Anatomy of a Scandal

by Sarah Vaughan

  ‘I meant what I said . . . That arrogance can be an attractive quality.’

  ‘You meant that you found him devastatingly attractive, didn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You suppose so?’

  A pause and then: ‘Yes.’

  ‘And after you say that he opens the door from the committee room corridor to the lobby staircase; he calls the lift; pushes the button to open the door and I believe you go in first?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t remember?’ Angela is all mock-incredulity and looks at the jury to register the apparent flakiness of the witness. She turns back to Olivia. ‘Well, if I may refer to your statement, which I have here, you say very clearly: “He called the lift and I went in first. He followed.” ’

  ‘Then I must have done,’ Olivia says.

  ‘So you tell him you find him devastatingly attractive and you then lead the way into the lift that he’s opened?’

  ‘I didn’t lead the way. The door opened and he ushered me in.’

  ‘But you didn’t resist?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t question why he was doing this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Even though you needed to stay on the committee room corridor and you had a meeting to go to in less than fifteen minutes, you didn’t question why he was doing this and you didn’t resist going into the lift at any time?’

  A pause. Then ‘No,’ Olivia reluctantly says.

  Angela waits, her forehead creased in a V, then looks down at her papers as if searching for a credible explanation. When she speaks, her voice is low, and her tone oozes incredulity and a hefty dose of contempt.

  ‘What did you think he was doing, calling the lift?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You’re a highly intelligent woman. You had told this man with whom you’d had an affair that you found him devastatingly attractive – and then he calls the lift and you enter first, without question.’ A pause. ‘He was taking you somewhere private, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . Perhaps,’ she says.

  ‘Perhaps? There was no reason for you to get in that lift together. The meeting you were about to attend was in that corridor, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your offices were in an entirely different building?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I think that that lift only leads down to New Palace Yard, where you could turn right and go back to Portcullis or left towards Central Lobby. Nowhere that had any bearing on your meeting? Nowhere that you needed to be?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what were you thinking of, getting into the lift?’

  There is a long pause while she lets Olivia endure the agony of being unable to come up with an innocent explanation. She is cruelly feline: a cat toying with a vole, permitting the possibility of escape, tossing it in the air, before sinking her claws in.

  The blow is vicious.

  ‘He was taking you somewhere private, wasn’t he?’

  The silence is painful – long and taut before Olivia breaks it in a voice so quiet it is almost a whisper. ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘So he ushers you in and once in the lift, you kiss.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was a passionate kiss, I think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A French kiss. With tongues?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘His hands were all over me, you said. So you enter the lift with this man you have told us you still loved, that you found devastatingly attractive, and you kiss passionately.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He puts his hands on your bottom.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And opens your blouse.’

  ‘Yes . . . He wrenched it open.’

  ‘Wrenched suggests some force. Were there any buttons missing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was it torn?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So perhaps it’s more accurate to say that in a moment of passion, he pulled it apart?’

  Olivia’s face contorts with the struggle of remaining calm in the face of such disbelief. She compromises. ‘He pulled it apart forcefully.’

  ‘I see.’ Angela lets her scepticism tinge the court before moving on.

  ‘So he pulled it apart forcefully and he gives you what might be called a love bite above your left nipple.’

  ‘He bruised me and it hurt me.’

  ‘We will submit that it is the nature of such bites to bruise and many might describe it as a bite of passion,’ Angela glances at the jury; we’ve all been there, her look says, ‘but it is only at this point that you say,’ and here she looks down at her notes, drawing out the tension and the possibility for bathos. ‘It is only here, when he has kissed your breasts, passionately, that you say: “No, not here,” that’s right, isn’t it?’

  A pause and then a reluctant: ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m just checking your statement. You don’t say, “No, don’t do that. I don’t want it.” You don’t even say, simply: “No.” You simply say – at this point when he has opened your shirt, forcefully or not – it is only here that you say: “No, not here.” ’

  ‘Yes . . . I was worried someone might see us.’

  ‘You were worried that someone might see you.’

  ‘It would have been acutely embarrassing.’

  ‘And that was your concern: that someone might see you. Not that he was doing it – this man you still loved, with whom you had had a sexual relationship and had willingly entered the lift. Your concern, as he pulled open your blouse and put his hands on your bottom, was that someone might see you?’

  ‘He had shocked me with the bite – but, yes, that was my main concern, at that point.’

  A pause. Angela looks down at her notes again; shakes her head as if she cannot quite believe that she is hearing this. Her voice slows and is lowered.

  ‘Are you sure that’s what you really said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That you said: “No, not here.” At this point?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A very lengthy pause. Angela shuffles some papers. Looks down as if composing herself. Olivia looks discombobulated: left hanging and waiting to be challenged. She knows that something is up.

  ‘This wasn’t the first time you’d had sex with Mr Whitehouse in the House of Commons, was it?’

  The reporters on the press bench scrabble to attention: you can almost see their ears prick up as their pens race across their notepads. Only Jim Stephens, sitting back, looks characteristically languid but I know all the damning quotes are being jotted down.

  The colour rushes to Olivia’s face. Her eyes flit to me but I can’t help her and look away. During the lengthy legal argument on day one, Angela made a section 41 application to cite previous sexual history – arguing that two incidents were identical to that in this case – and I agreed to the material being included, on the basis that the last thing I needed was for James Whitehouse, if convicted, to use its exclusion as grounds for appeal.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Olivia’s voice is a semitone higher than usual.

  ‘Oh, I think you do. If I can ask you to cast your mind back to the night of September 29th 2016 – that’s a fortnight before the day we’re talking of. You met Mr Whitehouse in his office. It was just after nine p.m., wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She is meek.

  ‘You were due to go to a friend’s leaving party. Your colleague, Kitty Ledger, was waiting for you in the Red Lion but I think you were late for her, weren’t you?’

  ‘A little, yes.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  Silence.

  Angela turns to the jury and virtually rolls her eyes.

  ‘The reason you were late was because you were having spontaneous sex with Mr Whitehouse in his office, weren’t you? Oral sex, which you performed, I believe, and then sex on his desk. Sex that anyo
ne could have walked in on; that anyone could have spotted. Passionate, risky sex of precisely the kind in which you indulged in the lift.’

  The reporters are scribbling frantically and some of the jurors are glancing at her wide-eyed: you can sense the sympathy seeping away from the older women as they recalibrate their opinion. Orange Face is delighted at this turn of events while the elderly woman watches through narrowed eyes.

  ‘I think there was another occasion too, wasn’t there?’

  Olivia doesn’t answer; is looking down, blood flooding her neck.

  ‘On September 27th, 2016 – two days before this?’

  Still no answer.

  ‘There’s a BBC recording studio tucked away at the end of the lower reporters’ gallery and at around nine p.m. you met Mr Whitehouse there, didn’t you?’

  A squeak from Olivia: a sound that seems to escape involuntarily.

  ‘Did you meet Mr Whitehouse there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Olivia eventually says.

  Angela gives a small sigh. ‘And there you had passionate, risky sex. Just straightforward sexual intercourse, this time; but sex anyone could have walked in on at any moment.’ She shakes her head. ‘There seems to be quite a pattern – of reckless sex in the work environment – happening here.’

  But if the jurors think that Olivia will take this further dose of humiliation meekly, they have underestimated her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Angela raises an eyebrow, on certain ground.

  ‘On those first two occasions it was consensual sex. Sex that we both wanted. We are talking about something very different here.’ Her voice wavers and cracks, fury and fear coalescing, and then it falters and comes to a standstill – as if she lacks the power to argue against this ferocious opponent; as if she recognises that she has been damned by her frank admission of desire.

  ‘You had sex in the House of Commons on two occasions barely a fortnight before this incident in the lift. Risky sex that anyone could have walked in on; that anyone could have spotted, didn’t you?’ asks Angela. She pauses, letting the tension stretch. ‘A simple yes will suffice.’

  Judge Luckhurst suggests now might be a good point for a break. ‘Ten minutes – no more,’ he tells the jury. Angela, I’ll wager, is furious: she has ensnared her victim and wants to go in for the kill.

  When Olivia returns, she seems more composed – no sign of tears; a taut, pale face – but Angela is merciless. She has scored a killer point, overridden Olivia’s perfectly accurate distinction and will hunt her down until there is nothing left of her allegations but a bloodied carcass, no use to anyone at all.

  She deals with the casually dismissive: ‘Don’t be such a prick-tease.’

  ‘Are you sure he didn’t say: “Don’t be a tease.” “Don’t tease me.” That’s the sort of thing some lovers say to one another, isn’t it? Particularly if they’re the sort of lovers who thrive on the illicit nature of an office romance; the sort who love the riskiness of sex in an office, or in a lift?’

  She pooh-poohs the idea that her knickers were ripped – ‘They’re a rather flimsy piece of underwear and cheaply made. There’s no proof they weren’t torn by you – or torn already.’

  ‘They weren’t. They were relatively new.’ Olivia is close to tears.

  ‘You could have ripped them while pulling them off.’

  ‘No I didn’t!’ she insists.

  The atmosphere quickly turns oppressive.

  ‘I didn’t want it. I said I didn’t want it,’ Olivia insists at one point, her composure slipping completely; her sheer anguish exposed.

  Angela looks at her over her glasses. ‘You are clear about that, are you?’ she asks, boxing her in.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That you said that you didn’t want it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And my heart clutches tight for now I know that Angela has something concrete with which to catch her out again and all I can do is sit and listen, powerless to mitigate the next blow. Judge Luckhurst looks up, too: alert to every counsel’s trick; familiar with the traps we set; and so do the jurors – in delicious anticipation of the next twist.

  Angela sighs, as if it is painful for her to inflict this, and she reaches for a statement. She passes it to Olivia, via the usher; reads out the declaration of truth; gets her to agree that – yes – this was a statement made at the police station ten days after the meeting in the lift; and that this is her signature and they are her own words.

  Angela looks up, gestures at the document: ‘On page four, paragraph two – please correct me if I read this incorrectly, you say: “I told him to get off me. He shoved himself inside me even though I kept saying: ‘Not here.’ ” ’

  She pauses and looks at the jury.

  ‘In court you have just said: “I didn’t want it. I said I didn’t want it”; but in the statement I’ve just read out – given to the police soon after the event – you merely say: “I told him to get off me . . . I said: “Not here.” You didn’t mention – in your statement given ten days after the event – that you said you didn’t want it, you merely indicate that this isn’t the place. And you only mention it now, several months later, when you find yourself entangled in a court case and appearing in front of us, here.’

  She looks straight ahead at the judge, this formidable woman protected by her books and files and the garb of the court, holds her head high; keeps her voice deep and controlled; and delivers her killer accusation. A rhetorical question to which Olivia is not expected to rely.

  ‘You’re not reliable, are you? You loved this man; you’d had sex not once but twice before with him in the House of Commons; and distressed at him having finished with you, you told him you found him attractive, entered a private space with him, and kissed him – fully intending to have sex with him again.’

  And Olivia is left floundering, mouth goldfishing open, as Angela finishes this section of her cross-examination with a triumphant flourish.

  ‘The words you used in that lift could be interpreted as an invitation. You’re not in the least reliable. In fact, you’re lying!’

  HOLLY

  5 June 1993

  Nineteen

  The music filled the quad, throbbing from the far staircase, where the junior common room bop was in full flow. Saturday night, the sixth week of the summer term; an event where anyone single could be part of a sweaty, friendly mass and those who fancied it could cop off with one another, hands circling the sweat-drenched backs of T-shirts and squeezing buttocks in something that could morph into a clumsy first grope.

  The couples peeled away as the night went on, retreating to corners where they perched on chairs or one another’s laps, bottles of beer drained or knocked over as they settled down to the more exquisite business of learning new lovers’ faces: cheeks, necks, mouths. The unchosen few ignored them and carried on dancing, right arms breaking the air in a rhythmic salute; bouncing on the tips of their toes, bodies straining up in one big celebration of being eighteen or nineteen – for most were first-years with nothing more to preoccupy them than whether they would pull at the end of the night. The music swirled and rose: an anthem that built to a crescendo they could all shout out loud in one great affirmation of joy. Holly mouthed the lyrics – the words, not quite known, catching in her throat – and Dan, a friend she knew from the student paper, who had invited her to Walsingham College for this bop, lowered his salute until his finger was jabbing at her. He spun her round, then sang into her hair, his breath sharp with beer, his hands light on her waist brushing up against her breasts, and she was perturbed; her sense of feeling flattered giving way to embarrassment and shame.

  ‘Too dizzy, sorry,’ she said with a smile and broke away. And she was, the spinning on top of the two pints of cider that fizzed and sloshed in her stomach turning her head. She pushed through the fug steaming from all those hot bodies, the air stale and sweet, and made for the quad. The noise pulsed behind her, thrusting her forwards, encircli
ng her before being absorbed by the rough golden stone. The boom lessened as she walked quickly towards the porters’ lodge, boots clipping irregularly, for she felt an irrational need to escape from this college and Dan who, she belatedly realised, might be interested in being more than friends.

  She kept her head down, concentrating on the flagstones and on trying to walk straight for she risked stumbling onto the lawn, with its strict notice to keep off the grass, and her feet were definitely weaving. The June night had cooled, pimpling her skin for she only wore a vest top, and she stopped to put on her denim shirt, tied around her waist. The euphoria of being part of one happy group had vanished and she started to hum, her voice low and tuneful, to try to recapture a joy she could no longer feel.

  Her dizziness was lifting. She risked looking up at the cloudless night sky that stretched, midnight blue and brilliant; and tried to find the features in the face of the creamy full moon that hung high above. Venus winked and she blinked back. For a moment, she just gazed up: letting herself be overwhelmed by the darkness that soared beyond the golden spires. The feminist literary theory she devoured meant she saw phallic symbolism everywhere but the penetrating towers seemed pitiful, risible even, compared to the grandeur of the night sky. She staggered a little, overwhelmed by the velvet richness and the immense beauty of a full night sky pressing down on her.

  The college clock tolled twelve: the chimes long and sonorous. She must find her way out but, taking a left turn, she discovered she was in the college cloisters: a magical courtyard with oak doors set deep into the walls and a moonlit patch of lawn, framed by arches, enclosed. Was she lost? She didn’t know this college. It was far larger than hers: grander, with its deer park and fellows’ garden, and slightly disorientating. Perhaps she was trespassing – although Dan had invited her; had been quite insistent she attend. As always, she felt an imposter. Dan, Ned, Sophie, Alison even – though she would never admit to it with her proud Northern-ness – could justify being here but she still sometimes felt a fraud: someone who had managed to slip in, perhaps to fulfil some state school quota, and who wasn’t entitled. It was only a matter of time before she was found out.