He Said/She Said(39)

Price needlessly straightened her wig. ‘So we’re talking about the previous night, the night before the eclipse?’ Jamie nodded. ‘Did you take any drugs at this campfire?’ Kit and I looked at each other; this sounded like something the prosecution would say, surely. Polglase looked unsurprised.

Jamie looked at the public gallery and bit his lip.

‘Jamie, you must answer the question. Did you take any drugs at this campfire?’

‘I’m sorry. It’s hard to answer this in front of my mum.’ He sighed, long and deep. ‘Yes. There was a joint being passed around and I took a puff on it, just to be sociable really. I thought it would be a way of being accepted as part of the crowd around the fire.’ The tattooed juror nodded, as if to say, well, who wouldn’t? ‘I was just getting carried away with the atmosphere. But I coughed it out, I’m not used to it, and I said something along the lines of, this isn’t my usual sort of thing. Beth took it from me and laughed and said, don’t worry, it’s a festival, normal rules don’t apply.’

‘And did Miss Taylor partake of this joint that was being passed around?’

‘She did, yes, but only one go, I think.’

‘Were you intoxicated?’

‘I can’t speak for Miss Taylor, but I certainly wasn’t.’

I didn’t realise I was drumming my fingers until Kit put his hand over mine to stop me.

‘And how did this gathering end?’

‘Well, at maybe midnight, I wasn’t wearing a watch, she got up to leave. I asked her where her tent was and walked her back to it. I wanted to make sure she got there safely. I stayed there till she’d zipped herself in.’

Staying positive during this performance was like trying to hold water in my fist.

Price leaned forward on her knuckles. ‘And you weren’t tempted to make a move on her there? In the dark, when it was just the two of you?’

Jamie palmed his eyes and waited a long time before answering. ‘Yes, I was tempted, ok? We’d hit it off. But I didn’t do anything about it.’

I looked at Antonia. Her face was a mask. What the hell is going through your mind, I wondered.

‘So, knowing that she was vulnerable, and with both of you under the influence of cannabis, you left her to sleep on her own?’

‘Of course I did,’ said Jamie, as though anything else was unthinkable.

‘Of course. And now we come to the morning of the alleged incident itself. How did your day begin?’

‘He deserves a fucking Oscar,’ I muttered to Kit. He took my hand and smoothed it flat from its fist, but like everyone else he was mesmerised by Jamie.

‘The next morning was the day of the eclipse,’ said Jamie. ‘I thought I’d walk by Beth’s tent to see if she wanted to watch it with me. She wasn’t in, but I bumped into her leaving the main field, and she said she was going to find somewhere to watch it in peace. It was pretty full-on in the main field with all the music and shouting, and I didn’t fancy it either, so I said I’d go with her.’

‘And what was her response?’

‘She didn’t object.’ Jamie was emphatic. ‘I wouldn’t have gone otherwise. So, we walked a sort of winding way around until she suddenly stopped in this field full of circus equipment. I thought, hang on, because it wasn’t the best vantage point, there were loads of lorries and stuff in the way, but then I realised: what it did have going for it was privacy. She made a little space on the grass between two caravans and I sat next to her.’

‘Was this by mutual agreement?’ Price leaned forward; the jurors leaned forward; everyone on the public gallery and press benches seemed to lean forward, as though Jamie was a vortex, pulling us all in.

He handled his words with kid gloves. ‘I would say unspoken mutual agreement,’ he said. ‘Maybe that was naive of me. If I’d known what was going to happen . . . but it was all so spur of the moment. We just looked at the sky; well, at the clouds. Nothing happened for a while and then it all sped up. We only saw the sky for a second, but the way it went dark was just uncanny. It’s an incredible thing to share with someone, incredibly intimate. You’ve got all these people around you, but you feel like it’s just you and the other person and there’s this darkness coming out of nowhere.’ No, I thought irrationally; this man is not allowed to be sensitive to the beauty and power of an eclipse. I won’t allow it. Jamie cleared his throat. ‘And then, when it started getting light again, I said – what I meant to say was that it was amazing or incredible but there was a sort of Freudian slip and what I actually said was, wasn’t that romantic. And I knew it wasn’t a particularly appropriate way to describe it, but it was.’ He looked at Antonia helplessly and his voice lowered in respect to her. Her face remained inscrutable but her right hand repeatedly twisted her engagement ring. I didn’t know whether to feel contempt or pity. ‘And the mood just took us over, and after we started kissing it just went from there really quickly. It was so spontaneous I couldn’t even tell you who instigated it.’

Price put out a hand to stop him. ‘This is important, Mr Balcombe. The kiss was mutual? She never pushed you away, she never asked you to stop?’

‘Absolutely not. Absolutely not. If I’d read the situation wrong, I would have stopped in a heartbeat.’