Читать книгу Passion Into Profit - Harrington Andy - Страница 7

It's November 2001. I'm sitting in the viewing gallery of Court No. 4, and if you were sitting next to me you would have been looking down on the old wooden panels and the officious-looking people wearing capes and wigs. I can't help but feel intimidated by the gravitas of the room.

As I look down on the accused, the relative safety of the gallery is shattered as he looks up at us and secretly makes a cut-throat gesture that sends a shiver down my spine.

In the dock is a small, boyish-looking girl in her early 20s with short, dark hair giving evidence. Her chin is on her chest. She's just been cross-examined and it's not gone well. After a few moments that seem like eternity, her own counsel asks her one final question.

‘Is there anything you would like to add yourself?’

The young girl grips the rail tighter. She's visibly shaking but there is a determined steeliness to her voice. She looks up and addresses the accused directly.

‘I'm going to say something to you now that I didn't have the courage to say before.’ There is a hushed silence in the courtroom.

‘NO!

‘No longer am I going to believe it was my fault, no longer am I going to keep your secret. It's over. It doesn't matter what the verdict is – the truth is out.’

We hadn't been together for long but she had confided in me and this is where it had taken us. Over the next few days the case swung one way and then the other, depending on who was giving evidence. I cannot even begin to imagine how tough it must have been for her to wait for the outcome, but come it did.

‘Would the foreman please rise?’ asked the clerk of the court in an overly officious voice. ‘Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

I looked up to the gods. ‘Please don't let the last few years of struggle be for nothing.’

The verdict came: ‘Guilty.’

The wave of relief was overwhelming; my legs were still shaking as the adrenaline slowly started to leave my body.

But let me ask you this: have you ever struggled for something for so long and finally succeeded and reached the summit? Only for you to realize it's not the summit, and that there's a whole new mountain to climb?

That's what happened to us.

Over the next few weeks she became withdrawn and unresponsive. She would sit for hours on end staring up at the ceiling, not talking, just staring into space. She barely ate anything and I was freaking out, not knowing what to do. At this point I was running a successful recruitment company that was doing really well and had generated revenue of £21,000,000. But all the money in the world didn't help, because I didn't know what to do with it!

Out of desperation I checked her into the Priory, a mental health hospital. I was all out of ideas.

I remember looking at the consultant, hoping he had a magic answer. ‘Mr Harrington, she is clinically depressed. We are going to give her some tablets to restore her chemical imbalance. She will need to be admitted.’

I think I knew intrinsically that tablets were not the answer – but frankly, at this point, I was willing to try anything.

Fast-forward six weeks and although she has now started speaking again, she was also trashing her room on a regular basis, smoking and in one almighty mess. It was beginning to dawn on me just how lost we both were.