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Teresa’s heart was beating fast. It was the first time she had been in court. It was the first time she had been in trouble with the law.
Following William’s suggestion, she contacted a solicitor and tried to get legal aid.
When she told the solicitor that, again following William’s suggestion, she was planning to plead guilty; the solicitor told her she might get a more lenient sentence because she exhibited genuine remorse, had no previous criminal convictions and had a clean driving licence. He also suggested that she might argue that she had been under undue stress in the period leading up to the accident.
William and Teresa dressed up and arrived half an hour before the time stated on the paperwork Teresa had received. Security showed them where to wait and told them they would call Teresa’s name.
It seemed an age before the robed usher arrived and called Teresa’s name. They followed the usher into a modern courtroom where three magistrates sat at the front on a raised platform. In front of this platform sat the court clerk and in a gallery on one side sat a man and woman whom Teresa worried might be reporters from the local newspapers. They warned her that her case would end up in the local papers.
They asked her to stand in front of the magistrates, to confirm her name and address and then, once they had read the charges, they asked her to enter her plea.
“Guilty,” she said, as her solicitor had told her.
They asked her to sit down. A prosecutor explained to the magistrates how she had been involved in an accident with Annabel in the back seat, how she swore at a police officer who suspected she had been drinking and how she refused to give a breath, urine or blood test.
Then Teresa could give her side of the story, how she felt under a lot of pressure, how she realised what a terrible decision she had made and how she panicked when being asked to provide a test.
When she finished, the clerk told the magistrates that she had no previous convictions, and he gave them a statement regarding Teresa’s financial situation that they asked her to complete when she had received the notice of her appearance.
They asked the court to rise, and the magistrates left. Teresa wondered what was happening. The solicitor told her the magistrates were discussing her case. After the longest ten minutes Teresa ever experienced, they asked the court to rise again, and the magistrates returned. The rest of the court re-seated itself, but they asked Teresa to remain standing.
One magistrate told her they would ban her from driving for three years and that she should surrender her driving licence to the court. The magistrate added that if she partook in and completed the drink driving rehabilitation course, she might reduce that ban by up to a quarter.
The magistrate also handed her a twelve-month order for alcohol rehabilitation, a £50 fine for resisting police and £170 in costs.
They told her she would have to pay the fine there and then and William was not happy at being relied upon for the money. He was silent for a long time after they left the court.