Of course it bloody was, you daft bitch. What else could I do? There is no other defence they will let me make. ‘I’m telling the truth,’ my voice rings out, a tremor of rage in it.
‘Now, when it suits. But we have heard different versions of events. You lied in order to acquire the drugs in the first place, you lied to your own children, to Neil’s parents, you lied time and again. If you lied then, how do we know you are not lying now? Lying to the court, lying to this jury. There is precious little in what we have heard to suggest you are a credible witness.’
I look directly across at the jury, feeling miserable, bullied. ‘I’m telling the truth,’ I say to them.
Mousy drops her gaze, most of the others look away but some people meet my eye in that moment: the Cook and Dolly. And that humanity helps ground me.
Miss Webber finally drops me, a dog tired of its chewing slipper. She leaves them with the accusation ‘liar’ pervading the air. This is the word stamped on each of her bullets, carved on the shafts of her arrows, engraved on her knuckle dusters. Say it enough times and it will gather weight, gain credence.
A shaft of light, pale golden sunshine, gains admittance through the large window high in the walls and floods the ceiling. My neck is fused with tension. I can smell my own terror, a sharp musk.
There is a brief pause while Mr Latimer confers with Ms Gleason. From the gallery Jane smiles at me, an open, warm smile. The worst is over. Is it? I bite my tongue and suck in my cheeks.
Mr Latimer calls my neighbour Pauline Corby. There was never any love lost between us, though relations were more or less civil until the hammer incident. My defence team think this distance will give her testimony clout, as it were. This is no fawning friend or loyal relative but a mere acquaintance who can tell it like it is, no punches barred. And Pauline Corby does her stuff. Particularly when Mr Latimer asks her about my aggression.
‘She was like a mad woman. Completely off her rocker. I thought we should get the police, have her sectioned.’
‘And when later you heard that there were suspicious circumstances surrounding Neil Draper’s death, what did you think?’
‘I wasn’t surprised. I’d already said as much to Barry’ – Barry is a short, fair Londoner with all the social graces of a wasp – ‘ ‘‘The woman’s not safe. She’ll swing for somebody.’’’
Hah! A hundred years ago I would have swung for this. Women standing here, men too, would have been taken from here to the gallows at Strangeways prison. That please you, Neil? A little historical perspective? My skin feels clammy as though the ghosts are with me now pat-a-caking my arms and cheeks, grinning slyly with black, bloated tongues and blood-red eyes.
If they find me guilty how will I bear it?
‘Was her behaviour out of the ordinary, different from normal?’
‘Oh, yes. She was like a different person. She was just crazy.’
‘And apart from this incident did the situation return to normal?’
‘Hardly. She was always wandering about the garden at night, going out to her conservatory.’
Workshop, Pauline. Workshop.
‘The security light would come on and wake us up. I don’t think she ever slept after that. We didn’t know what to do.’
Miss Webber thanks Mr Latimer and approaches the witness box.
‘Mrs Corby. It’s true, is it not, that you have had previous problems with your neighbours and their children?’
‘Some.’
‘Could you give us an example?’
‘Well, the son Adam, he damaged the car. We had to ask for money to get it fixed.’
Adam, stoned, had found it amusing to walk over the Corbys’ Golf. The dents in the roof cost a small fortune to repair. ‘It’s only a car,’ Adam had protested, when Neil and I had hauled him into the kitchen to sort it out. ‘It’s not like I barbecued the cat or something.’
‘Anything else?’ Miss Webber asks.
‘We had to complain about the noise sometimes. Loud music going on half the night.’
‘And wasn’t this incident simply one more confrontation in the series?’
‘No,’ Pauline says stoutly. ‘This was different. She threatened me with a hammer. She was abusive.’
‘Did she raise the hammer?’
‘A little.’ She sounds defensive, unsure. ‘She was off her head.’
‘You’re a housewife, Mrs Corby?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Do you think that qualifies you to assess someone’s mental health?’
‘Maybe not,’ she says bluntly. ‘But I was a psychiatric nurse before I got married and I reckon that does.’
Oh, bless you, Mrs Corby.
There’s a moment’s silence, then the court erupts with laughter. Dolly cackles and Hilda and Flo giggle and Alice whoops. Even Miss Webber has the grace to smile and gives up on Pauline before she digs a deeper hole.
The judge decides we will break for lunch. I realize, with a swirl of vertigo, that by the end of the day my trial will be over. There is only Don Petty, my shrink, to give evidence and then there will be the closing speeches. As the jury file out, I watch them go, the Callow Youth hunched but any attempt at looking cool compromised by his gait – he bounces on his toes like a kid as he walks. Flo has to help Hilda up. I see them as lifelong friends, like Jane and me. But they met for the first time last week, selected at random. The Sailor wears the same clothes again. It strikes me that I have never heard any of these people speak. They are silent in the court, eyes and ears. Once out of the room their chatter will flow, conversation and anecdotes with which they oil the lunches and coffee breaks, the times they wait for the call of the ushers, the partings at the end of the day.
I have absolutely no idea how we are faring. When the court is almost empty Mr Latimer comes over. ‘That was a gem,’ he tells me. ‘She doubled the weight of that witness’s evidence.’
‘Can you tell,’ I ask him, ‘what the jury are thinking?’
He shook his head. ‘Never can. Not worth a moment’s speculation. Only time I ever did, I was wrong.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘for shouting.’
He dipped his head. ‘Hard to resist. Could have been worse.’
‘I could have gone for her with a hammer,’ I murmur.
His eyes glint. He purses his lips. The smile is in his voice. ‘That would never do. I will see you after lunch.’
Chapter Twenty-two
Don Petty, the shrink for my defence, is a tall gangly fellow, close to my age, I guess, with a bald head, beaky nose and an insignificant chin, giving him the cast of a tortoise. He speaks in a precise Edinburgh accent and never smiles (now, I have to appear suitably glum and contrite but surely he could afford to crack a grin now and then).
Mr Latimer establishes his manifold qualifications and his extensive experience. He has been selected as our expert witness because he measures up to Dolores Cabril and then some. Though not, I fear, in the personality stakes.
Now Mr Latimer winds him up and sets him off, asking him about his assessment of me.
‘Our mental health operates in similar ways to our physical health,’ Don Petty begins. ‘And the two are closely intertwined. The balance of health can be compromised by sudden attacks to the system such as bereavement, redundancy, the end of a relationship. These are the equivalent of the broken leg or the heart-attack. But mental health is also undermined where there are ongoing long-term factors – say, an unhappy marriage, a stressful job, a lack of self-esteem. In addition, there are the factors we inherit. Just as some cancers or allergic complaints run in families, so do mental health diseases.’
‘And h-how does this relate to Deborah’s situation?’ Mr Latimer asks, with a flourish of his arm in my direction.
‘Inheritance first. Deborah’s parents both suffered from depression.’
I am surprised to consider my mother in this light. But it makes perfect sense. Her cold reserve, her distraction, her continuing failure to engage with me, with the world, her disaffection: these could all be symptoms of depression. Had she ever sought help herself? Gone to the doctor about her nerves, exhausted by the heavy cloak of misery she carted about? Should I have seen this? Understood it, done something about it? Always too lost in my own disappointment with her, I’d not had the objectivity to do so. How different things might have been. Perhaps I could have forgiven her, absolved myself. But the past is done. The tide went out, leaving us marooned on opposite sides of the same island. Cast away.