On March 18 at around six fifteen, she was on her second lap of the grounds, and Quigg guides the jury to the detailed map of the Sports Ground so they can see that she was in the final quarter of a clockwise circuit. There is a slight incline that meant she did not have a clear view of the entrance to the Sports Ground till she was about 800 meters away from it. This was the first point that she noticed Ryan ahead in the distance. She had her headphones in, was listening to garage music as she ran. She was vigilant, always is when she’s running. She’s had trouble with weirdos, been followed in the past, regularly had to deal with sexual innuendo and unwanted attention, so although she had her headphones in, she was fully aware of her surroundings and the people in her vicinity.
She is pretty, Nadine, maybe five seven or eight with a slim, athletic frame. I visualize her in running kit, with cropped pants and vest, her hair, which is down now, pulled into a ponytail behind her, and have no difficulty imagining men ogling and making comments as she passes.
Quigg asks, “Miss Forrester, what was Ryan doing when he first came into view?”
“He was too far away, I couldn’t see what he was doing, but once he came into view I kept my eyes on him.”
“At that point he was walking toward you?”
“Yes.”
“But still some distance away?”
“Yes.”
“Was there anyone else in the park?”
“No. I’d passed another guy who was jogging in the opposite direction a few minutes earlier, but no one else. That was one of the reasons I kept my eye on him. I thought about turning around and running the other way, to be honest, ’cause there weren’t any other people near us and I didn’t want my phone jacked . . .”
“As in stolen from you?”
“Yes.”
“So you thought about turning around and going the other way.”
“Yes.”
“What stopped you?”
“As I got closer, I could see he was eating, looked like chicken and chips out of a box. That sort of made me feel a bit safer, not that you can’t mug someone if you’re eating, but it made me feel a bit safer, so I carried on.”
She’s blowing my mind. She sees my son walking in the park. He’s not interested in her, not even glancing her way or paying her any attention. He’s just in the Sports Ground, walking along, eating chicken and chips, wearing his football kit with his school blazer over it, and without knowing anything else about him, she’s already associated him with phone-jacking and mugging.
Ryan slept over at Lorna’s about a year ago. He got the bus to hers after school and stayed till the Saturday evening. He got home about sevenish, and when he entered the house, he slammed the front door. It was so uncharacteristic that I went straight out into the hallway to see what was wrong, and it was obvious he was upset, close to tears as he chucked his bag onto the floor, unzipped his body warmer.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Nothing!”
“Tell me.”
“What’s the point? It doesn’t change anything.”
“Ryan, would you please talk to me? What’s happened?”
“Nothing!” he said. “Nothing! I’m not exaggerating, nothing happened!”
“I don’t understand.”
“I got on the bus to come home. It was packed. I sat down. That’s it. I wasn’t doing nothing, just sat down and the old lady next to me moves over. There’s nowhere to go, but she moves, scrunches herself up against the window—oh my days, if you saw her, all scrunched up, y’know—and she wraps both her hands around the handles of her bag like she’s ready to fight me to stop me taking it. I never even noticed she had a bag. Up to then I never even really noticed her. Why’s she gotta go on like that? Why?”
“She’s an ignorant woman. You just have to ignore people like that . . .”
“I should ignore her? Why ain’t she ignoring me? On my life, she made me so angry I wannid to take her stinking bag, not to rob her, I wannid to chuck it out the window, teach her a lesson. I came this close!” He put his thumb and index finger about a centimeter apart, demonstrating.
Obviously he didn’t do it. Obviously I talked him down, appealed to the sensible, compassionate part of him that the stranger on the bus had snuffed out in a moment of ignorance. But it was on my mind for weeks after. He was fifteen. I was already steering him away from street kids toward friends of a higher caliber, I was preventing him from aimlessly hanging around by making sure his time was filled, nudging him toward study and books and everything that might ensure his future was bright, but I couldn’t work out how to steer him clear of ordinary people in common spaces, had not brought him up like my mother had brought me up, telling me I needed to be twice as good as the next white person in order to get half as far. That woman on the bus, who probably didn’t even think about him again once he’d got off at his stop, was in my head for weeks and I shared Ryan’s anger. I know he would have been angry now listening to Nadine’s racial profiling of him, while all he was doing was putting one foot in front of the other, going to pick up his stuff.
Quigg asks, “You were still jogging toward Ryan. You decided not to turn back. What happened next?”
“I was probably about a hundred meters away from him when I saw another guy behind him. He’d just entered the Sports Ground and he was walking quickly in the same direction as Ryan but was maybe two hundred meters away from him. I was close enough to Ryan to see his face. He had his headphones in his ears. I think he was listening to music, because he was walking like he was keeping time with the beat.”
“Did he look at you?”
“No, he was looking at his food. I’m sure he must have noticed me but he wasn’t actually leering.”
“Can you describe the other person, the one who had just entered the Sports Ground?”
“It was dark and he was wearing a hoodie. I couldn’t see his face. I thought about turning around again, but I felt safer because I was almost level with Ryan, so I wasn’t the only person about.”
“And what happened next?”
“I passed Ryan. He didn’t look at me. But the other guy, I was running toward him but I still couldn’t see his face even though I was only about a hundred and fifty meters away, and that was freaking me out a bit. Anyway, I carried on jogging toward him. He was walking really fast toward me and he seemed to be getting faster and then it was like he was running toward me and I nearly freaked out completely. I thought he was gonna attack me. After I started running, ’cause of a couple of incidents, I started going to tae kwon do, and when he was running toward me, I was thinking about stance, the best way to use his own force against him or block him if he went for me; it’s like my mind had slowed down and I was trying to be prepared for attack, and then he ran past me . . .”
“I want to stop you there for a moment. Can you describe that person?”
“It was all so fast and I couldn’t see his face ’cause his head was down, like he was looking at the ground.”
“What about his clothing? Did you notice what he was wearing?”
“Black jogging bottoms and trainers; Nike Flynit Maxes. He had on a top, kinda dark brown, and it had a logo on it, a yellow one, and his hood was up. The hood was black.”
“Did you notice anything in particular about the way he walked?”
“He was running.”
“Before he started running. Did you notice anything unique or characteristic about the way he walked?”
“No.”
“What about his height?”
“He was taller than me, a lot taller, about six foot, maybe six two.”
Her estimation of the person’s height is spot on; Tyson Manley is six foot one.
“Could you see if he was carrying anything?”
“Not in his left hand. He passed me on the left. That hand was empty. But even when he was coming toward me I couldn’t see his right hand because he kinda kept it behind his back. I was thinking he had a knif
e, then I was thinking I was overthinking and he probably didn’t have anything in his hand, and I was telling myself to stay calm, ’cause if I panicked I wouldn’t be able to defend myself. As he passed me he really started sprinting and I was relieved he had passed me but I looked back to make sure, in case he came at me from behind.”
“When you looked back, what did you see?”
“He stabbed him. In the back. I couldn’t believe it. I tripped and fell over. He just ran up behind Ryan and stabbed him! It was horrible, horrible!” Her composure has disintegrated. She is crying and it is easy to imagine that she is experiencing in the detailed recall the same level of incomprehension and shock she experienced at the time it happened. “He pulled the knife out and he stabbed him again. Ryan hadn’t even turned around. The first stab was like a punch and it kinda pushed Ryan forward a bit and then he stabbed him again and this time Ryan started turning around and he pulled the knife out and stabbed him again, and then Ryan fell. He just fell onto the ground, onto his knees then his stomach, and the hoodie still stabbed him again in the back. He went down on one knee so he was half kneeling beside him and he stabbed him again, the fourth stab, while he was lying on the ground. And then he looked up and saw me, and I’ve never ever in my life ever been that scared because I was a witness, I’d seen it all, and I thought he was going to come and stab me as well and I just got up and ran for my life. I thought he was chasing me and I ran. And when I got to the entrance there was another black guy there and I think I just screamed. Then he ran into the grounds and I ran across the road into the Turkish supermarket. I had scraped both my knees and my hands, and they were bleeding but I never even noticed till I got in there and they were ringing the police, that’s how scared I was. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t even walk past the grounds now, even now I can’t.”
I am crying silently and Lorna is too. This is how he was taken, my son, so mercilessly. Tyson Manley didn’t walk up to him and face him like a man and tell him what the problem was, so that if there was any possibility of it being sorted out, it could be. He never gave him a chance to explain or defend himself. How Nadine has described it is exactly how I have relived it, imagining Ryan walking along listening to his music and eating his hot wings and chips, because he loved hot wings. He would have been tired after training and he was just chilling, walking back to get his boots, just chilling with his food and his music, so unprepared that when it happened, instead of thinking about how much he was loved, instead he was wondering Why? Why was he being attacked, stabbed, why was he dying? Why? What for?
Tyson Manley is looking down at the floor. He makes no eye contact with anyone in the court. There is a scuffling sound from behind me and I turn my head to see Luke standing, with tears on his face, pointing at Tyson Manley and shouting, “Murderer! Murderer!” Then there are other voices, Ricardo’s trying to calm him down, Nipa’s as she rises, the security guard’s as the door is flung open and she enters. The judge directs the public gallery to be cleared and says we will have a half-hour recess. The jury begins to leave and Tyson Manley is taken out, and Lorna and Nipa have to help me to stand so we can leave the gallery, because my legs are unsteady, their strength fails me.
At the top of the stairwell I hug Luke to comfort him, feel his distress in the tension of his body, so tall and so strong, yet he is just a child, like Ryan was. His are the words I wish I had shouted myself. I understand his outrage, his need to rail against the wickedness of his best friend’s life so coldly taken. For what? That’s what I need Sweetie to tell me. Why. Lorna suggests Luke gets some air, goes with him and Ricardo down the stairs and outside. The other people who have also been expelled from the public gallery try to not make it obvious they are watching and listening, like people pretending to have stopped watching the TV just as the exciting film they’ve been watching reaches its climax.
I go to the toilet with Nipa, wash my face, blow my nose, attempt to compose myself. We stay in there a long while and she talks to me though I can hardly focus on her words, about strength and justice for Ryan. She speaks of justice as if it is the same as reparation, but it’s not. Lloydie’s right. This trial, all this evidence, these details I am sitting through, what’s the point of it? What has been done is too unjust to ever be put right. What difference does being here make?
Lorna and the boys return soon after we emerge from the toilets and we wait in silence for security to say we can go back in. Tyson Manley is expressionless while the judge gives the gallery a severe telling off. We are warned that being in the public gallery is a privilege, not a right, and that if there are any more outbursts he will have the gallery cleared.
The jury is brought back in and Quigg continues, and it is even worse. She wants specifics. The jury has to know how Tyson Manley ran, whether Nadine is sure there wasn’t anything characteristic about the way he moved (she didn’t notice). She wants Nadine to demonstrate how the right arm was being held as Tyson Manley ran toward her, the very angle so the jury can see how a cold-blooded murderer carries their weapon into the kill. She has Nadine demonstrate the actual stabs. The first one is like a fierce bowler throwing the cricket ball overarm toward the batsman and wicket, full swing. She wants to know about the knife, the very length of the blade; about twenty centimeters, like the knife Nadine’s father uses on Christmas day to slice the family’s turkey. She has to know how Tyson Manley came down to his knee; hard, he fell onto his knee hard with all his body weight. Which knee? The right one. Hard enough to leave a bruise or graze or cut? Yes, Nadine wouldn’t be surprised if it had. And any reaction, any gesture, any word from my son while this terrible assault was being meted out, any response or sound from him at all? None, he was completely taken by surprise, he didn’t have a chance.
I cry all the way through this part of her evidence. I try to keep it as quiet as I can so that my feelings do not interfere with the machinations of the court, so my grief does not hamper this legal process—or get us thrown out. Throughout, I watch Tyson Manley. I want to see some sign from him, some indication he understands the magnitude of what he has done. I want to see guilt, discomfort, the smallest gesture of remorse, but his expression is unchanged. As distraught as I am, I realize I made an error before in my assessment of him; I thought he was arrogant, filled with machismo, cold, but I was wrong; he is simply indifferent. Nothing moves or touches him because there is nothing in him to be moved or touched. I don’t know where such a vacancy comes from, how it is possible for a human being to have as little feeling as a puppet or paper doll. What difference will it make if he is found guilty and punished, sent to prison, given life? He is as indifferent as the judge’s bench, the glass cage he sits inside, the metal blade of the knife he used on my boy.
So far there’s been no sign of Ms. Manley. I’m sure, like me, she knew what evidence we were going to be hearing today. I would love to think that shame has kept her away, that she was worried she might not be able to successfully carry out her posing and posturing on the end of the bench while I sat hardly more than a meter away from her stylish handbag, weeping, but somehow I doubt it. The values—or lack of values—her son has, he’s learned at home, from babyhood, as a toddler, a boy too young for nursery school; he’s learned from her. I would love to think she isn’t here because she’s embarrassed by the notion that her son’s actions reflect on her as a mother. But if I was forced to put my money where my mouth is, I’d bet she simply couldn’t be arsed to get out of bed.
Quigg’s questions go on till almost one, when the court breaks for everyone to have lunch. I leave a different woman to the one I was this morning. It feels like what little was left of my heart has been smashed to smithereens.
5
WE GO TO LUNCH WITH Luke and Ricardo, to a sandwich shop nearby, where the boys have soup and sandwiches and crisps, knock it back like they could order and finish the same amount again, which is how Ryan ate; I had forgotten that, born hungry and it never changed. When people asked me how
he was, I used to joke that he was very well but eating us out of house and home. Those wings and chips he ate on March 18 wouldn’t have been his dinner. He was just snacking after football and would still have had room for dinner if he’d made it home. It worries me constantly that I will start forgetting him, forget over time the way he was. I’m glad they came with us to lunch. It’s such a small detail but I need every memory of him I can gather. I’m so grateful they helped me remember the way my son ate.
“I don’t know what St. Clare’s gonna ask in his cross-exam,” Lorna says. “There’s nothing in Nadine’s testimony that really affects his defense. It’s not like she actually recognized Manley. She just saw a guy in a hoodie. Maybe it wasn’t necessary to have all those details. It was horrible to hear and I don’t really see that it contributed to the case against him.”
“Sorry,” Luke says, “I never meant to say nothing. I just kinda lost it.”
“We all lost it a bit,” Lorna says. “I just hope all that detail is over now.”
I think of Lloydie saying, “Over? It’s already over.” All that happened this morning is that my waking imagination and dreams now have yet more violent detail to flesh them out. Those images in my mind that I’m constantly trying to steer clear of, avoid, that surprise me in my day-to-day life, the vivid flashbacks that appear unbidden in the middle of the most mundane tasks, will they ever be over? If so, when?
“Do either of you actually know Tyson?” Nipa asks. “Did you know him before?”
Before, a different era, the Before and the After, lifelines severed by a distinct demarcation forever. The life I lead now is in the After. The boys both shake their heads. Ricardo says, “He’s not from our manor. He never went to our school. I heard of Vito, his brother, heard about the shooting and that, but I didn’t know him.”
“What about Sweetie?” Lorna asks.
Luke says, “Everyone knew her. All the boys, anyway. ’Cause she was older than us, we kinda looked up to her. She had a bit of a mouth on her though. Couldn’t really tell Ryan what to do, but she wasn’t his type.”
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