‘Because people are busy Saturday nights, going out, meeting friends.’
‘So you assumed it would be quieter then for that reason?’ Mr Cromer says.
‘Yes.’ You sound slightly puzzled.
‘Because you had never been to the gym on a Saturday night before, had you?’
You are stumped. For one glorious moment. Whatever you prepared for, it wasn’t this. ‘I don’t know,’ you say.
‘The electronic swipe system shows members’ attendance. You’ve never been on a Saturday after five p.m. In fact the latest you have ever been there in almost three years of membership is seven o’clock on a week night. Can you explain why your pattern of use changed so dramatically on that very night?’
‘I felt like some exercise,’ you say.
‘I suggest you were creating an alibi, isn’t that the truth of the matter?’ says Mr Cromer.
‘No,’ you say, your face blanching and tightening, pulling your cheekbones into sharper relief.
‘Yes. I put it to you that your wife was already dead when you left the house. Isn’t that the case?’
‘No.’
‘I further suggest that before you left, you used her phone to text yourself and your mother-in-law, Ruth Sutton, to make it appear as if the victim were still alive at eight forty p.m. Then you wiped your fingerprints from the phone. Isn’t that the truth?’
‘No,’ you say firmly.
‘I also put it to you that you left the house then, at eight forty, after sending the text messages, not at eight thirty as you claim. Later exaggerating to the court how long that journey takes. How do you answer that?’
‘That’s not true,’ you say.
‘You then did your circuit training and had your swim, took your shower, and returned home, buying milk on the way, and pretended to discover your wife. Is that the real truth?’
‘No.’ You keep shaking your head. Your hands grip the edge of the witness stand. ‘No, none of that’s true.’
‘Where did you dispose of your clothes, Mr Tennyson?’
‘Nowhere. There weren’t any other clothes,’ you say.
‘Why did it take you half an hour to make a fifteen-minute journey?’
‘It always takes that long. It’s not fifteen minutes.’
‘According to calculations, if you took half an hour to cover that distance, you would have been walking at about a mile an hour, a snail’s pace. You expect the members of the jury to believe that?’
‘That’s how long it takes,’ you repeat.
‘This is all a string of lies, isn’t it? You’d attacked your wife before, and on September the twelfth you did it again. With fatal consequences. You took her life and then you lied about it – to the police, to Mrs Tennyson’s parents, her friends. You lied and lied and denied your guilt. It’s all a pack of lies, am I right?’
‘No.’ Your mouth is taut, lips white.
‘Your account is full of holes. You did not attempt to rouse your wife. If you had have done, then your trainers, the ones you gave to the police, would have been steeped in blood. The truth is your wife was dead, you could see there was no hope, and you spent the time clearing up. You left your daughter alone in the house, with her mother dead downstairs, and went to the gym. Had you no thought for anyone but yourself?’
‘I didn’t do it.’
‘Then how did your skin get under her fingernails as she sought to defend herself?’ Mr Cromer says swiftly.
‘It didn’t happen like that.’
‘Because it doesn’t fit your fiction? Your web of deceit?’
‘Because I never hurt her.’ Your voice quivers. ‘That’s not how I got the scratches; it was when we went shopping, she tripped.’
‘Do you recall what you were wearing, on that shopping trip?’ says Mr Cromer.
‘My grey jacket,’ you say.
‘This has long sleeves, am I correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you explain to the jury how Mrs Tennyson was able to clutch at your arm and graze the skin if your arm was covered with the jacket?’
‘I pushed the sleeves back, when I got warm,’ you say.
A frankly inadequate explanation.
‘Members of the jury – I am now showing you several still images taken from CCTV footage of Mr and Mrs Tennyson at Asda on the day of her death. Please note that Mr Tennyson was wearing a charcoal-grey jacket with full-length sleeves and that his sleeves are not pushed back.’
The grainy images of you and Florence and Lizzie fill my vision. No hint of the horror that is to come. Grief surges behind my breastbone.
‘Can you explain why her stumble is not shown on the CCTV footage?’ asks Mr Cromer.
There is a fraction of a pause, then you say, ‘It happened at home, as we were unloading the car.’
I never noticed those marks. You must have been rigorous in keeping them hidden. All part of the cover-up.
‘Then after you unloaded the shopping, Lizzie went to the hairdresser’s, she came home and cooked a meal. That’s what you said?’ Mr Cromer peers at you.
‘Yes.’
‘Did she practise good hygiene? In the house, in the kitchen?’
‘Yes,’ you say.
‘She would surely wash her hands in the course of cooking a meal?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you also claim Mrs Tennyson must have taken a shower while you were at the gym, yet you ask us to believe that the skin remained under her nails all those hours?’
‘It must have done.’ There’s a plea in your response, asking us to believe you, but your answers are unsatisfactory, paltry.
Surely this if nothing else will convince the jury. Your flesh under her nails. I think of her hands, flashing shapes, telling stories, conveying ideas. And now, after her death, she is still signing to us, communicating the truth. Guilty.
‘I put it to you that it didn’t,’ says Mr Cromer. ‘There is a much simpler explanation, Mr Tennyson. As you began to beat your wife, she reached out to try and stop you. That’s how you got scratched. That’s how your skin got trapped under her nails.’
‘No,’ you say, ‘no.’ You swallow.
It is all so clear to me. Do they see it, the jury, do they see it like I do? You hit her arm, her head, her shoulder, her face, her head, her head, and she is forced to her knees, you hit her head, her head. She falls on to her front. You keep hitting, blood on your face, your clothes, everywhere. You move round, step in it with your right foot.
She is dead.
Exhausted, elated, panic-stricken, you see the mark your shoe has made. Take the shoes off, stick them in the stove. Grab a baby wipe, clean the poker. Strip off and pile your clothes together. Run upstairs, shower, dress. Get in character, rehearse your lines, your moves. The role of your life.
Ruth
CHAPTER EIGHT
17 Brinks Avenue
Manchester
M19 6FX
Florence hasn’t eaten when I get to April’s house. ‘She didn’t want anything. We tried pasta and she wouldn’t have that. I offered her some chicken and rice but she said no.’
At home she whines that she’s hungry, so I make beans on toast, cut the toast into triangles and place them around the edge of her plate, pour the beans into the middle. She throws a tantrum, bursting out with a cry so vivid I think for a moment she must have hurt herself. She wails that the bean juice is touching the toast. This sacrilege means she will not eat the toast at all, so I sling it in the compost bin.
Sobbing, she slides the beans around the plate until they’re cold.
My blood chills at the thought of you leaving her in the house while you went to create your alibi. You were a good father. I thought you were. What if she had woken and gone to find her mum? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
There are no more witnesses, just the closing speeches to come. Mr Cromer begins. ‘On September the twelfth 2009, Lizzie Tennyson was bludgeoned to death in her living room. A shocking crime. The man in the dock, Jack Tennyson, is charged with that crime. He made strenuous attempts to conceal his actions but he made mistakes, and his account of the events of that night collapses under scrutiny. What does the evidence tell us?