I walked towards the river, heading for Barnes Bridge station, and I was as sure as I could be that I wasn’t being followed. It was almost nine in the morning and the train station was busy with silent commuters muffled in enormous coats. I squashed myself onto a train, pressed against a woman with a bulging handbag and a man who was determined to read his hardback book, despite the crush and the fact that he elbowed me in the head every time he turned the page. At Clapham Junction I got off and went up the steps to the footbridge that ran across the many tracks: seventeen platforms, two thousand trains a day, tens of thousands of passengers. I walked as far as the painted board that showed which platforms served which destinations, stood on the other side of the footbridge and considered it. Webster’s words ran through my mind.
People go back to places they know … People shed information about themselves all the time. You think you’re making free choices but really you’re just going back to what you find comforting …
To avoid a hunter, think like a hunter.
I carried my passport in my bag, a lesson learned the hard way when the house burned down, and I always had a couple of hundred pounds in cash on me for the same reason. I’d taken more money out that morning on my way to the station. I wasn’t going to use my cards again if I could help it. I could get to Gatwick Airport in half an hour. A few hours after that, I could be in Copenhagen, in my father’s flat, where I would be welcome. My impatient, funny father, who still clung on to the rebel image he’d adopted in his youth in the shape of two piercings in one ear and the battered moped he loved to ride around town. I wanted to be folded in his arms and reassured and taken out for drinks and dinner in a nice restaurant, or spirited away to the lakeside holiday home that had been in our family for generations. No one could find me there, I thought, knowing from the ache in my heart that they could, and would, and if I went to him I would only put him at risk.
My eyes tracked down the list of place names again, looking for the unfamiliar, the unknown. The criteria: nowhere too small, nowhere too distant.
‘What time,’ said a querulous woman who was walking past, ‘do we get to Brighton? Because if they won’t let us check in to our rooms, I just don’t see the point in getting there early. I don’t want to have to walk around for hours with my bag, Andrea.’
I joined the flow of passengers heading in the opposite direction, towards the ticket office.
I had been to Brighton before, but not for a long time – not since a school trip that had taken in the Royal Pavilion and the pier. It had been summer on my last visit and I remembered sitting on the pebbled beach eating ice cream. I didn’t recall a lot more, unfortunately. As I walked out of the train station and set off down the hill I recognised absolutely nothing. It was a cold day with low cloud grazing the rooftops and a sea mist blurring the outlines of buildings in the distance. I walked quickly, cutting down random side streets, wanting to get away from the station. I had nothing to carry but my handbag. At Clapham Junction I’d bought a pay-as-you-go SIM card. I’d texted Diana the number and had an acknowledgement from her, so that was all right. She had promised to tell me how Mark was, and I trusted her.
All roads downhill led towards the seafront and I arrived there eventually, to find a sea that was dark and violent and full of white horses. The wind scoured the promenade. Shivering, I retreated a couple of streets back to the shelter of the Lanes where I wandered for a while. I found myself staring into windows without seeing anything but my own reflection and the street behind me, so I could check I was alone. Leaving the antique shops and jewellers and narrow alleys behind, I found a Marks & Spencer where I bought pyjamas and underwear and an extra jumper. The shop assistant told me where to find a pharmacy, helpfully pointing out an enormous shopping centre opposite Marks. I bought some snacks and moisturiser and another new toothbrush and toothpaste and a hairbrush and anything else I could think I might need, within reason. My cash needed to last me a couple of days. Last of all I bought a notebook and pen. I had lunch in a tiny café with foggy windows, and sitting there felt almost like normal life had resumed. It was an illusion and I knew it, but I let myself go along with it for an hour or two. I stayed there nursing a cup of coffee until after three, when I tore myself away from eavesdropping on the conversations around me and walked back to the seafront with my purchases. The sea was churning and the wind had strengthened, blowing spray through the air. I put my head down and battled along the front to a small, faded hotel where I was able to negotiate a double room with a sea view for three nights. It took most of the money I had left but that was fine. I wasn’t planning to go out.
The room was on the fifth floor. It was decorated in brown and cream and in ordinary circumstances I might have wrinkled my nose at the worn carpet, and the stained grout between the bathroom tiles, and the grey net curtains. It felt like a haven to me though as I shut the door behind me and locked it. There was a bed, and a desk, and even a lumpy armchair. The main thing I liked was the view from the window: the seafront, and beyond it the sea. There was something about being able to see the horizon that soothed me. I unpacked my few things, turned the armchair around to face the window and settled down to watch the waves until the last light faded from the sky.
I didn’t go out much in the next few days. I sat and thought, turning the few facts I knew around in my mind, rearranging them to see if I could force them to make sense. The harassed chambermaid was happy to skip my room and I had enough to eat so I didn’t need to brave the hotel breakfast. The weather was so terrible that I didn’t feel guilty about not walking by the sea – the few dogwalkers and runners I saw were kitted out in full wet-weather gear and still looked miserable. Rain and sleet blasted the window at regular intervals, as gale-force winds whipped across the south of England. The television news was full of dire warnings about flood risks and structural damage; it all seemed incredibly remote. The hotel room was now the extent of my world.
On the second day, around noon, my phone hummed with a text message.
I felt a rush of affection for her and the stupid abbreviations that probably took longer to type than the actual word would have. Tears stood in my eyes: Mark was awake and would soon be out of the ICU. I almost couldn’t bear the relief of it. He wasn’t going to die. He sends love to you – but that was a commonplace, words chosen by his mother who was always effusive. If I’d been in any doubt about my feelings for Mark, the fact that I read the text message over and over again might have given me a clue.
It was frustrating that he didn’t remember anything, but I had been braced for that. A bang on the back of the head hard enough to fracture his skull would have made him a very shaky witness. Saying my name could just have been a kind of mental short circuit instead of a warning to me.
I sent back a brief message of thanks and good wishes, after dithering over whether I should send love or not. I thought of them sitting in the ICU, reading it out, and what Mark would say about it, if anything.
There was one other thing about Mark’s situation that gave me pause. The staff in the ICU had been so matter-of-fact, even though they clearly cared about what they did. It was their job, just as the law was mine. What seemed extraordinary to me was routine to them. I frowned, thinking about it. I’d thought my knowledge of the criminal justice system, and my experience in organising facts into a narrative would help, but what if it was part of the problem? I was coming at it from the wrong angle.
What I needed was an ordinary member of the public, and fortunately I knew where to find one.
‘Hello?’ Adele sounded wary when she answered her phone.
‘It’s Ingrid.’
‘Ingrid? Why are you calling me from an unknown number? Did you lose your phone?’
‘No. I’m just using this one temporarily.’
‘Okay.’ She sounded baffled.
‘What are you up to?’
‘Finishing up at work. Do you want to meet up?’
‘I’m not in London,’ I said. ‘But if I can borrow you for a while, I’d appreciate your help with something.’
‘Anything.’
She meant it, too, I thought, and I loved her for it. ‘I know it sounds weird, but I want to tell you a story.’
‘Okay.’
‘And I want you to be honest about what you think.’
‘Is it a love story?’ She sounded hopeful.
‘It’s a story about a rape trial.’
‘I should have known better.’ She sighed. ‘Okay. I’m listening.’
I told her what I remembered about Guy Lanesbury’s trial, and how it had played out. ‘She lied and we proved that she lied. Guy didn’t do anything wrong. The jury believed him.’
‘Ye-es.’ She didn’t sound convinced. ‘But Lisa was upset by what he did.’
‘That doesn’t make it illegal.’
‘I don’t think that’s the point, Ingrid. She was heartbroken and embarrassed and – and guilty, really, because it was her fault that he was acquitted.’
‘You feel sorry for her.’
‘Yeah, of course. Don’t you?’
‘I do, but that doesn’t mean I think Guy should have gone to prison.’
‘Well, no. They’re both victims in a way – victims of bad judgement and being young and stupid. She hurt his feelings, but then he didn’t do the right thing either. He couldn’t have had consent for what he did to her. And she didn’t deserve to be a social outcast. She didn’t deserve to be humiliated in front of her dad. She was entitled to be unhappy about what he did but even if he’d been convicted she would still have lost all her friends and her privacy. You’re just looking at it from the point of view of winning and losing and the law. Life isn’t like that. Emotions aren’t tidy and logical and legal.’ She paused. ‘How do you feel about what you did during the trial?’
‘Me?’
‘You sound defensive when you talk about it. What part did you play?’
‘I didn’t do much. I talked to Guy about what actually happened. I went through a million printouts of phone records. Oh, and I did cross-examine someone. A witness.’
‘Which one?’
‘The best friend, Tess.’ I remembered her: pale, round-faced, earnest, pushing her glasses up her nose every few seconds. ‘She admitted that Lisa had been intending to sleep with Guy that night. It was her idea that Lisa should report the incident to the police. She basically convinced Lisa that what had happened to her was rape rather than—’
‘Rather than what, exactly?’
I leaned back, staring out at the sea. ‘An unpleasant incident.’
‘You can say that again,’ Adele said. ‘You know, if that happened to you, and I talked you into going to the police, and this was the outcome, I would be pretty upset with myself. I’d hate to let you down.’
‘She didn’t really let Lisa down,’ I said absently. ‘There were lots of other people who didn’t cover themselves in glory.’
‘Like you?’
I had been out to impress Belinda and Hugh Hardwick, the solicitor. I didn’t recall exactly what I’d said to her, though I remembered the judge gently reining me in once or twice, with a twinkle. Over-keen young barristers needed a steady judicial hand, but he had been kind to me all the same. It might even have looked as if he was taking my side, if you hadn’t known what he was saying, and why.
I hadn’t thought about the young woman in front of me, except as a challenge. I hadn’t thought about how she might feel.
‘I was younger then. Less experienced.’
‘I suppose you get used to that kind of thing.’
‘You do, but I didn’t.’ I hadn’t wanted to get pigeonholed into only doing sex cases, as many women at the bar did. I wanted to do big frauds and robberies and murders – the complicated, demanding, high-stakes trials that were so much more satisfying than the impossible evidence-free rape trials that came down to one person’s word against another. My career had taken a different direction. But it wasn’t just a career decision, I admitted to myself. I hadn’t liked the experience of winning when it came at such a cost.
Belinda had laughed at me when I tried to talk to her about it, and not kindly. ‘Do you think men have to justify defending rapists? Do you think they’re expected to identify with the victim? It’s a trial like any other and it’s your professional duty to do the best you can for your client, no matter what they’re accused of doing.’
‘Are you still there?’ Adele sounded worried.
‘Yes.’
‘I know you were only doing your job. But I can see how someone who doesn’t know you might think it wasn’t a very good job to do.’
After I’d talked to Adele, I switched my phone off altogether. The SIM went into a bin near the big shopping centre. The weather was bad enough that no one was around and anyway I doubted whether anyone would have recognised me scuttling along the deserted streets with my hood pulled down over my face. I circled back to the hotel nonetheless, dodging down side streets and waiting to make sure no one was after me. It made me feel mildly insane to take precautions like that, but I had gone to a lot of trouble to disappear off the face of the earth and walking an extra kilometre or two couldn’t hurt.
Back in the safety of my dingy room I settled down and spread out the notes I’d made over the past few days. I’d done the emotional side. Now I needed to think of this as if it was a brief and I was writing a case summary, spinning a clear and coherent story out of the facts that I knew for certain and the likeliest answers to the questions I had. There were still gaps – things I didn’t quite understand yet, things I only suspected, things I wished I was wrong about.
I needed to fill in the gaps before someone else I loved got hurt.