I’ve lost count now of the verdicts I have waited for. Sometimes I think it’s like waiting for the result of a pregnancy test. Or a DNA test.
You tell yourself that you have done your best, and you hope that it all goes in your favour. But you also warn yourself that this might not happen. You try to prepare yourself, argue that it isn’t the end of the world if the result isn’t what you want. Yet at the same time, you know that’s not true.
A lost case means you’ve let yourself down. And, more importantly, others too.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been too keen on this barrister. He was too young. Too inexperienced. But as I told Carla, some juries are put off by an all-guns-blazing, confident, strutting QC. My man endeared himself to me when he had said we needed to go softly. ‘Our defence is that there is only circumstantial evidence,’ he’d pointed out, flushing madly – he was one of those types, like me, who blushes easily. ‘Nothing firm. No witnesses seeing Carla do anything other than run through the park. No incriminating fingerprints on the knife. She saw an intruder at the door.’
‘But there’s no proof of this,’ I butted in.
The barrister went pink. ‘Carla is a beautiful woman. I wouldn’t mind betting that the men on the jury will believe her. That at least would give us a fifty-fifty chance.’
Of course, that was when I should have told him about the envelope I’d received soon after Carla’s arrest. The one with the familiar spidery writing which, the office night porter told me, had been handed in very early one morning.
The one I had told myself I should not open.
Naturally I knew what the envelope contained. A tip-off. Hadn’t Joe already told me in a phone call that morning? ‘I want to help you, Lily.’
I’d nearly put the phone down there and then. ‘I told you, Joe. Don’t contact me again. I did what you wanted – had the paternity test done – and now it’s over. There’s nothing left between us.’
‘I don’t believe you. You lied to me.’ His voice was deep, sending tremors through me. ‘You’re just scared. I get that. I really do. I can tell from your voice that you haven’t looked inside that envelope I sent you. It will help you in the case. Open it. Fast. For old times’ sake.’
Old times’ sake? He spoke as though we had a past. Which of course we did. A past that no one must know about. A past he can always hold over me. Can you imagine the headlines? THE SOLICITOR AND THE BATH KILLER. Let’s not even go there. It would destroy my career. Not to mention my family. And Joe knows it.
‘Tom isn’t yours, Joe.’
‘And I told you I don’t believe you, Lily. I love you.’
I wanted to be sick. A murderer was in love with me? I slammed down the phone. Made sure the envelope was hidden in a drawer. I should have torn it up there and then. But it’s sitting there. My insurance. My plan B.
But right now I’m waiting. Waiting to hear what the jury is about to say. Carla is shaking. (I can say her name without a pang now.) Her terror gives me pleasure. There is nothing she can do now. No one she can bribe. No one she can sleep with to get her own way.
She can’t even blame me. No one could deny that I have done my best legally, hand on heart, to get her off. I even took her into my home to coach her for the defence. (Although she flagrantly went against my instructions to wear something suitable.) Together we have succeeded in blackening Ed’s name so that everyone thinks the man I married was a drunk and a philanderer. You see? I am not as good as I look.
The whole court is taut. Waiting.
‘Do you have a verdict?’
The foreman’s mouth is opening. My palms are sweating. I swear I can feel Ed by my side tugging at my sleeve. When I turn, I realize I’ve snagged my navy silk jacket on the bench.
‘Not guilty.’
I don’t believe it.
Walls shake around me. There are gasps. Screams from the gallery. A baby cries. Poppy? The daughter I never had. Carla is collapsing. It might of course be for show. A policeman is helping her to her feet. The barrister shoots me a smug ‘We did it’ look. People are congratulating me. One of the detectives is speaking urgently to a colleague. I feel a twinge of misgiving. They’ll be on the hunt for the real killer now. But up in the gallery I see someone else.
A tall man. Clean-shaven. Short hair. Boldly staring down at me. Wearing a moss-green tweed jacket with a light-beige suede collar, turned upwards. And then he disappears.
The phone rings the moment I get back into the office.
‘Why didn’t you use my evidence?’ Joe Thomas’s voice is gravelly with disappointment.
I open the drawer and take out the envelope. It is still sealed. How many times had I thought about opening it? It would have made my job easier. I knew that. Joe has never got things wrong before. As he’s pointed out on many an occasion, I wouldn’t have got this far in my career without his help.
‘It’s my insurance,’ I say.
‘Insurance? I don’t get it.’
‘In case the verdict wasn’t what I hoped for.’ As I speak, I think about Carla and how she barely thanked me after the trial. How her chin tilted upwards as if being acquitted was no more than her right. How she was swallowed up in the hysterical press of journalists, each wanting her story, each wanting to pay her more than the others.
‘You can’t use it now,’ he adds reproachfully. ‘The trial is over. The police will already be looking for someone else to pin Ed’s murder on.’
I wince. Even now, I can’t believe my former husband has gone. I miss him. My mind keeps going back to the better bits of our marriage. Curling up on the sofa together. Holding Tom as a baby. Celebrating when Ed’s painting was bought by an anonymous buyer.
Then my memory returns to that early morning jog on the seafront when Joe asked for a paternity test. I had felt particularly vulnerable at that time. Angry towards Ed for having his cake and eating it. Jealous of Carla for seeing my son on their access weekends. Lonely. Scared. Confused about still feeling drawn to Joe.
And for the first time since it happened, I allow myself to think about the key. The one that I was carrying, as always, for self-defence. The key that fell out of my pocket. The one that Joe picked up.
And didn’t give back.
‘It’s the spare from the house,’ I said bitterly at the time. ‘My old home that Carla has now taken along with my husband and my son, who seems to think she’s wonderful.’
‘I could teach her a lesson,’ Joe said quietly.
I felt a tremor of fear – and yes, of excitement too. ‘I wouldn’t want her hurt. Or him.’
‘Just scared, perhaps.’
‘Maybe,’ I find myself saying.
That’s when I ran over the road, towards the sea, stunned by my own actions. Had I really just allowed myself to break the law? In one brief crazy moment, I’d just given a criminal carte blanche to break into the house where Ed and Carla lived. A criminal who would do anything for me.
Aiding and abetting, they call it.
I raced back to the cafe table, panting madly. But Joe had disappeared.
As time went by and nothing happened, I felt safer. The longer I heard nothing from Joe, the more it felt safe to put the DNA test out of my head. Maybe he’d decided not to do anything after all. Maybe they’d changed the locks. But then came the shocking news of Ed’s murder. When Ross called me at Tom’s school, I initially presumed Carla was guilty, as did the rest of the world.
But then she told me about the door opening and a man standing there. And the notes.
That’s why I took her on as a client. I needed to make sure that she went down, because if she didn’t, the police might track down the real murderer.
Joe.
He’d tell them I’d given him the key.
I would get sent to prison.
I’d lose Tom.
It was unthinkable.
I would do anything. Anything for my son. Suddenly I had to work out the toughest defence strategy of my life. How to make Carla lose without making it look as though I hadn’t tried.
Put up such a poor defence that she would go down?