by Nicole Trope
‘I don’t think you’re going to be sent to prison. And if the worst happens, Eric will appeal. If that doesn’t work, he’ll appeal again and again until we get you out. You are not without resources, Mother.’
‘Money can’t solve every problem, Portia,’ I said.
‘It can solve a fair few of them,’ she replied. ‘I’m sure in the end money will get you out.’
‘Out of where?’ I shouted.
‘Calm down. Just calm down! Look, whatever happens you have to know that we will do our best to ensure that we keep you out of prison. If by some chance you do get sent to prison, I’m sure it will only be a minimum-security facility. After all, you’re hardly a threat to anyone.’
I don’t know why Portia thought she knew what was going to happen. It may be that she found it inconceivable that I would be locked up like a common criminal, just like she might once have found it inconceivable that I would be charged with such a crime. Life can be filled with nasty surprises. I’ve spent most of the last eighteen months in a state of shock.
Although I wanted to believe her, I couldn’t put aside my fear that the absolute worst would happen. I had been right about the trial. I had known that, despite everything I had been told, the jury would find against me. I knew that there was no reason why I should not be sent to prison for manslaughter.
‘Prison is a last resort,’ said Portia.
‘Then that is where I will be going’ I said, making Portia shake her head at my apparent stubbornness.
The trial seems very long ago now, although little more than a month has passed. If I close my eyes I can still summon up the stale smell of the courtroom. I can still feel the acid in my stomach as I listened to the prosecutor demolish my entire life.
I knew that the jury were going to find against me. I’d been watching their faces throughout the trial, and there was a point when they just stopped looking at me. Of the twelve jury members, seven were women. I had thought that would be a good thing, but it didn’t seem to help at all. There was one woman who looked to be about my age, but she was missing a couple of teeth and had that worn look of someone who has had to struggle for everything. I’ve seen that kind of face before. My mother had that face. I could see her hating me from day one. Perhaps I shouldn’t have worn the Chanel suit, but it’s not like they didn’t know who I was. His face was all over the news for months before it happened. And then afterwards, so was mine.
If I had been allowed to speak to them I would have explained that I was wearing the pale pink suit to mourn him, to celebrate him. On our first trip to Paris he’d pulled me into the Chanel store and insisted I try it on. I’d only indulged him because I thought we were simply amusing ourselves, but then he bought it for me, signing the credit card slip with a flourish and a smile. ‘It’s too much,’ I’d said. ‘Nothing is too much for you,’ he’d replied.
Of course the prosecutor brought money into it. When the huge sum was mentioned, I watched the eyes of most of the jurors glaze over. Talk of millions of dollars belongs in magazines, not real life.
‘They will discuss his life insurance,’ Eric had told me.
‘I didn’t even know about that,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘We’ll make sure the jury knows that.’
From knowing nothing about the Australian legal system, I now feel as though I could write a book about it. Is this me? I often thought during the trial. Am I really sitting here listening to this? Could I possibly be the person they are talking about?
‘What has happened to our lives?’ wailed Rosalind after she read the first of many articles about the trial. Rosalind has not dealt well with everything that has happened. The trial was merely the horrible culmination of an appalling year and a half. Eric assured me that I wouldn’t even be charged with anything, especially after what we had all been going through; but when I was charged and the whole system shunted into top gear all I could do, all the girls could do, was just hang on.
I could have spoken to Rosalind about my fears regarding prison life, but she would have simply dissolved into tears with me and that would have achieved nothing. Rosalind, even more so than me, seemed to be coming apart at the edges. I wanted to help her but I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anyone but myself. It was not the kind of mother I had always imagined myself to be. I was supposed to be selfless, not selfish.
I knew once all the jurors stopped looking at me that I was doomed. I knew what they were doing. It must be very difficult to know that someone’s fate hinges on a single decision you have to make. It would be hard to look into the eyes of someone whose life you are about to destroy. It must be easier to make that decision if you dehumanise that person. At some point I must have gone from being Rose Winslow, mother, grandmother and the well-dressed lady sitting quietly next to her lawyer, to Rose Winslow, the accused. Rose Winslow, murderer. Murderess? I don’t know what you call someone charged with manslaughter.
The press referred to me as a mother and grandmother, but in some articles I was also described as beautiful. I would never tell anyone I had picked up that particular detail as I read about my alleged crime, but it stood out when I saw it. I quite liked being called beautiful even though I am not beautiful, merely well put together. In court I wore my long brown hair in a low bun and my face was only lightly made up, just enough to cover the small age spots on my face and the dark circles under my eyes. The only jewellery I had on was my plain gold wedding band. I suppose that on a good day with the right makeup I can look fifty, maybe even late forties. Life is supposed to begin at fifty now—or is it forty? I can’t remember which. Not that it matters. My life is, I think, essentially over.
After the sentence was handed down, Eric immediately stated his intention to file for an appeal. He was more in control of himself at the sentencing hearing. At the trial he was as shocked by the verdict as everyone else. You wouldn’t have known it to look at him. The only thing that changed about his usual upright demeanour and impassive face was a slight thinning of the lips. I’m sure no one in the courtroom noticed but me. But then I was the only one there who’d known him for thirty years.
‘A good family always has a good lawyer, my dear,’ Simon had said after I’d been introduced to him for the first time. Eric was just starting out then. Now his name is on the front of his own building. ‘Look how far we’ve come, old friend,’ Simon would say to Eric in his later years, and then they would toast each other with cigars and whisky. ‘Eric will always be here for you Rose and he will help you when I am gone,’ Simon told me whenever we talked about our old age.
‘What if I go first?’ I asked Simon when he lectured me on what to do after he was gone, because the idea of a life without him was unthinkable to me. I was sure that without him I would be reduced to sitting on the couch waiting to die.
‘Oh, my darling girl,’ laughed Simon. ‘My darling, darling girl.’
He had taken care of me for so long that at first I couldn’t even begin to think about how to take care of myself. I know that frustrated Portia. ‘What do you mean you don’t know the password for online banking?’ she said when we were discussing money to pay for the funeral.‘Your father must have written it down somewhere,’ I said. ‘I just never needed it before now.’
‘Give her a break, Portia,’ said Rosalind.
‘Stop mollycoddling her, Rosalind, these are important things to know. You’re going to have to step up to the plate on this, Mother. I have a job and Roz has kids. You have to grow up and take care of yourself.’
Had it been a different time I’m sure I would have squared my shoulders and said, ‘Don’t you dare presume to patronise me, Portia.’ As it was I did feel somewhat like a child who had lost a parent. I felt adrift. Adrift and bereft.
‘Please don’t lecture me,’ I said instead. ‘It’s hardly the time.’
‘I’ll make some tea,’ said Rosalind, hoping as usual to distract Portia before she worked herself up into a frenzy.
‘Oh God, spar
e me another cup of tea,’ said Portia. ‘What is it with everyone and tea? It’s not like it brings back the dead.’
‘Please, have some respect for Mum,’ said Rosalind.
‘Girls, I think I might have a little lie-down,’ I said. I have had a lot of lie-downs in the last year. During the trial and in the weeks awaiting sentencing I spent quite a few hours hiding in my bedroom from my girls. They meant well, but together they were a little too much to handle.
After the guilty verdict, the whole courtroom erupted. Portia and Rosalind, who had both been outward models of composure throughout the trial, let me down by losing control. Portia started shouting and Rosalind wept into her hands. Simon would have been very disapproving. He had been raised by an English mother who had taught him the importance of a stiff upper lip. (In fact, he seemed, at times, more English than Australian. It was an affectation of his that he held onto tightly. Most people on meeting him for the first time assumed that he had not lived in Australia for most of his life. Simon was always delighted when that happened. ‘I could have been in the House of Lords,’ he liked to say. I never contradicted him. His fantasy life as an Englishman was something I got used to.)
‘She always impressed upon me the need to keep my emotions in check, especially when my father behaved badly,’ he used to say about his mother.
‘What do you mean by behaved badly?’ I asked, but he never had a clear answer for me. Simon’s true past was a secret he sheltered. Occasionally he would speak of a home filled with violence and humiliation, but just as quickly he would retreat from his words and refuse to say any more. ‘But what do you mean he was violent, Simon?’ I would ask. ‘What did he do?’
‘There are some things, Rose, that are too terrible to say, just too terrible to even think about. I would not want to burden you with the knowledge.’
I don’t know if it was the truth. I never got to meet anyone from his family. During interviews he would sometimes smile mysteriously when asked about his family, ‘Oh, I don’t think they would want their private affairs discussed,’ he would say, leaving the journalist to make his or her own assumptions about his past. I remember one article where it was speculated that he was descended from royalty. How he loved that. ‘Where did they get that idea?’ I asked him, but his only reply was an odd little laugh. I’m sure that one or two reporters went looking for his family, but they never looked very hard. It was a different time, I suppose, and there were fewer resources to track down the truth, and more respect for the aura of untouchability that surrounded celebrities.
When we first met I thought his inscrutability was part of his charm. Now I regard myself as remarkably gullible to have let him get away with saying such things. If I had questioned him more I might have known more. Or perhaps not. Knowing now how carefully constructed his persona was, how much he was concealing, I cannot believe he would have given up his secrets so easily.
At the judge’s reading of the verdict, the members of the press who had been granted access were also unable to restrain themselves. There was a lot of noise. They wanted me to turn around and so kept calling my name. They wanted to see the look on my face.
I sank into my chair and then I sat very still with my hands in my lap. I heard the raised voices calling out, but distantly, as though they were coming from another room. My heartbeat was louder than the sounds being made by my daughters, who were sitting right behind me. I twisted my wedding ring around and around and concentrated on my breathing. What? I thought. What? When I looked at my daughters and Eric, for a moment I had no idea who they were.
I had both expected the guilty verdict and not expected it. Now I realise I would have been better off to just assume that everything would be fine. I could have used the time to simply enjoy being in my home rather than spending every waking moment worrying about whether or not I would be found guilty. I heard Eric ask for bail while I awaited sentencing and I heard it granted.
Even though I knew that worrying cannot change anything I still did just as much fretting as I awaited my sentencing. There really is no rest for the wicked.
Eric’s lips thinned a little more at the chaos after the verdict. I have often wondered what Eric looks like at the point of orgasm. I have never wanted to sleep with him or anything, but I would like to know if his face changes. I would ask his wife, Patricia, but we are not so close that I could say something like that to her. Over thirty years of dinners and lunches and brunches I have never seen Eric look any different. Even when he smiles and laughs, the top of his face stays still and only his mouth moves. It must be disconcerting for Patricia and their children.
The barrister we had hired was also a little rattled at the result. His wig slipped to one side and I would have laughed at him but I’m a little awed by him. He has a tattoo of a snake all the way up his muscular arm. The first time I went to meet him in his very imposing wood-panelled office in the city, I thought he was a builder who had come to fix something. The man was actually holding a hammer and chewing on some nails.
‘Sorry,’ he said when he saw that Eric and I were already seated in his office. ‘If you want something done, it seems easiest to do it yourself.’
He was wearing black pants and a shirt with no tie, and when he leaned forward to take some papers from Eric his sleeve slipped up and I saw the tail end of something tattooed on his wrist.
‘It’s a snake,’ he said, catching me looking.
‘Oh, I didn’t . . .’ I said. I felt my cheeks flush.
‘Don’t worry,’ he laughed. ‘If I’d known I’d have to spend my whole life explaining it I would never have done it. What can you do? The folly of youth.’
I nodded my head to let him know I understood, but the tattoo wasn’t the reason I blushed. Robert has wide strong wrists and broad shoulders. He is entirely too good looking to be a barrister. However past it society thinks I am, I am still very capable of being attracted to a good-looking man.
‘He’s the best in the business,’ Eric said to me as we left Robert’s office.
‘He better be for that amount of money,’ I said.
‘Rose, we will keep you out of jail. I know that’s what Simon would want, and I will not let him down,’ said Eric, and then we were both quite sad for a few minutes.
Those little bouts of sadness are the hardest to handle. Strange though it may seem, great waves of grief are easier, because you know that all you can do is sit tight and allow them to pass over you. They are so overwhelming that you can do nothing except give into them. You may be tumbled about a bit, but eventually you will be able to stand up and breathe again. The little waves that just lap at your feet come with no warning and somehow manage to be more devastating. They tend to arrive right in the middle of an ordinary moment, rushing in when they’re least expected.
I didn’t think Simon would have liked Robert—he was always suspicious of a man who didn’t wear a tie. Simon loved silk ties. For years they were a standard birthday and Christmas gift from the girls. The night before closing arguments and the verdict, I found myself sitting on the floor of his closet rubbing my face with his favourite paisley tie. It smelled vaguely of cigar smoke and the aftershave he loved. I cannot live without him, I thought. I simply cannot go on. I don’t know what would have happened if Rosalind hadn’t knocked on my bedroom door.
‘You believe me, Eric, don’t you?’ I’d asked Eric as we waited for a cab after that first meeting with Robert. ‘About what happened, I mean?’ I have probably asked Eric that question at least a hundred times since it happened. His answer is always in the same vein. He never actually answers yes or no, so I am always left wondering. Mostly I’m left wondering because I’m not sure if I believe me.
‘Rose, I’ve known you for thirty years,’ he said on this occasion. ‘You’ve never even had a parking ticket, and I know how much you loved him. You would never have wanted to hurt him.’
A cab pulled up next to us, and Eric opened the door for me. I would have preferred to c
atch the train home from the city, but Eric would never have allowed that. I stared out of the window at all the people going about their ordinary days—perhaps wondering what they would have for lunch—and mulled over Eric’s words: You would never have wanted to hurt him.
Those closest to me had seemingly accepted my version of events. There was no one who could challenge me on them, after all. I was and am grateful for their support, but I have spent many nights questioning what they actually believe. I know Rosalind would like to question me further, but she has never been one to press the point. Portia’s stance on things has become her stance as well—or it had before I was convicted. I am sure if my mother or father were still alive I could count on them for the truth of what they believed, but I have lived without them for years.
I play out the events of that night in my head again and again, trying to come up with a different outcome, trying to bend reality. I know what I did and I thought I knew why I did it. But what if I was wrong? I keep thinking. What if I was wrong?
‘I am very confident of a not-guilty verdict,’ Robert had said to me, Eric and the girls as we waited for the jury to return after they had been sequestered. We hadn’t bothered to go home, because Robert thought the verdict would come back quickly, so we were sitting in a cafe eating a rather poor lunch. I had a piece of salmon quiche and salad. The quiche was bland and the salad was limp and sad. Portia had ordered a glass of wine and a pasta dish. I’m not sure you can trust wine served in a cafe, but she drank it quickly enough. It probably made the pasta more palatable. Rosalind ordered a piece of cake and then didn’t eat it because she was worried about the children.
‘I’m sure Jack can manage just fine,’ I said to her after she had checked her phone for the tenth time in five minutes.
‘Oh, of course he can,’ she said, but then she checked it again.
‘They’re still at school, what are you getting so hysterical about?’ said Portia.