‘Hey,’ I said, taking Juno from her. ‘Hey, it’s fine.’ The baby’s hair was a wavy black corona around a golden orb, a total eclipse in negative. She was my niece in all but blood and, I now think, one reason Kit and I were in no rush to try for children of our own; not only that loving her stemmed the parental instinct in us, but the way Mac and Ling imploded after her birth. We valued our relationship too much to let that happen to us.
I sent Ling to bed, and while Juno kicked on her playmat I made a half-arsed attempt to clean up the house, putting a wash on and folding clothes, bagging up the newborn things Juno had already outgrown. When she cried, I gave her her bottle, burped and changed her. As Juno melted into sleep on my chest, I analysed her upturned face for her parents’ features. It was hard to tell whose eyes she had when they were closed; she had Mac and Kit’s pointed nose. Once she hiccupped and blew a milk bubble that stayed unpopped on rosebud lips that were all Ling’s. I let my own breathing fall in line with hers: three breaths of mine for each she gave. Into her tiny little ear, I whispered my confession. She is still the only person I’ve ever told. I would be grateful later that Ling had fallen asleep. She might have understood what I did in court, but then she would also have been party to my later doubts, and with her as my witness, I would have had to act.
The Friday after the verdict, I left work to find Yusuf, the monolithic security guard, blocking someone from the building. I didn’t give it much thought; the office where I was temping was in that strange place between the City and Soho, close to the British Museum and the old Virgin Megastore, and it wasn’t unusual for tourists and shoppers to ask to use our toilet. I sidestepped Yusuf only to feel a warm, dry hand grip my forearm.
‘There she is. Laura!’
I could see why Yusuf hadn’t let Beth in. She had on purple flared jeans, a yellow belly top and half a dozen necklaces. Her hair was tied up in a messy topknot. I felt caught red-handed in my temp’s uniform of dress and heels. Beth seemed so much more herself than I was; no, she seemed more like me than I did.
‘Have you heard?’ she said. I noticed her eyes were bloodshot. ‘They didn’t ring you?’ I put up a hand to show Yusuf I’d got this, and led Beth by the arm to the street.
‘Who didn’t ring me?’ I said.
‘The police.’
My legs went boneless as my mind leaped to the only conclusion; somehow they had found proof of my lie. Had word of my testimony got back to Beth? Had she given me away? She wouldn’t jeopardise her own rapist’s conviction on a technicality. Would she?
‘No.’ I thought for the first time what a tidy, contained word ‘no’ is; hardly any room for the speaker’s voice to shake and betray. It’s a gift to the liar.
‘Jamie Balcombe’s been given leave to appeal. Carol Kent rang me this morning. She didn’t want me to find out from the papers.’ Beth sniffed loudly, like a child. ‘Jamie threw out his old legal team and the new one reckon they’ve got some new evidence that might get the whole thing back in court again, and I can’t, I can’t live through that again.’
Neither could I. I knew already that I could not lie convincingly twice; spontaneity had made me credible in a way that premeditation never would. I would have time to think about it now and get nervous. Reverting to my police statement would probably mean acquittal for Jamie Balcombe and a perjury conviction for me.
‘Shit.’ I said. Beth misinterpreted my self-serving panic as concern.
‘Shit’s about right,’ she said. She blew her nose with a dirty tissue. ‘Sorry. You could probably do without this. Only, I can’t talk to my parents about this, they’ve been through enough, and my friends don’t get it, and you were there, Laura.’ A colleague emerged through the revolving door of my office and wished me a good evening. ‘Sorry,’ said Beth. ‘You’ve probably got somewhere to go.’
As if anything was more important than getting to the bottom of this.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I think we should . . . I think we should go and get a drink.’
We walked in silence, heading into Holborn. My thoughts were a tangled ball of string. Ideally – for her peace of mind as well as mine – Beth had blocked out much of the attack, and took my word for the truth. Or the details of my statement in the witness box had somehow escaped her, which didn’t seem likely. It was possible, though, that she knew perfectly well that she hadn’t said no, or hadn’t said no in my hearing, and understood that I had put my neck on the line for her. Either way, she had as much to lose as I did. The tangle of string in my mind’s eye pulled itself into a tight knot that could only be undone with scissors.
We ended up in a tatty old man’s pub just off New Oxford Street, one of those mysterious central London pubs that never actually seems to have anyone in it yet remains there year after year.
‘Bottle of white?’ I said, when we’d climbed rickety stairs to the second-floor bar.
‘Thanks,’ said Beth. ‘But what’ll you have?’ The joke was a toe in the water: is it ok to be frivolous, given how we met? My answering laugh seemed to reassure her. The wine was only Echo Falls white zinfandel but the barman put it in an iced bucket, which I carried rather self-consciously to our table.
‘So . . .’ I filled Beth’s glass first, even though my mouth was watering for something cold and sharp to dull the edges. ‘What’s happened? What, exactly, has happened?’
‘Jamie’s got a new legal team,’ she said. ‘Obviously you could tell at court his family had money, but I didn’t realise how wealthy his dad was until I read the fucking papers.’ She’d seen the reports, then. That line in the Mirror – a crucial eyewitness who wavered in her testimony – couldn’t have escaped her. I braced myself for the challenge, but it didn’t come. ‘That man, Jim Balcombe, his wallet’s a bottomless pit. He can basically afford to keep going till they get the result they want. I looked up the new lawyers. They specialise in getting men like him off the hook.’
I took a large acid gulp of wine. ‘But what new evidence have they got?’