Xander stood still for a moment and it was good to see him wrong-footed. I felt him look straight at me but I didn’t return his stare because I was never going to take my eyes off you. ‘When did this happen?’
‘When I went to her house on the Monday. After we kissed we spent a lot of time talking about how we were going to handle the situation, like I’ve said.’ I stopped for a moment, remembering how the floor had felt underneath me, how we’d sat up, how we’d shivered with desire. ‘As you know she said that she wished things had worked out between us.’
My God, V, you are the most beautiful being ever to have existed, that’s what I thought when I looked at you then. I could swim into you and lie still forever. But I knew Xander and all the rest of them would need more. I knew the story needed a more definite climax.
‘She told me she wanted to get out of the marriage but that she couldn’t do it alone. She asked for my help.’ The words pricked me as they left my body.
‘Mr Hayes, what did these words mean to you?’ Xander asked through my thoughts.
‘That she was scared because she hates confrontation. I’ve always saved her from bad situations and she knew I could help her with this one. Verity didn’t want Angus dead, just like I didn’t want him dead. But we had to be together. Do you understand that? It is simply impossible that we don’t end up together.’
I was speaking only to you, V, and you never moved your gaze from mine for one second. You stopped crying. And I knew then that you finally understood what I had done.
Xander and Petra spent ages summing up, all going over and over the same wrong thoughts in the same wrong ways. And then the judge could have had his lines written for him by Xander. He spent a lot of time summarising the legal issues: how to find me guilty of murder was the most serious verdict the jury could bring against me. How to do so they had to be absolutely certain of my intention to kill Angus at the moment I hit him. How they had to be sure I wasn’t acting in self-defence. He also reminded them about my upbringing and the mental strain I had been under at the time. He told them that the option to convict of manslaughter was a realistic expectation.
He did little to hide his revulsion for you, V. He reminded the jury how you had lied, even under oath, about Angela and the Kitten Club, and how you find it hard to remove yourself from unwanted situations, especially ending relationships. He talked for a long time about, as he put it, your extreme and unusual sexual appetites, and how you clearly used your sexuality to exert control over me. I shut my eyes as he spoke to stop myself from screaming out in your defence, but these are the trolls we have to deal with. These are the maggots who would not be fit to feed on our corpses.
In the end we only had to wait twenty-four hours before we were called back in. I was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter. And you, my love, were found guilty of accessory to manslaughter. I looked over to you when the verdicts were read out and I saw your knees buckle and how your warden had to steady you with her arm. Suzi cried out, but I’m not sure you heard. We had to stay standing to hear Judge Smithson talk about how tragic this case has been and how he believed that neither of us had meant for it to end in Angus’s death. He spoke about responsibility and the dangers involved in game-playing and using others.
I remember completely clearly only one line that he said: ‘You, Mr Hayes, have fallen victim to two emotionally deficient women in your life and I only hope that when you leave prison you choose your future partners with more caution.’ It took me a while to realise he was talking about you, V, and my mother.
He gave us both eight years, but Xander says we will appeal and it’s likely to be cut to about five. With good behaviour he reckons we should be out in three to four. It’s not that long.
Terry let me watch the news on his TV when I got back from court. We sat together on his fetid bunk and watched Petra stalk down the steps of the courthouse. There were lots of reporters jostling around her and she allowed them to settle before she began to speak.
‘In my opinion, the wrong person has been on trial in this case,’ she said, her anger bristling off her like a force field. ‘Verity Metcalf appears to have been on trial for her sexuality throughout this sham of a trial, which at times has felt like we were back in seventeenth-century Salem. I did not expect to be standing in a twenty-first-century courtroom and hearing words like “enchanted” and “beguiled” used about a clever, thoughtful woman. The lies and gossip which have enveloped this case have resulted not only in a dangerous man receiving a reduced sentence which will see him back on our streets in only a few short years, but with an innocent woman being convicted of a crime she did not commit.’
She chose a camera and looked down the lens, out to us. ‘Anyone who tells you that we have achieved equality should think hard about what has happened here; should wonder at why none of this even appears unusual or shocking. We in the legal system should all feel ashamed of ourselves today, for justice has not been served.’
I felt a coldness rest in my stomach, but Terry shoved me in the ribs. ‘Fucking women’s libbers,’ he said. ‘They’re all dykes, the lot of them. What they need is a good seeing-to by a real man.’ He laughed hollowly, the sound rattling round his chest. I didn’t reply, instead climbing up on to my bunk to find the fog had lifted for the night and I could see the stars through my tiny window.
And so we are here, V. Both shut up in our boxes, waiting for the moment we can be together again. Xander forwards me lots of requests from writers and journalists and production companies, all of whom are eager to tell my side of the story, as they put it. He tries to persuade me to talk to them, saying it would be good for me, but really it’s just because he’s vain and would like to see himself mirrored by a handsome actor. So far I have refused all requests, but I am starting to wonder. News changes quickly and gossip is overtaken. We are bound together by this story, our shared truth, and maybe we need to prolong it. Maybe we need to cement it forever on screens and in books so that we are always bound together by words.
Thank you for dropping the assault charges. I know of course that you never really meant it to go to court; it was simply another part of the Crave, another way to take us close to the edge before pulling back. And you were right to plead no contest to Angus’s family’s ridiculous civil action about the will. I recognised what they were when I saw them in court. But it doesn’t matter; we wouldn’t have ever touched a penny of his money anyway, would we, my love?
V, I know you like instant gratification and I know you will be finding the thought of spending even three years without me very hard, which is why I write to you every day. Long letters all about our glorious future.