Anatomy of a Scandal

by Sarah Vaughan

  By tomorrow, they will be used to the canteen; will know where to go to the loo and how long they will have for a cigarette break. They will realise how hard they will have to concentrate – will agree that, as the judge says, ‘five hours a day is quite enough for all of us’. By then, they will have understood the legal definition of rape and the concept of consent and their eyes will no longer widen, their bodies freeze in surprise when words like penis, penetration, oral and vagina are used.

  But for now, they are keen pupils at the start of the school year: in polished shoes and smart uniforms; with new folders and pencil cases; excited and apprehensive about what the week will entail. And I will settle them in; will reassure them that we can do this together; that they will understand the terminology as well as the magnitude of what the British justice system is asking them to do. I won’t bamboozle them with law. Most crimes centre around dishonesty, violence and lust: the last two in full play here. Juries sometimes surprise me with the astuteness of their questions and they will be fully capable of understanding the question at the heart of this trial: at the point of penetration, did James Whitehouse understand that Olivia Lytton did not consent to sex?

  I begin to speak, still ignoring the man in the box behind me, whose eyes I imagine boring through my black gown, my waistcoat, my tailored shirt and into the soul of me; but taking heart from the fact that his wife, whom we had thought would be unfailingly supportive, is not in the public gallery high above the court. My voice is low and reassuring, caressing the words, and only interjecting a note of sorrow and indignation when strictly necessary. I reserve my anger for my closing speech. I may need it then. For now I will be calm and steady. And this is how I start:

  ‘This case is centred on an event that took place between two individuals. James Whitehouse, who you see behind me in the dock, and a young woman called Olivia Lytton.

  ‘Mr Whitehouse, as His Lordship has said, may look familiar. He is a Member of Parliament and, until he was charged with this offence, a junior minister in the government. He is married with two young children and Miss Lytton was his parliamentary researcher who started working for him in March last year.

  ‘By the May, the two of them had embarked on an affair, despite his being married. It was a consensual relationship and Miss Lytton believed she was very much in love. The relationship ended on October 6th when Mr Whitehouse told her he needed to be with his family. And that might have been that. Except that on October 13th, a week after their affair finished, they had sexual intercourse once again in a lift off the committee corridor in the heart of the House of Commons.

  ‘There is no dispute that this event took place. Both sides acknowledge that. What is in dispute is the nature of it. Was this, as the Crown submits, something sinister: an act forced upon Miss Lytton by the defendant? Was it, in fact, a rape? Or was it, as the defence will submit, an act of passion: a frenzied bout of lovemaking by two individuals caught up in the moment?

  ‘You will hear evidence from both sides but for you to reach this verdict you must agree on three things. One, did penetration by a penis take place? The answer is yes: neither side disputes this. Two, at the point of penetration, did Miss Lytton consent? And, three, at the point of penetration, was Mr Whitehouse aware that Miss Lytton did not consent?’

  I pause and push my heavy-rimmed glasses up my nose then look at the jury, managing eye contact with each and every one of them; trying to impress upon them that they must concentrate but simultaneously to reassure them that they can do this. I smile as if to say that this is simple.

  ‘It really is no more complicated than that.’

  KATE

  25 April 2017

  Thirteen

  Day two and Olivia Lytton – the complainant in the language of the court; the ‘blonde mistress’ as she was once described by the Sun – enters the witness box. The jury falls quiet, for my opening was the warm-up. Olivia is the main event, as far as we are all concerned.

  A couple of the women stare at her, eyes narrowed. The elderly woman, who had looked as if she had no knowledge of the case yesterday, is peering at her through wire-rimmed glasses; and one of the thirty-somethings – straightened hair, heavy brows, foundation trowelled so that her face is an orangey-pink – is perfecting a scowl. She is one of the women who have been glancing at the defendant in the dock as if she cannot quite believe that he is there. Almost as if she is starstruck. I keep my gaze neutral and, when she catches my eye, give her a bland, businesslike smile.

  Olivia looks terrified. Her eyes glimmer, the possibility of tears not far off, and her skin has an unnatural pallor: as if her spirit and not just her blood has been drained. When I met her in the witness room yesterday, she spoke clearly and quickly, betraying her intelligence, her anxiety and a simmering anger. She was brittle; holding her body stiffly like a fragile twig about to break.

  ‘The odds are against us, aren’t they?’ she said, rattling off some statistics about conviction rates in a direct challenge.

  ‘We’ve got a strong case and I aim to persuade the jury he’s guilty,’ I said, looking her in the eye and trying to convey the strength of my determination – not just the CPS’s – to acquire a conviction.

  She smiled weakly; her mouth twisting to one side; a look of sad resignation that said: But that’s not enough, is it? She’s a Cambridge graduate and not stupid. But you don’t need to be clever to acquire her knowledge: being raped will soon erode your belief in fairness and justice and being treated with respect.

  In court, though, there is no hint of such brutal awareness – and she looks the picture of innocence, or at least more innocent than you might imagine a young woman in her late twenties who has embarked on an affair to appear. She is wearing a simple shift dress with a Peter Pan collar and I wondered if this was pushing it too far. But it works well. She’s sufficiently slim to pull off the androgynous, waif-like look and it has desexualised her body. Those small breasts – bitten and grabbed, the Crown will submit – are swamped by navy fabric; her long legs obscured by the stand. No glimpse of anything that could be perceived as overtly, tantalisingly sexual here.

  James Whitehouse can’t see her, of course. The stand is cordoned off so that she can be seen by the jury, the judge and counsel but not by the defendant. There’s a move towards using video evidence of vulnerable witnesses in sexual assault cases; the complainant’s testimony relayed in grainy black-and-white images that flicker and jump like a crudely edited amateur video as it lurches between the disturbing and the mundane. Olivia could also be questioned via video-link but has bravely agreed to give evidence in court. That way, the jury can sense the full trauma of the ordeal: will catch each intake of breath; spot her shoulders shake. And though it will be distressing and might seem cruel, it is in the spaces between her words – the silences that swell as she fumbles for a tissue or responds to His Lordship’s suggestion that she has a sip of water – that her story will emerge most clearly. It is through this vivid and compelling evidence that we have the best hope of convicting him.

  I watch the jurors watching her now; assessing her dress, the shine of her hair; trying to read into her expression – distinctly apprehensive, though she is trying so hard to be brave. She catches my eye and I smile, hoping to convey my reassurance: to let her know that she will survive this; that it will be bearable if not OK. I know that she is preparing to relive the most horrific event of her life with all its intense shame, anger and fear. It takes real courage to do this: to stand up in court and accuse someone you once loved of this vicious crime; and she may feel guilt at this apparent betrayal. I imagine her palms pricking with sweat; her underarms growing damp as the court clock ticks, regular and insistent, marking the silence. She is about to reveal herself as emphatically as if she were cut to the bone.

  I wonder if she is thinking of him behind the screen; if she imagines his gaze focused in her direction. She sounds intensely nervous; her voice, that of a Home Counties Sloane, so quiet that w
hen she confirms her name I have to ask her to speak up.

  ‘Olivia Clarissa Lytton,’ she says, more firmly, and I smile and turn to the jury. Ms Orange Face’s eyebrows have shot up. Yes, we all know it’s a ridiculously posh name but don’t hold that against her. Rape, like domestic violence, happens across all classes: could happen to each and every one of us.

  ‘Miss Lytton, I am going to ask you some questions and we are going to take things slowly. Now, if you could just keep your voice up a little?’ I try to settle her in: maintaining eye contact and smiling encouragement; trying to make her comfortable. It’s important: an uneasy witness won’t tell their story well and there’s little worse than a witness with a suddenly blank mind.

  I phrase my questions simply; and ask them one at a time, leading on things like date, location, time and names but otherwise allowing her to talk about the events at her own speed and in her own words. I develop a rhythm: question; answer; question; answer. Maintaining an even tempo as if we were going for a gentle afternoon’s walk and a single fact was being thrown down with each step. When did you start working for Mr Whitehouse? In March. And what was your role in his office? Did you enjoy it? And what did that entail? Short, easy questions that are uncontentious and that allow me to lead her, a little, because they are not in dispute and Angela Regan, a formidable advocate, will not need to bluster and interject. And I think that when Mr Whitehouse gained his ministerial job, you still worked for him in his Commons office? Yes, that’s right? And so we go on.

  We hear a little about the long hours she was expected to work and the general culture within this and the departmental office. They all respected Mr Whitehouse: the civil servants calling him ‘minister’, though he preferred ‘James’.

  ‘Was he friendly?’

  ‘Yes. But not overly so.’

  ‘Did you socialise together?’ I give her a smile.

  ‘Patrick and Kitty – the staff in the private office – and I would sometimes go for a drink but James never did.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  ‘He had a heavy workload or he would say he needed to go home to see his family.’

  ‘His family . . .’ I pause. Let the fact that he is a married man with two young children just hang in the air. ‘But all that changed, didn’t it?’ I go on.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On May 16th, you did go for a drink together.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think you’d been for a drink with friends earlier?’ I pause and smile to reassure her that I am not revealing anything shocking. We all go for the odd drink, my demeanour and my calm, no-nonsense tone says.

  We establish that she had a couple of gin and tonics with former colleagues from Conservative Central Office at the Marquis of Granby and that, feeling ‘a little light-headed’, she went back to the Commons, just before 10 p.m., to pick up a forgotten gym bag. And it was while she was walking through New Palace Yard that she met James Whitehouse. ‘That’s marked A on the first map in your folders. The outside space between Portcullis House and Westminster Hall,’ I tell the jury, holding a document up.

  There is a rustling of papers; an increase in interest on the jurors’ faces as they open their ring binders of evidence and search for the map. Everyone loves a map, even though there’s no real need for anyone to look at one at the moment. But I want the jurors to visualise Olivia and James meeting at this point they see marked with an X on a map in their ring binders. They need to get used to the physical layout of the Commons – a labyrinth of back passages and secret corridors that lends itself to illicit meetings, both political and sexual. I want to plant the seed of this idea, now.

  ‘And what happened next? Did you speak to him?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ Olivia says, and her voice wobbles. I look at her sharply. She can’t turn flaky, now. We’re not close to the meat of the evidence. I smile encouragingly, though my smile contains a hint of steel.

  ‘I saw him coming towards me so I said hello and I stumbled a bit. I think I was nervous. The House wasn’t sitting and I hadn’t expected to see him. I was just rushing to collect my bag.’

  ‘And what happened, when you stumbled?’

  ‘He helped me. He sort of held my upper arm to steady me and then he asked if I was all right, something like that.’

  ‘And had he ever helped you like that, held your upper arm before?’

  ‘No. He’d never touched me. It was all quite proper in the office.’

  ‘Did he carry on touching your arm?’

  ‘No. He dropped it once I’d got my shoe back on.’

  ‘And what happened then?’ I continue. Any slightly tipsy young woman might scurry away but that’s not what happened, here. I can’t lead her on that, though; must wait for her to place the next piece in the jigsaw of her story.

  She smiles and her voice quivers at the memory.

  ‘He asked me for a drink.’

  I lead her on. Question; answer; question; answer. Maintaining the rhythm. Keeping things slow, even and pleasant; pacing my speed to match the movement of the judge’s pen.

  We confirm that the relationship started and that, after a week, it was consummated. Ms Orange Face narrows her eyes further. They had sex, yes. That is what this case is about. Get over it. I don’t convey this irritation, of course. I remain serene, my gaze moving from one juror to another but not settling on any of them for any length of time. I am too busy drawing out my chief witness, who has grown in confidence. She stands more at ease now, her voice no longer so high-pitched.

  I don’t want her to go into details of this relationship: that will only open her up to Angela questioning her about their previous sexual history, something, the Crown submits, that’s totally irrelevant. We have agreed on a series of set words to convey that it happened, and now it is time to move on to what happened in the lift.

  But Olivia resists keeping it this factual and clear-cut.

  ‘I didn’t want it to end,’ she adds, when I ask her to confirm the relationship was finished on 6 October. Her voice drops to a near whisper. A curtain of hair swings in front of her face.

  I don’t ask why this was, and am preparing to move on, but she seems determined to be heard on this.

  She tilts her head up, her hair swishing against her cheek. Her eyes are moist but her voice rings out, clear in the simplicity of her statement.

  ‘I didn’t want it to end because I was in love with him.’

  SOPHIE

  25 April 2017

  Fourteen

  Sophie is shaking. In the sanctity of her home, she has begun shaking; her body betraying her in a way it would never do in public, limbs knocking together, jangling; undermining her habitual self-control.

  Her stomach falls out of her as soon as she reaches the downstairs loo, handbag thrown on the floor, its contents splayed across the Edwardian tiles – lipstick, purse, diary, mobile phone. The phone’s face shatters with the sudden drop: a slim line running in a neat diagonal then dispersing into tiny shards just held by the cover’s tension. Gathering the items together, she traces the line with her finger, entranced and unthinking; then winces at the pain caused by a tiny sliver of glass.

  She begins to weep, her shoulders hunched around her, the sobs muted until she reaches her bedroom, for Cristina might be in her room on the next floor and she cannot bear her gentle, insistent support. The au pair has been so eager to show her sympathy. Those tremulous brown eyes threatened to overflow with tears as she left with the children for school this morning, and Sophie wanted to scream at her to pull herself together; to show some self-restraint in front of the children as she was having to do, as she continually had to do. Where was the self-absorption she had expected from a teenage girl and that they had experienced with Olga, their previous au pair, who would empty the freezer of Ben & Jerry’s, scooping the ice cream straight from the tub into her vast, gaping mouth, and then put the near-empty carton back?

  Cristina has witnessed the whole unfolding of
this hideous mess: was at home that night, back in October, when the story broke; has lived with them through the door-stepping by the paparazzi that first terrible weekend; and even – bless her – opening the front door and lying on her behalf.

  ‘Mrs Whitehouse and the children are not in,’ she told one photographer who was more insistent than any of the others, hanging around after James had gone into Westminster on the Monday and laying siege to them in their own home. And she and Emily and Finn had hidden upstairs in Em’s bedroom at the back of the house as this slight eighteen-year-old, with her charming French accent, deviated from the instructions she had given her – ‘Just tell them we’re not here then close the door politely but firmly’ – and began to beseech them, her voice spiralling in indignation. ‘Pleez. Pleez. Mrs Whitehouse eez not here. Pleez. Can you just leave them alone?’

  She listens, now, a sob in her throat. ‘Cristina?’ she calls up to her bedroom. Silence. Her body aches with the relief, the utter relief, of being on her own. She shuts the bedroom door and leans against her radiator, feeling the warmth seep into her back, pulling her knees up and holding them tight towards her; as if she is being held tight and warmed; as if, she acknowledges as she gives herself up to the shaking that courses through her body so that her knees knock against one another uncontrollably again, she is back in the womb.

  She lets herself sit like this for a good five minutes, the tears tracing lines down her cheeks though her sobs remain muted. Having spent forty years learning to control her emotions she feels self-conscious – and yet the relief of letting go! She reaches for a tissue and blows her nose noisily, swiping at her wet cheeks then risking looking in the mirror to find her face blotched, red, streaked with mascara. She looks a mess. She walks to the bathroom, splashes herself with cold water, and reaches for the cleanser. Laboriously sweeps away the detritus of the morning – mascara, foundation, eyeliner, fear, guilt, shame, and this intense, gnawing sorrow – with a large flat cotton-wool pad. Pats her skin dry; applies moisturiser. Stares blankly at a face that is no longer the one she knows; or, rather, one she would rather not recognise. Begins the process of constructing it – and herself – once more.