The Best of Friends

by Alex Day

  ‘Yes,’ I say, my voice wavering with emotion, tears close to the surface. ‘I did. But only because he told me his relationship with his wife was over, that their marriage was loveless, that it was going nowhere. I thought that he and I had a future together and therefore it wasn’t, in my mind, an affair. For me, it was …’ I pause before completing the sentence, ‘it was love.’

  I conclude with the most important word of all and then fold my hands in my lap and wait, eyes cast decorously downwards.

  ‘So you profess that you were – I put it to the court that you still are – in love with Mr Hegarty. And that you were planning a new life with him, once he had rid himself of the wife who got in your way.’

  The words these lawyers use are so loaded, full of pernicious undercurrents.

  The barrister continues. ‘And yet, when you hear that they are having a meeting in order to effect a reconciliation, you offer not only to make the food but also to deliver it to their door.’

  His artful use of the present tense makes my actions seem immediate, on-going. He looks around the courtroom, a magician playing to the crowd. ‘A veritable one-woman Uber Eats, so to speak!’

  He pauses for the ripple of laughter that drifts across rows of seating, his expression one of self-satisfied self-congratulation. It’s all about self with these people, even though they’re supposed to be working on behalf of their client. For them it’s nothing more than a show, an opportunity to demonstrate how terribly clever they are.

  I struggle to maintain a suitably humble demeanour. He’s starting to annoy me, but I know I mustn’t show this. I must play this absolutely right in order to make sure Charlotte gets her just desserts, i.e. a long period behind bars.

  ‘Charlotte had been my friend,’ I state, clearly and simply. ‘I wanted to assuage my guilt about what had happened and help her and Dan to make the right decision. Taking round the homemade curry was a way to make amends for the wrong I’d done. It was never an affair between me and Dan. As I said, I thought it was love. Only in hindsight can I see how he exploited me, that in fact it was a misguided and misjudged one-night stand brought on by loneliness and too much alcohol, never to be repeated.’

  I study the jurors again as I explain this, reading their body language. I see from their sympathetic smiles and gentle nods that they understand. Everyone makes mistakes; the better people try to atone for them.

  But the barrister isn’t finished yet.

  ‘When you took the curry to Mrs Hegarty, how would you describe her state of mind?’

  This comes from nowhere to take me by surprise; I don’t know why it’s relevant. Are they angling for a plea of mitigation, trying to establish diminished responsibility?

  ‘She was … distracted, I guess,’ I answer, honestly. ‘A bit all over the place, mess everywhere, no make-up on, halfway through ironing her outfit for the evening, that kind of thing. This struck me as unusual – she was always immaculately turned out and she was accustomed to hosting lunches and dinner parties for up to twenty people so she wouldn’t normally be phased by a meal for two. Though she had given the housekeeper the day off so I suppose she was having to tackle the kind of menial chores – like laying the table and ironing her own clothes – that she usually left to others.’

  I see various members of the jury frown, their foreheads creased, their mouths pulled into disapproving grimaces. It’s only the absolute truth, which I vowed to tell when I swore my oath, but of course most ordinary people are either outraged by, or condemnatory of, the idea of having full-time live-in servants to wait on one hand and foot.

  ‘And in her distraction,’ continues the barrister, ‘what did she do when you handed over the casserole dish which contained the … lamb massaman?’

  He enunciates the last two words so precisely and deliberately, emphasising the plosive ‘b’ and the sibilant ‘s’ sounds; it’s as if he’s tasting them. And finding them wanting. I’m still not sure where he’s heading with this line of enquiry, and that makes me nervous. But I do everything I can to hide my disquiet.

  ‘She tasted it,’ I say calmly. ‘She found it very hot, as in spicy, but she knew that I’d made it that way because it’s how Dan likes it. But she suffered no ill-effects, which proves that she added the poison after I’d gone.’

  ‘And what happened next, that evening, after Mrs Hegarty tested the dish?’

  I narrow my eyes as I try to remember accurately. ‘I left pretty much straightaway.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The barrister sniffs and nods his head as if weighing up what I’ve said. ‘Straightaway,’ he repeats. ‘You’re sure about that, Ms Carr?’

  I work hard to keep my face expressionless. ‘Yes. Absolutely sure.’

  ‘Really?’ His voice is laden with disbelief. ‘So you judged Mrs Hegarty to be distraught and distracted, as well she might be when what lay ahead of her was a meeting crucial to the saving of her twenty-five year marriage.’

  Twenty-five years. The number hits me like a cosh. The jury will be beguiled by such a long-lasting union, censorious about the person who threatened it.

  ‘Yes,’ I repeat. What is his point? When he next speaks, I find out.

  ‘So she was in enough of a muddled state that, when she turned away from you to finish ironing her blouse or to put something on the table, she wouldn’t have noticed you slipping the poison hemlock into the curry?’

  Her blouse. How old is he? Doesn’t he know that women wear shirts these days, just like men? I hope this will show the jury how out of touch with reality this man is.

  ‘Because that’s what happened, isn’t it, Ms Carr?’ he continues. ‘You set the whole thing up to frame Mrs Hegarty and you hoped her unsettled frame of mind would allow you to get away with it.’

  ‘No,’ I state, calmly but insistently. ‘Categorically no. I did not poison the curry.’

  ‘No further questions, m’lord,’ says the barrister.

  I step down from the box feeling a mixture of relief and confusion. I’m not sure what was achieved during that questioning. But I have a lingering sense of something unfinished. None of it seems to be as clear cut as it should be – and that worries me.

  However, as the case progresses I begin to relax.

  There are plenty of other factors that add up against Charlotte, that leave her hung out to dry. Naomi tells the court about the ‘welcome’ meal Charlotte invited her to shortly after her arrival in the village, how she’d been very ill after eating mushrooms Charlotte had foraged. Crucially, it was another instance where more than one person ate the same meal but only one of them suffered symptoms.

  If it sounds suspicious, looks suspicious, and smells suspicious …

  Everything conspires against her. Why did she eat so little herself? She doesn’t like curry, she explains. She hates spicy, chilli-laden food. But she also doesn’t normally eat carbs and yet on this night, had a mountain of rice, naan and poppadoms on her plate – as testified to by Dan – a calorie-fest her body hasn’t seen since about 1999.

  The jurors stare intently. No one fidgets. No one loses concentration for a moment.

  In addition to the mushroom story, Naomi uses her time in court to lay it all on the line – all the petty insults Charlotte has fired in her direction over the years, all the jealousy she’s displayed towards the poor, sweet, buxom waitress her husband had befriended. Charlotte’s barrister is good but he hasn’t prepared for her to lose the sympathy of the court and once she has, it seems there is no way back.

  By this stage, there may still have been a grain of hope for her. A soupçon, a gram. But then the fatal text message is read. I had to hand it over; it’s a crime to withhold evidence. As the words are enunciated, everyone knows it is the moment that changes everything. It’s an admission of intent, and laden with profanities, which never go down well with a jury. Especially not coming from a posh woman who should know better.

  I wish I could just get rid of him. For ever. I feel like fucking poisoning the bast
ard. In fact, I think I will. I’ll kill the motherfucker for what he’s done to me.

  There’s only one thing I don’t tell the court, and it doesn’t involve a lie. They don’t ask me. So I don’t have to admit that I left the necklace on purpose, that I broke the chain and put it under the bed. I did it after Dan delivered his bombshell, popping upstairs on the pretext of fetching my cardigan. It was the only thing I could think of that might ensure Charlotte found out that Dan had slept with someone while she was away which, I believed, would bring their marriage to an end.

  It was my only hope.

  Chapter 45

  Susannah

  Eventually, just as spring was turning to summer and the leaves on the trees were thick and green, the date for my sentencing arrived. The press came out in force; it could hardly have been a better story.

  The jilted girlfriend, the French temptress, the handsome, talented man caught between two beautiful women – precisely the stuff newspapers, particularly the tabloids, thrive on. The public gallery was full to bursting point.

  Because of my guilty plea there was no need for anyone to give evidence, so there would be no weeping Josephine in the dock, relating how she nearly died (she didn’t), no steely eyed Charlie recalling the fear I instilled in him (he wasn’t, ever, frightened).

  Only I would be there.

  The judge, a kindly old man who smiled broadly at me when I was led in, gave a brief summing up of the case as he saw it. He explained how I had been so poorly treated by Charlie that I had been left in a state of utter despair, and that I had clearly suffered inordinately by being abandoned in favour of another woman. He understood that I obviously still loved Charlie very much and this had clouded my reason and made me act in a way that was completely out of character.

  My unblemished record hitherto, my creditable exam results, my solid, middle-class upbringing, were all cited in my favour. Finally, explained the judge, I had already lost everything that mattered to me – my partner, my degree, my home. I had acted in an ill-advised and imprudent way but I had had no serious intent to maim or kill and, in his opinion, I had endured enough. He painted me as an ingenue who should be pitied, not punished.

  In light of all of this, he let me off virtually scot-free. No penalty, just a suspended sentence. And, of course, a criminal record.

  It was a better outcome than I could possibly have expected and no one could believe it, least of all me. But, when I had recovered enough from the shock to think about it more deeply, it was obvious what had happened. The judge had fallen for my youth, my pretty face. Perhaps I reminded him of his own daughter, or niece, or a family friend. The silly old fool clearly couldn’t bear to see me carted away in a van, forced to endure the deprivations and degradations of life in a women’s prison. I just wasn’t that sort of criminal.

  Thanks to that judge’s old-fashioned attitude and susceptibility to a young girl’s good looks, I walked from the Old Bailey, the scales of justice glittering in the pale autumn sun, a free woman.

  Charlotte doesn’t look as if she’ll be as lucky as I was. I’m sure it would be the same if I were in her position. For a start, we’re middle-aged women now, no longer able to hide behind the recklessness of youth, to use it as an excuse for foolish and impetuous behaviour. More importantly, we’re no longer fresh-faced, dewy-skinned, doe-eyed beauties – not like twenty-year-olds are, anyway. So I suppose it’s hardly surprising that the jury is not all that sympathetic.

  Lacing a curry with poison hemlock, leaves that perhaps she gathered from the patch we had visited all those months ago when I had first got involved with her foraging club, is never going to be explained away as an accident, an inadvertent mistake. The fact that she used her wholesome, happy-clappy hobby to nearly kill her own spouse … well, any courtroom would view that with the horrified disdain it deserves.

  The gossips in the village have gone mad for this story, as one might imagine. Of course it’s not just the poisoning that has set tongues wagging. It’s the juicy details, now fully out in the open, about me and Dan, combined with Charlotte’s incandescent rage, her quest for retribution.

  Miriam has been wearing a stunned, disbelieving expression for weeks now; every time she sees me her jaw drops an inch or two further. I don’t know if she’s more incredulous that Charlotte is a would-be murderer or that I, the poor church mouse, managed to attract the village superhero. She’s clearly having difficulty with the concept of taking Charlotte and Dan off the pedestal she’s kept them on ever since they first pitched up in the village, Mr and Mrs Nobody from Nowhere masquerading as the squire and his wife.

  The press is having a field day, just as they did all those years ago when it was me in the dock.

  ‘Murderous mother vowed revenge’ blares the headline of the local free sheet. Jealousy is an emotion that everyone can understand so it’s no great surprise when the theory put forward is that Charlotte arranged the meal with Dan, pretending she was looking for reconciliation, whilst in fact secretly planning to murder him in the most terrible way. She accepted my offer of the curry to cover her tracks; if I had made it, it could not be her who was responsible for the poisoning, I suppose must have been her rationale – though of course, in court she denies it.

  I’m so sorry for her boys, and there’s a part of me that feels pity for Charlotte, too. When I gave chocolates injected with mercury to Charlie and Josephine, I was propelled by heartbreak and devastation. For Charlotte, as far as I can see, it was pure base anger, a desire for revenge, a determination to make sure that Dan never went with anyone behind her back again.

  There’s one thing I do feel bad about, that I sincerely regret. I should have told her about me and Dan. I should have been the one to tell her truth – though not of course that I deliberately planted the necklace. No, let her think that had been an accident, a silver chain broken unnoticed in the throes of passion. Once she and Dan were back from Corsica I had ruminated about confessing, going over and over it so many times, the pros and cons, whether I should or whether I shouldn’t. In the end, I left it too late.

  So instead I decided to say sorry. I went back to see Charlotte, that evening after I’d dropped off the curry. But I wavered as I approached her front door, remembering her verbal attack on me when we met in the village. My resolve deserted me and I slunk back home. Jamie was still at his cinema party and Luke and Sam were so engrossed in whatever they were watching that they didn’t even notice I’d gone out, so I never told anyone.

  I read in the papers that it came out in court that Charlotte had recognised my necklace quite early on, that she was the one who had returned it to me, and also that Dan had confessed only when stricken with the poison – the last revelations of the dying man.

  Except he didn’t die.

  Which is fortunate because it means she is not facing an actual murder charge. They say he’ll be fine now; if it doesn’t kill stone dead at the time, there are no lasting effects of hemlock poisoning. Charlotte played it so cleverly by pretending she shared in the poisoned meal, even though she actually barely touched it.

  Anything other than a guilty verdict seems unlikely. If I had been to prison myself all those years ago I’d be in a position to give her advice – what not to do and say once she’s behind bars, how to survive such a hostile environment. But mine was merely an act of folly that I got away with, whereas hers … she had intended to take a man’s life.

  Once the jury gives their verdict, Charlotte won’t be able to deny it anymore.

  Chapter 46

  Charlotte

  During the trial, the hours in that courtroom, bland and sterile and windowless, there is nothing to look at but the intent faces of the jurors, trying to seem intelligent and as if they understand what is going on when they are clearly far too stupid to do so, the peacocking barristers, so full of themselves in their pretentious wigs and gowns, and the court reporters, pencils flying across shorthand notepads. And you.

  Preening yourself, so
pleased that you’d set up your attack on Dan so cleverly that it is I who is taking the blame. You would probably say that I made myself vulnerable by making so many mistakes and maybe I did. But that’s often what happens to the innocent, isn’t it? They fall foul of their own guilelessness. Their inability to foresee that their best friend might sleep with their husband and then, when told that it’s going nowhere and that he really loves his wife, try to kill him. If you couldn’t have him, you didn’t want anyone to have him, did you? Least of all me, his lawful spouse.

  When you put the hemlock in the curry, you cared nothing for either Dan nor me; our lives were yours to take to make yourself feel better. Did you even think of my boys, orphaned so young? And what, really, were you going to gain from it? It’s not as if you would benefit in any way. On the other hand, maybe you planned for only me to die, thinking that someone smaller and lighter might succumb more easily, leaving you free to close in on Dan, bereaved and suffering. To think that I am the one who warned you off the hemlock when we found it in that place we were foraging. If I’d said nothing you’d probably never have thought of such a vile plan.

  All of these crazy thoughts tumble through my head as I sit in court or in my cell after I’ve given my evidence and wait for what is starting to seem inevitable.

  The text message clinches it. Damn that stupid message. Damn that I sent it to you. Damn that you made sure you carefully preserved it. Handed it over at the first possible opportunity.

  When the case collapses, at first I think it’s a joke, a mistake, a cruel prank.

  But it’s not.

  Non-disclosure of information. New facts. And then the words I’d hoped, but never truly believed I’d hear: ‘You’re free to go.’

  These must be the sweetest words in the English language, the sound of justice being done.

  Chapter 47

  Susannah