Our Kind of Cruelty

by Araminta Hall

  ‘Is it possible that she was in a state of shock?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t imagine how it could be seen as normal behaviour however you want to say it.’

  Petra looked down at her notes and I saw her neck had blotches of red on it. ‘I put it to you, Miss Porter, that you are in love with Mr Hayes and therefore jealous of Mrs Metcalf. That you know you saw a woman in a state of shock, being taken advantage of by a delusional man, but your personal feelings have coloured your testimony.’

  Kaitlyn laughed lightly. She shook her head. ‘No, you’re completely wrong. When I said I stay with Lottie a lot, that’s because we’re partners. She’s my girlfriend. I can assure you I have no feelings of those types for Mike. And I have no feelings whatsoever for Mrs Metcalf.’

  I felt myself blushing as she said the words, a strange shame seeping through me at my arrogance. At my inability to see the signs. Maybe there will never be pictures in clouds for me.

  Petra coughed, but Kaitlyn stood firm, her eyes level.

  I felt a strange sensation rise through my body as I flicked through all the times Kaitlyn and I had spent together, all the things she’d said, all the fleeting touches, all the half-sentences. Knowing this truth about her and Lottie altered it entirely. What I had interpreted as love on her part had really been friendship, concern. The sensation flipped in my stomach and passed out through my head, leaving me feeling dizzy. I had got so much wrong, I had misunderstood Kaitlyn in almost every way, and the thought was terrifying.

  It was V’s turn to take the stand yesterday, which means we are here at the moment I have been turning over in my head. I must testify tomorrow and I only have tonight to make my final decision. To separate wrong from right, truth from lies, fact from fantasy. I must separate and then rearrange and do what is right for only V and me.

  She was wearing the same black suit, this time with a pale blue shirt. She had flat ballet pumps on her feet, her hair tied in a low ponytail and no make-up on her face. There were simple pearls in her lobes and naturally the eagle hung around her neck, its silver brilliance resting peacefully in the hollow at the bottom of her throat, between her delicate collar bones. She was very pale and because she has lost so much weight her bones jut out of her face, making her look harsher than usual. My heart sped at the sight of her, so small and delicate, as she stood inside the giant witness box. Fear struck at me with the thought that this strategy is perhaps too much and maybe V is too delicate to handle all the scrutiny.

  I remembered her suddenly in all those bars, when I’d felt she was a butterfly surrounded by flies. And fast on the heels of that thought came the next: if we do both end up in prison she will be surrounded by flies for years, except I won’t be physically able to save her. I won’t even be able to see her. The thought lodged in my throat and I couldn’t pull my breath into my lungs so I started to feel light-headed. I shut my eyes and counted to ten. I have to banish the bad thoughts and instead focus on the thought of her packed away like a precious jewel, ready and waiting to be taken out again when the time is right.

  ‘Mrs Metcalf,’ Petra began. ‘Perhaps you could start by telling the court about the history of your relationship with Mr Hayes.’

  It looked like it was painful for V to take a breath. I knew where Suzi and Colin were sitting and I saw her glance up at them briefly before she began. ‘We met at Bristol University, during our second year. We started dating and after we graduated we moved to London and rented a flat together. He went to America six years later and I stayed on in London. We carried on a long-distance relationship, but we didn’t see much of each other because of work and it became a bit strained between us. I ended the relationship about thirteen months ago.’

  ‘Was it a happy relationship, before the end?’ She was keeping her movements relaxed today.

  ‘Yes,’ V said. ‘We were very happy for the first eight or so years. It only turned towards the end, I’d say the last six months.’

  ‘And why would you say that was?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe the distance? Or maybe we grew apart a bit?’

  ‘Can you elaborate?’

  ‘I began to find his, his …’ V looked up at Petra, but then down again. ‘… his, I suppose, need of me, too much.’

  ‘In what way?’ Petra asked and I hated her at that moment, purely and simply, for everything she was making V say.

  ‘He’d always been very connected to me, but when he went to New York it got worse. He had to know what I was doing at all times, and if I changed my plans or did anything spontaneously we had to discuss it for hours.’ V swallowed. ‘It felt like nothing was ever enough. I had to send him weekly emails with my movements for the week listed in them.’

  ‘If I may I am going to read the jury one of these exchanges, although they are all in your files, item twenty-one,’ Petra said, turning towards the jury as she spoke. She looked back down at her papers. ‘“Monday gym after work, Tuesday meetings all day so won’t be able to speak to you but will go straight home, Wednesday dinner with Louise, meeting her straight from work, Thursday leaving drinks in the office for Sam, Friday will catch a train straight to Steeple.” Mr Hayes replied the same day: “Didn’t you have dinner with Louise last week? Why do you need to see her again so soon? And which Sam? Why do you feel like you have to go to everyone’s leaving drinks? I would prefer it if you went straight home and we can have a proper chat.”’ She looked up and back to V. ‘There are lots of similar exchanges between you two. Did you not find them a bit odd?’

  ‘Yes,’ V said. ‘But I also didn’t want to fight when he was so far away.’

  ‘I believe Mr Hayes also liked you to sleep with Skype on?’

  ‘Yes, he liked the laptop to be on the pillow next to me.’

  ‘And you did that?’

  ‘A couple of times, yes. It was easier than saying no.’

  ‘Would you say Mr Hayes is controlling?’

  V lifted her hand but then dropped it again. ‘In some ways, yes.’

  ‘Were you scared of him?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say scared.’

  Petra moved forward marginally. ‘So, to be clear, you hadn’t minded this attention before he left for New York?’

  ‘When we were at university and after when we lived in London, I think I was flattered by it. But we were much younger and I think when you’re young you want to be adored more, don’t you think?’ She looked up as she spoke, but really she had asked the question to no one. ‘Mike and I were in a bit of a bubble and I think when he went away I realised that things couldn’t go on the way they had been. I guess I just wanted a more normal life.’

  Petra looked over at the jury. ‘I’m asking you this next question because so much has been made of it in the press. But I would like it noted that I don’t think your sexuality has any bearing on this case or any other. Unfortunately, though, it is not something which can be ignored.’ I looked at the jury as well and saw how uncomfortable they were. She turned back to V. ‘When you say you were in a bubble, are you talking about this game you and Mr Hayes played, this Crave which the press has made so much of?’

  V hesitated and rubbed at a point above her eyebrow where I knew her headaches started. ‘I think that had a lot to do with it. It felt like something private and special between us and I suppose it bound us together in the way things like that do.’

  ‘How often did you Crave?’

  ‘Not a lot. Maybe once a month.’

  ‘Would you describe what you did as sexually deviant?’

  V almost laughed. ‘God no, it was just stupid adolescent fun. We went to a bar, I got chatted up and Mike broke it up. It turned us on, the thought that another man found me attractive. That’s it. No one ever got hurt; it was just a bit of fun.’

  ‘And who started it?’

  V’s head flicked towards me involuntarily, but she stopped herself from actually looking at me. ‘We were at a party once, just after our finals, and someone started c
hatting me up and Mike got a bit heated. We left the party and laughed about it, but it became obvious that we’d both been turned on by it. A few days later we went clubbing, just the two of us, and Mike suggested I go and stand by the bar on my own. He said he wanted to see how long it took for me to be chatted up. We were both drunk and I did it and pretty soon this man approached me and Mike came steaming over. It sort of went from there.’

  ‘So it was Mr Hayes’s idea?’

  ‘I suppose it was, yes.’

  Petra nodded. ‘So, perhaps you can talk us through the end of your relationship with Mr Hayes. You said things had been going wrong for about six months.’

  V nodded. ‘Yes. I started to feel very stifled by him and his constant need to know everything about me stopped seeming sweet and started to become irritating. My work was very busy and it became exhausting juggling the two things.’ She paused, her eyes wide as though she was scared. ‘Then I met Angus. He came in to do a pitch and I had to run him through something I was working on afterwards and then he rang me the next day and …’ She trailed off and I thought she was going to cry. ‘He was just very different from Mike. He was calm and self-assured and he seemed in control of himself and his emotions. We went on a few dates and I realised I was falling for him.’

  ‘And this happened when?’

  ‘Well, I met Angus around September the year before last, but we didn’t start seeing each other until about November and even then we took it very slowly because of Mike. I knew I was going to have to finish things with Mike, but I felt very confused and I also knew how badly he’d take it. My plan was to tell him face-to-face when he came home at Christmas.’

  ‘Would you say you had fallen in love with Mr Metcalf by then?’

  ‘Yes,’ V said, very simply. ‘I’ve never loved anyone like I loved Angus.’

  It was possible, I thought, that I had died and gone to hell. The room had become very hot and I could feel water dripping down my back. My mind slithered, not able to keep up with what V was saying, not able to process it into the meaning I knew was there, into what I knew she would be wanting me to hear. Stop listening to the words, I kept telling myself, except they were all I could hear.

  ‘But you were still concerned for Mr Hayes at that point?’ Petra asked stupidly.

  ‘Yes, very much so,’ V answered. ‘Naturally we’d talked lots about his childhood over the years and I knew he was much more affected by it than he admitted, even to himself. I know the reason he doesn’t get close to many people is because he finds it hard to believe anyone will love him. He was always going on about how he wasn’t good enough for me. And I understand that. My God, it’s amazing he’s done as well as he has with a start like he had.’ Her voice caught and my brain stopped slithering. ‘But I couldn’t let that mean I sacrificed my life to make his happy. I knew telling him was going to be awful and I knew he was going to take it badly, but I had to do it.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ Petra said. ‘Your mother said it made you ill.’

  ‘Yes, I felt very agitated for weeks before he came home. I barely slept at all. I had to take time off work and go and stay with my parents.’

  ‘But it turned out Mr Hayes had been unfaithful to you in New York, which he admitted to you?’

  ‘Yes. I can’t tell you how relieved I felt when he told me that,’ V said. ‘Looking back now, I can see how cowardly I was to use that as an excuse and I wish I hadn’t done it, but at the time it just felt like a massive release.’

  ‘Perhaps you thought Mr Hayes didn’t care as much about you as you’d thought?’

  ‘There was that as well. I mean, I was surprised that he’d done it, but his excuses were very irritating. He tried to blame me for it, going on and on about how lonely he’d been, as if I was the one who’d made him go to New York.’

  ‘Which you hadn’t?’

  ‘No, of course not. In fact, when he applied for the job I remember being very upset. But Mike had this obsession with retiring by the time we were forty-five. I don’t know why, but I always presumed it had something to do with his upbringing and how out of control he’d always felt. I think it’s very important for him to feel in control now and I suppose money helps with that.’

  I reached out and put my hand against the solid wood of the box in which I sat, contained and safe. I felt the warden look at me and I would have punched him if he’d touched me. Because at that moment I still hadn’t entirely worked out what V was doing, why she was swapping and spinning our story.

  ‘How did Mr Hayes take the ending of your relationship?’

  ‘Very badly. It was dreadful. He started screaming and crying and begging me not to end it. He grabbed me round the legs and I had to slap him to get him to let go of me because I was so scared. My parents had to ask him to leave our house the next day because he wouldn’t leave me alone and then he bombarded me with phone calls and texts and emails. He sent so many flowers my mother had to donate them to the church. Angus came and took me away in the end and I think if he hadn’t done that I might have gone mad.’

  I concentrated on the feel of the wood beneath my fingers, old and ridged, and ultimately unconcerned.

  ‘But Mr Hayes went back to New York in the end?’

  ‘Eventually, yes. He’d bought me a ticket to come and spend New Year with him there even though I’d told him a hundred times I wasn’t going to, way before our conversation about splitting up. When I didn’t turn up for that flight I think he began to get the message and then I changed my phone number and told him I wasn’t going back to our flat. In the end he went back to New York, but the emails continued for about six weeks. It got to the stage where Angus would go on to my account every morning and evening and delete them so I wouldn’t even have to know how many he’d sent.’

  An image of monkey man Angus reading my private words to V flashed into my brain and I almost wished he wasn’t dead so that I could feel my hand smash into his face again.

  Petra walked towards the jury. ‘Item thirteen in your folders. And then they just stopped?’

  ‘Yes. One day they stopped and that was it. At first I didn’t believe it but as time went on I really thought things were OK. Then Angus and I got engaged and I was so happy I let the thought of Mike drift to the back of my mind. I always knew I was going to have to tell him about the wedding, but I kept putting it off and then one day, out of the blue, I got this email from him saying he was coming back to live in London and so I replied and told him about the marriage.’

  ‘And how did he react to that?’

  ‘It took him a few days to reply, but when he did he sounded fine. He congratulated me and I really thought we’d moved on and could be friends.’

  Petra was still over by the jury and she put her hand on to their box, so she could have almost reached out and touched the fat man nearest to her if she’d wanted. ‘Now this is where I think some people might question you. Why did you still want to be friends with Mr Hayes?’

  V looked over to Petra so I knew the jury would be getting the full shock of her beauty. ‘We’d meant so much to each other,’ she said and I saw her throat move with the words. It was as if I was able to watch them form in her before she said them. ‘And I knew how vulnerable he was and how few people he had in his life. I didn’t want him to be unhappy. I wanted nothing more than to see him settled with someone nice. It was stupid of me.’

  ‘Or kind-hearted,’ Petra said, removing her hand. ‘So, he came to your wedding and you didn’t see him before then?’

  ‘We bumped into each other once. He was shopping on Kensington High Street and I lived just off it, so.’

  I waited for more because V must have known, but she held her counsel.

  ‘How did Mr Hayes seem?’

  ‘Fine. We chatted about his new house and the wedding. It was a five-minute meeting, nothing more.’

  ‘And how did he seem at the wedding?’

  ‘Again, I only saw him briefly when we said hello in t
he line, but I’ve heard what everyone else has said. Perhaps he did seem a bit anxious. I don’t really remember.’

  ‘Then you went on honeymoon.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s when I received the next two emails.’

  ‘Item sixteen in your folders,’ Petra said to the jury. I heard the rustle of paper and I knew what they were reading.

  ‘They were a terrible shock,’ V said. ‘I got in quite a state about them. They ruined a couple of days of the honeymoon. Angus was furious; he wanted to call the police, but I stopped him. We agreed that the best thing to do was leave it till we got home and then compose an email that made Mike feel valued and listened to but which spelt out the fact that I loved Angus and didn’t want to be with him.’

  ‘Why did you stop Angus calling the police?’

  V opened her mouth but then she swallowed and her shoulders tensed, so I knew she was trying not to cry. ‘I think I still felt guilty. I wish I had done now. It was a massive mistake.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because after we got back Mike turned up at my work and made it clear that he thought the marriage was a sham and I really wanted to be with him. It became clear that he thought it was all part of some sort of Crave.’

  ‘And he told you this when you went for a drink with him in the bar opposite your office?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t go straight home and tell Angus?’ Petra said, which was the first reasonable question she had asked.

  V looked down and swallowed again. ‘No. He was going away on a business trip and I knew he’d have freaked out and called the police and worried the whole time he was away. I thought if I waited till he got back then we could deal with it together. I really didn’t think Mike would do anything more than he’d already done. I thought I could handle it.’

  ‘Except that didn’t turn out to be the case, did it?’ Petra walked towards V, who looked like she was shivering. ‘I’m really sorry to ask you to tell us about the next part, Verity, but I’m afraid you need to tell the jury what happened.’