“So it is not possible that, for example, the baby rolled and became trapped somehow in the Moses basket?”
“Layla was only eight weeks old. She hadn’t rolled over yet. So I would be surprised by that.”
“Thank you. And now to the bruising on her earlobe.”
“Yes.”
“Why is that unusual?”
“It’s very difficult to bruise a baby’s earlobe. It is not bony, and so it is not likely to be bumped. It therefore raises red flags to medics.”
“Why?”
“It’s consistent with signs of abuse. Deliberate trauma. Pinching.”
Pinching.
“Thank you. And finally. The pathologist has timed the death as occurring at around eight or nine at night. Is that consistent with what you have read?”
“I have no reason to dispute that. Yes.”
“And would Layla have died instantly, following the suffocation?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing further,” Ellen says.
Harriet stands up, looking contemplative. Her eyes are narrowed and she upends her pen and taps the end of it on the desk until it clicks off, and then on again. The noise seems to echo in the courtroom.
“Would retinal hemorrhages be present in an accidental smothering?”
“Yes, probably. But not always.”
“Would bleeding in the lungs?”
“Yes.”
“Bleeding in the skin surrounding the mouth and lips?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“Bruised gums?”
“Not always.”
“Sometimes?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. Is it not also possible that some of these injuries—the retinal hemorrhages, for example—are incidental findings, left over from, say, if not accidental smothering, then a traumatic birth?”
“Possible, but unlikely.”
“So with that possibility, we cannot be certain that this baby was smothered at all, either accidentally or on purpose. There are plenty of explanations.”
Helena huffs. “I can’t answer that.”
“I think you have to,” Harriet says, raising her eyebrows to the judge.
He makes a motion with his hand. “Ms. Armstrong, an answer to this is both helpful and necessary,” he says.
She pauses, then says slowly, “I would like to think I am as certain as I can be.”
“Nothing further.”
Ellen stands back up. “If you had to say, in terms of likelihood, whether these injuries were more consistent with accidental or homicidal smothering, which would you say?”
“Homicidal.”
“Thank you.”
“We’ll take a break there,” the judge says.
I thought he might intend this for Becky’s benefit, even though she’s been sitting there impassively, her chest rising and falling, but he’s looking across at me and Scott. “We only have one more witness,” Ellen says. “Then the prosecution can close.”
The judge looks across at us, over his glasses, and raises his eyebrows. He reaches a hand up to scratch underneath his wig. It must be itchy in the heat.
I look at Scott. His eyes are wide, panicked, even though he has always suspected Layla’s death was not accidental. He looks at me, raising his eyebrows, wondering if we can go on. I lift a hand, which is supposed to mean go ahead, but the judge remains looking at me, forcing me to speak.
“Please, go on,” I say, my voice sounding loud and confident.
I must look calm on the outside, but I’m not. Marc’s name has been running through my mind repeatedly as I sit in the public gallery.
I know what I’m going to do. I have decided. I am going to speak to Ellen about him. I’m going to tell her that he has no alibi. Perhaps I can speak to her after this next witness. Tell her about Marc. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity.
“The prosecution calls Jane Ghale.”
After a few moments, a small, bent-over woman arrives in the court, brought in by the usher.
“Please state your name for the record,” Ellen says.
“Jane Ghale.”
She is sworn in and confirms she is a radiologist and has been for ten years.
“Have you reviewed the MRI scans of Layla Blackwater?” We’d given Layla my name. We wanted to go against the grain. Things like that had been important to us then.
“I have.”
“Please talk us through them. Jury, please turn to pages thirteen and fourteen again for the scans.”
Jane reaches forward and holds two slides up, showing my baby’s chest. “The white area indicates bleeding.”
It looks like a cloud over Layla’s lungs.
“Is there any doubt about what that represents?”
“No. It represents blood.”
“Thank you, nothing further,” Ellen says.
“Nothing from me,” Harriet says.
Ellen rises again, tugging at her robes, which keep slipping down over her shoulders. “The prosecution rests,” she says.
* * *
—
And just like that, the onslaught of the State is over. There is no more. It didn’t end with a revelation or a bang. Just a radiologist confirming in a small voice what we all already knew.
I look up at the ceiling behind the dock where Becky sits and think about it all.
The trip to Londis, leaving my baby alone in that house.
The Google search.
The neighbors overhearing the shouting, right before the exact time of death.
Alison, Forrest and Ralph’s mother, seeing Becky gray and shaking, the house eerily silent behind her, when we all knew that Layla cried so much, all the time.
And the medics, of course. Convinced that it couldn’t have been an accident, not feasibly.
Layla could only have died during that evening. That evening when Becky was alone with her.
It is a compelling case.
I glance at the jury. They’re shuffling in their seats, at the halfway point, as they wait for direction from the judge. Would I convict, if I were seated there, and not here? If the victim wasn’t my baby, and if the defendant wasn’t my sister? It is only halfway through the case—the prosecution is at its strongest, like the winter solstice, night at its longest—but I cannot ignore the voice inside me that says: Of course I would. It’s like Scott said: There is no other explanation. The only way she is innocent is if we shrug our shoulders and pin our hopes on spontaneous, unexplained bleeding, on coincidence, conjecture.
Becky’s defense is that she has no defense at all. She doesn’t know, can’t explain. That isn’t a defense. They have no explanation, only the holes in the prosecution’s explanation. And as for the rest, the nonmedical evidence, they’ll say: But she’s a good person. What defense is this? It is nothing. There is no defense case. It is only: Not that. A finger pointed at the prosecution. It was an accident, but not one Becky caused: She admitted that in her police interview. If it wasn’t a tragic co-sleeping accident, then what was it?
Murder.
Scott is right. He is always right, the most reasonable person in my life. My sounding board, my voice of reason.
I look across at my sister in the dock, her head bowed as the lawyers shuffle their papers, as the judge takes stock, as the players prepare to metaphorically switch sides. I look at her and agree with Scott. Here was a smothered baby. And here was the person looking after her. She must know. She must know what happened. She must know more than me, anyway.
“I think we should leave it there for today,” the judge says. He looks at the digital clock on the table down below him, its giant numbers glowing red. “We’ve made very good time thanks to the meticulous preparation, prompt witnesses, and the jury’s flawless attendance. We’ll be looking t
o conclude early next week. We can commence the defense case in the morning. Everybody fresh.” He directs a kindly smile my way.
I linger and see the security guard releasing Becky from the dock. He hands her over to an usher. She waits obediently at the door, clearly schooled in what to do, and only moves when the usher motions her out. She’s bailed. Not in custody. She’s not dangerous, surely. But then I think of Xander, moved into Marc’s house, her contact with him supervised by our own parents, and I wonder. Social Services must think she is dangerous. The State does, too. Is it only me who doesn’t?
I look at her slim wrists, at her rib cage visible at the top of her thin, open-necked shirt. If she is convicted, what will I think then? Will she transform, in the dock, as she is sentenced? Into my sister the murderer? I can’t imagine it. I just can’t. Perhaps I will always believe her.
“Shall we go?” Scott murmurs to me.
I’m watching the barristers. Ellen leaves first. My eyes track her across the courtroom and out the door. Through the little glass window in the wood, I see her disappear into a meeting room opposite the courtroom.
“Yeah,” I say.
The room is clearing out around us. The jury is looking pleased with their early finish, off to enjoy the sun and put loads of washing on and collect their children from school, probably. Becky’s team has closed around her and escorts her out. She’s got a tan line around her neck that I spot as she reaches to pull open the door. She must have been outside a lot. It’s only sun, I tell myself. You can sit in the sun but still be miserable.
It’s just the two of us now, in here together, looking at it all. The dock. The royal coat of arms. The places where the jury sit.
All of it.
Layla’s life.
Her little fat fists that gripped my hand during night feeds, her dark, soulful eyes that looked into mine as she suckled, her golden hair that smelled so good, like cooking biscuits and lavender and summer days. Those are all gone. Instead, we have juries and witnesses and experts’ reports about hemorrhages.
The detritus of a life.
I tell Scott to go home without me. He looks surprised for a second, then obliges. He doesn’t question it anymore. He doesn’t try to maintain a sense of togetherness. Neither of us does.
I wait in the foyer, listening for the sweep of Ellen’s robes.
She arrives out of the meeting room after ten minutes and I hover nearby, looking vague, as though I might be waiting for somebody, or looking for the vending machines.
She catches my eye, briefly, and I think I see something sympathetic behind her professional, neutral expression.
“Ellen, I . . .” I say softly to her.
She stops fussing with her briefcase and looks at me.
“I was thinking—listen. About . . . about Becky’s husband.”
“Marc,” Ellen says.
“Yes.”
“Look, I’m just wondering . . . has anyone ever looked into his alibi for that night? Really looked?” I swallow, not saying I’ve asked him, not admitting that. Trying to forget it, but not able to, either. Those words he used. Came over.
“Marc’s alibi?” she says. The expression on her face is suspicious, irritated. She looks as though she is about to tell me to stop, to let her do her job. That I am inappropriate. But, at the last moment, she seems to take in my skinny form, my thinning hair, and she looks at me kindly instead. “I’ll look into that,” she says to me. “Tonight.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you.”
42
Martha
When I walk through the door of the flat, Scott doesn’t look at me.
He sits on one of the armchairs covered in fabric from India and I sit on the sofa and wonder why the flat feels so cold as summer starts to wane. We watch the sea in the distance, still lit up by the sun. Even though it’s right there, it’s four stories down, and behind a glass wall. It may as well just be a big flat-screen television tuned permanently to the seascape. People are swimming in it, some paddling at the edge, some in wet suits, their strokes confident and strong.
“I’m going out,” Scott says.
Most evenings from late spring to early autumn, he would go to his patch of land and harvest it. This time of year we would be looking forward to blackberries and apricots. Boxes of them, every evening. They were always fresh and sweet. Scott would fold his lips in on each other as he brought them in; otherwise his proud smile would show. He’s been going more, lately, but not bringing any fruit back with him. He’s maintaining the status quo, I guess. Going through the motions.
“Please don’t do any research. It’s not good for you.”
“Sorry?” I say sharply.
“No more research. It’s time to . . . we need to . . . we need to accept it.”
“Why do you care if I research it or not?”
“I just don’t think it’s good for you . . .” He pauses, and looks at me sympathetically, as if I were a mad person. “Listen, anyway. At the land, I’ve been working on—”
“Can you not? Can you just not? I don’t even really like fruit, actually.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, and I see Scott’s face fall. “I’ve been pretending to,” I add spitefully.
It’s the truth, but it’s not the time to tell it. It’s not about the fruit. I know that. It’s about what he said. We need to accept it. But how can we? How can we ever?
“Okay,” he says. His tone is so measured, always controlled. “Whatever.” It’s not dismissive. It’s weary. Sad, even.
“Sorry,” I say. He must think me a diva. Who rejects presents from their spouse, after years and years of receiving them silently, complicitly? “I just . . . I didn’t want to tell you.”
He walks past me, pulling his shoes out of the hall cupboard. “Don’t worry,” he says wearily. “I’m going anyway.” He reaches toward me, just slightly. But when I don’t take his hand, he lets it drop to his side. He lingers for just a second, looking at me. “Love you,” he says softly, so quietly I have to strain to hear it.
“Same,” I say back.
I’m blinded, momentarily, by a memory of wandering the streets of Verona with him, queueing up to see the Juliet balcony with dripping ice creams clenched in our hands. He laughingly licked the wafer cone of mine, and I swatted him away. We were happy. We were. Perhaps it is just grief, my mind marinating in negativity, affecting everything, coloring it black.
“I mean it,” I say to him.
He gives me a quick, warm smile, and then the door closes softly behind him, leaving the flat in silence.
He texted me the day after the dinner party at which we first met. It was nice chatting, he said. It really helped. And so it went. It wasn’t so much the beginning of a relationship as a general molding together. I had just started teaching, in my Newly Qualified year. He had been a teacher, too, for two years, but had just left to do a master’s in programming. We used to work together, in my kitchen and his, late into the night. I liked the way he worked. The calm, quiet tidiness. The single desk lamp. Muzak that he found on streaming sites. We were study buddies, best friends, and then more. There was no moment. It was inevitable, like the quiet, calm movement of the tide up the beach.
Staring now as I walk into our bedroom and run my fingers over his rows of neatly hung shirts, I wonder: Shouldn’t it be . . . something more? The kind of something that Becky and Marc had. The thoughts rise but, methodically, I push them back down again. They will not come in here. They are not welcome.
He hasn’t brought a single piece of fruit back from his land recently. I pause at the window, watching his car headlights as he drives away into the twilight. Is he really going there? Who knows? I can’t ask him. It would be barbed and loaded. But he’s been there more and more. Perhaps he’s just sitting, on his land, not tending the vegetables, not doing anything. J
ust sitting, letting them die.
I go and get my notepad and look at it.
Marc. He would do anything for Becky. Give her an alibi. Cover up a murder. He would help her in her hour of need. Maybe he hated our arrangement. Maybe he got frustrated with Layla himself, and her constant crying. He was temperamental, too. Quick to anger. Maybe he resented Layla. They had wanted another child. Maybe it’s that: plain old jealousy. Maybe all of it, put together, tipped him over the edge.
I go for a drive. My muscle memory takes me naturally to Becky’s. How many times have I driven here? Hundreds, it must be, over the years. Thousands. The car idles as I stop outside Becky’s. The night is warm and I wind down the window to let in the air. It’s clear here, not salty like the gritty sea air near my flat, but fresh and soft against my shoulders.
I rest my head against the seat and survey the house. It sits empty now, virtually since the night of, the black windows ghoulish-looking in the darkening evening. Becky and Xander left, like evacuees, to separate locations. He to Marc. She, home, to Mum and Dad. I stare at the garden gate, the three steps up to Becky’s front door; then my gaze trails upward to the bedroom window.
That’s where it happened. Up in that room, the farthest on the left.
I get out of my car, pulling my jacket around me.
I stand on the pavement and look at the window. What happened in there? Only Becky and Layla know for certain.
Layla.
She was small when born: just six pounds, dead on, as if maybe she intended to be an exacting person—my favorite kind. Her arms would forever be disappearing up the sleeves of her Babygros. It frustrated me. I was trying to mold her to a fixed world, like, This is how we do things, we wear our sleeves down to our wrists. But she had other ideas. Once, when her hand had disappeared up again, she reached out and grasped my finger through the fabric, and looked at me. It felt warm and deliberate, that clutch of hers.
I try to remember those moments, standing here now, outside the spot where she died. I try to forget the moments when I was bored, or frustrated. There were so many of them. That time, on a coach, when she vomited up all of the milk it had taken me three hours to express. The times when she just wanted to be held. The love I felt for her hid behind it all—like a stunning view from a house, appreciated at first, and then ignored. The main emotions I felt had been frustration, boredom, and guilt. My nipples hurt, until I stopped breastfeeding, and then they dribbled milk in my bra, leaving impressions like pale inkblots. The love somehow did not come to the forefront like it should have. Perhaps I needed time. I don’t know.
The Good Sister Page 20