Apple Tree Yard

by Louise Doughty

  I wonder what you are thinking, as I sit there in the dock – but you remain silent and impassive as you have done throughout. Surely you would have been pleased to see me set free, despite the seriousness of your own predicament? And then a sobering thought occurs to me: Is this a question that I even need to ask?

  I am so swaddled in disappointment that I hardly notice the business of the court continuing. Of course. The defence cases can proceed apace now, beginning with yours. It takes effort to lift my head and look around but I say to myself, you must stay alert. You will be on the stand before you know it.

  The judge has finished rearranging some papers in front of him, looks up and around the court, beams at us all and says, ‘So then, are we ready for the jury?’

  *

  Ms Bonnard begins by calling some witnesses who will counter the poor impression of you given by DS Amelia Johns and Witness G; your boss at the Houses of Parliament, a colleague from your days as a cop. It strikes me that your counsel is in a difficult position here. She wants to humanise you, and she wants the jury to start liking you a bit more, but she also wants to present you as psychologically disturbed enough to avail yourself of the defence of diminished responsibility. It’s a tricky one.

  The only witness that matters, though, is her psychologist. She better have a damn good one.

  As it turns out, Ms Bonnard has two. I have no idea how much choice barristers get when they choose psychologists to give evidence in their cases – presumably there is a register, presumably they have their favourites. But Ms Bonnard has chosen a couple of wild cards – a young man who looks scarcely old enough to be on work experience and a woman like herself. I wonder if she thought the jury would be more favourable to her youthful, eager psychologists than to the prosecution’s heavyweight and unpleasant Dr Sanderson. It works for me. I like them both. They were the two people who were sitting behind Ms Bonnard while Dr Sanderson gave his evidence – I noticed them taking notes.

  Although they are a team, it is only the young woman who takes the stand. She is called Dr Ruth Sadiq and has neat dark hair and pale skin, very fine hands, I notice from across the court as she reads the secular oath – I am reminded of what Laurence said about how we receive information. She has also interviewed you in prison and presents a much more sympathetic portrait than Dr Sanderson. Yes, she would agree with Dr Sanderson that you are an ‘unreliable historian’ but that is characteristic of people with psychological problems who hold down high pressure jobs and family life: it could be viewed as a coping strategy. It turns out that Dr Sadiq is a specialist in high-functioning patients with disorders. Personality disorders are often diagnosed in people who have chaotic lifestyles, she says – drug addicts or alcoholics, homeless people – the kind of people much more usually seen in the dock. Anti-social personality disorder is often twinned with those conditions, for instance. But very intelligent people with good support systems are able to come up with coping mechanisms that ameliorate their disorders – for instance, in the case of borderline personality disorder, a calm environment, the patient being surrounded by people who behave in a consistent way, means that the patient is able to pick up clues on appropriate behaviour from those around them. Dr Sadiq is softly spoken – the judge has to ask her to speak up twice – and has none of the rhetorical certainty or sneering of Dr Sanderson. I can feel the jury warming to her. My hopes rise.

  ‘So you are saying, if I am correct,’ Ms Bonnard prompts, ‘that the unstable behaviour usually associated with borderline personality disorder is sometimes not apparent in people who have strong support structures.’

  ‘Yes, that is correct, I believe it manifests itself in other ways.’

  ‘Would you care to describe those ways to the jury?’

  ‘Well, in its developed forms, borderline personality disorder can lead to what we call dissociation – that is, where a person dissociates from real life and starts to create their own self-sustaining narrative, almost as if they believe they are watching themselves in a film, if you like, a little drama around themselves, which they are the centre of, and in which they feel safe. This, I believe, would also fit the criteria of a narcissistic personality disorder.’

  Ms Bonnard affects an air of pleased surprise. ‘So,’ she says, ‘someone in a dissociative state, as a result of either borderline or narcissistic personality disorder or a combination of the two, could be using their own made-up stories about themselves in order to cope with daily life, and hide their disorder from those around them?’

  ‘Precisely, yes. If they create their own story about themselves, then they remain in control. As I said, safe.’

  ‘To other people they might just seem, well, a bit of a fantasist?’

  Dr Sadiq gives a smile and says, ‘Well, that’s not a very technical term but yes, I believe fantasist is what such a person might be called, when actually, they have a serious undiagnosed psychological disorder and are using a sophisticated coping strategy in order to manage everyday life.’

  It all sounds plausible to me, and it fits with your idea of yourself, your need to pretend that you were more glamorous and exciting than you were, the risky sex… the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the way we pick and choose our evidence. Trying to look at this coldly, to remove the element of self-interest in this theory, I am still convinced.

  Ms Bonnard gives Dr Sadiq a warm smile and says, ‘Thank you, Doctor, please remain where you are.’

  *

  Mrs Price gets to her feet for the cross-examination. She has none of the feline poise of Ms Bonnard – that frightening slowness and precision. You do not get the feeling, as she rises, that her cross-examinations are spectacles. As she is nearer to the witness box than Ms Bonnard she doesn’t have to turn her head and so I rarely catch sight of the expression on her face, but from the set of her shoulders I am guessing she still has that slightly weary air, as if her point of view is so patently correct that she can hardly be bothered with cross-examining at all.

  ‘Dr Sadiq,’ she says, looking down and up again. ‘Your theory, that people with high-functioning personality disorders can develop coping strategies that protect their lifestyles from becoming chaotic, that they can hide these very serious disorders for many years from friends, family, workmates, doctors and so on… It formed the basis of your PhD thesis, I believe? The one you took at Kingston University. Is that correct?’

  Dr Sadiq is still composed, softly spoken. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  Mrs Price looks up and says simply. ‘It’s your pet theory, isn’t it?’

  And then Dr Sadiq gets it very badly wrong. She says nothing. She looks over at Ms Bonnard, as if hoping for instruction, but all Ms Bonnard can do is stare at her encouragingly. It is a big mistake. It makes her seem like a star pupil who is looking for the right answer. She glances at the judge and the jury but none of them are going to help her out either. She looks at the dock and I want to lean forward and say, go on, forget the self-deprecation, just be firm in your opinion, be unequivocal. It’s 60 per cent how you look, 30 per on how you sound and only 10 per cent what you actually say. That 30 per cent is yours for the taking.

  Dr Sadiq says, ‘Well, yes, you could call it that, it’s a theory I believe in. I do believe it is a good one, though, I think it explains a lot.’

  ‘But Dr Sadiq, forgive me,’ Mrs Price says patiently, ‘what I’m driving at is, the theory of high-functioning personality disorders which you expound in your PhD thesis, it is countered by most of the recognised psychological diagnostic tools used in criminal cases, isn’t it? For instance, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?’

  Again, that self-sabotaging pause. ‘Well, yes, but…’

  ‘And what about the International Classification of Disease?’

  ‘Well…’ falters Dr Sadiq.

  After that, it’s a blood sport. Mrs Price lists – one after the other – the manuals, the papers, the works by authors with impressive CVs. My heart is
in my boots. I know all about citations. I know how the whole point of presenting a new theory is to anticipate the counter-citations from those who will disagree with you and to have, up your sleeve, a list of counter-counter-citations. I could have told them that. They should have me up there. This woman is a nice young woman, intelligent, competent, with a perfectly decent theory – but she is entirely lacking the aggression that will allow her to present her theory as fact. The objectionable Dr Sanderson is wiping the floor with her without even being in the room, just by the force of his certainty.

  *

  It is not quite lunchtime by the time Dr Sadiq is allowed off the stand. If the judge had insisted at that point, as he had every right to do, that Ms Bonnard continue with her case, then perhaps none of what followed would have happened. There would have been no time. Ms Bonnard would have announced there and then that you were not taking the stand – the judge would have issued the statutory warning that the Crown would be allowed to draw a negative inference from your refusal to do so – it is even possible that Robert would have opened his case there and then and that he would have called his only witness – me – immediately.

  As it is, the judge looks at the clock hanging beneath the public gallery, in that obvious way that he often does. He smiles at Ms Bonnard, perhaps even feeling a little sorry for her, and says, ‘I think now might be a suitable juncture to adjourn.’

  Ms Bonnard is only too happy to agree. After we have all risen and the judge has left, I watch her carefully from behind. She sinks back down into her chair and leans forward a little. I can’t see the expression on her face but I think – she must know she’s losing.

  And then, from the corner of my eye, I see you leaning forward, lifting a hand, and giving a sharp tap, tap-tap, on the bullet-proof glass. Heads in the courtroom turn and I look at you too and it comes to me in a wave that you have been so still, so silent so far, that I have almost forgotten you are in the dock with me. The truth is, the man sitting a few feet away from me, the man who never moves or gives anything away by gesture or expression, he has seemed so unlike you throughout this whole process that I have almost entirely detached your fate from mine. Mark Costley, the thin figure in the dock, is so unlike X, the lover who pressed his open mouth against mine.

  Ms Bonnard lifts her head and turns, gives you a weary smile.

  The dock officer sitting next to me rises and touches my elbow and without looking at you again, I turn to leave the dock and return to my cell.

  *

  Ms Bonnard seems to have recovered when she returns from lunch, which is odd, because things are looking bad for her and she has nowhere else to go. ‘My Lord,’ she says, when we are all in position again and she is on her feet. ‘I will be offering no further witnesses.’

  *

  As Robert gets to his feet, he looks over at Ms Bonnard and I see him give her one straight, slightly questioning look, but she has her head down over her papers and does not return his gaze.

  The judge smiles at Robert, as if he is relieved to at last have a fellow chap in front of him. Robert gives a slight bow and says, ‘My Lord, we are planning to call only one witness in our case, Yvonne Carmichael.’

  I rise.

  *

  As I stand, so do my dock officers and we file past you and your dock officers – there is plenty of room in front of the seat but, even so, I would only have to move a little to one side to brush your knees as I pass. You stay immobile, staring straight ahead. The dock officer in front of me descends the three short steps to where there is a door in the side of the dock that allows us all out into the courtroom. As I cross the courtroom to the witness box, walking past the ends of the rows of desks where the police officers, lawyers and barristers are seated, I know that everyone is watching me but none more closely than the jury. I glance over at them at one point. I keep my head high. You know what, I think, and I wonder if it shows in my glance: I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of being told what to do and how to look and how to sound. I am innocent. I didn’t kill anyone. And I have nothing to fear from these wooden procedures or the cops or the paperwork or Letitia in the breakfast queue or any of them. I’ve had enough of being afraid. I’m not even frightened of the jury. Maybe they should be frightened of me.

  The members of the jury are riveted. They are watching me with the same sort of star-struck horror they might feel if they had been visiting a zoo and a jaguar had casually stepped through the bars of its cage and strolled among them. I’m so glad that I’m finally getting a chance to get out of the dock. Guess what, defendants in murder trials are human too. I read the oath loudly and firmly, hand the card back to the usher, and then look up and around the court, as if surveying it for the first time.

  The witness box is a very different vantage point than the dock. You are raised up so that everyone can see you but with the pleasing side effect that you can look down on them. I know this room so well by now: the quality of the light, the hum of the air conditioning – I feel no fear. I sit on the drop-down seat behind me and as Robert stands, he gives me a fond look, half a smile at one corner of his mouth, a friendly twinkle in his eyes. The doubts I have had about the way he is conducting my defence melt away. I can rely on him.

  ‘Is your name Yvonne Carmichael?’ he asks me.

  Instinctively, I copy the professional witnesses, the police officers and pathologists – I am not one of the others, the accidental witnesses, I am a professional too. I look directly at the jury. ‘Yes, that is correct.’

  ‘Mrs Carmichael, can you tell us what you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m a geneticist.’

  22

  Robert doesn’t spend too much time with my career, merely establishing where I work, how long I have been doing it. He touches briefly on my lengthy and stable marriage, my two grown-up children, the fact that my husband, like myself, is a respected scientist. I don’t like talking about Guy and Adam and Carrie – I can hear my voice dropping a register – but I know Robert has to do it in order to create the picture of me as Mrs Utterly Normal. It’s easy enough for him to do. I am. After a while, we get to the bit of my job that people are most readily impressed by, although it was actually one of the least taxing things I have ever done: my giving evidence at the House of Commons Select Committees. Again, Robert does not need to spend long on this, merely enough to establish my credibility and by the time he has finished, I believe myself incapable of the things I know I have done, let alone the thing I am accused of that I didn’t do.

  ‘And it was on the last of these occasions, that you met the man in the dock, Mr Mark Costley?’

  ‘Yes, that is correct.’

  Robert stands up a little straighter, folds his arms, says casually. ‘Can you tell me your impressions of him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I liked him. We got talking in a corridor. He clearly knew his way around the Houses of Parliament, he gave me a guided tour, the Great Hall of Westminster.’ A tiny pause. ‘The Crypt Chapel. He knew a lot about the history and the way things were run. He seemed very competent.’

  I look across the courtroom and get what I have been waiting for since our trial begun: you are looking at me. Your gaze is soft. I dare not look at you for more than a second. As my gaze shifts, I catch sight of the expression on DI Cleveland’s face – he is sitting two rows behind the prosecution bench, directly in line with where you are seated. DI Cleveland is looking at me too and his gaze is not soft. He is thinking, You fucked him and I know it, I just couldn’t prove it.

  ‘You became friends?’ Robert asks.

  ‘Yes, we met for coffee a few times.’

  ‘Just friends,’ Robert states, and I nod. Without waiting for a fuller answer, he goes on, ‘I believe Mr Costley wanted your advice.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘His nephew was considering a career in science. We talked about it.’

  Robert pauses at that point, a telltale pause, slow and deliberate, one that everyone in the court registers. ‘Mrs Carmi
chael, we now have to discuss the events that have led, indirectly, to you being here, in a position it is safe to say you would never have imagined yourself to ever be in.’ He pauses again. He leans forward and says, ‘Would you like me to request that the public gallery is cleared?’

  Robert has warned me that he will ask this question and has told me to say yes, but the strange thing is, even though I am entirely prepared, my cheeks feel hot with the humiliation to come and the quietness in my voice is perfectly genuine as I say, ‘Yes, yes please, if that is possible.’

  *

  It is Robert’s gentleness, that is what makes me cry. It is when he prods me, in his modulated tones, with all the questions that the jury might themselves ask. ‘Some people’, he says gently, ‘will find it hard to understand that you couldn’t even tell your own husband about this horrible, vicious attack…’

  My eyes well with tears – I can feel my face tense and wobble with the effort of staying composed. Still, I am able to look at the jury at this point and want them to understand, not just for myself. ‘I know that anyone this hasn’t happened to would have difficulty with that, and before this happened to me, I would have thought that way too. But actually, your husband is the last person you want to tell. If I had told my husband it would have been in my home. I would have brought it into my home. And in two years’ time, we might have been sitting at our kitchen table talking about how he felt about the fact that I had been attacked but it didn’t happen to him, it happened to me…’ And suddenly, I crack, and sob, and realise how angry I am. What the hell was Guy doing in Newcastle? Why wasn’t he at that party? Come to think of it, why weren’t you? All the people who claim they love me, my family, all my friends, where the hell were they that night?