And then, in the final year, with it known that she would apply for Oxford, she had become defiant: had begun to speak up again and to acknowledge her cleverness, though tentatively at first. This is who I am, she effectively said, every time she found herself raising a hand to respond to Mrs Thoroughgood’s questions on free will and determinism in The Mill on the Floss or on Bertha Rochester as Jane Eyre’s doppelganger. She could see the end of school now: could count the remaining months and smell the freedom that would soon be hers; could sense the escape from the girlish cliques, the continual bitchiness, the insidious belief that if you weren’t pretty or slim or wore a sufficiently short skirt or tucked in your tie in precisely the right way – skinny with the fat tongue thrust between the top second and third buttons, you had no worth. On the last day of her exams, she had stalked into the Shakespeare paper, her thighs rubbing together under her frumpishly pleated skirt, her tie unashamedly fat, and she had written her heart out. Her worst tormenter, Tori Fox, had asked how she had found it, and she still hadn’t dared to tell the truth; hadn’t risked confessing: ‘Actually, it was pretty easy.’ But when she got her four straight As, they all knew.
She stood up to stretch and to glance out of the window again, at one of the finest views in Oxford. The Gothic tower of St Mary’s offset by the classical Radcliffe Camera; a thrusting phallus of a spire outshone by a rotunda, study trumping worship; self-containment beating self-aggrandisement, over and over again. Perhaps that was why she felt so content, here in this spot on the west side of this cobbled square where she was surrounded by libraries with the square’s centre showcasing the prettiest of them all. All of this beauty and history and tradition existed to celebrate and facilitate studying. She need never feel apologetic about wanting to read a book – or be herself – again.
And so none of her social fears really mattered. She knew she would never be part of Sophie’s clique but perhaps it wasn’t a huge issue. She had friends outside college: those earnest, ambitious boys on the student paper, who talked of applying for work experience on broadsheets or at the BBC – perhaps had even already done so; and Alison – with whom she could down a pint of cider in the college bar; and who she knew still unaccountably liked her, even if she was too inhibited when she dragged her to the Park End Street nightclubs – her clothes wrong and her movements stilted; her body too gauche to really let herself go.
She was free of the fear of being deemed wanting – for here, she was finally realising, there were a few other people who were sufficiently different; enough for her to feel as if she could somehow fit in. For the first time in her life, or the first time since very early childhood, she belonged. And she could relax. The low-level anxiety that had coursed through her veins every day at school, and that had only ebbed away on the bus home, as she sought comfort in a Twix gobbled in a rush of relief at having survived another day, had disappeared and would only surface intermittently – when she sought Sophie out among her other friends. It was a new and completely wonderful feeling. This strong conviction. This sense of being happy and at ease.
KATE
26 April 2017
Sixteen
Day three, and Olivia Lytton looks more as if she is dressed for a job interview. Gone is the Peter Pan collar; in its place a crisp white shirt and well-cut navy jacket and skirt. Her hair, which she repeatedly tucked behind her ear, yesterday, has been held back with a nest of grips. The effect is to make her look both younger and less elegant. Her cheekbones are more pronounced: she is less attractive, more severe.
She is even paler this morning. I would guess that she has barely slept and her eyes are lit by an artificial brightness powered by adrenalin and the bitter filter coffee bought from the court’s canteen. Olivia’s eyes have hardened. Ali, in a rare undiplomatic moment, once told me that no one could properly understand the pain of giving birth until they had experienced it. In the same way, Olivia could not hope to predict quite how terrifying giving evidence would be. Despite the court’s best efforts to be gentle, I know of few chief witnesses in sexual offences cases who have managed to come through this experience unscathed.
The court is nearly full now. I rearrange my side of the bench: building a fortress with bundles of documents, neatly aligned pens, a jug and glass for water; defending myself with books and files, as the jury settle themselves into their now familiar positions and a clutch of journalists – not just the jaded court reporter from the news agency, with his shiny suit and greasy tie, but the safe hands from the broadsheets and tabloids – sidle onto the press benches and fling their pads down.
Jim Stephens, from the Chronicle, is here: an old-school hack fuelled by beer and fags, his face puce beneath that raven-black hair that perhaps comes from a bottle. One of the few who remember working on Fleet Street when it was Fleet Street, it would be easy to dismiss him compared to the hungry graduate trainees working alongside him. But I read him; and I rate him.
For the third day, Sophie Whitehouse hasn’t arrived.
‘Done a runner,’ Angela Regan whispers, her mouth set in a line of condemnation. My junior, Tim Sharples, a languid fellow with a good line in black humour, catches my eye.
I look at the QC, sharply.
‘Scarpered off to her mother’s in Devon.’ Her tone is grim. This doesn’t look good for her client: this pointed, continual absence of his wife. I busy myself with searching for a document in a ring binder; double-checking out of a needless nervousness; biting back the trace of a smile that Angela, a street fighter of an opponent, must know is playing across my face.
And then there is a hush, which grows into a heavy cushion of silence: the rustles stop and all I can hear is the rhythmic ticking of the clock. We are all poised. I stand, an actor on a stage, until His Lordship indicates that we should get started. I turn to Olivia. For it is time to draw her on, now, to tell the heart of her story.
‘Can I take you back to October 13th?’ I say, my voice moderate and reasonable. ‘The date in question. I think you were due to attend the Home Affairs Select Committee, together?’
‘Yes. James was due to give evidence on the new countering extremism strategies we were about to start implementing.’
‘In everyday English, I think those are ways in which the government aims to stop potential terrorists?’
‘Yes.’ She straightens for she is on safe territory here: civil servant speak which is uncontentious. ‘Normally this would be evidence given in private to the Intelligence Select Committee but there was a slight turf war between the committee chairs.’
‘I think the meeting was first thing in the morning. So what time did you set off?’
‘Just before nine. James was jittery and said that he wanted to talk to me over a coffee.’
I push my glasses up my nose and turn to look at the jury. The officious middle-aged man, his belly straining against his ironed shirt, and a smart navy tie on today, smiles, anticipating my next question – for it is a courtly dance I am playing here and the jury is beginning to predict my every move.
‘You say: “He was jittery?” . . . Why was that?’
‘There’d been an unfavourable comment piece in The Times. It was by a journalist he knew and rated. A contemporary from Oxford; he thought he liked him. It was quite poisonous and he didn’t seem able to laugh it off, like he usually did. He kept repeating the most damaging phrases as if he couldn’t shake them from his mind.’
‘I think we have the article in question here.’ I flip to the relevant page in my file. ‘I think you’ll find it’s document three in your bundle of evidence?’ A rustle of action and a frisson of excitement among the jury at being asked to do something. Frankly I’m amazed the judge has ruled the article admissible, it’s so potentially prejudicial. But I argued it is relevant because it prompted James Whitehouse’s anger before the alleged rape and explains his state of mind.
‘Here it is!’ I hold the document in my left hand, brandishing it firmly and looking around for confirma
tion. ‘It’s from The Times of that morning, October 13th, and it’s written by a Mark Fitzwilliam. He’s a comment writer on that paper. It’s about the impact of the terror legislation but the part we are interested in starts at the second paragraph and, you may think, constitutes an attack on the defendant.’
I glance at Angela but she lets this go, as discussed pretrial. We are all agreed the article is pretty bloody damning. I clear my throat. ‘If I may begin:
‘ “When James Whitehouse came into government, many hoped he would be a fresh broom to sweep aside some of our more draconian anti-terror legislation. But the close personal friend of the prime minister, and long-standing member of his kitchen cabinet, has surpassed his predecessor by rampaging through our nation’s civil liberties like a member of the Libertine Club intent on trashing an Oxford restaurant: smashing its windows; defacing its walls; soiling its carpet with magnum upon magnum of wasted, emptied champagne.
‘ “As a member of the notorious dining club, James Whitehouse was famed for his breathtakingly arrogant disregard of those who owned or worked in such establishments. Why should he care about the disruption, the grievance, the headache of righting the chaos he and his friends had wreaked when a fistful of fifty-pound notes would always provide a ready solution? Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had no insight into the effect of his behaviour on those whose livelihoods he trashed. In the same way, this Old Etonian shows a blatant disregard for the impact of the anti-terror legislation on law-abiding British Muslims that he champions, now.” ’
I pause. ‘You say he was “a bit jittery”? Is it fair to say that this article also made him angry?’
‘Your Lordship . . .’ Angela rises, for I am leading the witness.
‘I’m sorry, Your Lordship.’ I bow to the judge. ‘Let me rephrase the question. Could you describe Mr Whitehouse’s response to this article more fully?’
‘He was angry,’ Olivia confirms. She deliberates, and I catch a glimpse of the thoughtful young woman who would have been destined for a good career before it was derailed by sex. ‘Short with me, but also somehow seeking reassurance. It was as if he had forgotten the distance that he’d put between us and wanted to recapture our closeness. It was clear that this had affected him sharply. He seemed vulnerable, for once.’
‘ “It affected him sharply.” How could you tell this?’
‘His body language was stiff: ramrod straight and I had to half-run to keep up with him. Usually he brushed off any criticism but, as we marched to the committee room, he kept repeating phrases as if it had really got under his skin.’
‘If I can stop you, what time was this?’
‘At about nine-fifteen. Normally, the minister would sweep in just before the start so he didn’t have to chat to the backbenchers, unless he wanted to. And he didn’t want to that morning. When he saw the committee members huddled together outside room fifteen, the Lloyd George room, and glancing at him as he arrived, he said something like: “I can’t deal with this,” and he charged off down the corridor in the other direction.’
‘That’s towards the press gallery, to the east?’ There is a rustle of the jurors’ folders.
‘Yes, that’s right. It is.’
I direct the jurors to the relevant map: another corridor stretching away from the central staircase and leading to our crime scene, for which they also have photographs: an unprepossessing, brown-carpeted lift.
‘And what did you do, when he charged off like this?’
‘I followed him.’
‘You followed him.’ I pause, letting the fact sink in: and the implication that she was just being a good employee, attentive to her minister. ‘He said: “I can’t deal with this”; stormed off and you followed him.’ I tilt my head to one side, sympathetic: ‘Can you remember what he said?’
‘He was still muttering under his breath and then he stopped, by the door leading to the press gallery and the lift, and turned to me and said: “I’m not breathtakingly arrogant, am I? Do you think I’m arrogant?” ’
And Olivia stops abruptly for she is like a runner who has been pushing herself to exceed her personal best and finds that she has surpassed herself and is breathless; her face flushed, her energy almost spent.
‘And what did you say when he said that?’ I keep my voice matter-of-fact, and glance down at my open file, as if the answer is of no particular significance.
‘I said he could be ruthless when he needed to be. Cruel sometimes, even.’
‘And how did he respond?’
‘He didn’t like it. “Cruel?” he said – and then: “I’m sorry.” ’
‘And what did you say to that?’ I ask, for we can all imagine how she felt: the jilted lover who finally receives the long-awaited apology.
‘I said . . .’ and her voice dips but the court is quiet: we are all straining to capture her every word and they are words that could damn her.
‘I said that, sometimes, arrogance could be devastatingly attractive.’
On we march through the evidence that could be construed as damaging. He flings open the door from the committee room corridor to the press gallery; stops outside the lift; presses the button and she enters first.
‘And what happened next?’
‘We kissed. Well . . . we sort of collided.’
‘You sort of collided?’
‘I suppose we both moved together at the same time.’
‘You moved together at the same time. There was a strong attraction there, then, although he had “finished with” you, that was the term I think you used, just over a week earlier?’
‘We had been involved for five months . . . We had been lovers,’ and here she looks at me, a little defiant, and I wonder what she thinks of me: if she imagines me as a woman who has never known an irresistible sexual attraction; that melding of mouths and limbs, the jigsawing of bodies that shrinks one’s world to just the two of you – and in those most intimate moments, makes the rest of the world disappear?
I smile, waiting for her to continue. For this is what the jury needs to hear to understand: how she got herself into this situation in the first place. They need to sense her emotional confusion: to appreciate that, despite feeling humiliated and bruised by his treatment, she could not fail to respond when the man she loved so passionately moved towards her for a kiss.
‘You don’t just switch off your feelings for someone when they finish with you. Not after that short a time. Not if you’d wanted it to continue,’ she says. ‘Or at least I don’t. I still found him very attractive. I still loved him.’
‘Can you describe the kiss?’ I need to push her on this.
She looks blank.
‘Was it a chaste peck on the lips?’
‘No.’ She looks at me, perturbed.
I smile. ‘Well, is there a word you might use to describe it?’
She looks embarrassed. ‘I suppose you would call it French kissing.’
‘French kissing?’
‘You know. Passionate kissing, with tongues.’
‘So you kissed, with tongues – and can you remember what happened then?’
‘His hands were all over me. Touching my breasts and my bottom . . .’ She falters.
‘And then?’ I probe gently.
‘Then he . . . he . . . He wrenched at the top buttons of my shirt to get into my bra . . . to my breasts.’
I pause, letting the room take in her humiliation; the casual violence of the moment. Perhaps I seem cold, pushing her to relive it all, and yet I am not: I can imagine all too clearly and I want the jury to imagine what she felt then and what she is feeling now.
‘Can we take this in stages? He was touching your breasts and bottom and wrenched your shirt to get into your bra. Did he get into it?’
‘Yes.’ She is close to tears. ‘He grabbed one of my breasts – my left breast. Pulled it out of my bra and began to kiss and bite it . . .’ She nods and swallows. ‘He kissed it quite savagely.’
> ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that he gave me a love bite – but quite a harsh one.’
‘I think you received a bruise as a result, just above your left nipple?’
She nods, close to weeping.
‘In fact, we have a photograph which you took on your iPhone later that week. It’s photograph A in your bundles,’ I tell the jury, and I hold an A4-sized photo up for them to see. It shows a fat greengage of a bruise, two centimetres by three; a yellowy-brown by this stage, less angry than the reddish-black it must have been in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
‘If you look closely on the left of the bruise,’ I tell the jury, my tone ever-so-matter-of-fact, ‘you can see a slight indentation. The defence’s case is that this is a usual discoloration on a bruise but the Crown submits . . .’ and here I pause and shake my head ever so slightly. ‘The Crown submits that they are caused by teeth.’
I wait for the inevitable gasp. The jurors don’t disappoint. Several glance at the dock and Essex Boy eyeballs James Whitehouse clearly: chocolate eyes not moving from his face.
‘And where were you when this happened?’ I go on, for I must continue before Olivia loses momentum.
‘In the lift. It’s a tiny wooden lift: it says it can hold six people but it can’t possibly. I had my back to the wall and he was in front of me, so I was pushed . . . well, trapped against it. I couldn’t move past.’
‘You couldn’t move – but you must have done something?’
‘I think I yelped in shock and tried to push him. I said something like: “That hurt me.” And then: “No. Not here.” ’
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