She went on shouting as she was led from the court, and her last sight was of Andy, bent over in the witness box, his face screwed up as if someone had punched him.
Sixty-Five
Even sitting alone in the quiet of the holding cells, Tabitha felt like she was surrounded by a swarm of wasps. They were inside her head and outside her head. They were buzzing and they were crawling on her skin and they were crawling inside her skin. She felt an urge to tear at herself or to smash against the wall, anything that would just put an end to this fever of anger and agitation that was like an unbearable itch that she couldn’t scratch. She only had the dimmest memory of the previous minutes, of being dragged like an animal through the court, along the corridors into the cell.
She stood up and faced the white concrete wall. She slowly clenched the fingers of her right hand and raised it. Just one punch would do something to break the fever.
“Don’t,” said a voice behind her.
She looked round. Simon Brockbank was leaning in the doorway of the cell, his wig in his hand, his robe over his arm. There were two chairs in the cell. Brockbank walked inside and sat on one of them. He draped his robe across his lap and placed his wig on top.
“I did a case a few weeks ago,” he said. “A fight outside a pub. My client took a swing at another defendant, missed, and hit a brick wall instead. So I’m a bit of an expert on hands and walls. There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand and if you do what you’re thinking of doing, they’re difficult to fix.”
He gestured toward the other chair. Tabitha glared at him. She was seriously thinking of punching Simon Brockbank instead of the wall. She looked at Brockbank’s face with its slightly sarcastic smile. He’d probably like it if she took a swing at him. It would show he had got to her. So she took a slow, long breath and sat down opposite him.
“Have you come to gloat?”
Brockbank thought for a moment. “That would be one idea,” he said. “You did me a favor up there. I imagine the jury had been thinking, this Tabitha Hardy, she’s a bit prickly, a bit angry, but would she really be capable of killing someone? You’ve dealt with that little problem.”
Tabitha knew he was probably right. “Andy was my only friend,” she said. “And look what you all did to him.”
“That sounds like a conversation you should have with someone,” Brockbank said, not sounding very concerned. “Meanwhile you have a decision to make.”
“What’s that?”
Brockbank sniffed. “It’s not really a decision. It’s more like an acknowledgment of reality. You can’t just sit here forever. You have to do something.”
“Such as what? Plead guilty? Is that what you want?”
Brockbank seemed to consider this, as if it was an entirely new idea.
“It’s never too late to do the right thing. The judge might give you a certain amount of credit.” He looked at Tabitha, whose expression was entirely impassive. “I thought not. In that case, what you really should do is go back upstairs and make a full, unconditional, sincere apology to the court.”
“Fuck that,” said Tabitha.
“All right,” said Brockbank, looking more serious. “I really should let you do this to yourself. But first I’m going to spell out in detail what will happen.”
“Go on then,” said Tabitha. “Spell it out.”
Leaning closer in, gesturing with both hands, Simon Brockbank spelled it out.
“Have you anything to say, Ms. Hardy?”
Tabitha stood up and faced the judge. She had a sudden flashback to apologies when she was at school, to a teacher or, on occasion, to the head. Those apologies were normally delivered in a faintly ironic monotone. It was generally accepted on both sides that Tabitha wasn’t really sorry but it was a form of theater that had to be gone through so that life could proceed.
This was different. If she was going to do this, it had to be convincing. It had to be real. It wasn’t real, of course. But it had to convince both the judge and, even more important, the jury.
She clenched her fists so that her fingernails bit into her palms so hard that they actually hurt.
“Yes, I do have something to say. I don’t want to make excuses for what I did. I don’t want to say that I’m feeling stressed by this whole situation, I don’t want to say that I was upset by having a friend appearing for the prosecution—” She stopped herself, realizing that she was making the excuses she’d said she wasn’t going to make. “I just want to say that I’m truly sorry. I know that you’re meant to behave in a certain respectful way in court, quite rightly, and I didn’t live up to that. I’m sure I’ve broken some law and I’m completely willing to acknowledge that and pay the penalty.” She turned to the jury with an expression that she hoped wasn’t obviously hypocritical. “I just hope that you can all accept this apology and that I’ll be allowed to carry on representing myself. I absolutely promise that nothing like it will happen again.”
She turned back to the judge. Too much? she wondered. Actually, she was regretful. She’d lost all control. She’d let everyone see something that should have been kept hidden. She waited, looking at the judge, who was looking down at her notes, frowning. What would be truly galling would be if she had groveled and humiliated herself and it didn’t get her anywhere.
Judge Munday looked up. “Ms. Hardy, your outburst was a disgrace. I seriously considered citing you for contempt of court and appointing a counsel to act for you.”
Tabitha gave an inward sigh
