Blood Sisters(82)

The barrister comes up to us. She is very tall and handsome, rather than beautiful, with golden hair. About twenty years older than me, at a guess. Robin addresses her as Lily. She is, he says, ‘just the woman for the job’. I can only hope he is right. Apparently, she took time off to concentrate on her son, who has special needs, but now she is back. What if she isn’t up to this? There hasn’t been much time for us to get to know each other because the case came up much faster than any of us anticipated. ‘They’re trying to clear a backlog,’ Robin said. Is this good or bad?

‘Time to go in, Alison,’ she says to me. She smiles as if trying to put me at my ease, but this makes me feel even more nervous. ‘Just tell the truth like you did during the bail application. The jury can usually tell if you don’t.’

I feel sick. My mouth is dry. The only saving grace is that the new machine has not helped Kitty. Or rather, Kitty was not suitable for that particular type of technology. So, the one person who could say exactly what happened – apart from me – is unable to speak.

The courtroom is huge, with high ceilings that make voices reverberate dramatically as if on stage. There is a great deal of oak panelling, reminding me of a large dining room in a stately home which Mum, David, Kitty and I had visited once on a day out. But that’s where the similarity ends. I have to stand high up in a box surrounded by a glass screen.

In front of me is the judge – a woman. The jury has been sworn in. Are they friendly? Hard to tell. Several keep glancing up at me and then at Kitty. I’m still not sure if it’s wise to have her here but my barrister apparently thought it was important. She wants to stress the sisterly ties which my mother has told her about. ‘Alison loved Kitty,’ she kept saying during the preliminary meeting. ‘She’d have done anything for her.’

How simple it is to rewrite history to fit in with an idealized image. Mum still doesn’t know about my confession to Robin. What will she say when she hears it from my own lips? Lily, of course, knows, but she still thinks Kitty should be here so that the jury can see what Crispin did to her. ‘Your actions might have contributed to the accident,’ she told me. ‘But it’s still not right that you should shoulder the whole responsibility.’

Will a jury agree with her?

Now it’s time to find out. The case has been outlined. I am accused of the manslaughter of Vanessa and of Crispin’s mother and of causing grievous bodily harm to my sister.

The prosecution is calling the first witness. One James Bowles.

I already knew from Robin and Lily that there had been an important later ‘addition to the prosecution’s case’, but by that time I was incapable of taking any more in. I refused – despite their entreaties – to sit through any more witness statements. Besides, the name had meant nothing to me. Kitty, seated down below with Mum, starts to roar with laughter as if she’s watching one of her programmes on television.

A tall, slightly stocky man with a chiselled jaw walks across the room and takes his place at the witness stand. He does not look at me. But my eyes are fixed on him.

Unable to believe what they are seeing.

It is Lead Man.

I am so shocked that I can barely take in what he is saying. The betrayal is such that I feel as if I have been stabbed in the stomach. I have to grip the rail in front of me. For a minute, I fear I might wet myself like my sister. My breath is coming out in short, sharp gasps. The officer next to me notices and gestures at the water in front of me. I want a sip but I cannot move my arm to take it. I can only sit, stunned, and try to concentrate.

James Bowles? Who is this man? And what about all the other lies he has told me? Not to mention the things I told him on the last day I saw him.

I want to run. Scream. Shout.

‘Can you describe to the court how you met the accused?’

‘I tracked her down at a local authority art class.’ He speaks clearly. His face ahead. Still not looking at me.

‘Tracked her down?’ repeats the barrister. ‘Why is that?’

‘I was hired as a private investigator by Crispin Wright.’

There is a loud gasp. From my own mouth. The jury, to a man and woman, turn to face me. Suspicion is written over each of their faces.

‘At first, I just followed her.’

So that explained the feeling I’d kept having that someone was trailing me near my flat.

‘But then my client decided he wanted to confront her. He’d been told that he was going to be transferred to HMP Archville in the new year because of good behaviour since the last episode and because he claimed the location would make it easier for a distant cousin to visit. Prison staff are meant to be aware of family issues and in this case it worked in our favour because it was near Alison too.’

His voice drops as though he would rather not say the next bit. ‘It was my idea to post an advert in the college she worked at for an artist-in-residence job there. We also … well, we paid one of my contacts in the prison admin office to shred the other submissions so that Alison appeared to be the only one to have applied.’

There’s a gasp of disapproval from the jury which I share. So much for the governor asking why he should choose me instead of the ‘many other applicants’ who were after the job! That was just a bluff to make it look as though they weren’t desperate. As for the ‘contact’ in admin, I’m shocked. Angela had told me about bribery in prisons but I hadn’t realized that outsiders like Lead Man got involved too.