The task of the Prosecution in the trial of Rick Boyd had been to establish the truth. The transcript of the trial, the distillation of evidence into printed words on paper, moved him. He was remembering the frustration he had felt when the law was discussed, similar to what he felt now. Can you kidnap a person without kidnapping them, so to speak? Has there ever been a case before your Lordship where the kidnap is only the result of the victim’s naiveté, rather than deception, and where there was no force involved because she went willingly? Albeit she went seduced by hopeful promises which are only now called lies? Could you kidnap a person without force, by seduction only? Kidnapping, my Lord, surely involves the active subjugation of will, and there was none of that here. Just as the infliction of grievous bodily harm cannot be made out as a punishable offence when the only perpetrator is the victim. My client has been framed by facts, my Lord. Some of the facts may be indisputable – the woman went with the man; she became ill; she was hurt – but the inferences drawn from these facts, such as any of this being my client’s fault, are riddled with doubt. Peter could hear in his imagination exactly the way Ms Shearer would have argued a powerful closing speech, if ever they had reached that point. If Rick Boyd had ever given evidence and been revealed in cross-examination. If Angel had not died of her own free will.
The train sped through the station where his sister lived and he had the sudden urge to get off and find the noisy sanity of children in her crowded house. An hour outside London, it was emptying fast and careering towards Dover. The sky lightened and the threat of snow was far behind. Despite himself, and the monstrous scenarios that were forming in his mind in a mushroom cloud of an explanation of why Marianne Shearer might have killed herself when she did, he looked forward to seeing where Hen had lived. Curiosity, a clue to the enigma she was, perhaps, or simply something to endorse the powerful need he had to believe in her.
His thoughts deviated to wondering if Marianne Shearer had really formed some master plan before she jumped. He decided it was unlikely that she had, or at least not any plan which bore close inspection. If she were mad enough to jump, she would surely not have been sane enough to plot the details with her usual finesse. It followed from this thinking that he wanted to tell Hen that Marianne Shearer might not even have planned the course of Rick Boyd’s acquittal, since no one in a trial could ever have the exclusive power to do that. It just looked as if she had controlled it while really it was a procession of accidents with its own momentum. He wanted to explain that it was not entirely her fault. Peter got out on to a platform and smelled the sea.
After the warmth of the train, the fresher cold took his breath away and he plunged his hands into the pockets of his coat. There was only one colour for a coat and that was black. He was still wearing the borrowed suit because it was big and comfortable and he thought he would ask Hen if he could buy it. A red woolly scarf was his only colour, worn like a badge. It was like setting out to interview a client or witness in prison, with him always hoping he could like or admire something about the person at some level or other, even if he only liked their shoes, because that always helped. There was also something else intervening which made him feel increasingly uncomfortable. He felt like a suitor, come to woo the parents of a beloved and wishing their approval, without quite knowing from when and where that feeling had arrived. He was nothing of the kind. He was searching for words for what he was. An interfering arbitrator, come to make peace. He turned off his mobile phone.
The route to the house was as easy as she had described. Go the long route, she said, because it’s easier to explain and you see the sea soonest. Walk through the town down to the front, turn right, continue along, turn right at the end of the street, it’s three doors up, and oh, by the way, if you see a woman with white hair sitting in one of the bus shelters you pass en route on the sea side of the road, bring her along, she might be my mother. Peter looked as he walked and saw no one either waiting for a bus or sheltering from the wind. The sea was magnificently churlish, speaking to him with the subdued violence he had met in many a prisoner. He turned into the correct side road and stepped up to ring the bell. There was a small Christmas tree lit in the window next to the door which was flung open as if whoever indoors was waiting for a signal.
A big man and a small woman crowded into a narrow entrance to greet him, competing for the privilege. He was standing on the bottom step of three, just about level with their waistlines, which despite the disparity in overall height appeared to coincide. One with a long torso and short legs, and the other with long legs and a thin middle leading to a long neck, bypassing the bosom entirely. He could see no resemblance to Hen at all. A blast of warmth hit him.
‘How kind of you to come all this way. I’m sorry to have sounded so brisk, yesterday, only… ’
‘Silly old bugger… ’
‘Honestly, we get so upset… Come in… ’
‘I was in the bus shelter when it came and I didn’t know… I’m not going to do that any more. I get so cross. I think, if only Angel… ’
‘Stoppit, Mother. Oh come in, it’s cold out there. Who are you, anyway?’
‘My name is Peter Friel… I spoke to you yesterday.’
‘Yes, I know the name, but who exactly are you?’
Peter smiled at them. They were the kind of people it was easy to smile at. He remembered them now, from the single day they had come to court and taken their daughter home.
‘I’m an arbitrator,’ he said. ‘I help sort things out.’
‘Of course, of course, come in, cold out there, come in.’
And then he was in, hauled up steps and into an overwarm room with a blazing fire, and his eyes getting accustomed to dark and light and an onslaught of colour. Rubbing shoulders with tapestries in glass, slinking in like a stranger on what felt like false pretences, smothered in words, but welcome. It occurred to him, humbly, that they welcomed him because they needed him and they had needed someone like him all along. An outsider to talk to. His coat was almost forcibly removed.
The fire blasted out heat and the room was an oasis of comfort. The coffee lived up to its own smell and biscuits were proffered with urgency by Mrs Joyce, both of them talking at once, as if he knew everything already. He let it flow.
‘I shouldn’t have got so angry,’ Mr Joyce was saying. ‘I really shouldn’t. I never get angry at work, even though people irritate me, so why should I get angry at home? It was just the last straw, you know. Henrietta always thinks she can fix things, always took it for granted she could. She thought she could cheer us up by staying with us at Christmas, but she was just a reminder, you know? Acting as if she owned this house, when she hasn’t lived here for years, getting stuff delivered here, as if we were her postbox. She knew it would have to go in Angel’s room.’
‘That’s not so bad, Father, she wasn’t to know, was she? And it is her house, always will be. Just like it was always Angel’s house, only Angel never really went away.’