Our Kind of Cruelty(74)

‘Can you elaborate?’

‘I began to find his, his …’ V looked up at Petra, but then down again. ‘… his, I suppose, need of me, too much.’

‘In what way?’ Petra asked and I hated her at that moment, purely and simply, for everything she was making V say.

‘He’d always been very connected to me, but when he went to New York it got worse. He had to know what I was doing at all times, and if I changed my plans or did anything spontaneously we had to discuss it for hours.’ V swallowed. ‘It felt like nothing was ever enough. I had to send him weekly emails with my movements for the week listed in them.’

‘If I may I am going to read the jury one of these exchanges, although they are all in your files, item twenty-one,’ Petra said, turning towards the jury as she spoke. She looked back down at her papers. ‘“Monday gym after work, Tuesday meetings all day so won’t be able to speak to you but will go straight home, Wednesday dinner with Louise, meeting her straight from work, Thursday leaving drinks in the office for Sam, Friday will catch a train straight to Steeple.” Mr Hayes replied the same day: “Didn’t you have dinner with Louise last week? Why do you need to see her again so soon? And which Sam? Why do you feel like you have to go to everyone’s leaving drinks? I would prefer it if you went straight home and we can have a proper chat.”’ She looked up and back to V. ‘There are lots of similar exchanges between you two. Did you not find them a bit odd?’

‘Yes,’ V said. ‘But I also didn’t want to fight when he was so far away.’

‘I believe Mr Hayes also liked you to sleep with Skype on?’

‘Yes, he liked the laptop to be on the pillow next to me.’

‘And you did that?’

‘A couple of times, yes. It was easier than saying no.’

‘Would you say Mr Hayes is controlling?’

V lifted her hand but then dropped it again. ‘In some ways, yes.’

‘Were you scared of him?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say scared.’

Petra moved forward marginally. ‘So, to be clear, you hadn’t minded this attention before he left for New York?’

‘When we were at university and after when we lived in London, I think I was flattered by it. But we were much younger and I think when you’re young you want to be adored more, don’t you think?’ She looked up as she spoke, but really she had asked the question to no one. ‘Mike and I were in a bit of a bubble and I think when he went away I realised that things couldn’t go on the way they had been. I guess I just wanted a more normal life.’

Petra looked over at the jury. ‘I’m asking you this next question because so much has been made of it in the press. But I would like it noted that I don’t think your sexuality has any bearing on this case or any other. Unfortunately, though, it is not something which can be ignored.’ I looked at the jury as well and saw how uncomfortable they were. She turned back to V. ‘When you say you were in a bubble, are you talking about this game you and Mr Hayes played, this Crave which the press has made so much of?’

V hesitated and rubbed at a point above her eyebrow where I knew her headaches started. ‘I think that had a lot to do with it. It felt like something private and special between us and I suppose it bound us together in the way things like that do.’

‘How often did you Crave?’

‘Not a lot. Maybe once a month.’

‘Would you describe what you did as sexually deviant?’

V almost laughed. ‘God no, it was just stupid adolescent fun. We went to a bar, I got chatted up and Mike broke it up. It turned us on, the thought that another man found me attractive. That’s it. No one ever got hurt; it was just a bit of fun.’

‘And who started it?’

V’s head flicked towards me involuntarily, but she stopped herself from actually looking at me. ‘We were at a party once, just after our finals, and someone started chatting me up and Mike got a bit heated. We left the party and laughed about it, but it became obvious that we’d both been turned on by it. A few days later we went clubbing, just the two of us, and Mike suggested I go and stand by the bar on my own. He said he wanted to see how long it took for me to be chatted up. We were both drunk and I did it and pretty soon this man approached me and Mike came steaming over. It sort of went from there.’

‘So it was Mr Hayes’s idea?’

‘I suppose it was, yes.’

Petra nodded. ‘So, perhaps you can talk us through the end of your relationship with Mr Hayes. You said things had been going wrong for about six months.’

V nodded. ‘Yes. I started to feel very stifled by him and his constant need to know everything about me stopped seeming sweet and started to become irritating. My work was very busy and it became exhausting juggling the two things.’ She paused, her eyes wide as though she was scared. ‘Then I met Angus. He came in to do a pitch and I had to run him through something I was working on afterwards and then he rang me the next day and …’ She trailed off and I thought she was going to cry. ‘He was just very different from Mike. He was calm and self-assured and he seemed in control of himself and his emotions. We went on a few dates and I realised I was falling for him.’

‘And this happened when?’