He doesn’t break my gaze. His eyes dampen, but still he keeps looking at me.
‘You never doubted her?’ I say. ‘You never once thought she’d done it?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Not once, not ever.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ I say. I’m genuinely curious. How could he possibly know?
‘Because … because I know her. Inside out,’ he says. ‘And I know grief, too. It’s obvious. She doesn’t eat.’
I don’t say anything. I just carry on looking at him, feeling utterly lost, on my brother-in-law’s doorstep.
‘Look, Martha, if you come again, I’m going to need to inform somebody,’ he says gently.
I turn and walk away without another word.
He is convincing. His tearful gaze is convincing. His threat, imparted gently, reluctantly. It is the Marc I know well. My brother-in-law. No wonder the barrister didn’t ask him. Of course he wasn’t there.
I’m an embarrassment. A desperate woman.
I walk to the beach and try to forget I saw Marc. Try to forget the look he gave me.
The trial will close on Tuesday and then the jury will commence its deliberation. At the start of this week, I couldn’t imagine today. But here we are. The days are the same length, the same rhythm, meted out by God, even though their weight, on us, is heavier than mercury. Scott is right. I’ve got to stop trying to solve it and move on somehow.
The sea sparkles in front of me.
I flew to Kos on the Wednesday afternoon. A few hours. Hardly anything, I thought. Like driving to Oxford. Hardly any distance.
I would sign the documents on Thursday. Get a lawyer instructed to purchase the property. Return Friday morning. A fleeting visit to ensure all was safe; to see the children and hold their warm hands for a few moments. To ensure they had a premises. And then I would hire somebody: properly. Spend the rest of my maternity leave with Layla. And with Becky. Maybe we could do the admin between us, jointly.
I was already on the return plane, waiting on the runway, when I got the call. The door hadn’t shut yet, people were still milling about, putting their hand luggage above me – a man’s zip from his hooded jumper swung perilously close to my face – and so I answered my phone, ringing in the depths of my handbag.
It was Becky. The last call I ever took from her. It’s still in my call records, frozen in time.
It took me more than two iterations to understand it. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. The man was still trying to get his bag into the overhead locker. His zip was still swinging. Towards me and then away from me, towards me and then away from me.
We started taxiing. I woodenly turned my phone off. Logical Martha overrode the other. Just get home. Get home and sort it out.
But I never came home again. Not really.
Scott is in a shirt and boxers in our bedroom when I return at eight in the morning. I don’t like the vertiginous sensation of being up in a flat that overlooks the sea: the expanse of it. I don’t tell him where I’ve been. What I’ve asked Marc.
‘You don’t need to wear a shirt,’ I say, suddenly irritated at the pretence of it all. At the Masai masks hanging on our wall that we brought home from some exotic holiday or other. Status symbols. That’s what they are. And where did status get us? I want to pull them off the wall, but I resist. I rage at the sea views we purchased, like they were a tonic to cure all modern ills. At the shirt he insists on wearing to the trial for the murder of our daughter.
‘I know. But it’s … you know. It’s court,’ he says.
He likes to follow the rules. They are the scaffolding of his life. Taking a bottle of wine when invited to somebody’s house for dinner. Sending birthday cards, thank-you cards, sympathy cards. He’s good at all of that: etiquette. I’ve always found it charming, like he has fully bought into the world he lives in, not questioning his choices, like I am.
I could tell him, I think strangely. I could say it, right here, and unravel my marriage: I married you because I thought I should. I never liked the fruit and vegetables you brought back for me. I don’t want any more children with you. I don’t know you.
‘Never mind,’ I say, instead.
I try to think of the good times, the good memories, but they are only things. The excellent champagne we had at our wedding. The venue with its sandstone walls that I snuck off to run my hand over. The bike with a basket he bought me for my thirtieth birthday. The £17.99 pregnancy test I took – digital – which told me I was between one and two weeks pregnant. The damned raspberries and strawberries he brings back. They are all so material. What is the substance beneath it? I look out to sea, but it’s shifting, the bed of the sea churning itself up and spreading itself out over the beach. What is underneath that – the core of the earth? I want to press myself against it, to feel its heartbeat, to feel its stability underneath my chest and hands as I lie there.
‘We’ve got to go,’ Scott says. ‘We’ll be late. I know it’s … I know you’d rather be anywhere else,’ he says tentatively.
See? I tell my mind. See? He is always thinking of me. My stoic, gentle, thoughtful Scott. Why can’t I reach him?
He looks at me, in the mirror, his eyes on mine as he flattens his shirt collar down. There’s a question in those eyes, I am sure of it. I want to ask him what it is, to put it out there, but I don’t. I rack my brains for a nice memory, trying to find one amongst all the things, like a hoarder with a room full of useless stuff. Eventually, I find it, while still gazing at him.
We were lazing by the river, in Cambridge. It was in the early part of summer, or late spring maybe, when days like that still felt like such a treat. Winter had gone! We had a picnic blanket out but Scott was lying with his feet in the grass.
‘I keep getting ants on my legs,’ he said.
‘Move your feet then,’ I said.
‘I can’t. I like to—’ He stopped.
‘What?’
‘I really like to dig my toes into the mud. Look.’
He waved a foot upwards, swinging it towards me. His toenails were encrusted with mud. A lone ant made its way across the arch of his foot.
‘That’s gross,’ I said.
‘I know. I must stop. But I like the feel of it. The squashy feel. I’ll wash later.’
‘You’ll get threadworms,’ I said.
‘Maybe so.’
Yes: that, I think now. I cling to it. We are all the other has. And we were happier. We never laughed, exactly – not like Marc and Becky – but perhaps there’s something here, underneath the earth.
That solid mud. That earth between our toes. I am sure we can find it again, somewhere.
53
Becky
7.50 p.m., Thursday 26 October
As soon as I walk up the drive, I hear the screaming. I almost go out again, but it’s been too long. She must be terrified, I think guiltily. The double-edged sword of motherhood. I had forgotten. Every uncomfortable emotion comes with an unpleasant side order of it: guilt. Feelings were one-dimensional, when life was lived just for me. But when Xander was born, and now, while looking after Layla, feelings are experienced twice: the initial emotion, and then the guilt. The bitter aftertaste.
The crying gets louder and my jaw locks into place. The glint of empathy I felt has disappeared behind a smokescreen, and all I feel is steeliness. There is something hard in the centre of my gut, unyielding. It’s taken root, and I can’t stop it growing.
What is it?
It is anger. I am angry.
When I reach the front door, something is different. The key won’t turn left.
The door is already unlocked. I open it, my heart pounding.
There is Marc, right on my sofa, holding Layla, staring up at me, an unreadable expression on his face.
54
Martha
The curly-haired journalist says nothing today. A new tactic. I appraise her silently as we ascend the steps to the courtroom. She looks back at me, impassive. I wonder if
I can see a hint of something in her eyes. An apology, maybe. Perhaps she has a mortgage, is a single parent. We all have our jobs to do. The microphone drops to her side and she makes a funny kind of gesture, her hands just twitching by her sides, the palms turning to me, slightly.
Surrender. It is surrender.
The defence proceeds in a more shambolic way than the prosecution, it is less carefully meted out. A medical expert was due today, but she got her days muddled up. And so the defence skips to a social worker, who is available, having answered her phone at 9.45 a.m. and saying she would be in as soon as possible.
Between nine and half past ten, we do nothing. The jury are sent back to their holding room, but we aren’t. Instead, Scott and I watch the barristers milling around, offering each other water, talking about colleagues in common. Becky, too, is taken away again – who knows where? – and for fifteen minutes Mum, Dad and Ethan leave the courtroom. I guess they are with her, though they won’t tell me; they never do.
I visit the tea machine and stand in the foyer, delaying the moment before I go back into the stuffy courtroom, then decide to use the toilet to put it off for a few minutes more. I’ve not been to the toilet here yet, going only in cafés at lunchtime. I must be dehydrated, not looking after myself in the wake of it all. Perhaps my cheeks are sunken, dark circles beneath my eyes. I wouldn’t know. I am buried in the cemetery just over there, with Layla.
The dark wood door swings shut behind me and I enter a cubicle. There are tufts of wet tissue paper lining the edges of it. One of them sticks to my black shoe. I hear someone else come in. I listen carefully, but it is not Becky’s walk, her stomping. It must be somebody else.
I emerge, and it is Becky’s lawyer. She’s only come in to wash her hands, fix her hair, it would seem. Our eyes meet in the mirror for a moment. A few days ago, I would’ve spoken to her about Marc, but not now: he is telling the truth.
We both look away.
She looks back as she leaves, just once. Our eyes meet. She looks sorry. She looks sorry for me.
The social worker is finally called to the stand, though we are almost stopping for lunch. She smiles at Harriet, a quick smile, eyes crinkling, but in a way that is too practised, as though she has perfected it in the mirror. She has attractively pointy canines. She doesn’t look much more than twenty-five.
‘Can you please confirm your name?’
‘Lynne,’ she says, and I’m surprised by such a sixties name. ‘Lynne Oliver.’
‘Isn’t it right that you are the social worker who investigated the incident involving Xander and the defendant in Accident and Emergency?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell us what happened after the incident with Bryony Riles, the safeguarding nurse in A&E? When Xander and his mother gave a conflicting account as to the cause of his shoulder injury?’
I look across at the judge. He has pulled a handkerchief from his robes, somewhere, and I can just see the edge of it, pale blue, peeking over the top of his bench before he wipes his glasses with it.
‘I received a report from A&E. Xander’s explanation of his injury was that his mother had pulled his arm in their kitchen. His mother’s account was that she pulled him out of traffic. It’s reasonably common but, nevertheless, I wanted to speak to Xander.’
‘And so you arranged for a home visit, with him, on his own?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And what was the date of that home visit?’
‘The twenty-first of September.’
‘And what happened?’
‘The defendant let us in, and then went into another room while we spoke.’
Harriet fumbles with the papers. ‘Yes. And what did you discuss?’
‘We discussed the events that led to Xander’s admission to A&E,’ Lynne says. ‘He told me that his father had become frustrated with him walking into traffic and—’
‘Hearsay,’ Ellen says. ‘That’s Xander’s account. We want yours and yours alone.’
‘Alright,’ Harriet says, through gritted teeth.
‘Did you have any concerns following your talk with Xander?’
‘No.’
‘And during your visit at the defendant’s home, did you assess their home life more generally?’
‘Yes. The defendant lives – lived – alone with her son. She and her ex-husband are on good terms.’
‘Go on.’
‘Becky’s home was completely normal. Clean. Bright. Plenty of food in the cupboards. Xander’s artwork on the fridge.’
‘And Xander?’
‘Perfectly well adjusted,’ she says.
I think of Xander with his quiet, people-pleasing personality. I think of the surprisingly good poem he wrote for me a year ago, and the computer games he loves to play.
I think of Marc’s expression outside his house and feel deflated all over again. What was I thinking? I had no reason to suspect him. What was it based on? His lack of alibi, and flashes of temper here and there? That doesn’t mean he’s capable of murder.
God, I have been a fool.
‘And what was the house like? Did you see the bedrooms?’
‘Perfectly unremarkable. The house is over three floors, and Xander’s room is up in the eaves. Xander had his things everywhere but it wasn’t untidy. There were no signs of substance abuse or violence. Xander’s behaviour towards his mother was completely normal.’
‘And how did the defendant herself seem?’
‘Normal. Funny, actually,’ Lynne says.
I like that she noticed it. You cannot help but notice how funny Becky is; it is her defining characteristic.
‘Very jolly. A bit nervous, which I would expect, and hope for. It was important to her, what I thought of her during that visit. Which is a good, and normal, sign.’
‘Yes. Did you notice anything else?’
‘No. Nothing at all. It was a completely normal set-up. A normal family home.’
‘Thank you,’ Harriet says, giving Lynne a warm, broad smile.
Ellen stands up immediately. ‘Lynne.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why were you instructed to review the defendant’s family life?’
‘Because there was suspicion about whether she had been violent to her child.’
‘How long elapsed between Xander’s version of events in A&E, and you seeing him alone, without his mother, to discuss what he had said?’
‘Nine days.’
‘During which time he was living alone with …’
‘His mother.’
‘Who could easily have asked him to lie for her.’
‘No.’
‘No? How do you know?’
‘I … I don’t.’
‘Thank you. Nothing further.’
We are dismissed early. The judge has to hear another case, or something, and so we leave just after lunch. The summer heat continues relentlessly, and Scott takes my hand outside the courtroom. ‘Home?’ he says gently, but it irritates me.
‘Okay,’ I say.
We stand on the steps for a moment in the sun. Becky’s already left, and Mum and Dad, too, with the air of people leaving a wake. It’s almost over. The verdict is almost upon us. No matter how hard I try – and I do try – I just cannot imagine that verdict happening, nor the things it will bring with it.
A new image springs to mind. Becky in prison, her cheeks gaunt and chiselled, her humour stamped out by prison’s relentless, unvarying ways.
And then, when she’s released … How will we continue? There is no way out for us. Something has to happen.
Something will happen, I tell myself. I’m just not sure what.
‘She got a lawyer right away,’ Scott says to me. He is squinting up at the sun.
‘Huh?’
‘She didn’t answer questions with an open mind, like somebody who’s innocent. She got a lawyer before she would speak to anybody.’ He runs a hand over his chin.
‘Yeah. But Becky is – you know. Prett
y savvy. She’s … you know how she is. Streetwise. A cynic.’
‘Streetwise about what?’ asks Scott. ‘Because I sure as hell don’t know.’
‘I don’t know, either,’ I say. ‘Sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying.’
I suddenly feel flat. There’s no solution. It wasn’t Marc. Oh God, so it was Becky. Of course it was.
‘I wouldn’t know how to get a lawyer so fast, anyway,’ Scott concludes.
Ethan appears behind us. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he says quietly. ‘They all get lawyers right away. I’m telling you, she didn’t do it.’
‘Hmm,’ Scott says.
Privately, today, in this moment, I agree with Scott.
I’ll go there, one night, I decide. Before the trial ends. Stay at Becky’s house. Not to investigate it, but to accept it. To accept what has happened to me.
To all of us.
55
Martha
I go for a walk alone, and microwave a pizza when I get back to the flat. It cost 89p from Sainsbury’s Local. It is one of those cheap children’s ones. Plastic cheese and tomato. No sun-dried tomatoes here; no fresh baby spinach, no buffalo mozzarella like we would usually have. Just an 89p pizza, obliterated in the microwave, tipped whole on to a small plate and cut with scissors.
Scott is in bed when I walk into the bedroom, carrying my dinner on its plate. His chest is tanned. I hardly recognize it.
I set the pizza down on the end of the bed. It’ll stain the Egyptian cotton sheets, but I don’t care.
‘What’re you eating?’ he says as I sit down and look at him.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Pizza.’
‘I had a cold quiche.’
‘Nice.’
He ignores me and goes back to his iPad. He is reading the Telegraph on it, something which Becky always found hilarious. ‘Just educating myself,’ she would mimic him, when Scott perused articles even on Christmas Day. I wince as I think of her. I think of her often in this way, in this normal, benign, friendly way. Oh, Becky would love this spotty mug, I will think in a shop, and then remember, suddenly, and stop.
No Further Questions Page 24