At the hotel that evening, I went straight to Abigail’s room. I knocked, carefully at first, then louder. I wanted to warn her. I needed her to know what I’d heard. It isn’t black and white, I had to tell her. There’s all these questions, all these doubts. Getting the truth, hearing him found guilty, it’s what you need, I know that, but what if the very opposite happens?
It was Auntie Anne who opened the door, dark shadows under her eyes and a finger pressed against her lips. Abigail had gone straight to bed, she said. No, no, she was fine, she just needed her rest. ‘Best let her be,’ she said as she let the heavy door fall closed.
I crept back along the muffled hotel corridor to Mum and Dad’s room. In the single cot the staff had set up for me, all night I drifted in and out of sleep, unable to get comfortable on the stiff mattress. It seemed my back was caught against a cold hard rail and something or someone was pressing me backwards, leaning on me, pushing at me until I was slipping, falling, a terrible fall with something horrifying beneath—
I wrenched myself up from the nightmare, head ringing. Mum’s alarm clock was shrilling for morning. Not a sliver of light showed through the heavy black-out curtains. Under me, the mattress was damp with sweat.
Chapter 33
Thursday 26th September:
Day 123
ANNE
Near the end of the week, the defence called an expert witness – a psychiatrist who had examined Cassingham. He had conducted interviews, compiled a report, laid down all his conclusions in there, and yes, he’d concluded that the defendant had no mental illness. On the witness stand he kept referring to his typed report; it was all in there, he kept repeating, everything he wished to state. But the defence barrister kept pushing him – beyond his remit, the lawyers later said, beyond the requirements for the court, but perhaps he was just like the rest of us in that courtroom, wondering, if he wasn’t ill, a psychopath or madman, then why?
The psychiatrist had a neat, square face; his grey-dusted hair was clipped short and his voice was soft. To me, he seemed likeable even though he spent his time amongst such unlikeable people. The court was quiet while the psychiatrist spoke and as he talked, Cassingham’s eyes skittered. They made the same movement each time, like a tic, a slide, always in the same direction – towards our family – again and again but never quite landing. Yet again I wished Robert could be here with me; I felt so strangely exposed without him. But we’d agreed we would do it this way: he would stay outside, with Abigail. And I would be the one to listen to it all.
The defendant was a complex man, the psychiatrist was saying. He struggled with relationships and with himself. Don’t forget, this doctor said, the circumstances in which he grew up. I wanted to close my ears to his voice. I didn’t want to know about this man’s past. Was I expected to care if he was lonely, childlike, as the psychiatrist said? What did I care that he’d been brought up in foster care, multiple homes, never being loved. It didn’t excuse him, not one bit.
Don’t forget, the psychiatrist went on, the defendant only wanted a bond, a family. He didn’t wish Abigail any harm; he only wanted to keep her. The defendant, he explained, was something of a fantasist. It was his own reality he’d decided to create: that she belonged to him and that he was her guardian.
A surge of nausea rose up in me.
And yet, the prosecution barrister was now saying, cross-examination already underway, he kept Abigail a secret. He kept her hidden. Even in his fantasy world, he knew enough to do that. This man knew wrong from right. And despite his fantasies, he did harm her. In some of the worst ways possible. Physically, mentally. Sexually. And when he was done with her, he found himself another girl to abuse.
If I could have, there in the courtroom, I would have drilled my fingers into my ears. Instead I imagined a great thick wall around me, layers and layers of perfect lines, like a tight deep weave that would never let anything through.
Yes, the psychiatrist was saying. Because although Abigail was a child, Cassingham was not. Cassingham was a man with the appetites of a man. And as time went on, Abigail was not so much of a child either. Cassingham, the psychiatrist said, had expressed great remorse about this aspect of his relationship with Abigail. He had never planned for this to happen. But you have to understand this too: Cassingham had nobody else. He was incapable of forming relationships with those his own age. And Abigail had become everything to him.
I kept swallowing, keeping the nausea at bay. The prosecuting barrister pressed on. You say he cared deeply for Abigail. She was everything to him. He made a whole fantasy out of their lives. So I put it to you – why then did Cassingham attempt to obtain himself another child, another little girl to keep? Why did he – so to speak – abandon Abigail? If he cared that much for Abigail, how then, sir, do you explain that?
A murmur rose up behind us, people shifting in the gallery. The psychiatrist looked down at his hands, as though trying to find the right words to explain something so unspeakable.
Picture this, he said at last. A china vase, enamelled in exquisite colours. It is perfect – in shape, in form, in design. It’s a thing you’ve always wanted. You love to hold this beautiful vase, to trace its outlines with your fingers. But one day, in your fervour, you grip the vase too tight. A tiny crack appears on its surface.
One crack is not so bad. You can display the vase with the crack turned to the wall. From the front, it looks like the perfect vase you know and love. But soon the same thing happens again – another crack – and again and again, until whatever angle you view the vase from, it shows its defects, its damage. The vase is no longer perfect. In fact, this vase that was once so precious to you, now appears flawed. It is not the same to you now. Now that it is broken.
For a while, you don’t know what to do. Things aren’t as they were before. Then one day, you are walking past a shop and in the window, you spy a vase. It is perfect, no cracks or flaws …
Well, said the psychiatrist. I think perhaps you understand.
A fantasist who still knew right from wrong; that was the picture they painted of him. Did it help us, did it explain anything? Not for me. The only person I cared about was my daughter, my beautiful, brave daughter. Only her answers mattered to me and hers was the only voice I wanted to hear.
The video link was designed to let her speak freely, without fear, to prevent any possibility of him intimidating her. She swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and I wondered whether at last this would bring us to the heart of it. I wondered if we would finally hear a story that made sense of the child who had returned to us, or whether it would only be one more story we couldn’t understand. The special room she sat in, just for this purpose, was plain; I could only see the pale blue walls. I longed to be in there with her, to comfort her, to help her, but she had to do this part alone. Even Robert would have to wait outside. They asked her a whole catechism of questions, prosecution and defence. Each time there was a pause before she spoke, her voice on the link a fraction delayed, as though she hesitated before each answer.
Yes, she had lived with the defendant for seven years. From the age of eight until the age of fifteen.
Yes, to begin with, there were locks on the trapdoor. Later, he’d decorated the attic, made it her room.
Yes, she’d had food and warmth and water. Was permitted to wash, and use the flush toilet. Yes, he’d guarded and watched her while she did. Later she’d had the freedom of the house.
No, he’d made no attempt to return her home. His house was her home now, he’d said. Yes, it was true, there were times when he’d hit her. But only sometimes. Only when he got tired or angry or sad. No, she had no lasting scars.
As I watched her up on the screen, it was more and more like watching a somnambulist: someone in a dream who hardly knew what they were saying. Was it only the delay in the sound that made it seem like that? She was telling us the truth – the other evidence proved it – so why did I sense this strange falseness in
her, as though somewhere there lived another truth entirely?
Yes, he brought her books, she went on. And newspapers with – now she realized – certain pages torn out.
Yes, she had been thoroughly taught. No, she was never taken to school, but sometimes he would take her outside, just to the end of the street and back. No, she had never been recognized. She wasn’t very recognizable by then.
Yes, after a while, he’d begun to have sex with her. When she got older. From when she was thirteen. Yes, he always used protection. He was always careful to protect her that way.
No, she’d never really tried to run away. And she told them about the one attempt she had made, when she was still so little, still only eight. One night when she was exhausted, confused and angry with him. She told him that she didn’t like him and didn’t want him to look after her any more. She didn’t want the sweets or the books or the cuddles. She only wanted to go home.
So much of what she said I already knew, but here were so many details that I had never been aware of. All these parts of my daughter I’d never known.
That night, he left the trapdoor unlocked deliberately, the ladder unfolded on purpose for her. She heard him do it. So she packed a bag – used her pillowcase – and put in it the pyjamas he’d given her, one of the little vests and her shoes. She climbed down from the attic, crept downstairs. She found him by the front door, sitting collapsed on the floor with his head all askew. Tongue hanging out. Throttled by the tie he’d looped round the door handle. She was nearly sick. He opened his eyes.
But I would have, he’d told her. And it would have been all your fault.
But the truth was, even despite that, she wouldn’t have gone through with it. The truth was, from the beginning she had believed him, the things he had said. When he’d told her that he had always loved her. When he’d said she was always meant to be with him. Because he was right that her family never came, though every day she had waited for them in vain. Because he’d done everything to make her feel special.
And because, in the end, he’d had so much proof.
He’d been so clever. At eight, she had been old enough to think for herself, and that was the worst part of what he’d done to her. Mind games, like Robert had once said. She had formed her own beliefs, reasoning straight from his faulty premises. She had built them up in her own mind from the sliver of doubt any child might have had, and I knew that Abigail’s sliver had been wider than most. He’d presented her with layer upon layer of confusion and lies, dressed up as truth and perhaps that was the cruellest abuse of them all.
But from the moment Abigail took the stand and began to speak, I saw that he would be found guilty. Abigail’s testimony showed us it all. Whatever he’d told himself and whatever justifications he had given her, none of that would hold up now. I felt it in the ripples through the courtroom as Abigail spoke. I saw it in the shifts on the jurors’ faces and in the way the defence barrister lowered his head. They saw exactly what he had done.
Now as the prosecution and defence unfurled their closing speeches, I imagined myself holding Robert’s hand and finally being able to hug my daughter. With Lillian and Fraser and Jess beside me, it felt as though nothing could break our family now. Maybe I should have noticed when they showed us the photos, those stark images of how she had lived, kept until the very end of her testimony, projected on a wide, tall screen for anyone who could still be in doubt. The tiny bed, hardly five-foot long, crammed against the wall. The bare floorboards. The lock. The potty by the bed. The sloping attic walls with no windows, papered in a striped design, the single light in the ceiling with a crooked shade. The photographs were crisp and blown up large for display, but it was such a small detail and there was so much else that was awful in them, that I simply didn’t notice. Then before I knew it, the judge was summing up and sending out the jury, and we were standing and it was over, no more testimony – we were done.
Now all that remained was to wait for the verdict. Outside the courtroom, we went upstairs to the balcony, trying to stay away from the hubbub of reporters who swarmed the street outside. Caroline brought Abigail and Robert to us, and Abigail let me hug her though she was as stiff as a mannequin.
Caroline crouched down next to her, Witness Service badge shining, her voice a murmur, checking with my daughter once, twice, a dozen times, are you sure you really, really want to go in? ‘I need to see,’ Abigail kept repeating, like a record stuck in a single groove. ‘I need to see it. I need to know.’ It was as though her mind was grappling with something that blocked out every single other thought. Eventually, Caroline stood up and stepped back, leaving her to us as though to say, I’ve done my part, it’s your call now.
Robert shook her hand. ‘Thank you, Caroline, we appreciate all you’ve done.’
From the balcony, I could see people milling below: all these people here to see lives broken, changed or put back together. Robert stood beside me and took my hand though we didn’t exchange a word. Until the verdict came what was there to say?
Another half an hour crawled by. I saw the detective come in through the entrance, DS McCarthy who had said he would come to check on proceedings. He turned his eyes up at me, his grey gaze falling on me like a shadow. As I followed his movement through the space below, my eyes caught on another figure – impossible but there. In shock, I drew back from the rail.
‘What is it?’ said Robert.
I couldn’t move. I’d recognized, unbelievably, who this was. Ten years etched into his cheeks, his forehead, but the eyes were the same, and the nose and the lopsided mouth.
‘It’s Abigail’s father,’ I said. ‘It’s Preston.’
‘Preston? Here?’ Robert peered over the balcony.
Somewhere nearby I was distantly aware of my sister and Jess engaged in a whispered argument. ‘But didn’t you see it?’ Jess was saying. ‘That wallpaper, the pattern, the very same one!’
All those phone calls I had ignored. All those lines I had tried to hold. I glanced behind at my daughter, curled in her chair, blocking out the world, then turned back to the man who was her father.
He was here; it seemed he had only just arrived. Had he flown all this way, just to be here at her trial? As though he had heard my thoughts, Preston looked up and saw me, and I hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. After everything I had done to keep him out of this, after everything he had been to me in the past.
He began to climb the stairs up to us and I pushed myself away from the balcony and hurried to meet him, to stop him. We came face to face, halfway up, halfway down, the father of my child, this man I hadn’t seen in a decade.
‘Please,’ I found myself blurting out. ‘Please, Preston, don’t make a scene. I’m sorry I never answered your calls, but please don’t do anything now, not in the middle of this, please. She won’t be able to handle it, she’s already dealing with so much.’
He looked at me; even standing on the step below, he still stood that little bit taller than me. I felt as though I was nineteen again, my life all over the place, things spiralling.
‘Please, Annie. I only want a chance to see her. I promise I won’t even speak to her; everything else can wait until after.’
He took a step to one side and slowly continued climbing, and I hurried after him. As I did, I realized something had changed about him. It wasn’t simply that he was older, those lines on his face anyone might have expected, it was that there was a colour to his skin and uprightness in the way he held himself; he had changed and I realized in a rush what it was.
Finally, Preston was sober.
At the top of the stairs he came to a halt. My family were there, scattered on the balcony, Lillian and Jess still whispering together. And Abigail, curled in her seat, knees drawn up, hair half covering her face, thumbs jabbing at her phone, some game she was playing, drowning everything out. She was so thin, so pale; her hair that once had looked so sleek straggling across her shoulders.
I stood there next to Preston
, looking at her. It felt like how sometimes in the dead of night we would stand together looking down at our daughter in her cot, those rare times when none of us were fighting. In sleep, she had been the perfect child, but now … I felt almost ashamed. ‘Preston, I’m sorry, it’s been so difficult, so hard for us all—’
‘Annie. Stop. She’s beautiful,’ he said.
That was the moment she looked up and saw him, dawning recognition on her face. Preston was smiling and raising a hand, hello, but then Lillian was moving, crossing the space between her and Abigail, putting her whole body in between like a shield. And it was Abigail who got up and roughly pushed my sister aside.
Before any of us could move a step further, a voice came from the stairs behind me. ‘They’re ready for us now,’ said DS McCarthy, like an order. ‘They’re calling us back in.’
There wasn’t time for anything else; no time for Abigail and Preston to reconcile, no time for me to say a word to Lillian. I stood there looking at my daughter and I couldn’t name it, couldn’t say what it was, only the sense again that there was something terrible I had missed, something all of us had missed and I felt the lines – all those lines I had so carefully drawn – start to splinter, only this time I had no idea how to stop it and no idea what was about to be let in.
The gallery was crammed full – a dozen journalists had arrived and DS McCarthy slipped in too – and there now wasn’t enough room for us all to sit together. We’d only waited two hours in total – such a short time for a jury to deliberate.
I pushed my way with Abigail and Robert to the front and Abigail insisted that Jess sit with us. Fraser and my sister sat alone, behind, and I saw Preston slip in at the back. Good to his word, he’d let her be. Afterwards, I promised myself, I would put everything right between them, only please, please let us get through this first.
Little White Lies Page 24