I heard Kit, and Carol Kent, in my head; you shouldn’t be here.
The right thing to do was to walk off, but this was a human being, and one who had just been ‘shredded’ in the witness box. My smile was all I had to give her.
‘Hey,’ I said softly.
‘It’s you,’ she said nervously, but she did smile back; then she grew serious, double-checking the empty cubicles, and shot a glance towards the door. ‘This is against the rules.’ She said it more in the spirit of this will jeopardise my case than moral conflict.
The door to the corridor clicked open and we both jumped but it was only the breeze.
‘It’s ok, I know you can’t talk about it,’ I said. I felt a little flare of pride in my correct behaviour, and anticipation of Kit’s approval. ‘I heard you talking to the barrister about not coming back tomorrow.’
‘Who? Oh. He’s not the barrister, he’s the CPS caseworker, barrister’s dogsbody.’ Beth took off her jacket. Underneath she was wearing a black shift dress with no sleeves. I started; her arms, which I remembered as soft and white, rippled with muscle and her shoulders were as broad as Kit’s. You didn’t need a degree in women’s studies to realise that this was a reaction to the rape. The bulging biceps were as damning as scars. I watched her wash her hands, soaping them past the wrist. Muscles twisted like ropes under her skin, and the awful thought rushed at me; I hope she kept her jacket on when she was giving evidence. She looks too powerful now. She doesn’t look like a victim.
I hadn’t even been into the courtroom yet, and already I was thinking like them.
‘It’s probably for the best.’ She rinsed her hands and shook them dry. ‘Because this way I don’t have to run the gamut of him and his bloody family every day. They were next to us in the car park. Have you seen what they drive? Massive fucking Jaguar.’ She was talking to her own reflection rather than me. ‘And Carol’s going to keep me posted.’ Beth leaned, almost fell, forward, pitching her head until her brow was pressed against the mirror, then her palms. ‘I don’t think I can live through the next few days, not knowing what’s being said about me in that dock,’ she said. ‘He’s going to get up and lie through his teeth and they’re going to believe him. Look at him. He looks like butter wouldn’t melt. I don’t think I can survive it going his way.’
The urge, somewhere between sisterly and maternal, was a warmth spreading from my heart throughout my body. It was such an instinctive thing that I didn’t know I was making a decision, let alone what I was setting in motion.
‘Oh, Beth.’ I put my hand on the small of her back. ‘It will go your way, because he’s guilty. I know what I saw.’ She smiled weakly at my reflection. ‘But if it doesn’t,’ her spine went rigid under my palm; ‘I mean, it will, but if it doesn’t, and you need to talk to someone who believes you, give me a call.’ I rummaged in my bag for something to write on and found only a work card, the generic business card they gave all the temps. I wrote my mobile number on the back of it.
Beth put her hands on my upper arms and gave me a watery smile. I could see the effort of holding back tears in the tiny convulsions of her lips. ‘Thank you,’ she mouthed. She took a deep breath in and a long breath out. ‘Ok, I’ve got to go. I need to talk to Carol and my parents are in the car park. It’s a long old drive back to Nottingham.’
When she had gone, I briefly laid my own forehead against the imprint hers had left on the mirror. I had done it. I had wanted more than anything to know what they had said in court, but I hadn’t put her in the impossible position of asking her. Kit would be proud when I told him.
I trotted down the hill, pulling out my bun as I crossed the little bridge over the Kenwyn. I felt, if not light – the morning would bring me to the witness box, after all – then lighter. Whatever else happened, Beth knew now that I was on her side. I hoped that, whatever was to come, she would always be able to find solace in that.
Kit was just waking up when I twirled the key in the lock; he had the surprised look of someone who’s woken up in the middle of the day, puffy around the eyes and lips. He pulled back the covers and I slid in beside him, my clothes cold against his hot skin.
‘Where’d you go?’
I don’t know what made me say it.
‘Out for a walk. Along the river, just around.’
It was my first lie.
Chapter 13
KIT
18 March 2015
My instinct is to run back to my cabin. Do what Laura does and make a list of what I need to say. Fifteen years, it seems, is not long enough to prepare for this conversation; I need another hour.
I should run. And yet I am paralysed, my boots apparently glued to the deck, my eyes fixed on Beth. Has she seen me? She’s done this before, kept her back to me when she knew I was watching her. I always reasoned that when someone has taken so much of your power away, you’ll work with what little you have left.