Wife On Demand

by Alexandra Sellers

  Jude came across as not only expert at his work, but a man of integrity. He was unshakable on cross-examination, and Sondra Holt did not make the mistake of challenging him for long.

  The general contractor had long experience of building for Jude. He testified as to Jude’s perfectionism in all matters of construction and pointed out that the safety record on a Daniels site was always very high. Jude Daniels did not cut corners in matters of quality or safety. He was sometimes difficult to work for but at least you always knew what was wanted. The best.

  The glazing contractor discussed in minute detail Jude’s concern over the glass-to-glass joints which held the glass. He was sure that Jude had consulted the test figures on many occasions before August first, by which date the installation was nearly complete.

  He also testified to the fact that everyone on the site had known and freely discussed Jude’s sudden love affair with Hope Thompson. The glazing contractor had even saved Jude’s life when the architect lost his footing on the scaffolding one day when he grabbed for his phone when Hope was calling.

  “Did you ever get the impression that Jude Daniels’ affair with Hope Thompson was making him lose concentration, on the job in hand?” he was asked on cross-examination.

  “Nope,” said the man laconically.

  She backed off that. “Did he ever show you the papers with the test results?”

  “Probably. Maybe. I can’t remember.”

  “So you have no recollection of what lab had done the results or any date on the document you say Jude Daniels was working from?”

  “Nope.”

  “No recollection at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Nope. The lab’s not my business. The building is.”

  Hope had been going to be called by the defence. Nicholas Harvey had planned to show her the DeMarco test results and question her as to the date stamp, and the fact that there was no initial on the top page. She would have said that that simply could not have happened, that as well as the cover letter, she would have initialled the top page of any document attached. That, in her opinion, someone not entirely familiar with the procedure must have got hold of a Thompson Daniels stamp, stamped the document and misfiled it. But it had never been received in the mail at Thompson Daniels.

  But he did not call her. Hope was sure that it was because he did not want the jury reminded of her dismal performance as a witness for the prosecution.

  Nevertheless, he put on a good case. Hope relaxed more with each successive witness who testified to Jude’s integrity and attention to detail. She was sure her own testimony had been long forgotten under the weight of what had come since. By any standards there was reasonable doubt, and that was all Nicholas Harvey had to prove.

  Between the prosecution and the defence summing up, there was almost nothing to choose. Both were masterly performances, but Nicholas Harvey had the advantage of addressing the jury after the Crown Prosecutor. It was clear to almost everyone that he had won the case.

  And then came the judge’s address. “You may think that the defendant’s previous history shows a man of integrity who would not have stooped to put the public at risk for any reason. But we have the testimony of two women who have been badly treated...I would ask you to consider whether it is appropriate to place too much emphasis on the testimony of a witness who is being browbeaten as Ms. Lamont clearly was.... Then we come to the witness who could testify only from a distance. The man who said, He’s lying about the letter. Now, you may ask yourselves why this man’s daughter, the defendant’s mistress, who as we all saw had no idea of the existence of the defendant’s fiancée, kept that final deathbed accusation quiet if she believed her father was referring to Bill Bridges...

  “You have heard Mr. Bridges suggest that something called a channel frame would have been needed to accommodate the shape called 31AA, and you have heard Mr. Daniels say that a simple increase in the width of the already existing joint would have sufficed. You may like to ask yourselves whether Mr. Daniels thought of that innovative solution at the time or only later, and whether he did in fact fear that his design would be spoiled...

  “You may ask yourselves whether the defence has provided you with an alternative hypothesis that is reasonable, that a reasonable person would accept. Is he suggesting that someone broke into the offices of Thompson Daniels to plant that important letter? You may like to ask yourselves whether in the absence of any evidence of a break-in that seems feasible....”

  And so the judge tore down the structure that Nicholas Harvey had built up, and painted a picture of a man who was honourable only so long as he was not threatened, a man who used women for his own ends, who had interfered with the testimony of a significant witness, using the fact that she loved him to make her submit to his demands to change her testimony....

  The verdict was guilty. The sentence, four years. Jude did not once look her way, not even as they handcuffed him and led him out.

  She went to the medium security prison to visit him a few days after he was taken there. It was only then that Hope understood, at last, what the future held for her.

  The ritual of metal bars, clanging gates and sneering guards was something she thought she had got used to at the detention centre, but at least there she had believed that these things were temporary. She thought of what Jude’s feelings must have been as he had entered this place. For her the gates would open again in an hour. For him, probably not in under a year.

  She sat in a room with twenty other women, waiting for her name to be called, for another locked door to open, and then she passed through into the prison visiting room, the only place, for prisoners, where the prison connected to the outside world.

  He was standing waiting for her on the other side of the void.

  “Jude!” she’d whispered, seeing him for the first time since that moment when they had handcuffed him in court and led him away. Close to him, with nothing between them, for the first time since his arrest, long months before. Other couples around them in the visiting room were embracing, and she instinctively, hungrily moved close and half lifted her arms before his face stopped her cold.

  “Don’t touch me, Hope,” he said, as he had said once before. But though the words were the same, now he spoke a completely different language. Then his voice had been ragged with erupting passion, now it was blank, a coating of ice over a face of granite where no living thing could get a foothold. She flinched as the cold of absolute zero burned her.

  “Jude,” she said again, uncertainly, wanting to comfort him but not knowing how to reach him if she could not touch him.

  “I don’t know why you’ve come here,” he said.

  “You—” She stared and swallowed. He didn’t know why she’d come? Had he imagined that she would abandon him? Hope smiled tremblingly, frightened for what had happened to him. “But I—”

  “And I don’t care,” he overrode her ruthlessly. “I am seeing you now because I want to make it clear that I do not want you to come again.”

  Fear was cold. She felt it creep down to the roots of her soul. Frantically her spirit moved to ward off understanding. “Jude, what is it?” she begged, but he had not finished.

  “I am not interested in seeing you now or ever.”

  “Why?” she whispered finally. She understood nothing. The world was on its head. Nothing was as it should be. He did not blame her, he could not blame her.

  He laughed a sound that was entirely without mirth.

  “I’m sorry,” she tried to say, through her tears. “Is it because—?”

  “Get out of here,” he interrupted. “Get out of my life.”

  She stood stock-still then, all the blood leaving her head as she finally faced the truth. “Nooo!” she sobbed. “Jude!”

  People looked at them, but she did not see anything but Jude’s back as he turned from her and walked away towards the door that led back into the prison.

  Tea
rs streaming from her eyes, she ran after him. The door opened for him as she reached him. “Jude!” she cried again, but without one glance back, he passed through.

  A uniformed guard stood in her path as she tried to follow. Stunned, blinded by tears, she pushed at him. “No!” she said. “Let me go! I have to—”

  “Stand back, please!” said a cold voice, with a tone of threatening authority that cut through the fog in her brain at last.

  “Oh, God!” she cried. Beyond the guard, Jude, his back to her, stood waiting in front of another metal gate.

  That was the last view she had of him.

  Chapter 9

  “You found something?”

  Jude’s voice expressed contemptuous disbelief. The passion he had once felt for her had lost none of its intensity, but was now transmuted into hostility. Instead of his object of desire, she was the enemy.

  Hope felt it coming from him in waves. She shivered. “Can we sit down?”

  Jude’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. His hand shot out and grasped her upper arm as she half turned to look for empty chairs in the inhospitable room. In the centre of one wall was the glassed-in enclosure where the guards sat watch. Around them a disturbing scene was forming as men and women collected coffee from a machine and sat down over low tables to engage in domestic discussion, as if the Saturday breakfast tables of the nation were under the watchful eye of Big Brother. “Jerry’s teacher is saying...” she caught on one side, and on another, “What does Dad think about it?”

  “Who told you to come here?”

  “What?”

  He was silent, his gaze compelling.

  “Nobody told me to come here! Who would want me to, and why?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering.”

  She still wanted him. Whatever he had changed into during the months he had been here, whatever had changed him, there had been no change in the essence that mingled with hers and caused that overwhelming, inexplicable physical and mental reaction in her. Feeling it, she closed her eyes and looked away. She had hoped to find it dead.

  When she faced him again, his smile told her that he saw that movement not for what it was, but as an admission of guilt.

  “Jude,” she said. “No one even knows I’m here. I came because I found something. Your appeal is still ongoing, isn’t it?”

  He crossed bulging arms over his chest, and she thought that he must have gained twenty pounds, all of it muscle. He was wearing a cheaply cut beige shirt, the sleeves rolled up over muscled forearms, and green gabardine prison pants. His thighs and buttocks were different from what she remembered, too. There, too, he had added muscular bulk. She wondered if pumping iron was a release for his anger.

  “Now, why would that be of interest to you?”

  “Because your conviction was a miscarriage of justice and I contributed to it, and I would like to help put it right,” she said furiously. “How dare you imagine otherwise?”

  “Hope,” he said softly, dangerous. “Don’t say how dare you to me.”

  “Jude—”

  “The only thing within your power to put right is coming here today. You can do that by leaving.”

  He was a mountain of iron. But Hope was stronger than she had been a year ago. She, too, had been tempered by the flame she had passed through.

  “All right, I’ll do that. When I’m gone, suppose you have a look at this. If you don’t find it interesting, maybe your lawyer will. He can call me anytime.”

  She was wearing a simple sheath dress in soft corduroy, with two hip pockets. She pulled a paper out of one pocket, unfolded it, and thrust it. into his hand. Jude involuntarily took it. Their gazes locked, but she stood her ground, saying nothing, and after a moment he glanced at the typed front, then at the blank reverse, flipped it back and began to read.

  It was a curriculum vitae of one George Henry Young. She watched Jude’s eyes flick along the lines outlining the personal details, the education, and reach the section titled Career History. Suddenly all the tension left the muscles around his eyes, and he read something twice. She knew what line he had reached without looking.

  1991—present: Environmental Glass Systems

  Wood stock, Ontario

  Jude looked at her. “Well?” he demanded.

  “You probably don’t remember him. He was only with us for two weeks. We called him Gig.”

  His whole body became intent. “We hired him? He was working in the office?”

  She nodded.

  “When?”

  “Dad took him on in early July last year. He left before the end of the month. I don’t know what reason he gave. Someone else was hired to replace him.”

  “Where did you find this?”

  “At home. I’ve been...cleaning out Dad’s study.” Her voice cracked.

  “I’m sorry about Hal.” He said it unwillingly, she could hear from his tone. He had no real sympathy for her, it was just a social ritual whose promptings he could not resist.

  “You got my letter?” she asked woodenly.

  Dear Jude, I’m writing to tell you that Dad died last night...I know you were almost as close to him as I was...he never regained consciousness. They had kept his body alive, but I knew he had left it a long time ago...

  “Yes. In any case, his—uh—” he flicked her an unreadable look “—his lawyers got in touch.”

  He had sent no reply, no acknowledgement of her letter. That was as hard to forgive as anything else. That he could blame her for cracking on the stand, that he could refuse to see her, was one thing. But he had pretended to love her father, and he had let his death pass without a word.

  “Yes, it was completely unnecessary for me to write you,” she said coldly. “Of course Barry Ingelow had to tell you about the will. But I hadn’t read the will when I wrote, so I didn’t know.”

  When the will was read, she had learned what her father had meant by those last words—You’ll be safe now. Hal Thompson had left his daughter and Jude Daniels half shares in everything he had possessed.

  So that was the mystery solved, of who he meant by “he” when he said, He’s lying about that letter. Not Jude Daniels. Her father was not the man to think his daughter would be safe with a man who lied. Hal Thompson had had full faith in Jude Daniels, right to the last conscious breath he took.

  Hope had asked Barry Ingelow what had been in the previous will. “He had left his share of Thompson Daniels to Jude and everything else to you,” the lawyer had said. That made it conclusive: her father had believed and hoped their involvement would be permanent, and had done his bit to see that at the very least they would be deeply entangled financially.

  It did not endear her father to her. Safe, he had called it, but she didn’t feel safe. Every move she made, whether to sell off some of her father’s effects or close down the office, had to be approved by Jude’s lawyers. She was tied hand and foot to a man who wouldn’t even talk to her directly, and who, seeing her now for the first time in months, still had nothing for her but anger and contempt. He had not even begun to try to find understanding or forgiveness.

  Jude turned and nodded her to a table, and they sat. He set the paper on the low table between them and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, frowning at it in concentration. “Where are the office records?” he asked.

  “Still there.”

  At this he looked up. “Still where? Hasn’t the office been shut down?”

  “Yes, but—we haven’t been able to sub-lease the space, so what was the point of paying more money to store everything? I just left it all there and locked the door. When we find someone to take over the space I’ll put everything in storage.”

  With neither her father nor Jude to run the place, Thompson Daniels was nothing. No new commissions would come in, and all the company value had been in the skills and talents of the partners.

  He came to some decision. “Has Nicholas Harvey’s office got a key?”

  “I don’t think so.”

 
“Do you mind sending one over to him?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t mind, but why?”

  “I want him to get someone over there and search through those files. I need—”

  Hope took a breath. “Forgive me for interfering, but do you have any idea how much you already owe Nicholas Harvey?”

  Jude looked at her.

  “He’s been putting in a lot of hours on your appeal, Jude, and I think you’re running up a pretty big bill.”

  “You know that, do you?” His eyes were flat as he looked at her, without emotion, coldly assessing.

  She was involuntarily remembering the first night they had met. Then, too, he had assessed her, but that had been very, very different. She had thought him hostile then, but she hadn’t known what hostile was. Then he had been a furnace compared to this. Well, she wanted no more from him. She had stopped wanting anything from Jude on the day she had stood in this room, her life in pieces around her, and he had delivered the death stroke with merciless cruelty. Get out of my life.

  “I have to talk to your lawyers practically every week,” she said flatly, because if he didn’t know this, it was wilful ignorance. “The firm is looking after your share of the estate. Who do you think I deal with every time I want to lift a finger regarding my father’s effects?”

  He took that with a slow blink. “What’s your point?”

  “The point is, you have run out of money. I have run out of money. I’m sure Nicholas Harvey has told you that my father’s estate wasn’t what he imagined it would be because there was no one managing his stocks portfolio, and by the time we looked at it...” She faded off. Jude must know as well as she by now. Hal Thompson had always managed his own investments. Hope hadn’t thought once about them until he died, and by then most of his wealth had disappeared. “The house we own outright, but if we have to raise a mortgage on it, it may not be so easy to pay off when we’re already stretched paying the office lease.”