Making sure Lulu was dry, Cleo decided that no harm could come to her if she laid her in her cot for a while. She would undress her when Joe had gone. He wouldn’t be staying long, unless things had somehow changed at home, and anyway, she didn’t think she wanted him to. He was another reminder of something that she had lost.
Slowly she walked back down the stairs, wondering what she was going to say to him.
‘Do you want something to drink?’ she asked – always a safe opener – as she pushed open the door to the sitting room. Joe had taken a seat on the sofa, but he had perched right on the edge, hands clasped between his knees, as if ready to take flight at a moment’s notice. He wasn’t a big man, but tonight he seemed smaller, thinner than she remembered.
‘No – but if you do, go ahead.’
‘Don’t you have to get back?’ she asked, ashamed at the slightly bitter tone in her voice. She didn’t need to be like this. Joe had the sense not to answer and waited for her to come back in with a large gin and tonic. After the day she’d had, she needed this.
‘Tell me how you are,’ he said. ‘How you really are.’
She couldn’t do it. If she opened her mouth to talk about the pain of losing Mark she would fall apart, and she mustn’t do that in front of Joe. The temptation to give in and let him comfort her would be too great.
‘I’m doing okay. But you shouldn’t be here. How did you get in?’
‘I still have a key. You never asked for it back.’
Joe used to come round to her house whenever he could safely get away. He would call her at the gallery and she would stop whatever she was doing and run to him. It had started when Mark had begun to spend more and more time with Evie, and their budding relationship had created a huge gap in Cleo’s life. To start with, time with Joe was little more than a filler for her lonely hours, and she knew that for him it was something of an adventure. He was the type of man who never took risks, but when he had come into the gallery to find a piece of jewellery for his wife he swore that he had been completely bowled over by Cleo.
‘You were – no, are – so vibrant,’ he had told her. ‘Everything about you from your shocking cropped white hair to your vivid clothes was mesmerising. I thought you were exciting, different, dangerous. You represented everything that I had never experienced in my life.’
For Cleo, Joe became the person on whom she depended. Despite the fact that he was being unfaithful to his wife, something that he had always found difficult to believe about himself, in every other way he was steady, reliable.
He told her that more than anything he wanted to be with her permanently – to live together, maybe have children together. But they would have to leave the area.
‘It’s not fair on Siobhan if I’m still around,’ he’d said. ‘But if we moved away, not so far that I couldn’t get back to see the kids at the weekend of course, but far enough so that she didn’t have to witness our happiness, we could start again from scratch.’
Mark was the only person who knew about Joe. She had told him she had ended the relationship because she had no right to steal another woman’s husband – that was how she felt and truly what she believed. But it wasn’t the only reason.
The minute Joe had suggested moving away – away from Mark, away from the baby that was growing inside Evie and was now lying upstairs in her cot – Cleo had known she couldn’t do it.
In all truth she didn’t believe they would have lasted as a couple either, and recognised that they had both fulfilled a temporary need in each other. She had needed someone to care about her, and he was looking for excitement. Would it feel the same when someone had to go out in the pouring rain to put the bins out, or when one of them was lying in bed with a streaming cold? She doubted it.
She made a virtue out of her decision to end the relationship before Siobhan found out, but her apparent self-sacrifice was only half the truth.
41
The trial had reached a critical point. The prosecution had rested its case and the defence was due to begin. The jury had heard from forensics, from the pathologist, and from a string of other experts, and for Harriet there had been no surprises other than the additional scars on Evie’s body. Right now the jury would probably be feeling most inclined to believe the prosecution, and so it was up to the defence team – and in particular, Boyd Simmonds – to change their perception.
They had yet to decide whether Evie should take the stand. It would be the obvious thing to do, but Harriet was concerned about how the jury would see her. She could appear aloof, distant, and although Harriet was certain this was Evie’s way of protecting herself against all that was happening in her life, she needed to appear to be the victim she undoubtedly was. She would have to convince the jury and the judge that when she took the knife into the bedroom she had no intention of hurting Mark – that there was no premeditation and it wasn’t an act of revenge. One unintentional slip, one unguarded word, and the case could turn on its head. But they had time to decide. Until then, they would see how the defence developed.
Boyd Simmonds called his first witness.
‘Doctor Chaudhry, I believe you treated Miss Clarke when she came to the accident and emergency department at the hospital at which you work. Is that correct?’
‘Yes, that’s right. She was in considerable pain.’
‘Can you tell me what her injuries were?’
‘She was suffering from a severe crush injury, and had broken the proximal phalanges of three fingers.’ The doctor held up his hand and indicated the bone above the knuckle. He then grasped the end of the middle finger. ‘She had also damaged the distal phalanges on two fingers, and two metacarpals. Fortunately there didn’t appear to be any long-term nerve damage.’
‘Can you please describe to the court what you mean by a crush injury, Doctor?’
‘A crush injury occurs when a compressive force is applied to the tissues. At the site of the injury the tissues experience several forces simultaneously. Imagine, for example, getting a hand caught in an old-fashioned wringer.’ The doctor, who clearly enjoyed giving demonstrations, held one hand flat while the other turned an imaginary handle. ‘There can be all kinds of implications but it seems Miss Clarke was able to extract her hand quite quickly, which probably saved her from damage to the blood vessels.’
‘And did Miss Clarke explain to you how she had suffered this injury?’
‘She did. She said she had trapped her hand between some weights in their home gym.’
The doctor described in detail how Evie claimed the injury had been caused, complete with further intricate hand movements.
‘Did you believe her?’
‘The injuries were consistent with the accident that she described, yes.’
‘Did you believe that she had been holding onto the bar that lifted the weights, and that it had slipped out of her hand?’
The doctor gave a small shake of the head. ‘It’s technically possible that she did that, but highly unlikely. I didn’t believe her, if I’m honest.’
‘Apart from feeling it was an unlikely accident, was there any other reason to disbelieve her?’
‘Yes. I checked her medical history and she had been in to see us before. The last time was with a particularly wicked scald on her right forearm, and prior to that her ribs had been x-rayed for a possible fracture, although none was found, and she had broken a couple of toes on one occasion – apparently from kicking a coffee table. There were a few notes in her GP records which gave me cause for concern too.’
Boyd stopped him. The next witness would be a nurse from the GP’s surgery, and it would be far more powerful to hear her evidence directly.
‘From what you had read in the notes, Doctor Chaudhry, did you feel there was a pattern to these injuries?’
‘I’m sure you’ll understand that we see a lot of people – not just women – who have been subjected to abuse. The red flag was definitely waving for me in this case.’
The doctor lo
oked towards Evie and gave her a sympathetic half smile. Evie dropped her head, as if too ashamed to face the doctor or the court.
‘Did you ask Miss Clarke if she was being abused?’
The doctor gave a slight nod. ‘I did, but she kept shaking her head and denying it. I was not convinced by her response.’
The questions for the defence were complete, and as Boyd took his seat, Harriet glanced up to the gallery. Cleo North was sitting right at the front, practically hanging over the rail. Her eyes were bleak, her face white, and once again Harriet felt deep sympathy for the woman. How awful to realise that someone you loved had done such terrible things to another person.
She turned back as Devisha Ambo stood up for the prosecution.
‘For the sake of clarity, Doctor Chaudhry, when Miss Clarke presented herself at the hospital telling you the damage to her hand was the result of an accident, could she have been telling the truth?’
The doctor’s mouth settled into a tight line. There was only one answer he could give, although clearly he didn’t like it.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And when you asked if she was being abused, according to you, she said no. Is that correct?’
The doctor looked uncomfortable. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly.
‘So, if I have interpreted your answers correctly, you decided not to believe what she was telling you purely because of an expression in her eyes and because you have had to deal with abused women in the past. In other words, you made an assumption, didn’t you Doctor Chaudhry?’
Harriet glanced at the gallery and saw Cleo North fold her arms and lean back, a fraction more colour in her cheeks.
42
I’m letting everything that is happening in court wash over me, because one thought, one image, pushes everything else into the background. In my head it’s as if I’m looking at one of Mark’s photos – the centrepiece brightly lit and in sharp focus, everything around it dark, blurred, indistinct.
Central to the image in my mind is my daughter – Lulu.
It’s so long since I’ve seen her and I missed her first birthday. I’ve tried not to think of her too much, not to miss her, but I’ve been away from her for four months, and what happens in the next few days is going to decide whether I see her any time soon.
Since I’ve been on remand I have contacted Cleo time and again to ask if she will bring Lulu to see me, but she says it’s too upsetting for such a young child. And of course Cleo doesn’t want to see me. I killed her brother – whether justified or not, it’s all the same to her. If I killed him because of the way he treated me, she will assume it was something in me that made him behave the way he did. Cleo could never allow herself to believe that Mark would abuse anyone, and whatever the courts say, she never will. But she does think that he is capable of lashing out in anger. I know that.
I could probably demand to see my daughter – maybe appeal to Social Services. But I know what Cleo will say. She just repeats the same excuses over and over: it’s too far to travel; it will unsettle Lulu; she’s too young. If I force the issue she will do all she can to turn my daughter against me. What do they call it? Parental alienation, I think. Cleo wouldn’t have to do much to make the visit unpleasant for Lulu. Just making sure that my little girl was tired before she arrived so she was grumpy and tearful would be enough to make her dread a return visit.
If I’m out of here in a few weeks, I’ll be able to get Lulu back – eventually. If I’m found guilty of murder, it might be best for her if she doesn’t have to visit me in prison week after week throughout her childhood. It’s not a great place to be and it will be so hard to explain – as soon as she’s old enough to understand – why I’m in here and not at home with her.
And what would I say? ‘I’m in here because I killed your daddy.’
Should I say, ‘He had it coming to him,’ as if we were all part of a bad TV drama?
The sad thing is that Lulu is going to have to learn the truth some time, and it’s not what I want for her. Which would be worse in her mind – that she had an abusive father or has a mother who is a killer? I can see no happy outcome for my daughter, and that’s not the way it should be. I know instinctively that she would be no happier with Cleo either – whose twisted version of the truth and bitter hatred of me would be bound to colour my daughter’s life.
Whatever Cleo chooses to believe, I find it hard to accept that for the six months before I killed Mark she didn’t suspect anything was going on. She must surely have noticed how nervous I became each time Mark went away, and how withdrawn I was when he returned, how I flinched from his touch? I was sure she would see there was something wrong.
I did everything I could, short of saying outright that her brother was hurting me, to make her believe what I wanted her to believe. But she was blind. Perhaps I should have come right out with it; spoken the words out loud.
Surely by now she must have some doubts? She has to believe he was a bully. I need her to believe that.
She’s been in court all day, but I can’t see her unless I turn my head. I know she’s there, though. Every now and again when someone makes a comment about Mark that she doesn’t like, I hear a little gasp. Nobody else in the gallery would care that much about what was said, so it has to be Cleo – probably sitting right at the front, wishing there was no glass between us so she could throw a rope around my neck and strangle me. I had originally thought the glass was to protect the court from violent defendants. But perhaps it’s the other way round.
For most of this session, with a parade of witnesses recounting the dreadful things that I suffered, I will hang my head in shame. Nobody wants the world to know that they allowed themselves to be abused, and I don’t want anyone to see my eyes or what is lurking behind them. I don’t want to look at the people who are having to stand up in court and talk about my injuries.
Of course, they don’t know the half of it.
No matter what anyone says in this court, whatever injuries they describe, they will never understand the pain I have suffered or experience the hatred I feel for the person I hold responsible. Maybe justice has been done now. Maybe I can let it go, and carry on with the rest of my life.
But for that to be possible, Harriet and her worthy QC are going to have to perform a miracle, and at this moment I’m convinced it’s not going to happen. I may be in prison for a very long time.
43
Stephanie stole a sneaky look at Gus. His jaw was tight as he listened to the evidence presented in support of Evie’s not guilty plea. It was hard on the senior investigating officer; there was always the sense of the unknown – some fact or other that the defence could pull out of the hat which might knock the carefully constructed prosecution case sideways. She wanted to reach out to him, to show her support. But she resisted the temptation.
The previous evening it had almost felt as if they were a couple again, but when they had exhausted talk of the case Stephanie had begun to feel uncomfortable. If she had stayed any longer the conversation would have become too personal and they would have had to expose all the unspoken truths about their relationship, so she had made her excuses and left. Now, watching him lean forward as the next witness took the stand, she wondered if that had been a mistake.
The defence had called a nurse from the local GP practice to the stand. A tall, cheerful-looking woman with a frizz of curly hair and a big smile, the nurse didn’t seem at all fazed by the occasion.
‘Mrs Gifford, you are the practice nurse at Church Street Surgery, is that correct?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And you saw Miss Clarke for a routine smear test a few months after she gave birth to her daughter?’
‘Yes. I think the baby was about seven months old when she came to see me.’
‘Had you met Miss Clarke before?’
Mrs Gifford turned to give Evie a smile, but Evie’s head was lowered, as it had been for most of the day.
‘I’ve seen her a
few times. She came in with the baby once or twice, and I’d replaced the dressings when she scalded her arm the month before. That was nasty – I thought she was very brave.’
‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Gifford. We know about the scalding. On the occasion that she came in for her cervical smear test, did you feel there was anything of particular interest about Miss Clarke’s behaviour?’
‘I thought she was a bit nervy – but then nobody likes having a smear test.’
‘What happened when you began to examine her?’
Mrs Gifford again glanced at Evie, and this time Evie looked up and gave the nurse a tight smile, as if in apology for what she had put her through.
‘I could see the poor lass was badly bruised,’ she said. ‘The soft tissue on the insides of her thighs was discoloured – some reddish purple bruising, which suggested it was fairly recent, and some signs of older damage, maybe a few days.’
‘And did you comment on this to Miss Clarke?’
‘I did. I wanted her to tell me how the bruising came about, because sometimes it can indicate other problems or illnesses, and if she had no explanation I would want to run some tests or ask the doctor to take a look at her.’
Boyd Simmonds nodded his head, as if this was all news to him. ‘And was she able to provide a reason?’
Mrs Gifford nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, but she wasn’t telling the truth. I could see that because she wouldn’t look me in the eye. She said she’d fallen off her bike.’
‘And what did you think of that?’
‘I asked her if she’d fallen off twice, because she had two sets of bruises, and she said the road to the house she lived in was covered with gravel and it was easy to slip. But the bruising was on both thighs and she’d have had to roll around a few times with the bike between her legs for that to have happened.’
‘Did you draw any conclusions of your own?’
And So It Begins Page 18