by H S Chandler
For a second Lottie contemplated suggesting herself as foreperson. Five years ago she wouldn’t have given it a second thought. The sharp-edged cockiness of her early twenties that had allowed her to heckle, joke and lead had drooped, then dissolved. Baby-brain had softened her wits, that’s what her husband Zain occasionally teased. Lottie told herself to forget putting her name forward. No one was going to be interested in anything she had to say.
‘Agnes Huang,’ the woman next to Lottie said. ‘Can you believe it’s an attempted murder trial? I thought we might end up doing something boring like, I don’t know, car theft. This is much better.’
‘I’m not sure “much better” is how I’d phrase it,’ Gregory commented. ‘Tragic, perhaps.’
‘I could be foreperson. It sounds fun,’ Agnes ignored Gregory and continued. The Chinese woman folded her arms and directed a challenging stare towards Tabitha. Lottie compared the two. Perhaps the women were a match for one another, but judging by the looks on Gregory and Jennifer’s faces, they would be happier with a known quantity in charge, and that known quantity came with a middle England accent.
‘I suggest a vote at the end, when everybody’s said their bit,’ Tabitha answered. ‘How about you, dear. It’s Charlotte, isn’t it?’ She smiled like an officious grandmother and motioned for Lottie to speak up.
Caught between wanting to tell Tabitha that nobody had put her in charge yet, and shrinking under the table to avoid making a fool of herself, Lottie opted – as she always seemed to these days – to comply. ‘Call me Lottie,’ she said spontaneously. It was the name she always used in her own head, a throwback to a time when her life still seemed full of possibilities. Here, with these strangers, she could be anyone she wanted to be, again. ‘I’ve got a three-year-old son, so I’m not working at the moment,’ she said. ‘I’m planning to, though, soon. I’m not going to be a housewife forever.’ She blushed, wishing she’d phrased it better, hoping Jennifer Curry hadn’t been too insulted. All she’d been trying to say was that she still had dreams. One of them was to see a bit more of the world. She’d been on one long-distance trip, even if the circumstances had been unexpected. Her husband had organised a visit his family just before their son was due. It had turned into a longer stay than she’d thought, and Lottie had ended up giving birth in Pakistan. Her husband’s parents had been delighted to see their grandson the day he was born, even if Lottie had missed the support of her own midwife. It had been worth it at the time to have made Zain so proud. They hadn’t returned to England until Daniyal was a month old.
‘And do you have any thoughts about who should be foreperson, Lottie?’ Tabitha asked, bringing Lottie’s attention back to the matter at hand.
‘Not really,’ Lottie replied, sitting upright and pretending she hadn’t just been daydreaming. ‘I think Pan’s right, though, it should be someone, you know, open minded.’ She looked to the tall, skinny male seated at the end of the table next to her, the one who’d been absorbed in his book, diverting any further attention from herself. He was the only person younger than her, no more than twenty-one Lottie estimated, and had opted for the compromise of wearing jeans but ironing them, smartening up his look by adding a striped shirt.
‘Okay, my name’s Jack Pilkington,’ he muttered.
‘Sorry, can’t hear a word,’ Gregory said. ‘Speak up.’
‘Pilkington, Jack,’ he repeated. ‘I’m a student at Bristol Uni. Latin and Arabic.’ He was so softly spoken that everyone around the table was leaning forward. Lottie could hear him swallowing, as if punctuating his sentences with his throat. His shyness was painful for Lottie to watch, her own confidence having seeped into supermarket trollies and baskets of washing over the last few years. No one even looked at her any more. Passers-by didn’t notice you when you were pushing a pram. It didn’t matter what she wore, how she did her hair, or how long she spent doing her make-up. The pram was like an invisibility cloak. Motherhood had stolen her identity.
‘Latin’s not a lot of use these days, is it?’ a tattooed man from the other side of the table asked. ‘Guess it’s all right for you posh lot to waste three years of your life though. What exactly qualifies you to be in here? Shouldn’t let students do jury service, if you ask me.’
Jack stared at him, then picked up his coffee and took a sip. Cameron stepped in, managing to sound both half asleep and irritated at once.
‘No one did ask you, so it’s my turn.’ The tattooed guy gritted his teeth at the dismissal. Cameron smiled in reply and slowly poured a few extra drops of milk into his coffee mug. ‘I’m Cam Ellis. Self-employed carpenter in case any of you need any jobs done. I’d rather be working, or on the beach, or anywhere but here. I don’t want to be foreperson. The daily allowance for jury duty isn’t enough to bother with that, especially with how bad the coffee is. Does that cover it?’
Jack looked gratefully across at him, the attention firmly removed from his university degree subject. Cameron was tall with the sort of build and skin tone that could only belong to a man who either spent all his time at the gym and abusing tanning machines, or who did a hard physical job and spent much of his time outdoors. His denim shirt had seen better days, but it flattered his broad frame and set off his blue eyes, and he moved with an assurance that was unmistakably alpha male. Agnes Huang was staring at him openly, and even Jennifer Curry seemed to have perked up as he spoke. He was the type of man who attracted attention without making any effort at all. Lottie had been too nervous to notice much about him in the courtroom, but it was hard now not to see the effect he was having on all the women under sixty in the room. Lottie included.
Legs wide apart and outstretched, he let one arm hang to the side of his chair as he held his coffee mug with disregard for its handle. Everything about him was casual and taut at the same time. The cords in his neck tensed as he swallowed, and the flex of his jaw gave Lottie a tiny buzz low in her stomach. He slid his eyes sideways, meeting Lottie’s boldly before flicking his eyes up and down her body. She looked away, aware that she had been caught staring, shifting her focus to the next person around the table.
Samuel Lowry was an insurance clerk from Burnham-on-Sea. ‘I’m fifty-nine,’ he said. ‘I live with my sister and our three dogs. It was four, only Potts passed away last year …’
‘Garth Finuchin,’ the tattooed man interrupted. His bulk suggested more muscle than was really there, and he held his arms away from his sides to enhance the impression of strength. ‘I may not have a degree in some fancy waste of time, but I reckon I’ve got more life experience than anyone else in this room. Makes sense for me to be foreman. More of a bloke thing anyway as it’s a murder.’
‘Attempted murder,’ Tabitha added, ‘and I don’t see that gender plays any part in it.’
‘Witnessed much violence at the WI, have you?’ Finuchin asked, rewarding himself with a bark of laughter.
‘I’d have thought it was more important to elect someone who might communicate well with Her Honour,’ Tabitha continued.
‘Absolutely,’ Gregory nodded. ‘Not that I’m prejudging.’
‘Well, of course you two are going to stick together,’ Finuchin smirked.
‘Could we please just get on with it?’ Cameron asked, sighing loudly. ‘At this rate, the accused will have served a couple of years before we’ve chosen a foreperson.’
‘The lawyers call her the defendant, not the accused,’ Tabitha said. ‘We should try to get to grips with the proper vocabulary.’
The final two jurors – Andy Leith and Bill Caldwell – both declined the opportunity to be elected as foreperson. Lottie didn’t blame them. Joining the contest between Tabitha, Agnes and Garth felt more like inviting a vote for least disliked rather than a show of confidence.
‘Shall I preside?’ Gregory asked, smiling around the table. ‘Let’s each have a scrap of paper and write the name of our choice for foreperson.’ There was no dissent as he ripped up a sheet of paper and passed the sections around.
>
‘What if we don’t want to vote for any of them?’ Cameron asked. ‘Not that I’m saying it applies to me, just so we know what to do.’
‘Ruin your paper,’ Pan said. ‘Write a cross or something. Let’s get on, though. Some of us have work to do.’
Lottie allowed herself a half-smile across the table at Cameron who raised an eyebrow in reply. He was trouble, Lottie thought, writing a cross on her own piece of paper and folding it tight. They all handed their scraps to Gregory who opened them into a pile then set them out one by one in a line on the table.
‘One vote for Garth Finuchin,’ Gregory said
‘Fucking typical,’ Finuchin muttered.
‘Two votes for Agnes Huang.’ Gregory frowned but continued slightly louder. ‘Five votes for Tabitha Lock and four ruined papers. Miss Lock it is then. Congratulations.’
Tabitha bowed her head as if touched and humbled. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘I won’t let you down. Now, I think the first thing I should do is remind us all of our duties.’
‘Clean underwear every morning?’ Cameron muttered. Jack let out a yelp of laughter and Lottie masked a snigger with a pretend yawn, which she realised immediately might have come across as even ruder than Cameron’s joke.
‘We were just in court together, so I think we’re all up to speed with that,’ Pan said. ‘I’ve got emails to attend to so if there’s nothing new, I’ll need some space until the judge calls us back in.’
Lottie longed for a large glass of wine in spite of the two hundred or so calories it would cost her. Some days you just had to give in to your cravings. Jury politics were much more complex than she’d imagined. It was intimidating, yet she found herself intrigued by the lawyers and judge. She was terrified of humiliating herself with ignorance but there was no denying the importance of the job the jury had been given to do. She sighed. There would be no alcohol to sooth her nerves until she got home. Until then the best she could do was make herself a cup of tea. She walked across to the kettle. Jack, the student, followed.
‘Take no notice of Mr Finuchin,’ Lottie told him quietly as they poured insufficiently hot water onto tea bags. ‘I’m not sure he really gets the point of further education.’
‘He’s probably right,’ Jack muttered, shaking his head at the floor and reddening. ‘My mother thought I should study the classics but I wanted modern languages. It was a compromise.’
‘Oh,’ Lottie replied, trying to inject some reassurance into her voice. ‘Well, the Arabic will be useful, I bet. Interesting to put on your CV when you’re job hunting.’
Jack stirred his tea without answering. ‘Do you think she did it? The defendant, I mean,’ he whispered. ‘Only she looked so, I don’t know, pathetic.’
‘Those are the types you have to watch,’ Cameron said over Jack’s shoulder as he grabbed a biscuit from a paper plate. ‘It’s always the quiet ones who turn out to be psychos and maniacs. This whole thing’s a true crime TV drama waiting to be made.’
Lottie watched him devour shortbread and lick his lips, keen to respond with something insightful and interesting, or no one would want to get to know her. It wasn’t that difficult, she told herself. She chatted to people all the time at toddler group, and never felt out of her depth. Everyone on the jury was in the same boat, landed with strangers in the middle of the summer when they’d all rather be elsewhere. She just had to relax and stop being so insecure. In the middle of drawing breath to tell Cameron he shouldn’t judge the defendant by her looks, the door to the corridor opened and the usher beamed at them. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Her Honour Judge Downey has requested your presence back in court.’
Cameron and Jack made for the doorway as Lottie quickly tidied the abandoned cups, telling herself it was ridiculous to be worried about the mess when no one else seemed to care. Some habits were hard to break. Lottie wondered how she could possibly be expected to decide something as critical as whether or not the defendant was guilty, and which mistake was worse – setting a guilty person free, or wrongly condemning an innocent one to prison?
4
Maria Bloxham surveyed the courtroom through the smudges on the inside of the glass dock. She liked them. They told a story of a cleaner who was either too distracted or uncaring to be fastidious. No one should obsess about cleaning. She’d wasted so many years worrying about every mark on the carpets and straightening the towels. It had all been for nothing.
James Newell, her barrister, walked into the dock and took a seat next to her as the public gallery began to fill.
‘So the jury will come back in shortly. After that the prosecution will open their case, which means Miss Pascal will summarise the evidence against you. She’ll only give her version of the facts and will probably make you out to be extremely manipulative. Don’t expect anything she says to be either fair or balanced,’ he warned.
‘You’ll respond though?’ Maria asked. ‘We should have a chance to put our side, too.’
Newell shook his head. ‘That’s not how it works at this stage, I’m afraid, but I will be able to give a speech at the very end of the trial which is much more valuable. It’ll be one of the last things the jury hears before considering their verdict.’
‘But they’ll be thinking the worst of me from the outset,’ Maria said. The tension she had tried so hard to banish began flooding back in.
‘The system is set up so that the prosecution puts its case first as the burden is on them to prove their case. After that, we can call our own witnesses and you can tell your story. It’ll take a while and you should be ready for delays. Court cases rarely run smoothly.’
‘So are they allowed to say whatever they like about me?’ Maria asked.
‘If they break any rules, I’ll object. Otherwise it’s up to the prosecution to run their case as they see fit. Try to focus on something else during the speech. Miss Pascal is likely to disregard any mention of your defence. Any last minute questions?’
‘No, I’m fine,’ Maria said. ‘Although it’s a bit hot in here.’
‘You should feel it with this wig on,’ he smiled. ‘Listen, it’s not too late,’ Newell said, suddenly serious again. ‘We could still run a psychiatric defence. It’s much more usual in cases like this. The judge would criticise us for lateness, but I’m sure I could make her understand …’
‘You want to tell the jury I was suffering from an abnormal mental state. It would mean endless hours with psychiatrists, and that would be intolerable for me. I appreciate you’re trying to give me the best possible chance, but I won’t pretend I didn’t understand what I was doing.’
Newell nodded, acknowledging defeat gracefully. ‘All right then. I’m hoping the judge will keep the court days short. It’ll be unbearable in here by the afternoon.’ He motioned for the prison guards to take their place next to Maria, then went back to the lawyers’ benches. Most of what Maria could see was a wall of backs. It hardly seemed fair. Surely, she thought, she should be able to look at the faces of the people who were talking about her.
Only when everyone else had gathered did the jury enter. They must hate her, Maria thought. All they’d have heard so far were press reports from when she was first arrested. Headlines had ranged from the creative ‘The Would-Be Widow’ to the plodding ‘Suburban Violence Rages in Bristol.’ Her age had been given as anything between thirty and fifty. Various witness testimonies had apparently been uncovered, detailing a history of shouted arguments and vehicles screeching late at night from their address. Maria had been sympathetic to an extent. The press had to make something up. The truth of her life was far too dull for the public to bother buying it.
She sighed. It didn’t matter what anyone thought. The only real crime was that Edward hadn’t had the good grace to simply die. Ed, she reprimanded herself. She could call him Ed now. He could never complain about the abbreviation again. He’d once had a secretary who’d called him Ed three times in a row. Her employment had been terminated the next day. Since then, ev
ery other secretary had been firmly instructed to only ever address him as Mr Bloxham.
Her Honour Judge Downey cleared her throat, finished writing a note, and looked up at the prosecutor. Imogen Pascal – that was what Maria’s barrister had called her – was a tough one. Maria recognised the same ambition that had previously shone in her husband’s eyes. The drive to be the best, craving recognition. The nasty creep of failure just over your shoulder if you ever paused for breath. In contrast, all Maria had done for at least a decade was to stop and smell the roses in her garden. She wanted to tell Imogen Pascal that mediocrity wasn’t so bad. Excelling only meant there was a greater distance to fall.
Miss Pascal stood up, flawless in a grey woollen suit beneath her gown.
‘Members of the jury,’ Imogen Pascal began, ‘this case, whilst serious, is factually quite simple. The defendant,’ she turned flamboyantly with a wave of her arm to the dock in which Maria sat, ‘made a serious, forceful and deliberate attempt to end her husband’s life. That much, I can tell you now, is not in dispute.’
Heads turned. However much Maria willed herself not to move, it was inevitable that she should meet the jurors’ eyes. They looked bewildered. How could Maria not be disputing that she had tried to kill her husband? That was what they wanted to know. Miss Pascal’s description of pure brutality was not what they were expecting. Presumably they thought Maria would claim it had all been some dreadful mistake, that she’d believed her husband to be a burglar. Or perhaps that she had been swotting a fly with the chair leg and aimed badly. Maria frowned to deaden the grin that was threatening to spread her mouth wide. No. No excuses. Maria had wanted her husband dead. The truth was that she had prayed for it, fantasised about it. Seeing him bleed on the kitchen floor was all her Christmases come at once.