The door of her cell was locked. She dutifully ate her cheese sandwich, the white bread sticking to her teeth. She undressed and stared down at her strong, pale, hairy legs and her white stomach with the large mole just above the belly button. Her feet looked too big for her body. She remembered how when she had first arrived at Crow Grange she had been struck by the pallor of the women prisoners: now she was one of them. She washed vigorously, brushed her teeth, pulled on her night things and climbed into bed, where she curled under the scratchy blanket and looked up at the ceiling that was veined with dirt.
Her case for the defense started tomorrow. She went through the names of people who would take the stand after she had given evidence: Shona (and she grimaced to herself at what the fifteen-year-old Tabitha would have thought of Shona, one of the in-crowd who used to whisper about her bad haircut and her temper, being her character witness); then Sam McBride and, last of all, Luke, who she still felt guilty about calling. She knew that it was a paltry list of witnesses who at best would muddy the waters a bit more.
She turned on her side to stare at the wall. There was a rusty smear a few inches from her face that looked like blood. She rolled the other way, pulled her knees up. She could hear someone laughing, but it wasn’t a happy sound. It made the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. She tried not to hear the sound of her own slurred and horrifying voice, but it boomed and jeered inside her. “How can I escape?” she had shouted.
Sleep when it came was shallow and fitful, full of chaotic fragments of dreams. And then suddenly she was wide awake, sitting upright in bed and holding on to the memory that had somehow found her and now mustn’t escape. She swung her legs out of bed, stood up and turned on the light. She dug her notebook out from her pile of papers and found a free space on its scrawled and crossed-out pages, where she wrote down what she remembered, a little scrap gleaming in the mud. She wrote a name underneath and circled it several times. Her hands were shaking with hope: how could she have missed it? How could everyone?
Shona, Sam and Luke would still appear for the defense—but there was someone else, someone crucial, that she needed to call as a witness.
Part ThreeDefense
Sixty-Seven
When Tabitha first found herself in the witness box, even though she had only walked a few steps across the courtroom, it all felt completely different. Now she was looking straight across at the jury. Judge Munday was to her right, above her; Michaela was seated to her left, below her, staring up at her with a frown. She’s probably even more nervous than I am, Tabitha thought to herself. She can’t pass me a note, can’t whisper in my ear.
The atmosphere was different too. There was a new tension, an air of expectancy. The public gallery and the press box were both full. People were leaning toward her, waiting for something; something dramatic.
She affirmed, stumbling over the words, even though she had heard witnesses say them several times before. Then, just as she started to speak, Judge Munday interrupted her.
“I need to tell you, Ms. Hardy, that you are now appearing as a witness. That means what it says. You are only to report what you have personally witnessed, not what other people have told you.”
Tabitha thought for a moment. She was finding this unexpectedly confusing.
“But if someone tells me something, then aren’t I witnessing what they’re telling me?”
“Just give your account,” said Judge Munday. “I’ll determine what’s admissible. Just try and keep it relevant.” She gave a kind of faint sigh. “And decent.”
Tabitha took a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. It was as much to steady her nerves as anything else. She had been lying awake in her cell for most of the night, occasionally thinking of something she ought to say and then thinking she ought to get up and write it down. But she never did and now she was having trouble remembering anything.
She looked across at the jury for hints of friendliness or hostility.
“I’m not going to say very much,” she began. Her voice sounded too high, too loud. “I don’t know much about doing this. But I’ve heard that I don’t have to prove that I’m innocent. I don’t even have to give evidence at all, if I don’t want to.” She gestured across at Simon Brockbank, who was leaning back on his chair, his eyes looking up at the ceiling. “But I will say a few things.”
She took a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it and placed it on the little ledge at the front of the witness box, flattening it with the palm of her hand. On it was a numbered list she had written in her cell. It didn’t seem much, looked at in daylight, in the courtroom.
“I came back to Okeham when I bought the house. My plan was to do it up and then see how it all went. I could make a go of it in Okeham or I could rent it out as a holiday home or I could sell it.”
That was number one on her list. She looked down. She suddenly felt almost paralyzed by the idea of talking about her life in public, describing motives she hadn’t actually thought through at the time.
“Some nice person wrote a letter to the police telling them about whatever it was that I had all those years ago
