He Said/She Said(28)

If the courtroom disappointed, the judge did not; he was the archetypal television judge, a Rumpolean wine-red face craggy under his powdered wig. The jurors looked me up and down. Apart from one Sikh man, everyone was white. In the front row I saw a stern professorial man, a mumsy woman with reading glasses on a beaded chain round her neck, and a very young man in an England football shirt whose tattoos crept over his collar.

Unprepossessing as they looked, they had a huge advantage over me. They had seen Beth’s testimony. If only there was some telling detail she had shared that I could use to rivet my account of the rape to hers, to make watertight both our truths.

I walked to the witness box on legs of jelly and although I was offered a seat, I stayed standing. The air was thick and still, with a solemnity that must act like a truth serum on the guiltiest of people. Surely Balcombe couldn’t continue to maintain denial somewhere like this. He blinked at the judge and jury, long eyelashes batting away the allegations.

The prosecuting barrister, Nathaniel Polglase, was thirty-five or so and his horsehair wig looked box-fresh, each curl a tight glossy roll. Behind him, the CPS caseworker was wearing yesterday’s clothes. I knew that they weren’t, technically, Beth’s lawyers, but they were her only chance, and I felt a little spike of pre-emptive disappointment. To the judge’s left, Jamie Balcombe’s defence barrister, Fiona Price, was slick as steel. Her wig was tatty but she wore it well, and she looked so good in her gown I couldn’t now imagine her wearing anything else. I dared to glance at the public gallery; Jamie’s family sat two rows deep. On the press bench was the blonde journalist, Ali, another female journalist, a youth of about sixteen in a clip-on tie and a middle-aged man evidently on the verge of sleep.

I took the secular oath – in Kit’s eyes, anyone who swore on a holy book ruled their evidence inadmissible by reason of extreme stupidity – and parroted my promise with my eyes on the huge crest on the wall behind the judge; in dull gold relief, the lion and the unicorn battled for the crown. Tug of war, tug of love? You could read it either way.

‘Thank you for coming, Miss Langrishe,’ said Nathaniel Polglase. His accent was local and he pronounced my name to rhyme with language. ‘I wonder if you could, before you begin, let us know a little about yourself. Career, education, that kind of thing.’

‘I went to a comprehensive in Croydon, in Surrey. Ten GCSEs, three A levels,’ I said, feeling like the teenager I’d been last time I’d listed these qualifications. ‘And I got a 2.1 in Sociology with Women’s Studies from King’s College, London, last year. At the moment I’m working as a temp in the City, in advertising sales.’ This abridged CV was evidently all he needed from me as then, with a series of questions, he coaxed from me a version of events that was pretty much word-for-word the statement I had given to the police back in August. It sounded flat, weird, rehearsed; which of course it was. I kept looking up at the jurors to gauge their reactions. The man with the tattoos wasn’t even watching me. Somehow my words did not seem as powerful in the sterility of the courtroom as they had in the police cabin. The jurors didn’t seem to be engaging with me. I’m failing Beth, I thought, as I approached the part where I picked up the purse. I’m losing the jury and there’s nothing I can do about it. When I had finished, it was all I could do not to ask, ‘Is that all you want from me?’

I had expected some kind of break in between prosecution and defence, but Jamie’s counsel was on her feet before Polglase landed in his seat. She had the jury’s respect instantly; she had my respect instantly.

‘Miss Lang—reesh,’ she said, the correct pronunciation drawing attention to Polglase’s mistake. ‘When did the complainant tell you she had been raped?’

At first, I didn’t see where she was going. ‘She didn’t. Not in so many words, but—’

‘Not in any words. Who was the first person to suggest it was rape?’

My blood spiralled in my veins as my understanding caught up.

‘Me, I suppose, but I wasn’t suggesting, I was just saying what I’d seen.’

‘So the complainant Miss Taylor did not say that it was rape, or that she had been forced, or anything, before you called the police?’

‘Well, she wasn’t talking then.’

‘So she said it was rape when they came?’

I only understood she’d been trailing searchlights around me when they shone directly into my eyes. How had it gone so wrong, so quickly? ‘No, but—’

‘At no point did the complainant tell you that she had been raped. In fact, you arrived at this conclusion by yourself.’

I put my hands flat on the wood of the witness box. ‘Actually if anything he was the one who said it first.’ I glared at the dock. ‘He said “It’s not what it looks like” when he was pulling it out. I hadn’t even spoken at this point. So if anyone was on the defensive, it was him.’

Fiona Price hooked her thumbs under the lapels of her gown and raised a skinny eyebrow at the jury. ‘So he said that it wasn’t rape, that it wasn’t what it looked like?’

‘Because he knew that it was.’

I grew hotter, as though someone was turning up a dial inside me; it was a warning sign, a needle trembling in a red gauge.

‘You haven’t answered my question. He protested his innocence, didn’t he? “It’s not what it looks like.” Those were his words, according to you, weren’t they?’