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Chapter Four

~

Devon, May 1996

‘We’ve got a lot to get through today,’ Lucinda Sharpe began, bursting into the meeting room at the secure accommodation. Emily was being detained in this facility. Then, almost as an afterthought, Lucinda added, ‘How are you holding up?’ She was out of breath.

‘I’m all right,’ Emily said. It didn’t sound very convincing, even to Emily.

There was a ball of nerves in her stomach that just wouldn’t go away. She’d been trying hard not to think about the ordeal she would have to face over the next few days.

‘Really?’

Emily looked at her solicitor. Lucinda was blessed with flawless olive skin, beautiful dark eyes and shiny black hair, but cursed with a rather large bottom and a lousy sense of fashion. Emily thought she must be aiming for smart casual, but didn’t think she’d succeeded in pulling it off on any of the occasions they’d met so far.

Today, she was dressed more casually and less smartly than usual, Emily noticed, her buttocks squeezed into unflattering black leggings, and her hair held back with a neon yellow headscarf. She was wearing a denim shirt with too many buttons undone, and, somewhat ironically, court shoes.

Lucinda had often arrived late for appointments and police interviews with Emily, but she was punctual on this particular morning. It was to be their last meeting before Emily’s trial began the following day.

Emily was very fond of Lucy, as her lawyer insisted on being called. Lucy talked about her children a lot, and whenever she did, a proud smile lit up her face. She complained that she was always cutting corners, doing her kids’ homework for them because explaining would take longer, or heating up frozen pizza when she didn’t have time to cook, or putting on a video instead of reading a bedtime story so that they wouldn’t squabble while she got some urgent work done.

Listening to Lucy stirred up mixed emotions in Emily. Lucy was a single mother of four, and yet Emily found her accounts of family life attractive simply because they struck her as ordinary. She thought Lucy must be an excellent mum. Emily didn’t have any stories to tell Lucy about her family.

What Emily liked best about her solicitor was that she wasn’t patronising. She talked in legalese, using complex, complicated sentences, and she explained technical terms only when necessary. During Lucy’s visits, Emily didn’t feel like a child or an animal, as she sometimes did around the staff and other detainees.

‘Tell me the truth. How are you really doing?’

‘Well, I’m still not sleeping very well,’ Emily admitted, ‘and when I do manage to fall asleep, I have nightmares.’

Emily’s nightmares had got worse and worse since her father’s murder. Since then, she’d relived the whole incident several times in her sleep. At the end of the scariest dream she’d had, Graham Cavendish had survived.

‘We’ll have to see if the doctor can prescribe you some light sedatives.’ Lucy kept her caring eyes on Emily as she took some papers out of her bulging briefcase and sat down. ‘Are you eating better?’

‘Yes.’ She told herself it wasn’t a complete lie. She was making an effort to finish her meals. She just wasn’t keeping them down.

‘Uh-huh,’ came the response.

Emily realised she wasn’t fooling Lucy.

‘Are you ready to talk about what’s likely to happen to you, Emily?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I want to go through everything again just to be clear. That will be more for my benefit than yours, though, as you won’t have to talk during the trial. The recorded tapes of your interviews will be played in court instead. Firstly there were the interviews with the arresting officers in Barnstaple Police Station on Christmas Day, then those with DC Hazel Moreleigh and DS Michael Tomlinson in the Devon and Cornwall Police Headquarters over the following days.’

Lucy had already told Emily all this, and she felt very relieved that she wouldn’t have to take the stand.

‘As I’ve said before, you’ll be tried in the Crown Court here in Exeter. Your trial shouldn’t last more than a week. My guess is four days. Your sister and your mother will be called as witnesses.’

Here, Lucy paused. Emily realised her lawyer was also dreading the impression Josephine might make. She’d promised Emily she would ‘pull herself together.’ Emily supposed that meant she would sober up. But although Josephine had attended every one of Emily’s interrogations, as the law required, it was impossible to predict how drunk she’d be from one day to the next. Sometimes her presence had been merely a physical one. At best, she smelt slightly of whiskey; at worst, she couldn’t walk into the room straight, then tried hard not to doze off during the interviews. Emily could hardly blame her. After all, her daughter had just murdered her husband.

Amanda, on the other hand, had been very supportive. Emily often wondered how she would have coped that night without her sister. When, unbelievably, the gunshot hadn’t woken up Josephine, Amanda had decided to wait a while before calling 999. Then she’d gone over the questions the police were likely to ask Emily so she knew what to expect.

The emergency services had arrived two hours later, rather conspicuously in two squad cars and an ambulance with blue lights rotating and sirens blaring. Emily was sitting on the bedroom floor and Amanda was kneeling beside her, gently rocking her and stroking her hair. They were both covered in blood. Emily vaguely remembered her mother, who must have finally woken up when the police arrived, rushing towards them, an anxious look on her face. There were also two police officers. One of them had gone pale at the sight of all the blood while his colleague asked Emily and Amanda where they were hurt.

Amanda had done all the talking. Emily had been very grateful for that. It was Amanda who had used a blanket to cover up their father’s body and his gun as they lay side by side on Emily’s double bed. Emily had felt proud of her sister for everything she’d done that evening.

Since that night, Emily had often repeated to herself the words Amanda had said over and over to her as they were sitting on the bedroom floor: It’s over now, Emily. He can’t hurt you any more. It had become her mantra. Amanda had been Emily’s rock. She felt that she owed her life to her sister.

‘I’m sure Amanda’s testimony will be very useful,’ said Lucy tactfully, bringing Emily out of her reverie and back to the present. ‘She was there that night and she speaks very highly of you.’

Lucy leaned forwards and reached across the table to pat Emily’s hand. The contact made Emily jump and her knee hit the table quite hard. It didn’t budge; the very first time she’d come into this room, Emily had noticed that the furniture was bolted to the floor.

‘Now, for the trial itself,’ Lucy began, removing her hand from Emily’s to adjust her headscarf. ‘We couldn’t really have raised the issue of fitness to plead. No judge would have found you unfit to plead. It’s obvious from your school reports that you’re a very bright young lady, so clearly you’ll have no trouble understanding the proceedings of your trial. We can’t go for self-defence either—’

‘Why not?’ Emily asked, trying to sound patient, but wishing that Lucy would tell her what arguments she did intend to use rather than what she’d rejected.

‘Well, as you know,’ Lucy said, ‘the police didn’t just find the murder weapon; they also found a straight razor with an open steel blade, so it will be hard to rebut either premeditation or intent. And anyway, self-defence doesn’t really work like that. No, our best defence is to stress the mitigating factors – the, uh, abuse. Thanks to the examination you had in the North Devon District Hospital just after your arrest, we’ve got evidence for rape. If we can argue successfully for a special defence of diminished responsibility, you’ll only be found guilty of voluntary manslaughter.’

Emily tried to fight against her increasing panic. Lucy had already explained diminished responsibility to her, but this was the first time she’d mentioned voluntary manslaughter. ‘What do you mean, only?’

Lucy chose not to answer that. ‘Furthermore, Dr Irvine’s report will help us to exonerate you from the murder charge.’ Dr Rosamund Irvine was the psychiatrist who’d been treating and assessing Emily since shortly after her arrest. ‘She has said that you’re suffering from depression. Your self-harming and suicide attempt support this, according to her.’

Emily had cut into the skin on her forearm with a plastic knife she’d taken from the canteen. She’d also stored up her antidepressants and painkillers for several days and had taken them all together. But the knife had broken easily and she hadn’t had nearly enough pills to do herself any real damage. Her psychiatrist had told her it was a cry for help, and that help was here now.

‘Dr Irvine has stated that your depression started before your father was killed, and that’s vital,’ Lucy continued. ‘This will show that your mental state was too fragile at the time for you to be accountable for, um, your actions. Dr Irvine’s conclusions will be backed up by the psychologist you were referred to by your GP last October.’

Emily raised her eyebrows. She’d had just two sessions with this psychologist. He’d seemed completely indifferent to what she’d told him, which wasn’t very much.

‘Emily,’ Lucy’s tone was even softer than before. ‘I’m very confident that diminished responsibility will be applied. That will allow the judge discretion as to how to pass sentence. It will depend on the judge, of course. But I think we should be optimistic. Given your circumstances and your, um, mental health, you’ll be given a hospital order so that you can get the treatment you need rather than a sentence based on punishment.’

‘How long?’

‘My guess is a maximum stay of three years in a care home. You’ll probably be back home in eighteen months.’

Emily flinched.

‘Or you can go somewhere else when you’re released,’ Lucy amended hastily. ‘You’ll be seventeen after all.’

That was a shorter period than Emily had feared.

‘Is there anything that won’t work in my favour?’

‘Well, in one of your interviews, DS Tomlinson commented on your lack of remorse, but I’m hoping that the judge will be more sympathetic. I can’t see how Tomlinson expected you to regret your father’s death.’

Emily nodded. Amanda had told her to look contrite in court, but Emily wasn’t sure she could manage that. Amanda was a talented actress; she loved participating in school plays. Emily had only ever helped with the artwork for the scenery. Anyway, DS Tomlinson was right. Emily didn’t feel at all sorry. Why should she? She was aware that some of her answers in her interviews had sounded unemotional, even cold. She sometimes felt as though all this had happened to someone else.

‘The detective sergeant’s remark should be countered to a large extent by Dr Irvine’s diagnosis,’ Lucy said. ‘Your psychiatrist will show that you are showing the classic symptoms of a victim of abuse. Depression, and anorexia obviously, and post-traumatic stress disorder. She’ll also say that you are showing signs of dissociative identity disorder. Apparently, dissociating can be a coping mechanism after extreme childhood trauma and this explains why you might seem detached at times.’

‘What about the evidence?’

‘Well, that’s nearly all unequivocally against you: your fingerprints were on the weapon – along with your father’s since it was his gun, and your sister’s since she’d taken it from your hands; the blood on your nightwear matched that of your father…’ Lucy counted off each point on her fingers ‘…the ballistics was inconsistent with the blood spatter analysis, but there is nothing in either report that will help us, and, finally, you confessed in an interview that was recorded on audio tape.’

Emily tasted the coppery tang of blood and realised she’d been biting her lip. She made a conscious effort to stop. She didn’t want to show Lucy just how nervous she was.

‘But our defence is not to show you’re innocent,’ Lucy continued. ‘As I said before, it’s to highlight the abuse you’d been a victim of for some time. That way, we can have the charge commuted from murder to voluntary manslaughter.’

This time it didn’t sound quite so bad, but Emily felt far from reassured despite Lucy’s gentle, confident tone of voice. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep that night.

~

By the time Emily and Lucy had finished talking, night was falling. Emily handed Lucy two pieces of thick sketch paper that she’d kept face down on the table. Emily watched Lucy examine her pictures. One of the drawings was of a tree with different coloured circular swirls on the ends of its long branches. Two girls were sitting under the tree eating ice cream. Emily had tried to use bright colours, but the picture looked a little dark, even to her eyes.

‘For your daughters,’ she said. ‘The other one is for your sons.’

In the other picture, a hammock was suspended from a similar tree. Two black dogs peered from the hammock, their bright red tongues hanging out.

‘They’re beautiful!’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘You’re really gifted!’ Emily forced a smile. ‘Don’t worry about the trial, Emily. I’m certain it will go well. You’re young, and any judge will see you’re the real victim.’

Emily was reminded of Amanda’s retort that night to one of the arresting officers when he’d realised it was their father’s blood on their nightclothes.

‘The girls aren’t hurt. It’s the victim’s blood,’ he’d said to his colleague.

‘Our father is definitely not the victim here,’ Amanda had spat at him. Emily had worshipped her sister more than ever for that remark.

‘I’ve got something for you, too,’ Lucy said, interrupting Emily’s reflection. ‘I’ll leave it with the director.’ She held up a carrier bag. ‘For you to wear in court tomorrow.’

Emily was touched by her lawyer’s thoughtfulness and generosity, but dreaded what sort of clothes she might have selected. Lucy pulled out a navy knee-length skirt, black shoes, a light blue and white checked blouse and a white woollen cardigan, all from NEXT. Emily was pleasantly surprised.

‘Thank you.’ Emily managed to lean over the table and kiss Lucy on the cheek before she was scolded by the officer on duty from his position in the corner of the meeting room.

~

That evening after dinner, Emily didn’t even need to make herself sick. The following morning after breakfast, she also felt so nauseous that she vomited several times without sticking her fingers down her throat. Emily’s hands shook as she tried to do up the button of her new skirt. The waistband was tight around her stomach, which felt bloated even though it was empty.

It was the first day of the court case.

Lucy had informed her that Mrs Justice Taylor QC would be presiding. A female judge. Emily had no idea what effect this would have on the outcome of her trial. When she’d allowed herself to think about the court proceedings, she’d always visualised a male judge. But perhaps a woman would be more sympathetic. Emily hoped so.