Anatomy of a Scandal

by Sarah Vaughan

  ‘You said: “No. Not here.” And why was that?’

  ‘A kiss in a lift was one thing – something I found exciting – but this was different. Too full-on. Too aggressive. He might have meant the bite to be passionate but it shocked me. It was painful: not something he’d ever done before. And it wasn’t appropriate. He had yanked my breasts out and bitten me but we were meant to be preparing for a select committee. The lift runs from the press gallery to New Palace Yard, where the ministers’ cars wait. It’s a short cut to the committee room corridor. Anyone could have called the lift at any moment and found us there.’

  ‘So would it be fair to say that you were scared of being discovered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that you were preoccupied with being late for the meeting?’

  ‘Yes. But it was more than that. I hadn’t known him to be as forceful as this and he seemed not to be listening: a little like he was a man possessed.’

  ‘Like a man possessed.’ I pause as the reporters keep their heads down – their headlines and their opening paragraph written for them now – and as the judge takes a note, his black Parker scrolling. The pen stops and so I can begin again.

  ‘So, in this state, what did he do when you said: “Not here,” and tried to push him away?’

  ‘He ignored me and grabbed my thighs and my bottom.’

  She stops and I tilt my head to one side, a picture of sympathy for the evidence is going to get even grubbier now, the detail more embarrassing and explicit, and yet we need to hear it. The jury senses it, too. Some of them are leaning forward. All of us are rapt; knowing that the kernel of this case – the evidence that my learned friend will dispute and seek to undermine in cross-examination – will be found, bound hard and tight in her next words.

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘He tugged at my skirt so that it rode over my bottom and up round my waist. Then he thrust his hand between my legs.’

  ‘If I can ask you to be a bit more specific. You say he thrust his hand between your legs?’

  ‘On my vagina.’

  I wait three beats. ‘He thrust his hand on your vagina.’ My voice softens, quietens, becomes as gentle as cashmere as I wait for the impact of her words to resound around the court.

  ‘And what happened then?’ I say it so quietly.

  ‘He pulled at my tights and knickers and . . . yanked them down. I remember hearing the tights laddering and the elastic on my knickers ripping.’

  ‘If I may stop you there, we have a photograph of the knickers as evidence. If you look at photograph B in your bundle,’ I tell the jury, ‘you can see the ripped elastic.’

  A flurry of turned pages and a photograph of a wisp of black lacy nylon: the sort of knickers a lover might wear. The waistband at the top is frayed: the seam pulled loose at the top of the pants as if they have been wrenched in a hurry. It’s not incontrovertible evidence – and the defence will argue they were already ripped – but I feel a rush of sympathy for Olivia who will never have envisaged that her underwear would be pored over like this or make it into print. She is flushing now, crimson blooming on her cheeks, and I push on, for the evidence will only get harder; her experience worse.

  ‘So, he yanks down your tights and knickers . . . and what happened then?’

  ‘Then he put his fingers, two of his fingers, his middle and his index, I think, inside me.’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  She looks outraged that I am so relentless. ‘I struggled and tried to push him off, again, to tell him to get off me. But my back was to the lift wall, his weight was pushing against me, and he just wasn’t listening to me.’

  ‘So he had two of his fingers inside you.’ I pause and speak only to her for a moment, deepening my voice, indicating that I know that the next part will be difficult. ‘And what happened next?’

  ‘I realised his flies were undone and his boxers were pulled down and I saw his . . . well, I saw his penis poking out.’

  ‘Was it flaccid or erect at this point?’

  Her look is one of intense shame that she has to point this out. I tilt my head and remain impassive. Her voice dips. ‘Erect,’ she manages to say.

  And still I push on. ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘He sort of lifted me up, against the wall, and he shoved it inside me,’ she says, and her voice cracks with pain and perhaps relief that she has got the worst over. ‘He just shoved it inside me even though I had said I didn’t want it.’

  ‘You said that again, here?’

  ‘I said something like: “Not here. Someone might see us,” ’

  ‘Just to be clear: you indicated that you didn’t want this. You said: “Not here.” ’

  ‘Yes.’ She is emphatic.

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said . . .’ and her voice breaks now and she can barely get the words out, they are so painful. ‘He said . . . He whispered . . .’ Still a pause – and then out the sentence floods and her voice rings clear though I anticipated a whisper. ‘He said: “Don’t be such a prick-tease . . .” ’

  The words whip around the court: the c and t, two hard consonants that smash into the silence.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He just kept going.’

  ‘He whispered: “Don’t be such a prick-tease,” and he just kept going,’ I repeat, more in sorrow than in anger and I pause, letting the jury take in her unrestrained sobs that now fill the windowless courtroom – soaring up to the ceiling and bouncing off those oak benches with their fir-green leather seats.

  The judge looks down while he waits for her to compose herself. The jurors put their pens down and lean back. One of the older women – sensible short grey hair; a wide, open face – looks close to tears; while the youngest – a slight, dark-haired woman who I imagine is a student, watches, her face shrouded in the most exquisite pity. They wait, and they tell her with their silence, that they have plenty of time.

  Olivia is not in a position to answer calmly just yet; but it doesn’t matter. Those tears – and our understanding silence – will prove more eloquent than anything she has to say.

  Judge Luckhurst looks at me and Angela from over the top of his spectacles as her sobs become louder and more ugly: a throaty cascade that shows little immediate sign of abating, although she wipes ferociously at her eyes.

  ‘Perhaps this might be a good time to adjourn?’ he suggests, his voice gentle. ‘If I could see you back here in twenty minutes: at eleven o’clock?’ He is gracious to the jury.

  His clerk, Nikita, stands as he does. ‘Silence. Be upstanding in court.’

  I am trembling when I reach the Bar Mess to grab a few moments in which to compose myself. Olivia did well. I could not have hoped that she would have done better although I can predict the points that Angela will push at, in her cross-examination. The bruise: a sign of passion not violence? The prick-tease jibe: is she sure she remembered correctly? That it wasn’t just a ‘tease’ – something that might be whispered lovingly. Those words: ‘Not here. Someone might see us.’ Not – as I had hoped she would elaborate, though it was not there in her initial evidence – a more emphatic, unequivocal ‘No.’

  The CPS solicitor, Jenny Green, appeared pleased outside court, and I think Olivia will have played well to His Lordship – although the decision, of course, is not his. I should feel buoyed with relief but the adrenalin is rushing from me, and I feel, momentarily, drained. The inevitable anticlimax, perhaps, after a good performance; but there is also something else beyond this and the low-lying anger that helps power me through such evidence: a residual sadness that hijacks me like a stubborn bully I cannot shift.

  I slump in my chair and take a swig from a bottle of water: tepid, now, and tasting of nothing. My cuticles, I notice, are ragged: I need to put myself physically back together; I cannot let myself slip. Just one minute of introspection and then I must refocus. I close my eyes, wallowing in the dizzying blackness, shutting out the
sound of my fellow barristers bustling in; and try to draw on my inner strength – that shard of steel that my ex-husband, Alistair, once insisted I had instead of a heart. How little he really knew me; how little anyone knows me, except, perhaps, Ali. I see Olivia in that lift; and shove aside the memory of someone else.

  ‘Looking thoughtful, Kate?’ Angela – her grey eyes sharp in her doughy face – is brisk as she sweeps aside a paper cup half-filled with cold coffee and slams down her slab of papers. The room is filled with the bustle of counsel scouring laptops, analysing court papers, or reliving the horror of representing certain defendants. ‘By this point he’d drunk fourteen pints of lager and a bottle of vodka.’ ‘But he’s impotent – so that’s his defence.’

  I am aware that Angela’s eyes are still on my face. Her presence – her papers; her laptop; her capacious bag plonked right opposite me – feels oppressive.

  ‘Always thinking, Angela,’ I retort, for my learned friend is ruthless in court and I can’t betray any weakness. I push away from the table, to escape the fetid smell of the room – canteen food congealing on a plate; the windows need opening – and prepare for the next part of the case.

  Sometimes, I think as I shuffle my papers together, ensuring that the documents are just so, the jurors must question how I can pry like this. How can I probe into the most distressing moments of a woman’s life and appear so very detached? How can I niggle away at the details: where exactly did he place his fingers? How many? For how long? Where was his penis? Was it erect or flaccid at this point? A pause, just to exploit her anguish. And what did he do then?

  Where is your milk of human kindness? That’s something Alistair also hurled at me as our eighteen-month-long marriage imploded: a casualty not just of my inability to open up to him, and of too many late nights working; but an obsession, in arguments, with being utterly ruthless in winning each point.

  I know that, in the early days, I thought I had to just keep the questions coming until I ground the witness down and unearthed the salient fact. That’s fine if it’s the defendant in the box; but how can I do this to another woman? Reduce her to a humiliated heap of messy tears?

  I do it because I want to get at the truth, and by getting at the truth I can do my best to ensure each rapist, or murderer, or abuser is convicted. I can’t guarantee it. That decision lies with the jurors; but I do everything I can to ensure that’s the case.

  And how do I deal with knowing, and repeating, and rehearsing such graphic details? From mouths and tongues that probe, unwanted, to a penis rammed into each and every orifice – for hands on breasts or even vaginas are at the milder end of the continuum of what I hear. I deal with it just as a detective or a forensic pathologist or a social worker does, or should. I practise detachment, developing a neutral façade that is as much of a disguise as any gown or wig.

  Of course it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel. I just choose to contain that emotion, or rather to channel it into righteous anger – cold, forensic, focused rather than the white-hot rage that would boil over if I gave it half a chance.

  ‘His hand was on your vagina?’ I repeat, keeping my voice disinterested and low. A pause and she confirms it. I wait three beats. ‘And what happened then?’

  To be fair, I sometimes wonder why so many of us women allow ourselves to wander so directly into the path of danger. Why return to a man who has made an unwanted advance or send a text with a kiss or a smiley face emoji; why engage when it’s the last thing you feel?

  But the truth is, women are often scared of antagonising their assailants or they may feel conflicted: not so very long ago they may have been charmed by them. And we women aim to please. It is hardwired into us that we should placate and mollify: bend our will to that of men. Oh, some of us have fought against that – and we’re seen as hard-nosed, difficult, assertive, shrewish. We pay the penalty. Why don’t I have a proper, live-in partner? It’s not just because I’m unsure if I can trust anyone sufficiently. It’s because I refuse to compromise. I refuse to woman up, you might say.

  And so, yes, a young woman whose boss has touched her up or whose supposed friend has kissed her might well seek to minimise what has happened. To think the best: that it was an out-of-character mistake, best forgotten or brushed over, whatever the pounding of her heart – and the shot of fear coursing through her – might betray.

  But she is a fool – and it is no wonder.

  Men can make fools of us all.

  JAMES

  16 January 1993

  Seventeen

  They had reached the stage of the evening when it was imperative that they empty the restaurant of all the champagne on the premises.

  That, to James’s increasingly inebriated mind, made complete and utter sense.

  ‘Here, Jackson.’ He leaned back in the elegant dining chair and gesticulated to the maître d’ of the Cock restaurant, who looked as if he was having a tough night – though why, when he would be amply reimbursed for any damage the Libertines might commit, James couldn’t for the life of him understand. He flung a strong arm around the man’s shoulders and hugged him to him, to Jackson’s apparent discomfort. Having your gaff wrecked by the Libs was a badge of honour among Oxford restaurant staff. Or it should be. Part of university folklore. Tradition. James was a strong believer in tradition – or, rather, he was when he had drunk such an excessive amount he needed something as concrete as this to hold on to, rather than grasping at more nebulous concepts and sounding vacuous.

  He didn’t drink excessively, these days. Rowing precluded that. You didn’t become an athlete – a stroke for the men’s heavyweight blue boat – by sating your body with alcohol nor by shirking training or ergo practice thanks to the mother of all hangovers: something he would experience tomorrow, he knew. Which was why it made sense to stop the drinking now and dispose of the remaining Bollinger by some other means. No use leaving anything for other punters to drink, not that any other punters would be visiting this fine establishment in the immediate future. Perhaps they had rather trashed it. His shoe slithered on a sliver of glass beneath his chair as he took in the table strewn with smashed goblets: domes fractured into shards, splinters dusting the lone breadbasket and glinting on the pats of butter. The plates, slick with gravy from the duck, had been whisked away but the side plates had been smashed, Tom standing on a chair and Cassius on the table, which creaked as it took his hefty weight; holding the crockery up high and then throwing them down like a bunch of Greek tourists. Jackson and his staff, including two young waitresses who looked at them wide-eyed, had left the debris – jagged pieces of china and finer parings. He supposed it made sense to wait until they’d seen the full extent of their destruction. The clutter now looked pitiful, though those crashes had been satisfyingly noisy at the time.

  His stomach fizzed. That would be the burgundy on top of the champers, the duck and the Dover sole. God, he felt sick: a physical nausea and also something verging on self-disgust or distaste. Of course, his body would bounce back from this night of excess but he was proud of its definition: those abs made getting laid with whomever he wanted a foregone conclusion. He slid his hands under his waistcoat to surreptitiously check his definition was still there.

  ‘This won’t do!’ Tom, more bladdered than usual, more intoxicated than James, was weaving his way towards him, hips banging against the edge of the table, his broad, pleasant face a cheery red. You wouldn’t know there was a sharp brain beneath the sheen of his skin and that foppish hair. He was on course for a double first for he had the critical ability to judge the exact amount of work required to excel. James had shared tutorials with Tom in the summer term of their second year – a time he had spent rowing, punting and, pre-Sophie, getting laid with as many different girls as possible – and had relied on Tom heavily but had still been surprised by the extent to which his friend had blagged it. Neither of them frequented the Union – old fogeys; has-beens who never had been, in Tom’s words – but despite this, he sensed that
Tom, with a place lined up at the Conservative Research Department post-finals, could do as he intended and forge a stellar political career.

  Not that you would think it now. ‘This won’t do at all.’ Tom slammed the flat of his palm down on the table with a frenzied beam then sniffed. He had snorted several lines of coke, which helped explain his uncharacteristic volubility. ‘We need more champers, don’t we, Jackson?’ He clamped the maître d’ in a forceful hug. ‘More champers. More champers. More Bolly! We need more Bolly and we need it now!’

  There was a general braying of agreement from George, Nicholas and the Honourable Alec, the chaps at their end of the table; and a rallying cry from the other end where Hal was dozing on the floor, his midnight-blue tails dusted with glass; his shirt rucked up from its waistband to expose a delicate, pale arc of stomach flopping out. A dark stain bloomed at his crotch and he gave a low and fruity belch.

  ‘Let’s not drink it.’ James offered a note of caution. ‘Let’s waste it!’

  Tom’s face broke into a smile of comprehension. ‘Come on, Jackson. All the Bolly. All the Bolly-olly-olly. Let’s drink it and then let’s piss it up the walls.’

  The maître d’ put his hands up in a mild plea.

  ‘Come on, man? What’s the problem?’ Tom protested, as Nicholas roared and George undid his flies, preparing to take him literally. ‘We won’t really piss it – put your todger back, George. We’ll pour it away.’ And they half-hustled, half-jostled the man to the champagne fridge and watched as he withdrew the remaining ten bottles to add to the twenty already quaffed.

  ‘Come on, man!’ George, his penis stuffed back in his pants, the zip hastily pulled up, was in hectoring mood. ‘Open it, open it, open it! Christ. What’s wrong with you? Talk about fumbling . . .’

  ‘. . . And pour it away,’ Tom roared as Jackson, his hands shaking as he fiddled with the muselet, finally popped the first cork and began to empty it down the kitchen sink, the bubbles fizzing against the stainless steel. One of the waitresses ducked away; but the elder – a dark-haired girl, pretty in an obvious sort of way – stood by her boss, handing over bottle after bottle, her face rigid with disapproval. Small-minded pettiness. Well, bugger her. She was never likely to be able to do the same.