Hazel stands before the judge, her head bowed. She wears a cream blouse with a Peter Pan collar. Her hair is brushed to one side, her head as sleek as a seal’s. Her hands are trembling as she clings to the balustrade of the witness box.
‘Would you like some water, Miss Archer?’ the judge asks kindly.
Hazel nods and then nearly drops the glass the usher brings to her. She shakes her head, embarrassed.
‘I’m so sorry.’
Laurel’s barrister smiles at her, leaning easily over the wooden lectern in front of him. The courtroom is small, a single male judge in red robes facing them all. Max and Jonny sit at the back of the room on a bench with green felt cushions. Other than them, the barristers and the clerks, the court contains no one else and is closed to outsiders. The air smells of furniture polish and the foxed pages of legal tomes.
Laurel isn’t present. As is normal with a judicial review, she awaits the verdict in her prison cell.
‘Miss Archer,’ the barrister begins. ‘This is a rare occurrence, as you know. But the court has agreed that these are extraordinary circumstances. Oral evidence in a judicial review hearing such as this is extremely unusual. But we have called you here today – and you have agreed – to speak for your sister, Laurel Bowman.
‘Perhaps you could explain to the court a little bit about your relationship with your sister.’ He waves his hand towards her. ‘How you come to be here today and so forth.’
Hazel swallows. ‘I haven’t seen my sister for many years. We got back in touch just recently because . . . uh, well, because my identity became known. For various reasons. And so we thought . . . Well, I thought that the time was right to get back in contact.’ She inhales deeply as if she has emerged breathless from deep underwater.
The barrister nods. ‘And so, Miss Archer, if we go back to the offence for which your sister was convicted, it is my understanding that you have no recollection of that day. That – although you were present – given your very young age at the time and the distress rightly caused by the nature of the crime committed, you have blocked out all memory of that day and its transgressions?’
Hazel lifts her eyes to look at the barrister.
The judge pushes his elbows to the front of his desk, peering down to where she stands. The barrister shifts on his feet, waiting. A shaft of sudden sunlight bursts in through the small window at the very top of the courtroom, illuminating dust particles dancing through the air.
‘Miss Archer?’ the barrister says again. ‘Can you answer? Have you any memory of that day in 1997?’
Hazel doesn’t speak.
Max is on the edge of his seat, his palms pressed into his knees. The barrister turns with an uncomfortable laugh to the judge, his hands splayed, pleading for assistance.
‘Miss Archer?’ the judge says kindly. ‘I realise this is hard for you. But I must request that you answer Mr Donnelly’s question.’
‘Yes,’ she says. Her voice is clear although her eyes are glazed, as if she is herself transported back to that day when willow leaves spilled down on to the canal weaving its empty way through the trees. ‘That day in July. All those years ago. Yes,’ she says. All eyes are on her. The courtroom is as silent as if under a spell. ‘I have some kind of memory of that day. In fact, now I remember everything.’
‘It was the start of the summer holidays. Six weeks in front of us. Nothing to do except play. Be together. We were very close, Laurel and me. I remember . . .
‘If we were careful and promised not to talk to any strangers, Mum would let us walk from our garden gate, up the canal path to where the playground was.
‘It was hot. One of those beautiful summer days when everything was bright green and yellow and all you could hear were the leaves rustling in the trees and the far-off drone of a plane in the sky. You could hear the birds singing. We were happy. We were playing. Running to the playground together. We loved the roundabout and the swings. Flying through the air. Laurel would push me so high, to the point where your stomach flips. It was . . . fun.’
Hazel pauses, taking a breath.
‘We were just kids. Little girls.’
She looks up then, at the tableau of faces before her. Jonny is gazing directly at her. Something in his eyes comforts her, steadies her. She gives him a sad smile before continuing.
‘Kirstie was playing on the horse when we arrived. We just started talking to her. Playing with her. Her mother was having coffee, talking to her friends, I think. We didn’t notice. We were in a world of our own. That was why it didn’t seem strange when we suddenly found ourselves back at the old canal. We often played there, Laurel and I. The woods ran either side of it so it was good for Hide and Seek and Tag and make-believe games . . .’
She hesitates.
‘I mean, I know what people say about us watching films and that.’ Hazel looks up at the bench. ‘The trial judge said it. I read it, later on. But it wasn’t true. Really, you have to understand, films and television are nothing compared to what you can have in your head. Willow trees were fairy kingdoms to us. We used to go to a clearing where Laurel had her house and I had mine. Bits partitioned off where we had cinemas and swimming pools and huge master bedrooms with four-poster beds. None of it was real. You know?’
She picks up the glass of water and takes a sip. Her hands no longer tremble. She is calm.
As she drinks, the barrister rouses as if sunken in a trance and forces himself to interject. ‘And Kirstie Swann. What happened to her that afternoon?’
Hazel puts her head on one side.
‘She didn’t fall,’ she says carefully. ‘She was hit. We were playing Mums and Dads and the baby was naughty and so she was hit. And then she fell.’ She looks around the courtroom slowly. ‘But that was when I ran.’ She shakes her head. ‘The blood . . . I didn’t like it, I was scared. I wanted my mummy. So I ran. All the way back home.’ Hazel wipes her cheeks, which glisten with tears. ‘I swear that’s the truth. On the Bible. On my father’s life.’
The barrister stares at her for a long moment before seeming to shake himself into action.
‘Who hit Kirstie, Miss Archer? Who hit her and caused her to fall?’
Hazel looks surprised as she folds her hands one over the other in front of her skirt. ‘Well, it was Laurel. Of course it was. That’s why she was found guilty.’ She frowns as if confused. ‘That’s why she’s in prison.’
The barrister looks at the judge, who leans heavily back in his seat and lifts his chin at the ceiling in an apparent direction to continue.
‘Um, yes, indeed. ‘The barrister’s voice is bewildered, rising as he struggles to think on his feet.’ As it was found by a jury of her peers in 1998. And . . . can you tell the court, Miss Archer, are you willing to vouch for your sister now? Are you happy to state that you will be a constant in her life going forward? Provide her with some much-needed familial support if she were to be released?’
Hazel bows her head as the sun reappears. Its light catches the shine of her hair.
‘Can you vouch for your sister?’ the barrister says again after a beat. ‘Can you say that in your view she has been rehabilitated?’
There is no sound for a moment. The courtroom hangs on her words, chests rising and falling inaudibly, as they watch Hazel carefully considering her reply.
‘No,’ she says at last. ‘No, I’m sorry to say that I can’t vouch for my sister Laurel. I thought that I might be able to, but from what she told me at our recent meeting, and what I now remember to be the truth of that day back in 1997 . . .’ She looks slowly around the room, blinking as if viewing it from behind glass. ‘I’m so very sorry but I cannot in all conscience say that Laurel should ever be released.’