Balcombe’s victim showed courage in reporting her crime and sticking to her story in the face of a blistering cross-examination by the defending counsel Fiona Price. She was made to relive her sexual history, recounting all partners from her loss of virginity up to the day of the event. Throughout this gruelling ordeal, her rapist was repeatedly referred to as one more ‘sexual partner’. She was repeatedly told that she had had a ‘moment of madness’ in the eclipse that she was ashamed of, and that it was her own lack of self-control that was on trial here. At one point she screamed, ‘This is worse than being raped.’
The judge, Mr Justice Frenchay, twice stepped in and ordered a break for the victim to recover, but this is a symptom of his sympathy; Miss Price’s interrogation was entirely legal, and is all too common a feature of rape trials where consent, rather than identity, is under scrutiny. That the victim’s sexual history was a benign catalogue of serial monogamy is, must be, irrelevant; the point is that the recounting was tantamount to psychological warfare, an attempt to erode what dignity the victim had preserved.
Change is coming: when the so-called Rape Shield Law, the amendment to Section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act, comes into force later this year, it will greatly curtail the questioning of a complainant about her sexual history and behaviour.
Passing sentence, Mr Justice Frenchay said: ‘You are an arrogant opportunist who deliberately preyed upon a lone woman, and, when she rejected you, isolated her further until she was defenceless against your attack. You did not respect her pleas for you to stop. You did so knowingly and with a total disregard for her physical or emotional wellbeing. It is your sense of entitlement, and your perception of women as mere commodities, that causes me to give you the maximum sentence for this crime.’
Justice Frenchay and the jury have made a small step towards lasting change for all victims of rape. Let us hope we are finally on the threshold of something significant.
‘What happened to the Mirror?’ Kit shuffled beside me. ‘I’m sure I picked one up.’
‘Haven’t seen it,’ I said, deliberately not looking at the recycling box.
‘Weird.’ He scratched his neck and opened the Express. ‘Oh, it’s our friend from the court.’ Ali, or Alison Larch, to give her her full byline, had secured her interview with Antonia Tranter after all. It was a double-page splash. The redhead gazed plaintively up at me from beneath the headline, jamie, i’ll wait for you. I let it fall to the floor.
‘I know how you feel,’ said Kit. ‘I’ve read enough for now.’ He stacked the papers in a neat pile. ‘Remember I’m meeting Mac for a lunchtime pint.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. At least this way I know what he’s doing. That’s if he turns up.’ Kit spoke with the air of an old soldier going into battle.
The only sounds in the flat were sirens and horns, faint from the street below. It was the first time I’d been alone in days and suddenly my own company was not enough. With Kit out with Mac, and Ling welded to her baby, there was no one I could call for a casual game of pool, or to go mooching around Brixton market.
To busy myself, I heated milk for coffee and read through Alison Larch’s Express piece. Antonia, I read, had forgiven Jamie his ‘infidelity’ – ‘What the fuck?’ I shouted at the page – but was still reeling from what she called a miscarriage of justice. The Balcombe family and their legal team had been so sure the case would be thrown out of court and, later, that he would be found not guilty, that they had even bought a flat for him to move into on his release, in which Antonia ‘rattled around’ on her own. Now poor Jamie was in the same wing as serial rapists and child molesters. Beth, of course, wasn’t named, but was referred to as Jamie’s accuser rather than his victim throughout. I was fighting the urge to claw the paper to shreds when an unknown number called my mobile phone. I flicked the kettle on, then picked up.
‘It’s Beth.’
My silence was only shock; I wasn’t used to reading about people in the national press and then having them call me. And I had assumed that, because the trial had gone her way, we wouldn’t hear from her again. Beth took it the wrong way.
‘Elizabeth Taylor?’ I think it’s only hindsight that gives her words a petulant tone. ‘From, you know, from Cornwall?’
‘Sorry, yes, of course I know who you are,’ I said. ‘God, it’s good to hear from you. How are you? What’s the right thing to say? Congratulations doesn’t seem appropriate.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Relief is the main emotion right now. I’m at home in Gedling. I don’t know what to do with myself to be honest.’ It took a few seconds for me to realise that she was asking my advice. I had none to give her; I was the very last person she should look to for wisdom. ‘Anyway, I know you said to only get in touch if it all went to shit, but I couldn’t let you go without saying thank you. Not just for testifying in court but for taking over just after it had happened. I don’t know, if you hadn’t come along, how it might have gone. I probably wouldn’t have had the balls to do this on my own. And the CPS said your testimony made all the difference. The way you fought my corner. So, you know. I owe you one.’
I looked again at the picture of Antonia Tranter in the Express and hoped Beth hadn’t seen it.
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Anyone would have done the same.’
‘No, they wouldn’t.’ Beth’s voice was urgent, excited. I know I’m not imagining the fervency that overtook her then. ‘I don’t think you know how special you are. And I need you to know it. Do you believe in karma?’