky says she is too earnest. I have only met her a handful of times, and know that she used to live with her sister – they were often to be seen reading in their garden – and had a dog together called Patrick who they took to a dog nursery every morning at eight o’clock. Becky called it Malory Towers for Dogs, and would only ever refer to it as this. But then the sister left. ‘Got married, had a baby,’ Becky said bitterly.
Frannie enters the courtroom, brought to the witness box by an usher. She’s wearing a pair of huge glasses. Her hair is dip-dyed, near blonde at the ends and dark at the roots. ‘Very Brighton,’ Becky would say.
She’s wearing a paisley dress with bell-bottom sleeves that drape absurdly over the wood of the witness box.
‘Are you Francesca Lewis?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Will you tell us a bit about what you saw on the night of the twenty-sixth of October?’
49
Francesca Lewis
7.20 p.m., Thursday 26 October
Frannie was trying to French-plait her hair. It wasn’t so bad, living alone. It felt fat and full. Plus, she felt sometimes like she was a more interesting person when she lived alone. She was a cross-stitcher, a woman who liked to take a walk around the streets right before bed, a lipstick-lover.
She propped the phone up on the window sill, paused on the first video. She liked to do her hair there. She could stand the phone up against the glass and use the pane as a mirror. This is how she did the hair tutorials, even though she was thirty-four and alone and should probably be depressed.
She was just reaching up to loop a complicated bit of hair that didn’t seem to belong anywhere into the main plait when her eye was caught by a woman at the window opposite. Ah. Wasn’t that nice? Her neighbour, Becky. Cradling her sister’s baby. Becky was looking after her a lot at the moment.
They were always exchanging things: the car seat Becky had given to Martha, the pair of shoes Becky had borrowed for a night out. ‘See you Thursday,’ Martha would say, ‘and bring the chutney.’ Things like that. Family stuff. She missed that. Her sister, Olive, now lived in Cornwall with her new husband. It had all happened very quickly.
Frannie looked across again at the image in the window. It gave a new meaning to the word tender. One hand around the baby’s head, protectively. The other around its bottom. Comforting. Her body bent towards the baby. The room softly lit, amber, behind them.
She couldn’t help but wonder as she stared at the mother and baby framed in the window, like a Madonna and child.
Despite herself, Frannie couldn’t help watching them for a long moment. Aunt and niece.
50
Martha
‘Thank you,’ Harriet says. ‘So how would you describe the defendant’s body language towards the baby?’
‘Warm and protective. A hand around the baby’s head.’
‘Nothing further.’
‘How far away were you from the window?’ Ellen says, as she gets to her feet, as though she can’t possibly wait.
She shouldn’t be going in for the kill already. I fiddle with a loose thread on my jeans. Let us have this moment, the moment where this nice woman saw Becky with Layla. Let us remember it. Less than an hour or so before Layla died, she was held, a hand cupped tenderly around her head. Perhaps Layla thought it was me, momentarily. Perhaps Layla leaned in, ever so slightly, the longer, golden hairs along the nape of her neck just tickling Becky’s hands. She was safe, and Becky was calm and protective, her body soft, her voice low.
‘Erm … God,’ Frannie says, tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I have no idea.’
‘Your house backs on to theirs, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘The nursery that Layla was in has two windows – front and back. It’s a long room. Let’s look at the Scenes of Crime Officer’s photographs.’ She flicks through the bundle and directs the jury to look at them, too. ‘Here is the bedroom,’ she says.
I close my eyes. No, not the Scenes of Crime Officer’s exhibits. Not during this defence witness’s evidence that Becky was doing nothing wrong during Layla’s final hours.
She holds up a photograph. It was taken in the morning and the light is wintry, milky. The Moses basket lies, discarded, on the floor. Flappy scrunched up next to that. The first photograph shows the front window, the second one the back. I had always liked that room. Last night, looking up from the street, I could see right through it. Front to back, like it was a tunnel.
‘So the back of your house backs on to the back of Becky’s. Right?’
‘Yes.’
‘So there are two gardens between you.’
‘Yes.’
Ellen puts the photographs down. ‘Twenty metres, thirty, would you say?’
‘Yes. Probably.’
‘It’s thirty-two.’
‘Okay, thirty-two,’ Frannie says.
I wonder why they play these games.
‘How clearly can you really tell someone’s emotions, their stance, their real body language, from thirty-two metres, and through two windows? Thirty-two metres would be … it would be out of this room, and into the corridor beyond. Notwithstanding the fact that it was night-time, and, by your own evidence, the room was dimly lit.’
‘Is there a question in this monologue?’ Harriet says, not standing up, merely turning her head towards Ellen like a polite patron to a waitress, eyebrows raised.
‘How clearly could you see?’
‘Well, I thought I—’
‘Can you clearly see the faces of the public gallery here?’
‘Just about, yes.’
‘Well, they are only fifteen metres away, Frannie.’
‘I could see her.’
‘Did you like looking?’
‘I … what?’
‘Did you like looking at them?’
Frannie blushes. ‘Yes, it was … I was … it was a hard time, and I liked looking.’
‘A “hard time”?’
‘Well, I was living alone for the first time, and I liked … I liked looking at that image, of Becky holding a baby.’
‘And so you saw what you wanted to see.’
‘No, I—’
‘Nothing further.’
When we get home, Scott sits down in the big love seat, right next to a framed black-and-white photograph of Layla on the wall.
When I told Becky about my first date with Scott, she raised a hand to me and said, ‘Let me guess
– he’s a nice guy?’
‘Yes,’ I had said. ‘But isn’t Marc?’
She smiled, then, dimples showing either side of her cheeks. ‘He’s not a Nice Guy,’ she said.
I hadn’t known what she meant. She seemed to know more about life and its rules than I did, and that night, when I saw Scott’s number flash up on my phone, I thought: Are you a Nice Guy?
I supposed he was. But what was wrong with that? As I answered, a cold fear arrived in my stomach: was I settling? I ignored it. If I didn’t pay it any attention, it would go away.
I pull the laptop on to my knees, now, and begin to google.
Babies who died for no reason.
Babies who look like they were smothered but were not.
Accidental smothering false conviction eight-week-old.
There are some relevant hits. I read them, voraciously, making meticulous notes on my pad. I think of Frannie’s evidence, of Becky cradling Layla in the window, backlit. Becky is innocent. I let the words turn around in my mind. Could she be? Her damning Google search, the overheard shouting. Could they all be nothing? Bits of stray evidence caught up in the search, like ocean debris? Okay, I think to myself. Maybe.
Could Marc have let himself into Becky’s house during that five-minute Londis window? Is it even possible something could have happened then? The prosecution said the death wouldn’t have been after nine thirty but could have been as early as eight. Becky was at Londis at seven forty-five. It’s possible something could have happened when Becky was at Londis … something accidental. Something they then covered up. What was that bruise? Maybe it was that?
Maybe Marc came over and something happened. Together, they staged an accident. Positioned Layla in the cot. Waited it out. Called the ambulance in the morning. They’d thought they could fool everyone into thinking it was cot death; that the medical tests wouldn’t reveal the truth.
Or maybe Marc had done it – I recall that shouty, fatherly temper of his – and Becky was covering for him. They figured she would be more likely to get away with it than him. A man. The sister would never be convicted, they’d reasoned.
That could be it.
But why wouldn’t they have a party line? Why didn’t they concoct something? A fall? Co-sleeping? She could’ve said co-sleeping, and got off.
It doesn’t make any sense.
I read and read the internet, and my notes stretch to four pages, before Scott looks up.
‘What are you doing?’ he says.
‘Research.’
‘Researching what?’
‘Accidental smothering of young babies,’ I say. ‘And I’ve been thinking about whether somebody else could’ve been there that night, too.’
Scott doesn’t say anything, which is almost worse than a diatribe. He merely exhales, nostrils flaring, and shakes his head. He reaches for the remote control and turns the television on.
The local news blares out into the room. They’re covering our case, and he changes the channel.
51
Judge Christopher Matthews, QC
‘I can’t believe the ex-husband said all that stuff,’ Christopher says to Rumpole in the garden. ‘Bloody idiot.’
The dog is sniffing the hydrangeas Sadie planted one Tuesday afternoon when he was working. They are turning brown around the edges of their petals.
‘Can you imagine?’
Christopher has seen plenty of ill-advised witness performances. Ex-lovers, barbed answers to questions not asked. Lies told, of course. Contempt of court, and the rest of it. But he’s never seen anything quite like this. An ex-husband, sure his wife is innocent, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And looking at her from the witness box with that look on his face. Maybe they were in on it together.
Nevertheless, he thinks the barrister was nasty, going for their relationship history. He almost said something, but decided not to after a moment’s thought. Let them go for it, he thought. Whatever.
He stands, now, in his garden, worrying away at Marc’s evidence, but can’t find what bothered him most about it. He goes inside, leaving Rumpole in the flower bed, and sits at the breakfast bar, not knowing what to do with himself.
It comes to him, five episodes of Game of Thrones, four beers and six hours later: Marc respects Becky. He looked at her with respect in the courtroom. And so when she told him she was innocent, he believed her.
When was the last time Christopher looked at Sadie that way? He remembers, once, referring wryly to her nursing career as wiping bottoms in an unusually vicious, alcohol-fuelled moment at a dinner party when he chose to prioritize the cheap laugh over the offence it would cause. She never mentioned it, but he saw her shoulders tense. He should have apologized. Why didn’t he?
What did she think of him at the end? Does she miss Rumpole? She’s never said, and he has never enquired. Does she still love him? Not according to their divorce petition, no.
He sets his can of beer down on the arm of the sofa and pulls his laptop over. He will email her, he thinks.
As he types, a peculiar sensation comes over him. It is something to do with the stillness of his house. The only sound is Rumpole, turning around in the corner of the living room.
Layla.
That’s who Christopher is thinking of. The baby who died: by accident or from something sinister, he isn’t yet sure. But there is something weird about it. That is where the goosebumps come from.
Something isn’t quite right.
Something isn’t quite fitting together, somehow.
FRIDAY
* * *
52
Martha
I go to Becky’s house in the early morning. This time, I let myself in.
I wonder dimly if Scott knows of my absences: my late-night wanderings, my early-morning outings. He probably notices, as I notice his. Maybe he thinks I am seeing somebody else. That I don’t love him.
I shifted closer to him in bed last night, my skin against his, but he didn’t wake. He would have had no idea it had happened.
I’m standing in the hallway, my spare key in my hand, and it’s the overpowering smell that does it. The smell of their home. I never used to be able to smell it, I was there so often. I close my eyes as I think of it. Takeaways with Marc and Becky while Xander played on the floor, back when they were happy. White wine in Becky’s garden. Taking Layla over there for the first time, when she was just three days old and it still hurt to sit down. Xander cradling her clumsily while we watched anxiously. It was all ahead of us, then, or so we thought.
It was one such night, maybe just over a year ago, when she was still raw from her split with Marc, when she asked me about Scott. A couple of glasses of wine down on a Saturday night, she said, ‘Do you honestly really love him?’
‘What?’ I almost laughed. ‘Scott?’
‘Well, ignore me, if you want,’ she had said, sloshing wine everywhere as she gestured. ‘I married for love, and look where I am.’
‘But what do you mean?’ I said. I shouldn’t have asked. I knew what she meant.
On my hen do, in the quiet underground of a spa, I had asked her how she knew Marc was the one. She had wiggled her toes against the hot wall of the sauna, and said, ‘If you have to ask, he’s not.’
‘I just don’t think you’re that into each other,’ she said simply, pouring more wine for herself.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said.
But now, I remember the ruthlessness of it. Ruthless. That is one word I might use to describe her.
There will be evidence upstairs. I know it. Poked around in – by the Scenes of Crime Officer, the police, and maybe the medics. But there’ll be other evidence, too. A life, stopped. A glass of water, half empty, on Becky’s bedside table, perhaps, or a half-full laundry basket.
I can’t take any more steps into her hallway. It’s enough, for now, to smell Becky’s house smell. I leave after just a few minutes more.
As I’m walking down her drive, my hand on the
cool metal of her garden gate, I feel it. It’s conviction. That’s what it is. The complete, assured conviction that somebody did this to Layla.
And that it wasn’t Becky.
A murder happened here. My body knows it. And it tells me it was Marc.
I get in my car and drive in the direction of his house.
Marc answers his door with a confused expression on his face. It’s six o’clock in the morning.
He’s wearing a grey T-shirt and jogging bottoms. He looks up the stairs behind him, then shuts the door, standing barefoot on the welcome mat outside in the heat. I guess Xander is there, and he doesn’t want him to hear.
‘God,’ he says. ‘Martha, if this is about—’
‘Was it you?’ I say, unable to stop the words tumbling out of my mouth.
He says nothing.
‘Was it you?’ I ask again.
He pauses for a second, raking his hand through his hair. ‘This again,’ he says. His voice breaks. ‘You really think I did it.’
‘Did you go over to see Becky? What about when she went to Londis?’
He raises his head to look at me. ‘I can’t imagine you’re going to believe me,’ he says. ‘But it wasn’t me. I didn’t do it. I wasn’t there.’
‘You tried to help her, didn’t you? After? You covered it up … you said nobody came over. You didn’t say went over.’
He blinks, and that sentence – evidence I was so sure about – seems to evaporate into nothing.
‘I didn’t go there,’ he says. ‘I wish I could tell you how I felt the moment I got that call, Martha.’ He meets my eyes. ‘The call in the morning about Layla. It was the worst moment of my entire life. And Becky, she … I don’t know what you think, but, Martha, her heart is broken.’
‘Because she is accused?’ I say.
‘No. Because she lost her niece. Her niece that she loved and cared for so much. She feels guilty. Not because she is guilty, but because she feels it. Layla was in her care and …’
No Further Questions Page 23