‘Which you hadn’t?’
‘No, of course not. In fact, when he applied for the job I remember being very upset. But Mike had this obsession with retiring by the time we were forty-five. I don’t know why, but I always presumed it had something to do with his upbringing and how out of control he’d always felt. I think it’s very important for him to feel in control now and I suppose money helps with that.’
I reached out and put my hand against the solid wood of the box in which I sat, contained and safe. I felt the warden look at me and I would have punched him if he’d touched me. Because at that moment I still hadn’t entirely worked out what V was doing, why she was swapping and spinning our story.
‘How did Mr Hayes take the ending of your relationship?’
‘Very badly. It was dreadful. He started screaming and crying and begging me not to end it. He grabbed me round the legs and I had to slap him to get him to let go of me because I was so scared. My parents had to ask him to leave our house the next day because he wouldn’t leave me alone and then he bombarded me with phone calls and texts and emails. He sent so many flowers my mother had to donate them to the church. Angus came and took me away in the end and I think if he hadn’t done that I might have gone mad.’
I concentrated on the feel of the wood beneath my fingers, old and ridged, and ultimately unconcerned.
‘But Mr Hayes went back to New York in the end?’
‘Eventually, yes. He’d bought me a ticket to come and spend New Year with him there even though I’d told him a hundred times I wasn’t going to, way before our conversation about splitting up. When I didn’t turn up for that flight I think he began to get the message and then I changed my phone number and told him I wasn’t going back to our flat. In the end he went back to New York, but the emails continued for about six weeks. It got to the stage where Angus would go on to my account every morning and evening and delete them so I wouldn’t even have to know how many he’d sent.’
An image of monkey man Angus reading my private words to V flashed into my brain and I almost wished he wasn’t dead so that I could feel my hand smash into his face again.
Petra walked towards the jury. ‘Item thirteen in your folders. And then they just stopped?’
‘Yes. One day they stopped and that was it. At first I didn’t believe it but as time went on I really thought things were OK. Then Angus and I got engaged and I was so happy I let the thought of Mike drift to the back of my mind. I always knew I was going to have to tell him about the wedding, but I kept putting it off and then one day, out of the blue, I got this email from him saying he was coming back to live in London and so I replied and told him about the marriage.’
‘And how did he react to that?’
‘It took him a few days to reply, but when he did he sounded fine. He congratulated me and I really thought we’d moved on and could be friends.’
Petra was still over by the jury and she put her hand on to their box, so she could have almost reached out and touched the fat man nearest to her if she’d wanted. ‘Now this is where I think some people might question you. Why did you still want to be friends with Mr Hayes?’
V looked over to Petra so I knew the jury would be getting the full shock of her beauty. ‘We’d meant so much to each other,’ she said and I saw her throat move with the words. It was as if I was able to watch them form in her before she said them. ‘And I knew how vulnerable he was and how few people he had in his life. I didn’t want him to be unhappy. I wanted nothing more than to see him settled with someone nice. It was stupid of me.’
‘Or kind-hearted,’ Petra said, removing her hand. ‘So, he came to your wedding and you didn’t see him before then?’
‘We bumped into each other once. He was shopping on Kensington High Street and I lived just off it, so.’
I waited for more because V must have known, but she held her counsel.
‘How did Mr Hayes seem?’
‘Fine. We chatted about his new house and the wedding. It was a five-minute meeting, nothing more.’
‘And how did he seem at the wedding?’
‘Again, I only saw him briefly when we said hello in the line, but I’ve heard what everyone else has said. Perhaps he did seem a bit anxious. I don’t really remember.’
‘Then you went on honeymoon.’
‘Yes, and that’s when I received the next two emails.’
‘Item sixteen in your folders,’ Petra said to the jury. I heard the rustle of paper and I knew what they were reading.
‘They were a terrible shock,’ V said. ‘I got in quite a state about them. They ruined a couple of days of the honeymoon. Angus was furious; he wanted to call the police, but I stopped him. We agreed that the best thing to do was leave it till we got home and then compose an email that made Mike feel valued and listened to but which spelt out the fact that I loved Angus and didn’t want to be with him.’
‘Why did you stop Angus calling the police?’
V opened her mouth but then she swallowed and her shoulders tensed, so I knew she was trying not to cry. ‘I think I still felt guilty. I wish I had done now. It was a massive mistake.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because after we got back Mike turned up at my work and made it clear that he thought the marriage was a sham and I really wanted to be with him. It became clear that he thought it was all part of some sort of Crave.’
‘And he told you this when you went for a drink with him in the bar opposite your office?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t go straight home and tell Angus?’ Petra said, which was the first reasonable question she had asked.
V looked down and swallowed again. ‘No. He was going away on a business trip and I knew he’d have freaked out and called the police and worried the whole time he was away. I thought if I waited till he got back then we could deal with it together. I really didn’t think Mike would do anything more than he’d already done. I thought I could handle it.’
‘Except that didn’t turn out to be the case, did it?’ Petra walked towards V, who looked like she was shivering. ‘I’m really sorry to ask you to tell us about the next part, Verity, but I’m afraid you need to tell the jury what happened.’
‘I know.’ A tear rolled down V’s cheek and off the bottom of her face. ‘I went to my parents’ for the weekend and got back on Sunday night. Angus was due back very early on Tuesday morning and I hadn’t heard from Mike, so I thought maybe he’d got the message. But then he turned up at the house on Monday evening, stinking of alcohol. He forced his way in and it became apparent that he thought we had some sort of agreement. That I was planning to leave Angus and move in with him.’
‘I believe Mr Hayes kissed you. That you ended up on the floor together.’
V nodded, more tears falling. ‘Yes. I think he would have raped me if I hadn’t stopped him.’
‘Objection,’ Xander said, standing. ‘Mr Hayes denies assaulting Mrs Metcalf. He says this encounter was entirely consensual.’