‘Because she’d got wise?’ he suggested. ‘Because she was going to leave him, is that why? Nobody leaves Rick Boyd.’
‘Dead right, they don’t. Not even his QC. And Angel wouldn’t have done either, if I hadn’t pitched up. She’d got way beyond being able to leave, even if she wanted to. They’d been gone a year, supposedly working together at this mythical bar in Birmingham and she’d long since stopped calling home because he’d taken her mobile. There was no bar: she had a two-bit cleaning job in a pub and he took the money, rationed it out in pence. Then one night, I think it was soon after he chopped off her finger, she phoned me, from the job. She phoned because he’d left and she thought he wasn’t coming back. She wanted me to find him. I went the next day. You know what I found.’
‘No, I don’t. Not exactly. I know what you said you’d found.’
‘Bloody lawyers. You never believe what you hear.’
‘We can’t afford to.’
Hen poured the last of the wine into her own glass and put the napkin in the carpet bag. Now she had run out of words and held on to the watch she wore on a piece of ribbon round her neck. He noticed that the ribbon was red and gold and she herself was a mass of colours. He was slow to notice, but when he did, absorbed every detail. She did not seem to mind his scrutiny. She was calm after storm, spring after winter, a woman composed for the witness box.
‘There’s one thing about Angel you have to know, Mr Friel. She wasn’t very bright and she wasn’t pretty, but she was loyal and sweet-natured. She was born to look after people, should have got a job looking after animals, something simple. She may not have believed in herself, but she was utterly incapable of telling a lie.’
‘You must have loved her very much,’ he said.
She was shaking her head, wincing at the cliché. Love, yuk.
‘No, not all the time. She was exasperating and there were times when I actually disliked her, but I wanted the best for her. Look, I wanted her to give evidence because that was the only thing which would give her back her dignity and stop her being a victim, and also because she had the power to stop him doing it again. I thought she had an absolute duty to use her experience to put him in prison for a long time and I was going to make sure that she did. Only the worst happened. Your bloody Ms Shearer used every trick in the book to spin it out, knowing every delay would make Angel more of a nervous wreck than ever. He knew that and she knew it too. The final trick was to take my evidence first; it gave her more fuel to undermine Angel before she even appeared and it kept us apart. And then she made her look a fool. Angel’s worst nightmare comes true. She wasn’t going to be believed. She was being accused of being a liar, which was the one thing she wasn’t, and she was being exposed for everything she feared she was. A clinging wretch of a woman who’d never grown up and was willing to drag a man down into her own dirt. A madwoman who would mutilate herself to make him stay.’
‘He reversed it, didn’t he?’ Peter said. ‘She was demented and he was sane. Very clever. He made himself a mirror image of her. I don’t think it would have worked, you know, if only she’d had the strength to go on. It would all have become clear when he gave his evidence, we could catch him in so many lies. He was her diametric opposite, one of those who’ll lie about everything even when there’s no need. If only she’d completed her evidence. There was no real case without her. Not even with you.’
He sounded genuinely sad. Hen did not know if this was pity, or regret for an opportunity missed. She was feeling cold, but oddly grateful for finding her tongue. She touched the handle of the carpet bag, reminding herself of its presence, wanting to go, wanting to stay, needing to explain and not knowing what.
‘If Angel had completed her evidence, then she would have to see herself as others saw her. The ultimate, stupid victim. I think anything was better than that. She may have wanted to end it all, she may have wanted just to sleep herself into oblivion, I don’t know. She just could not bear to go back into that courtroom. There should have been screens… there should have been every protection fucking Shearer argued away. There shouldn’t have been Boyd’s fake illnesses, there shouldn’t have been a weak judge allowing all those delays. Don’t tell me you don’t know that. And I should never have let her out of my sight, not let her go home with Mummy and Daddy, to be put to bed and told she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. Look, I must go home myself. Thanks for the drink.’
‘Can I see you again? This is where I am.’
She put the card he gave her into the bag and smiled. With both of them standing, the top of her head was level with his shoulder and he was unnerved to notice how small she was. Her sister had been a strapping girl, once. The sort a kind aunt would have referred to as bonny. They bore no resemblance to one another at all. He walked down the road with her, wondering if he dared offer to see her home, or if that added to his impertinence. No, Peter, don’t push your luck. You know where she lives and she might, just might, phone you. Saturday evening crowds were gathering, looking for warmth on another cold, January night.
‘Can I get you a taxi? I’ve kept you late,’ he said, hurrying along beside her.
‘No. I don’t do taxis, except for work for carrying things.’
She wanted rid of him now and he felt awful, leaving her, as if he was letting one of his nieces cross the road on her own.
‘What exactly do you do, Henrietta?’
Not a good question. He remembered what she did. Something menial and dull. Shearer had sneered at it.
They had stopped at a bus stop and he could see one waiting at the next traffic light, ready to pull up and take her away.
‘Me?’ She sounded surprised at the question, sticking her hand out for the bus, not looking at him. ‘Me? Oh, I look after things. Clothes are so much more reliable than people. It’s all in the trial transcript. She gave me a job description, didn’t she? You can look up my website: Frockserve.com. You could do with a bit of scrubbing up yourself.’
She was looking him up and down with a glimmer of amusement; she in her mass of muted colours, and he, bland and rumpled and egg-stained. ‘And,’ she added as the bus slowed and a cyclist cut across, slowing it further, giving her the chance of the last word, ‘don’t think I don’t know your game, Mr Friel. You don’t care about my sister or me. It’s Marianne Shearer you care about. Your club, your kind. Your brotherhood.’
He stood rooted to the spot, because she was right.
The bus rolled her towards home. Henrietta Joyce pulled out the emerald square and sewed a few more stitches. Then she pulled out the lavender-smelling napkin and blew her nose on it, thinking how people imagined she was always in control of herself just because she seemed as if she was. They would make unconscious judgements about her because of the clothes and the way she sat, long before they had even really looked, but everybody did that with everybody. If manners maketh man, colours maketh woman. She decided that despite the doggy eyes and the egg on the shirt, she did not like Peter Friel for accosting her on a train in the evening of a dark day and pretending he cared.