by Ruth Mancini
‘Not far,’ I tell him. ‘I was just about to explain to Ellie that I may be professionally embarrassed. Not to mention personally,’ I add.
Ellie frowns. ‘You’re embarrassed? What about? What does that mean?’
Will turns to her. ‘It means that there’s a problem that might prevent Sarah – and me, as the barrister instructed by Sarah – from representing you at your trial.’
Ellie’s face falls. She looks petrified. ‘What? What are you talking about? You can’t do this to me! Not now!’
Will holds up his hand. ‘Well, it’s a matter for you, really, Ellie. The question is, are you going to want us to continue acting for you—’
‘Of course I am!’
‘—in the light of what Sarah’s about to tell you.’
Ellie frowns and looks at me. ‘What? What are you about to tell me?’
I glance at Will, who pulls out a chair. He sits down and crosses his arms.
‘It’s a rather unusual situation,’ I begin. ‘It’s to do with my personal life. I’ve been having a relationship with a man, since August – in fact, round about the time I took on your case. He told me his name was Alex and that he was a hedge fund manager. I’ve just found out that he’s been lying to me for months. It turns out he’s actually Jay Barrington-Brown.’
Ellie’s mouth falls open. She sits in stunned silence for a moment before saying, ‘You have got to be kidding me.’
I shake my head. ‘Unfortunately not. I only wish that I was.’
Ellie looks at Will. He presses his lips together and looks from her to me. His silence tells her that this is no joke.
Ellie’s chin juts out and her mouth sets in an angry line. She says, ‘How did you meet him?’
‘He followed me into a supermarket. My son was having a... well, what most people might think was a tantrum. I dropped a jar of coffee and it broke. I was pretty stressed. He came to my rescue and walked me home.’
Will narrows his eyes and listens intently.
‘Did he know who you were? When he followed you into the supermarket?’ Ellie says.
I nod. ‘Yes. He set the whole thing up.’
I watch Ellie’s face as she listens in disbelief to what I’m telling her. Her jaw tightens and her eyes flash with fury.
‘Why?’
‘He wanted to ask me not to reveal what you do for a living. He wanted to find out about your case.’
Ellie’s eyes meet mine. ‘And did he?’
‘No.’ I shake my head, vigorously. ‘No, Ellie. He asked me a lot of questions, but I didn’t tell him anything. Nothing confidential, anyway. I had my iPad at home, with your case file on it, but it’s password protected and I didn’t tell him the code.’
Thank God for Apple and their six-digit security code system. ‘Talullah’ wasn’t an option as a password this time.
‘He did have access to the prosecution papers at one stage,’ I admit, ‘which means that he could have read what the other witnesses were saying, what the rest of the evidence was against you. But I never gave anything away about your defence.’
Ellie sits in silence for a moment, her big blue eyes resting on mine. ‘How did you find out who he really was?’
‘I saw a photo of him in Hello! magazine. His parents were in the same shot. He looks just like his dad.’
Ellie nods, slowly.
‘Then my son ended up in hospital and it all came to a head.’
‘So the relationship is over?’ she asks.
I frown. ‘God, yes. Of course. It was based on a lie. He hurt my son. He drugged him. I called the police and he was arrested at the hospital.’
‘Really?’ Ellie looks alarmed. ‘He drugged your son?’
‘It’s a long story,’ I say.
Will leans forward. ‘Obviously this will raise some questions in your mind about the case against you, about Jay, about his mother. But before we talk about that any further, our question for you is this: in the light of what Sarah has told you about her relationship with Jay, do you feel that you need to instruct a new legal team? It would be completely understandable if you did.’
I add, ‘If I’d found out about Jay a few months earlier, I’d have had no option but to withdraw, to send you to a different firm. But I’m not going to do that on the day your trial starts, that wouldn’t be fair to you. It’s a difficult one for me. You must have a fair trial. If anything goes wrong, for instance, if you’re convicted, it might make things difficult for me, professionally. If this comes out during the trial, it won’t look great. But, on the other hand, I don’t want to abandon you. The trial would have to be vacated. It could be another six months or more before you’d get another date. So I’m leaving the decision with you. If you feel that you want to—’
‘I’ve made it,’ Ellie interrupts me. ‘I’ve made my decision. I’m sticking with you and Will. One hundred per cent.’
‘Really?’
‘Are you sure?’ says Will.
Ellie turns to me. ‘Jay lied to you and drugged your son and I know your son can’t walk and talk and stuff, so you must have been through a really hard time. But you never once stopped caring about me. You’ve always been on my side. It took me a while to see it, but you made me see that I was someone that mattered, someone who was worth fighting for. And whatever happens at the end of this trial, I’ll never forget that about you, Sarah. You’re right that I had a crappy childhood and nobody ever gave a flying one about me. Not until you came along, that is. You made me believe in myself. Even when you found out who I was, and what I did for a living, you never once judged me.’
She turns to Will. ‘And neither did you. You always talked to me like I was a real person, not some tart who you wanted to poke.’
‘Whoa. Steady on,’ says Will. Ellie’s eyes meet mine and we both exchange a smile.
She says, ‘I want this trial to go ahead and I want you both to run it for me.’
‘Is that your final answer?’ asks Will.
Ellie nods. ‘It’s my final answer.’
Will rubs his hands together. He turns to me. ‘Sarah?’
‘I’m in.’ I smile.
*
The prosecution case opens in the afternoon, once the jury have been sworn. It’s three thirty by the time Carmel has finished, however, and Judge Collins calls it a day. We arrange to meet Ellie first thing in the morning, and then Will and I walk together back to the advocates’ room.
Will gives me a sideways glance as he unlocks the security door. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asks.
‘Well, not good,’ I say. ‘It looks as though I’ve now got my own reputation to defend as well as Ellie’s.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Will says. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll support you.’
I look up at him. ‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I know,’ Will says, ‘but I want to.’ We walk into the advocates’ room and Will looks around discreetly to make sure it’s empty before saying, ‘I know you, Sarah. I know how professional you are. I know that you would never, knowingly, get mixed up with someone involved in a case you were working on. I also know that you’re not the sort of person that would go out with a man just for his money. At least I hope not.’ He gives me a sideways glance as he says this, and I look into his eyes and smile.
‘So, do you fancy a drink?’ I ask him. ‘I’m buying,’ I add.
Will laughs. He folds his wig up and places it into its leather case. ‘Avoiding the office, perchance?’
I smile, wryly. ‘Yes. Wouldn’t you?’
We find a small pub on the corner of Newgate Street, not far from the court building. I buy a lime and soda for myself and a beer for Will, who takes a seat in a quiet corner away from the bar.
‘So. I’m looking at tomorrow’s batting order,’ Will says, as I arrive with the drinks. ‘Tomorrow’s focus is going to be on Finn’s hospital admission on the nineteenth of July. The prosecution are calling Heather Grainger, the social worker, first. Then we have th
e A&E doctor and the toxicologist.’
‘Well,’ I say. ‘If we believe that Eleanor Barrington-Brown was responsible, we don’t dispute that the sodium levels were fatally high.’
Will looks at me for a moment before gathering up the prosecution statements, which he’s scribbled all over in red pen. He sorts them into an orderly pile and taps them on the table top, before sliding them into a folder.
He purses his lips and frowns. ‘I think we have an issue,’ he says, ‘as to how we are going to run our defence.’
I give him a half-smile. ‘An issue between you and me,’ I say.
‘Yes. An issue between you and me. Look, Sarah, this idea of pointing the finger at Eleanor Barrington-Brown... I don’t think it’s going to work. I think we should stick to our original strategy, the one we named in our defence case statement, which is simply to put the Crown to proof that Ellie did it all. We ask the A&E doctor if there are other reasons why Finn might have presented with the symptoms he did on admission; we question the toxicologist as to the potential for Finn to have ingested sodium accidentally; and we cast doubt as to whether Ellie caused the bruising. Yes, by all means, let’s get Marie onto the witness stand. Let her tell the court that Ellie left Finn in her care on numerous occasions and, if she wants to, she can blame everything on Eleanor Barrington-Brown. That’s fine. It doesn’t matter too much what Marie says, or whether she’s believed, so long as it muddies the waters as to who was looking after Finn. But I don’t think we should actively accuse Eleanor Barrington-Brown of anything. I think it will backfire on us if we do, and besides, if we change our trial strategy at this late stage, we could run into issues with the court. We’d have to ask the judge’s permission to run this as a defence.’
‘Then let’s ask for it,’ I say. ‘Look, I appreciate that you’ve been put on the spot at the very last minute, and I’m sorry. But you said it yourself: in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the presumption of the jury is going to be that Ellie harmed her child. We have to provide that evidence, that evidence that it was someone else, and not her.’
‘But how? It’s unlikely, in the circumstances, that they’ll believe Marie.’
‘Well, on its own, maybe not. But we can get Eleanor to admit she’s a doctor, that she’d know how to administer a lethal dose of sodium. She’d have known how much a lethal dose was, and she’d have had the wherewithal to get it. It’s the simplest explanation for how that much sodium got into Finn’s body in such a short space of time. We get Stacey’s statement admitted in evidence and then we get Eleanor to tell the court that she’s Dr Kent.’
‘She might be a Dr Kent,’ Will says. ‘But can we show that she’s the Dr Kent?’
‘Possibly not. But we can ask her about it, can’t we? We can ask her if she had access to Jay’s hospital lanyard, his fob, if she had a means of getting onto the ward without being buzzed in by the nurses or picked up by the CCTV operators. We can put that to her in cross-examination, can’t we?’
‘Only if we know what she’s going to reply.’ Will heaves out a sigh. ‘The thing is, Sarah, Carmel’s right. We have no motive. Even if we can convince the jury that Eleanor had the opportunity and the means to do any of these things to Finn, we also need a reason. Finn’s her grandson. Why would she try to kill him? Not liking Ellie, not being happy with the fact that her son has spawned an illegitimate child with her – even if she knows that Ellie’s a call girl – it’s... well, it’s still not enough.’
I lean forward in my chair. ‘But what if it goes deeper than that? What if Eleanor Barrington-Brown is one almighty snob, whose family’s wealth and title are so important to her that she’s prepared to go to any lengths to protect it? Jay’s father is a hereditary peer. They’re a dying breed; I did some research last night, and there are hardly any new ones being created, unless you’re a member of the Royal Family. As his only son, Jay will inherit the peerage. He told me he didn’t care about it, but that it was a big deal to his mother. Jay said that she wanted him to marry into a family with a similar rank and title, presumably so that the title can pass on to a worthy successor. Which is totally normal; rank and privilege has to be protected at all cost. Diluting the bloodline with a call girl from a council estate was certainly not going to have been part of Eleanor’s plan for Jay, and it wasn’t going to do much for his rating in Tatler’s Little Black Book of eligible men.’
Will shrugs. ‘But Finn is illegitimate. He wouldn’t inherit the title anyway, would he?’
‘Not at this point in time, no. But there’s been considerable debate on the subject in the House of Lords in recent years, and as the wife of a seated peer, Eleanor would know that. What the Lords are saying is that, with the advent of DNA testing, it’s now possible for an illegitimate child to prove definitively that he’s related to his noble father. So the argument against inheritance by illegitimate children is effectively lost. Since there’s no longer any stigma amongst the upper classes to having a child born out of wedlock, there’s nothing to stop Finn from launching a legal challenge to the document granting the hereditary title to his family, and it’s highly likely that he’d be successful if he did. The upshot is that, all but for the bar of illegitimacy, Finn, as Jay’s first-born child, is the Barrington-Browns’ next heir apparent. If that bar is removed, Finn inherits the title and any subsequent children that Jay goes on to have will lose out to Finn. That possibility must concern Eleanor immensely – and it may well concern the families of any potential suitor for Jay. Even if Finn didn’t inherit the title, he’d have a legal right to a large portion of the estate.’
I pause for breath. ‘If Eleanor were to kill Finn and frame Ellie for his murder, it would be the perfect solution. She’d get them both out of her life and leave the way clear for Jay to marry well.’
Will leans forward and takes a sip of his beer. ‘You’ve done your homework,’ he says. ‘That’s an impressive theory.’
I look at him. ‘But that’s all it is, just a theory? Is that what you’re saying?’
Will shrugs. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah, but what do I do with that? Without any hard evidence, I can’t cross-examine Eleanor Barrington-Brown on that basis, suggest that’s the reason for her to kill her grandson. What if she simply denies that it’s the case? What do I do then?’
‘Then you ask her about George.’
‘George? Who’s George?’
‘Jay’s twin,’ I tell him. ‘He died when Jay was five.’
‘Really?’ Will leans back in his seat and crosses one leg over the other. ‘How?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. George was born with a severe neurological disability. His problems were very similar to my son Ben’s.’
‘He was learning disabled?’
‘Severely so. Jay says he couldn’t talk, or walk. Jay used to push him around the family estate in his wheelchair, in the company of a nanny, an au pair. One day, down by the lake, they’d taken him out of his wheelchair. They were going to teach him to walk, Jay says. But then George had a seizure and fell forwards into the water. He drowned. At least, this is the story Jay’s parents told him, years later, after initially trying to pretend to Jay that his brother had never existed.’
‘Do you know for sure that he had?’
‘Yes. Jay wasn’t lying about that. I found George’s record of birth and death online. Jay definitely had a twin.’
‘Go on.’ Will narrows his eyes. I can see that I’ve now captured his interest.
‘OK.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Well, the thing is, Jay has no recollection at all of George’s death. He remembers taking George out of his wheelchair that day, but he doesn’t remember anything after that. All he remembers is noticing that George just wasn’t there any more and neither was the au pair; she’d been sacked. He kept asking his parents where George had gone and when was he coming back, but they wouldn’t tell him. Eventually, after long enough had passed – long enough, presumably, for Jay’s memory to fade and for him to begin to quest
ion himself – they told him that George was a figment of his imagination, that he’d always been an only child. It wasn’t until Jay found a photograph of him in the attic, years later, that they finally told him the truth... or at least, what Jay believes to be the truth: that George drowned and that he and the au pair were responsible. He’s been carrying that burden ever since.’
Will purses his lips. ‘So, you obviously don’t believe that Jay and the au pair were responsible for George’s death.’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Not any more, I don’t. I found out something else on the genesandarchives site last night. With twins, the time of birth is recorded on the birth certificate. George was the eldest twin. Not by much, obviously, but he was the first-born of the two. In time, he’d inherit the peerage from his father. I have no idea how Eleanor might have felt about having a child with a severe learning disability. But even if she wasn’t so much of a snob to mind that she had an imperfect child, if my theory’s right, she’s likely to have been extremely concerned about the peerage and what was to become of it.’
I pause for breath. Will waits in silence for me to continue.
‘I know that my son, Ben, is never going to get married and have children...’ I begin.
Will’s face softens and he begins to protest, ‘You don’t know that. Surely—’
‘No, Will.’ I interrupt him. ‘It’s never going to happen. You haven’t met him. You’ll see, when you do. He’s my boy for life.’ I smile, to let him know that this is OK – that, on the whole, I have come to terms with this. ‘But providing his epilepsy is controlled,’ I continue, ‘there’s nothing to stop that life from being a long and healthy one. If that were true of George, also, then there’s every chance that the title would die with him. The only way that Jay could inherit it would be if George died first. And if that didn’t happen in any hurry... well, certainly it would reduce Jay’s chances of marrying quite so successfully and passing it on to children of his own.
‘George seems to have been swept under the carpet,’ I continue. ‘Hushed up. I don’t know where he was buried – probably on the family estate somewhere – but I can’t find a single reference to him online. According to the record of death, he died as “George Kent”, stripped of the family name and, I imagine, disassociated from the Barrington-Browns in every other way that Eleanor could think of. I think the lie that Jay’s parents told him all those years ago was probably wishful thinking on their part; George Barrington-Brown was never supposed to have existed, and Eleanor did whatever she could to wipe him out.’