The Unknown Bridesmaid

by Margaret Forster

  But Julia wondered if how Iris reacted was a good example or not, even though she followed it for years.

  The girl was described in the referral notes as possibly seriously depressed. This comment had a red asterisk next to it, which irritated Julia – as if she would have missed the significance of this! Depression in any teenager was taken very seriously but these days she felt the term was used to cover many lesser states of mind, all of them perfectly normal. To be fed up, miserable, lethargic was not necessarily to be depressed. But schools panicked, and so did parents. They were afraid that ‘something’ might happen.

  However, there did seem grounds for Sarah Baxter, aged fourteen, to be a cause of genuine concern. She had begun refusing to get up in the morning. She lay in a darkened room unless her mother hauled her out of it and forced her to go to school. Once there, she would not speak. This had been going on for some time. Julia could see this Sarah Baxter already in her mind’s eye, right down to the sullen expression and aggressive frown. The session she would have with her was likely to be very wearing.

  When Julia returned to school after her mother’s death, Caroline was at her side instantly, shielding her from the curiosity of other girls, and from the pity she dreaded.

  Caroline had never met Julia’s mother. She’d never been to Julia’s home. But she knew about death, sudden death. She had had a brother who was an epileptic and had died, aged sixteen, when Caroline was twelve. She had never told Julia this, though they had got to the stage of telling each other about their families, and she didn’t make the mistake of saying to Julia that she knew how she felt. Mature for her age, Caroline found other, subtle, ways of expressing concern and showing sympathy, and Julia recognised what she was doing and appreciated it. From that point on, they were truly friends, soon thought of by the teachers as inseparable. Everyone was pleased that these two clever girls, excellent students both, had become so devoted.

  It took even longer, though, for them to see each other out of school hours. Julia didn’t want to invite Caroline to the Annovazzi household, where Elsa and Fran would run riot and give her and Caroline no peace or privacy, and Iris would be far too interested, plaguing Caroline with questions. And Julia knew, too, that Iris wouldn’t think much of Caroline, though she would say nothing. Caroline would not be deemed a fun person, with her rather solemn habitual expression, and the frown she had when anything puzzled her could make her look cross. The Annovazzis liked pretty girls and were wary of plain girls who might turn out to be clever. They knew Julia was clever, and forgave her for it, since she was family, but they didn’t want her friend to be of the same mould. They wanted a friend who would lighten her up and they would know, Iris and Carlo, at first glance, that Caroline was never going to do that.

  But Julia knew that she couldn’t put off much longer inviting Caroline to what was now her home. Caroline never said anything, never hinted that she was hurt, or thought it odd, that she hadn’t been taken home by Julia, but all the same the omission was becoming glaring because Caroline had taken Julia to her home often. Julia liked going there. Caroline’s mother was a rather vague, scatty woman, completely disorganised but welcoming and, best of all in Julia’s opinion, not given to asking searching questions or referring in any way to the death of Julia’s mother. She usually drifted off, once she’d invited Caroline and Julia to help themselves to what they could find in the way of biscuits, and she could be heard playing the piano, a sound Julia was unused to and liked. There was a younger brother sometimes around but he gave no trouble, occupied as he seemed to be with a variety of pets, and constantly going next door to play with his friend there who also had a cat and rabbits and a guinea pig.

  It was a relief to be at Caroline’s house, lolling in Caroline’s room and listening to records, of which she had a surprising number, or else discussing books and films. They wouldn’t be able to enjoy such seclusion in the Annovazzi household. Julia said this to Caroline, who shrugged, and said it didn’t matter, she didn’t mind about not going to Julia’s home. Julia said that Iris – Caroline knew who Iris was – minded. ‘She’s always on at me to bring you home. She says things like am I ashamed of them all, which is stupid.’ ‘You can see what she means, though,’ Caroline said. ‘It probably worries her, even though it needn’t.’ That was what Julia liked about her friend. She was always able to put herself in the other person’s head and imagine how they would think.

  So Julia finally braced herself and took Caroline home. She didn’t warn Iris in advance. To do so would provoke ridiculous preparations, endless fussing about what should be provided for tea, and Elsa and Fran probably dressed in their best to greet the visitor. What Julia was counting on was that nobody would be at home on the day she chose, a Wednesday. On Wednesdays, Iris and the girls always went to spend the afternoon with Maureen, usually not returning until around six o’clock. Carlo never came home before seven, so the coast would be clear. If everyone arrived back when Caroline was still there, it wouldn’t matter, she would be about to leave and would only say hello on her way out. Julia knew that this was a sort of cheating, inviting her friend to her house but not to meet its inhabitants, but she didn’t care. Iris would be a little hurt, but that couldn’t be helped.

  But the plan went wrong. As Julia and Caroline approached the Annovazzi house, Julia saw Iris’s car in the driveway and, worse still, Carlo’s. She almost told Caroline that she couldn’t invite her in after all (and Caroline would not have been the least bit offended, she was sure), but Elsa was at the window and had already spotted them. ‘Oh God,’ Julia said to Caroline, ‘I thought they’d all be out. It’s Wednesday, they should be at Maureen’s.’ It didn’t really occur to Julia, at that moment, that something unusual must have happened to alter normal routines, especially Carlo’s, but it was obvious when the two girls walked in that there was some sort of excitement disturbing the family. Elsa and Fran were jumping up and down in the hall, both talking at once, both unintelligible, and through the kitchen door Julia could see Iris with her head in her hands and Carlo shouting down the telephone. Then there was the mess. Julia could see drawers pulled out and overturned, cupboards open and the contents spilled out, and along the hall floor and going up the stairs a trail of assorted clothes. It was Caroline, who didn’t know the house at all, who murmured, ‘Julia, I think maybe there has been a burglary.’

  Which was correct. The house had been ransacked while Iris was taking her daughters to their grandmother’s, a daring daytime burglary. A neighbour had seen two men carrying two bags each, hurrying through the Annovazzi’s garden and she had phoned the police, reporting ‘suspicious behaviour’. There had been no breaking-and-entering because it hadn’t been needed: a window had been left conveniently open, which led to Carlo berating Iris, and Iris attempting to excuse the open window on the grounds that there was a loose catch which he had failed to mend and maybe it had just blown open. At any rate, all her jewellery had gone, plus £200 in cash, and, as well as various electronic items, and far more disastrously, all Carlo’s cups, the silverware he had won for his sporting prowess in tennis and golf.

  There was a policeman still in the house, who came down the stairs, on his walkie-talkie, as Julia and Caroline stood uncertainly in the hall. At the sight of him, Julia started to shake.

  Julia was sworn in as a JP together with nine others and taken by the legal advisers to the court through all the rules to do with verdicts and sentencing. There was a rota made out so that she and the other new JPs would never sit together but always be with two other experienced magistrates. Then they were all taken on a visit to the cells. She had been pretty sure she knew what a cell would look like but even so the reality felt dramatic. They were each invited to put themselves in a cell and be locked in for a few minutes so that they could experience what it would feel like to the people they would be sending down here. Only Julia accepted the invitation.

  She sat on the hard bed for five minutes. When the door was unlocked again
, she had to control her trembling, but before she’d succeeded it was noticed by one of the other new magistrates, who smiled at her. ‘More than you bargained for,’ he said, ‘or were you imagining yourself there for possible crimes?’ She managed to smile back, and nod, and agree that she had an overactive imagination – that was all.

  Except the trembling hadn’t been because of that.

  Sarah Baxter was composed. She was not sullen or miserable-looking, nor was there anything neglected about her appearance, which was neat and tidy. Her short hair was brushed, her fingernails were clean, and carefully attended to. She held her head up rather high, as though straining to see something above Julia’s head. Her complexion was pale, with traces of acne over the forehead, but there were no dark shadows under her eyes. Only her shoulders, slightly slumped, showed faint signs of possible dejection, but maybe she had poor posture.

  Julia smiled at the girl. She smiled in return, but with her lips tightly closed.

  ‘Sarah,’ Julia began, ‘I see you have two sisters.’

  ‘Half-sisters,’ Sarah said quickly.

  ‘Half-sisters,’ Julia repeated. ‘Six and five, is that correct?’

  Sarah nodded. ‘And you help look after them, is that right?’

  Sarah hesitated. ‘I don’t help,’ she said, ‘I do it all. I look after them. My mum doesn’t.’

  ‘What do you do for them?’ Julia asked gently.

  ‘I get them up, and dress them, and give them breakfast, and take them to school, and I pick them up from after-school club and take them home and give them tea and watch telly with them and put them to bed. That’s what I do.’ The anger was barely controlled.

  ‘I see,’ Julia said, ‘and how do you feel about this?’

  ‘I hate it,’ Sarah said, ‘I’ve got no life. I might as well not live. I’m just a slave.’

  Julia cleared her throat. ‘I don’t expect this will go on too long,’ she said, ‘your sisters –

  ‘Half-sisters.’

  ‘– half-sisters will soon be able to get themselves up and dressed and so on.’

  ‘Years,’ Sarah said, biting her lip, ‘not soon at all.’

  Sarah’s father had died when she was five. She had been looked after by an aunt, for almost a year, because her mother had had a breakdown and been hospitalised for some of it. Julia had read all this. She’d read that when Sarah had rejoined her mother she at first hadn’t settled well. She’d wanted to stay with her aunt (who had no children). But eventually, her relationship with her mother had slowly improved until Jack, who was to become her stepfather, had come to live with them. He seemed, from what Julia read in the notes, to have tried hard with Sarah, and not only in the obvious ways. She’d never had a pet, and longed for a puppy, so Jack took her with him to choose one from the litter his friend’s cocker spaniel had produced. He taught her how to look after it, and they went for walks together. So far so exemplary. But then he married Sarah’s mother, with Sarah as bridesmaid. Two babies quickly arrived, within a year, and Sarah’s mother began struggling to cope just as Jack’s firm required him to travel more, meaning he had at least two overnight stays a week away from home.

  Julia looked up again. ‘What happens, Sarah, when you stay in bed and refuse to get up?’

  ‘They cry,’ Sarah said.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Mum rings Jack, and shouts at me.’

  ‘Does Jack come home?’

  ‘If he can.’

  ‘What does Jack say to you?’

  ‘He begs me to get up and take over. For Christ’s sake, he says. He says he’ll pay me.’

  ‘And what to you say then?’

  ‘No. I say I’m not moving. It’s awful, everyone shouting, crying.’

  ‘Who is crying?’

  ‘The girls, my mum.’

  ‘But not you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. Do you cry when all this is going on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do these situations end? Usually.’

  Sarah thought for a minute. ‘Jack gets the girls ready and takes them to school and gets his sister to take them to her home until he can collect them.’

  ‘And what do you and your mum do?’

  ‘We stay in bed.’

  ‘Together?’

  ‘No!’ said Sarah indignantly. ‘I’m in my bed, in my room, and she’s in hers.’

  ‘And when Jack and the girls come home?’

  ‘He puts them to bed.’

  ‘It’s hard for Jack, isn’t it?’ Julia asked.

  Sarah frowned, and said, ‘Suppose.’

  ‘And hard for the little girls, upsetting for them.’

  No response.

  ‘Do you remember being five, six, Sarah? What was it like when there was a lot of crying, and you didn’t know what was going on?’

  ‘It isn’t my fault,’ Sarah said.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Julia said, ‘but it isn’t sensible, is it, to take the line you’re taking, and you’re a sensible girl, I think.’

  Sarah suddenly looked down, her head bowed where before it had been held up so proudly. It was impossible to tell if she was upset or merely adopting what she might think of as a thoughtful air. Julia gave her a minute or two, and then said, ‘I wonder, did you like being a bridesmaid, when your mum and Jack married?’

  Sarah looked up, surprised. ‘What?’ she said.

  Julia repeated her question.

  Sarah frowned. ‘Why do you want to know? What’s it got to do with anything?’

  ‘It hasn’t,’ Julia said. ‘I was just curious, thinking it may have been a great day in your life, a happy time, not like now.’

  ‘It was,’ Sarah said. ‘My mum was happy again.’

  ‘And she isn’t now, is she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why do you think that is?’

  ‘It’s obvious, she can’t cope.’

  ‘She can if you help her.’

  ‘But I’m tired of helping, I told you, it isn’t just helping, it’s doing everything.’

  ‘Yes,’ Julia said, ‘yes, I realise. You’re on a kind of strike, aren’t you? A withdrawal of your labour. So, what would your terms be?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To end this strike. What would be reasonable, in your opinion?’

  Sarah told her. Julia passed the news on. The only puzzle was why Sarah had needed to take such drastic action? Why, instead of staying in bed and letting chaos reign, she hadn’t said to Jack that her mum would have to have help. And why this stepfather, Jack, hadn’t realised this himself, when surely he’d realised Sarah was standing in for her mother and this was making her not depressed but rebellious. There was no need to imagine Sarah might ‘do something’. She’d already done it.

  VII

  THE HARDEST PART of sitting on the bench was, Julia found, the coffee that preceded it. The routine was that she and whoever else was sitting that session met in a small room before going into the court. The idea was that they got to know each other just enough to feel comfortable in each other’s company, but Julia would have preferred to have gone straight into court, keeping her fellow magistrates at a distance. She felt that during the deliberations that would arise, it would be better not to know what the others did, what their lives were like, what state of health and spirits they were in, all subjects that came up during the preliminary chatting. She didn’t like revealing anything about herself either.

  But some of those with whom she sat on the bench made determined efforts to be friendly, going so far as to express concern about her pallor. ‘You’re looking pale,’ this woman, a university lecturer, said, staring straight at Julia. ‘I’m fine,’ Julia said, ignoring the implicit request for information. There was then, because of her clipped tone, what her mother would have called ‘an atmosphere’, and afterwards, when they had a particularly tricky case to consider, Julia felt this atmosphere influenced the other woman’s decision to go with the opinion of the third mem
ber of their panel and not with hers. It was a nasty business: a woman found with twelve wraps of crack cocaine. She looked weak and ill, gripping the ledge of the witness box tightly to hold herself up. Her clothing was minimal. The shortest possible skirt without it not being a skirt at all, tights with holes and tears all the way up her legs, a scoop-necked T-shirt, showing bruises across her throat. There were bruises on her face too, making her look what she obviously was, a victim as much as a dealer.

  The woman was so clearly ill that Julia thought it automatic that she would be treated in some sort of hospital. But she had previous convictions for shoplifting and soliciting and the decision to send her for trial was made by the other two with only Julia wanting her instead to be released from custody into a rehabilitation unit. The chairman said it would not be appropriate, and that if she was committed to serve a sentence she would be treated in prison.

  ‘She’s had more than a second chance,’ the chairman said. ‘She really has to face up to the penalties of disregarding the law.’

  ‘But,’ Julia said, ‘she’s never had a chance. Look at her history. Fostered from the age of two, then a children’s home when the fostering failed, then the abuse from the staff member, then—’

  The other woman interrupted her. ‘All this is true, and dreadful,’ she said, quite gently, ‘but she could have turned herself round. She made choices, bad ones, which is why she is here, and has been here before.’

  They were right, the other two, but losing the argument made Julia despair.

  ‘Hiya, Julia,’ Caroline said, ‘it’s me, how are you?’