Our Kind of Cruelty(88)

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.

I especially like to talk to you about our home. The garden will be spectacular this spring, but it will be perfect when we return. Anna told me that all gardens need three years to properly settle and become the spaces they are meant to be. I lie on my bunk and think of this and it is like we planned it. You will be amazed at the cleverness of the planting and I can see you there, sitting amongst the swaying flowers as I cook us supper on the barbeque. We can lie on the hot stones and look up at the clouds and you can teach me again to see pictures. We will make love in every room of the house and I will show you the numbers of the women in the cupboard in the kitchen, which I have decided we can’t paint over. We will tell each other their stories; we will give them their proper endings.

We will get on aeroplanes, V, and lie on deserted beaches where the breeze kisses our skin. We will drink cocktails in strange hotel rooms where no one knows our names and swim in seas deeper than our imagination. We will hold each other tight every night, our bodies wrapping around one another, our heads resting against each other. We will sleep peacefully, our breaths in union, warm and deep. And I won’t wake in the night and want to uncoil your brain because I will know what is there. You will put your hand on my chest and feel my heartbeat and I will kiss every inch of your body. We, my darling, are creatures of perfection held in a state of waiting, our anticipation making our reunion all the better in the end.

V, we have managed what all other lovers yearn but fail to do. We have eclipsed the world and exist only within our hearts. We have almost reached a state of perfection, a state in which our communication is all that matters. I shut my eyes and think about all the wonderful days and weeks and months and years of togetherness stretching on before us, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, till death do us part, forever and ever, amen.



Oh God, V, you made me wait, but I have finally received a reply to all the letters I have written. It was a postcard on which you had written three words in capital letters: ‘YOU ARE NOT.’