chapter Eight
The judge called lunch at one o’clock for an hour. Honey bought a sandwich and a drink from the café near the courthouse and sat in her car. She didn’t feel hungry, but she made herself nibble the sandwich because she wasn’t sure how long the afternoon session would be.
In the end, though, she only ate one half, the bread and chicken sitting uneasily on her churning stomach. It had been an unsettling morning.
The defendant, Sarah Green, had taken the stand. The defence lawyer had summarised the case and asked her to tell her side of the story.
Honey had grown cold as Sarah related her tale. Sarah had worked in the advertising department of a paper mill, and James was a salesman at the same firm. She’d fallen for him the first moment she saw him, and when he finally asked her out a few months after she started working there, it was like a dream come true.
In the beginning, it had been wonderful. She was deeply in love and he was attentive, loving, generous and caring. Yes, he’d been possessive from the beginning, but she’d kind of liked that. What woman didn’t like to be waited on hand and foot, to have her partner jealous and protective of her? She’d come from a large family with parents who had no time for her, and he had made her feel loved and wanted.
Yes, she knew some of the things he liked to do were frowned on by modern women. Ordering for both of them in a restaurant. Suggesting what clothes she should wear each day. Stopping her from seeing her friends because he didn’t like them. Wiping her iPod free of the pop songs she liked and replacing them with music he thought she should listen to.
She’d suppressed her unease, wanting to please him, hating it when he got his dark, cold moods and refused to talk to her, or even worse, when he grew angry and shouted at her. She loved him, and she just wanted to make him happy.
But gradually it grew more and more difficult. He seemed permanently irritable, snapping at everything she did or said. She couldn’t do anything right. He hated her clothes, called her fat and frumpy. She dieted hard to lose thirty pounds but he still didn’t like the way she looked. She cut her hair and dyed it like one of the actresses he was always going on about, even though she didn’t like her hair short. She cooked him all his favourite meals, but he came home and said he’d already eaten.
And slowly the relationship turned abusive—she could see that now. He’d yell at her until she was in tears, then walk out and leave her, sometimes all night, and she never knew where he went. Once she asked if he was having an affair and he grew enraged and threw a book across the room in her direction that glanced off her cheek. It gave her a black eye, although he swore he hadn’t aimed it at her. She never asked about other women again, even though he regularly disappeared for several nights at a time.
The abuse grew worse—more mental than physical, and she became depressed. She had so many days off that she lost her job, but at least then she didn’t have to go out the house.
“Why did you stay with him?” asked the lawyer.
“Because I loved him,” Sarah replied simply. “And it takes a long time for love to erode.” And because she had nowhere else to go. She hardly saw her family anymore. Her friends had all drifted away. She had no savings and no job to pay for her own place. At least with James she had a roof over her head and food in her belly. She grew to love the nights he went out—she would watch her favourite programmes on TV, the ones he hated and wouldn’t have on when he was home, and eat chocolate biscuits that she’d smuggle in so he didn’t take them for himself.
But of course things couldn’t go on like that. One night he came home drunk with lipstick on his cheek, and she lost her temper and accused him once again of having an affair. They had a terrible argument, and he said he was leaving. She begged him not to go, but he said he was done, and he didn’t care if he never saw her again.
She spent several days in utter panic, knowing he would want her out of the house that he was paying for, alternatively relieved and upset, loving and hating him at the same time. The house was in a rough part of the neighbourhood, and at night she’d have to lay there alone listening to neighbours shouting, bottles breaking, the occasional police siren. It hadn’t been as bad when she’d still been with James and he’d left her alone at night because her neighbours knew him and left her alone, but once he’d gone, she felt vulnerable and scared. Sometimes drunk men would bang on the door, and once someone threw up on her doorstep. They’d been burgled before, when they were out, and she was scared someone was going to break in to steal her TV and maybe attack her while she lay in bed.
Then one night she heard someone fumbling at the door. Terrified, she crept down the hall to the kitchen. She heard the front door open and grabbed the nearest object to her, which happened to be a knife. The intruder fumbled around the living room, stuffing objects into a black bag. When he came closer, she lashed out with the blade, only realising as he swore and yelled at her that it was James. He yelled at her and ran out of the house, his hands and face covered in blood.
That was the last time she’d seen him. She left the house and begged her parents to take her back. Since then she’d got herself a job working the local supermarket and was trying to make a life for herself.
Honey had listened to the sorry story with rising nausea. She knew the other jurors would think Sarah sounded pathetic, a victim, too weak to stand up to the bully she’d fallen for. They would find it difficult to understand why she’d stayed with James, just as Dex and Honey’s family had found it difficult to understand why she’d stayed with Ian for so long. She hadn’t been able to explain to anyone that her own lack of confidence and low self-worth meant she’d constantly blamed herself for the problems in their relationship. It hadn’t been quite as bad as Sarah’s relationship with James, but there were definite echoes. Honey sympathised with Sarah and knew how difficult it must have been for her.
She stuffed the uneaten chicken sandwich back in its wrapper and checked her watch. Still fifteen minutes to go before she had to be back.
Taking on her phone, she saw she had two messages. One from the wedding organiser checking the colour of the lilies for the tables, and one from Dex.
She texted the wedding organiser back with White, please! Then she read Dex’s message.
Ring me and let me know you’re okay, it said, sent about half an hour ago.
Honey hesitated, wanting to speak to him but not really wanting to talk about the case. But she missed him, and suddenly longed to hear his voice.
In the end, she gave in and dialled his number.
It took him about ten rings to answer, and she was just about to leave a message on his answerphone.
“Hello?” he said.
Was it her imagination, or had he made that one word sound irritable? “It’s me,” she said, flustered.
For a moment, he didn’t say anything. She thought she heard the scrape of a chair, a mumbled sentence to someone in the room. Then he said, “Hi.”
He sounded strange. Or was it her imagination?
“Are you busy?” she asked, as she did whenever she rang him while he was on duty.
“Ah, no. Just taking a bit of lunch.”
Still, his words were stilted. Perhaps he was working through his lunch break. It wouldn’t be the first time. “I won’t keep you,” she said. “Just wanted to let you know I’m okay. I did get picked though.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“I know. Hardly anyone turned up! Typical.”
“Couldn’t you ask the judge to excuse you?” he said.
She shifted awkwardly. “It’s a bit late now. The case has started.”
“Honey, honestly. You should have told the judge once you were chosen—I’m sure he would have excused you.” He sounded irritated that she hadn’t thought of that herself.
She frowned and scraped at a mark on the steering wheel. “It’s my civic duty. I wanted to do it.” It was partly true. To be honest, it hadn’t entered her head that she could have asked to be excused after she’d been chosen. And now she was stuck there for the next few days. The judge had said the evidence would be presented over Monday, Tuesday and possibly Wednesday, and then they would have to make their decision. She could be there until the end of the week!
“What’s the case about?” he asked.
She hesitated. “I’m not supposed to say.”
He gave a barely suppressed sigh. “Fair enough.”
She flushed, even though he couldn’t see her. “It’s the rules, Dex. I’m not supposed to discuss it with anyone.”
“Not even the guy you’re marrying at the end of the week?”
She couldn’t tell if he was amused or irritated. “You are a police officer,” she pointed out. “You could have been involved the night it happened.”
“I suppose.” Obviously picking up on her mood, he fell silent.
Her stomach knotted. They hardly ever argued, and she wasn’t used to this feeling of awkwardness with him. Yet again, she worried about the distant look he’d had in his eyes over the past week. She swallowed down the panic that threatened to rise within her. He would never leave her at the altar. He’d only done that before because Cathryn had been so awful to him.
“I’d better go,” he said.
Something was definitely wrong. She closed her eyes and tried to envisage him in her arms, in her bed, but that only made her heart race even faster at the thought of what could go awry in that area. “Is everything all right, Dex? Only you sound…odd.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll ring you tonight.” He hung up.
She stared at the phone, flipped it shut and then banged the steering wheel. She’d annoyed him with her questions. He was nervous and anxious, just like she was. Why did she have to blow everything out of proportion?
And why was she so worried about the bloody wedding night? She wasn’t a virgin, for crying out loud. Saturday was going to be wonderful, the culmination of a year of longing, a blissful coming together of two souls who were meant to be together. Ian had called her bad in bed because he wanted to hurt her—it didn’t mean anything. Dex loved her—it didn’t matter if she hadn’t swung from the chandeliers or didn’t know the Kama Sutra inside out. Just being together was going to be fabulous. Nothing was going to go wrong.
She bit her lip. Please God, don’t let anything go wrong.