Our Kind of Cruelty(76)

‘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.’

Justice Smithson looked at the jury. ‘The jury will take into account that this case has not been heard yet and a verdict has not been reached, so Mrs Metcalf and Mr Hayes have differing versions of this event.’

V gasped suddenly, as if she was drowning, pulling her head upwards and forwards. ‘That was the worst part,’ she said in a strangled voice. ‘Mike seemed to think I wanted it all to happen. I had to play along to get him to leave. I had to pretend that I wanted to leave Angus and be with him.’ She put her hand over her mouth, as if containing the words, and her eyes looked desperate. She looked in fact momentarily mad, just as she had when she’d been ill before, when she’d said life felt like it was happening behind a wall she couldn’t climb. And that is when what she was doing started to make sense to me. When she’d been ill she used to say she couldn’t understand anything that was said to her and it was as though words churned in her head. And of course she is feeling that way now, of course all of this is more than she can bear. I forget sometimes how much I hurt her with Carly and how delicate this new life of hers is. The reality must collide with her construction in her mind and cause her to mis-think. She must be terrified at the moment and I am the only one who can make her feel safe again.