The first time I laid eyes on Sky Donoghue, I knew there was trouble ahead. He was tall, muscular, and handsome – like his father – but there was something more: a certain charisma, a certain charm. His tangled, light brown hair fell almost to his shoulders, and the five o’clock shadow over his chin framed a playful, bewitching smile, which generated handsome creases in the corners of his eyes. He reminded me of Larsen, or a young, long-haired Robert Redford (playing Jesus, maybe?). I could see straight away why Helena was drawn to him, though every bone in my body wanted to drag her away.
Now, I see him everywhere. He haunts me; he’s in my dreams and in my nightmares. His face is grinning up at me from my cereal bowl as I force myself to eat breakfast, and he’s on the number sixty-three bus as I head to court on the morning of my trial.
It’s a beautiful sunlit Monday in August, the kind of day that would make your heart sing, your spirit rise. It’s lunchtime, and I’m standing in an absent-minded fog by the German sausage stall in Borough Market, under London Bridge. I can hear the trains rumbling overhead, and it reminds me of that scene from The Godfather, the one where Michael Corleone is about to assassinate his father’s rival mafia boss. Trains always seem to rumble overhead in movies when something ominous is about to happen, and it’s kind of spooky, not to mention fitting, because things couldn’t get much more ominous for me, right now.
The market is huge and the smells around me are incredible: hot salt beef and Boston Sausage, Balkan Bourekas and Japanese Gyoza dumplings. There are thick buttery stews made with shallots and cream, and there is rich smelling coffee next to cookies the size of dinner plates. I know I should eat something. Isn’t that why I’m here? But though my belly churns and my legs feel weak, I just can’t see anything that I think I could stomach, right now. All I can see is him, his face rising up like a spectre out of the cheese, the bockwurst, and the prosciutto.
I haven’t eaten properly for months. I’ve lost weight, over a stone, and I suppose I’m a little pleased about that, though it’s not a weight loss programme I’d recommend. My clothes, in fact, look unattractively baggy these days, but something stops me buying more. For a start, I don’t know if I’m going to need them and I don’t want to waste what little money I have left. If that sounds self-pitying, it’s not meant to be, but you don’t need nice clothes where I might be going and – who knows? – I could be a whole different person, let alone a different size, by the time they let me out.
“What can I get you, Madam?” asks the market trader. I move my head slowly to meet his gaze and then back away.
“Nothing. I’m sorry.”
I glance around, and walk across to the stall opposite. The aroma of chocolate, mint and nuts and ten different flavours of Turkish Delight wafts deliciously under my nose. I choose baklava and almond honey cake for Zara, then head back along the Thames towards Battlebridge Lane. The river in front of me is grey and rippling heavily in the breeze. I can see Tower Bridge up ahead, looking elegant and timeless, along with the turrets of the Tower of London emerging from the bank on the other side. This stretch of the river from here up to the Globe Theatre is so old that you can easily imagine the clopping of horses’ hooves, see the London peasants and smell the rotten fish and food. If this were a couple of centuries earlier I’d have been carted off to The Clink, just minutes from here. I’d have had my head chopped off and stuck on a spike and my entrails would have been fed to the fish.
Zara is there when I arrive, sitting on the wall opposite the court building, eating some kind of wrap from a cardboard carton and feeding scraps to the gulls, which are circling beyond the tail of the huge ship behind her. She’s wearing a white shirt and smart black trousers and her long blond hair is pinned back in an Alice Band.
“You look nice,” I tell her.
Zara jumps off the wall and strokes my arm. “So do you.”
I’m not wearing a suit. I read somewhere that you should dress carefully, when you’re on trial. Not too dressy, but not too casual either. You don’t want to make the female jurors feel frumpy, but equally you mustn’t look as though you don’t care. Where did I read that, now I come to think of it? (Imaginary names for specialist magazines and articles start to pop into my head: “You and Your Trial”, “Trials!”, and “In the Dock: Dressing for a Not-Guilty-Verdict”). If I were Princess Catherine or Victoria Beckham, I’d have a different dress for every day of the hearing, but I don’t have enough smart outfits to last the week, let alone the two, or even three, that I could be facing my public. So, I’m dressed in a pale top with gypsy sleeves (from Per Una at Marks and Spencer’s) and a knee length navy A-line skirt with a tie up belt from Next. That’s the best I can do for the first day. It only goes downhill from here.
“Are you feeling okay?” I ask. Zara nods and offers me a bite of her wrap. She’s going to be a witness for me and I know that she’s as nervous as I am. I’m anxious that the ordeal she’s about to go through on my behalf could precipitate a relapse in her condition. But I need her help, and she wants to give it. She’s my best friend in the whole wide world, and I love her to bits for this.
“I just saw Dan outside the robing room,” she comments. “He said we’ve got another half hour.”
Dan’s my barrister, and Zara fancies him; it’s an undeniable fact. To be fair, she’s only very slightly enjoyed this unexpected side benefit of my unfortunate situation, and I have to give her that, after all she’s done – is doing – for me. Dan is just her type, after all: good looking, glamorous job, unavailable. He wears a wedding ring, a simple platinum band. He also has an old Timex watch, wears silver cufflinks and bites his fingernails. I know all this because I’ve spent literally hours watching his hands, as he scribbles my every word onto the notepad in front of him during one of our many conferences.
“I got you this.” I hand Zara the baklava and almond honey cake. She smiles and kisses me, and we jump back onto the wall and pick at the food in semi-silence. We’ve been over everything a zillion times, and now there’s nothing much left to say.
*
The usher unlocks the glass door to the dock and, well, ushers me inside. I glance around at the small crowd that’s forming in the public gallery, which, disconcertingly, is behind me. I tug at the back of my skirt and smooth it over my bottom. Zara once walked all the way down Euston Road with her skirt tucked into the back of her knickers and it’s made me paranoid ever since. I don’t know how she didn’t notice. She said she thought the cars were just beeping at her because of her allure.
Dan is in front of me, speaking with the barrister from the Crown Prosecution Service. It’s a woman. I’ve seen her before. She’s pretty, smart, and a good match for Dan. There is coughing and clearing of throats and nose-blowing and murmuring, behind me. It’s like being in a church, just before a wedding, when you’re waiting for the bride. (Does that make me the bride? It’s my Big Day, after all). Then they all troop in: the friends of the bride. They sit to the left of me, for which I’m grateful. First Catherine, who waves at me and smiles, and mouths, “You okay?” I nod, though I’m not, of course. She’s followed by my brother Pete and my dear friends, Tim and Shelley, and Tim’s lovely wife, Annalise. My sister Keri and my mum are next. My mum sits between Keri and Pete and pulls out a hankie. I smile at her and she smiles back, and then starts to cry.
The jurors file in.
“All rise,” says the usher.
And then the judge is there. My knees give way slightly beneath me and I steady myself with one hand against the wooden panel of the dock. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I can’t believe he has done this to me. I can’t believe he hates me this much.
The judge motions with his hand and everyone sits.
“Your Honour,” begins the prosecutor, and all eyes are on her. “This is a case of deliberate and pre-meditated wounding, which could have cost a man his life. The defendant is a woman of good character – that is accepted by the prosecution – who has, in the past eighteen months, developed an unhealthy, and almost fatal obsession with the victim in this case. The prosecution will show that her behaviour has become increasingly erratic over a period of time and that her jealousy and rage have led her to commit a horrific act. A single, once-in-a-lifetime act for her, maybe, but one that has had life-altering consequences for her victim.”
She turns round and looks at me. “The defendant is young. She is attractive. She is smart.”
Really?
The eyes of the entire courtroom are now on me. Please don’t judge me, I want to say. Although, of course, that’s exactly what they are here to do.
“She has a look of innocence about her,” continues the prosecutor. “And you may find it hard to believe, as did I, when I saw her for the first time, that she is capable of something so calculated and cruel. But don’t be fooled.” She swings back to face the jurors. “She will speak before this court in due course and she will tell you that she is a mother, that she has led an unremarkable life in the suburbs in France...”
Unremarkable?
“That she had no interest in the victim or his family. That she herself is the victim of what occurred.” She shakes her head pensively for a moment. “But make no mistake. That woman standing in the dock...” – she waves her arm at me dismissively, now, as though I’m nothing – “...is a violent and dangerous criminal, a control freak, and a liar.”
“Objection!” Dan is on his feet before she’s finished her sentence, but everyone has heard what she’s said.
Objection! I agree inside my head, glancing around at my audience and back at the prosecutor. That’s not me. That’s not who I am. You don’t know me. He’s duped you, like he dupes everyone. You have got me so very, very wrong!
I blink hard several times. I don’t want to cry; I mustn’t cry. I look across at Tim and Annalise, at Shelley and Catherine, at my mum, my brother – whom I haven’t seen for years – and my little sister, all sitting there in a row, because of me. My heart aches for Helena; I miss her so very much. I contemplate just giving up, pleading guilty, being done with this whole sorry mess, because I just don’t know if I can go through with it, with telling the whole story all over again. But I must; I have to. Helena needs to know the truth, if nothing else. How can I go away to prison, leaving her to get sucked into his crazy world, his mind games and his lies? I’ve got to do this. I have to be strong, for my daughter, if for nothing else.