Our Kind of Cruelty(67)

‘I suppose so.’

Xander left a beat of space before his next question. ‘Do you think your daughter was still in love with Mr Hayes at the time of her marriage?’

The line between V and me tightened again. I remembered our meeting on the street just before her wedding, her body ready to run, her eyes searching for me.

Suzi looked like she’d been slapped. ‘Absolutely not, no.’

‘But she cared about him enough to feel responsibility for his happiness.’

‘That’s totally different. Verity is a kind, caring person.’

Xander walked towards the jury. ‘Did you know about this game, this Crave, your daughter and Mr Hayes played together?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘What do you think about it?’

‘I think it’s strange, but they were young.’

‘Did it surprise you that Verity should play such a game?’

‘I’m not in the habit of speculating about my daughter’s sexuality.’ Suzi looked down and I thought she might cry.

‘But, with that in mind, is it fair to say that you don’t know your daughter as well as you think you do?’

Suzi looked back up, her eyes angry and hard. ‘No, of course it’s not fair to say that. What you’re talking about is different. It’s not what matters.’

Xander nodded. ‘If you say so, Mrs Walton. Did Verity tell you that Mike was back in touch with her? Did she talk to you about the emails or going for a drink with him?’

‘No, but that’s because she didn’t want to worry us.’

‘Would you like to have known?’

‘I’d like to have been able to help her.’

‘So, when Verity came to spend the weekend with you, when Angus was away and after Mr Hayes had been to meet her from work, she didn’t mention anything about this to you or your husband?’

‘No.’

‘And on the Monday after that weekend, when Mr Hayes came to Verity’s house and she claims he assaulted her – did she contact you that night?’

‘No,’ Suzi said and her voice sounded shrunken.

Xander nodded. ‘Thank you, Mrs Walton. No further questions.’

We countered Suzi with Elaine after lunch, as Xander put it. He said the comparison would be brilliant. Naturally we all want to support the underdog, he said, but also our society is still riven along class lines. No one would support a posh, snobby woman with a cut-glass accent over a salt-of-the-earth, foster-care giver dressed in a second-hand coat. I didn’t tell him that Elaine’s coat was not second-hand, simply well worn, as I wasn’t sure he would understand the concept.

Elaine almost stumbled into the witness box, her eyes blinking and her face creased in worry. She smiled over at me and nodded and everyone could see she would have blown me a kiss if she could have. She spoke in a quiet, yet determined tone and she turned and looked at the jury and Justice Smithson, as if wanting to include them and be polite.

‘He was quite a handful when we got him,’ she said. ‘But I could see the sparkle in his eye and I knew it was just a question of chipping away a bit at the hard surface he’d had to build up to find the real Mike.’

‘And who would you say the real Mike is?’ Xander asked.

Elaine looked over at me and I smiled at her because I wanted her to feel comfortable saying anything. ‘He’s a lovely lad,’ she said. ‘He’s always been a bit of a loner, but he’s very clever and part of his anger when we got him, I think, was that all his intelligence was frustrated. You know, it took him a bit of time to learn to trust Barry and me, but when he did he was a pleasure to have around.’

‘I believe you had him for longer than any other foster child?’

Elaine nodded. ‘Yes and he stayed on with us after he turned sixteen.’

‘Which is unusual why?’

Elaine turned to the jury. ‘Sorry. The state stops paying foster carers when a child reaches sixteen. They’re supposed to get a place of their own, but there was no way we were going to send Mike out into the world to fend for himself then. Poor lad had spent his childhood looking after himself; it didn’t seem right to make him do it again so soon. Plus he’d have had to start working and it would have been criminal for him to miss out on A levels and university.’ One of the women in the back row of the jury nodded vigorously.

‘But you must have seen something pretty special in him to make you take that on?’ Xander asked.

‘We did,’ Elaine said. ‘He’s not really tough like some of the boys are. Sometimes when you’ve had an upbringing like Mike’s you become Mr Hard Man, which Mike did for a while at school. But I think his real response was to look for love, to work hard and to make sure he was never in the place of his childhood again. Barry and I had to help him achieve that.’

‘So, by the time Mr Hayes went to university would you say he seemed like a perfectly normal young man?’

‘Yes, quiet and studious, but well balanced, I’d say.’

It was easy to see that the jury loved Elaine. They’d talk about her afterwards and marvel at her kindness in taking on someone as fucked up as me. I balled my hands into fists and held them in my lap.

‘And he met Verity in the second year. When did you meet her?’