He Said/She Said(29)

‘Well – yes – but . . .’ Of course he did, I was going to say. That’s what people do when you’ve caught them out. That’s what little children do, deny that they’ve been in the biscuit tin even when their hands are sticky and there are crumbs on their lips. By the time I’d formulated this thought, Price was already well into her next question.

‘In fact, the defendant Mr Balcombe was telling the truth, protesting a genuine innocence, seeing your obvious misinterpretation of the situation and jumping in before this misunderstanding had a chance to escalate, wasn’t he?’

‘No.’ My armpits were clammy, and I was glad of my dark dress.

‘You’d already made up your mind, hadn’t you?

‘It’s not a question of making your mind up. You know it when you see it.’

‘What you interrupted was consensual sex, wasn’t it? Vigorous, intense sex, yes, but something that took place between two consenting adults, that you interrupted?’

‘I know what I saw.’

‘You saw the last moments of sexual intercourse, Miss Langrishe. Were you there at the point of penetration; the point at which consent was allegedly withheld?’

My hairline was soaked. I put up a hand to wipe my brow, thought better of it, and wondered if the jurors could see the resultant trickle down the side of my face. Fiona Price certainly could; she traced its route with a smirk.

‘You know I wasn’t.’

‘So you agree that the only two people who can possibly know whether consent was given are the participants; that you can’t know?’

I might not have had the advantages of legal training or education, but I had right on my side. ‘No, I don’t accept that. You didn’t see their faces. He was so angry. And she was all, she had mud around her mouth where she’d been crying and dribbling, and snot all over her face.’

‘I must remember, in future cases, that an unwiped nose is evidence of rape.’

Tears began to prick, not just for my own embarrassment, but for Beth. If they were doing this to me, what must she have gone through?

‘Really, Miss Price?’ The judge’s warning shot landed short of its target. The mumsy woman in the jury smirked.

‘Your Honour.’ Fiona Price dipped her head in apology for a count of three. When she raised it again, her eyes were lasers.

‘Miss Langrishe, did the complainant display any sign that she had noticed you when you first interrupted them?’

I thought back to Beth’s thousand-yard stare. How long before she’d registered me? It was impossible to say. Time had stretched as I took it all in, the way they say it does during a car crash.

‘It took a few seconds.’

I could tell by Price’s expression that I’d said the wrong thing.

‘She was lost in the moment, wasn’t she?’ crowed the barrister. The words lost in the moment described something so other from what I had seen. She had locked herself out of it. She was trying not to be there. And how dare Price reframe it as the throes of pleasure? How was she allowed to do this?

‘If anything she was frozen in fear. He was hurting her!’ My voice was shrill.

‘Miss Langrishe,’ interrupted Price, but I kept talking without meaning to; it was almost as though I could see the words spilling out, a script scrolling in front of me, and I had to read it even though I had no idea what was coming next.

‘He had great big handfuls of her hair in his fists, and she was saying, please, no, don’t.’

Nathaniel Polglase’s head shot up so quickly his wig bounced. The scroll of paper in my mind’s eye abruptly trimmed and framed itself, my words hanging in the air for all to see. Fiona Price seemed to glide towards me.

‘Forgive me, I didn’t catch that last sentence. Could you repeat it, for my benefit?’

I had the sense of something huge falling away behind me. ‘She was saying, please, no.’ I said it as powerfully as I could, but my body told the truth. My face streamed with sweat. I don’t know what it looked like from the outside, but I felt as though someone had squeezed a warm, wet sponge over my head.

‘Allow me a moment, Your Honour,’ said Fiona Price. ‘I’d just like to skim-read the witness’s original police statement.’

She put on reading glasses and appeared to give the document before her serious attention, as though she were reading it for the first time, even though I was sure she had memorised everything in front of her and this pause was stagecraft. ‘Can you remember whether you mentioned when questioned by my learned friend for the prosecution that the complainant used the word no?’

‘I didn’t.’ She’s humiliating me, I thought, realising only as she reached out to pass me the witness statement that she was too clever for that; she was letting me humiliate myself.

‘I wonder if you could read your witness statement and tell the jury where you mention that the complainant said the word no.’

My eyes skidded unseeing across the page, even though I knew the words wouldn’t be there.

‘That is your witness statement?

‘Yes.’ There was a kind of relief in finally agreeing with her.

‘When was that statement taken?’

‘Straight afterwards. In the police cabin.’ After he raped her, I wanted to say, but I knew that would only show my bias, and I’d done more than enough damage already.