Cheryl stood up to get back to bed and heard a noise from downstairs. Her belly flipped. She opened her bedroom door and saw, with a rush of relief, that Nana’s door was open, her light on. Nana wasn’t sleeping too good. ‘It comes with age,’ she told Cheryl, ‘I sleep like a baby again.’
‘You’re not that old, Nana,’ Cheryl had said, ‘going on like you ninety or something.’
Cheryl went down to check. Nana was in her chair, eyes closed, a rug over her knees. ‘You okay, Nana?’
She opened her eyes. ‘Queasy, is all.’
‘The chicken?’
‘The chicken was fine, fresh and cook through,’ Nana objected. Then suspicious, ‘Why, you feel sickly yourself?’
‘A bit,’ Cheryl admitted. But she knew most of it was nerves, the whole business with Vinia and the trial, her insides all knotted up with it. Sometimes it felt like she was the one going to be in the dock. ‘Maybe a bug,’ she said.
‘Dry toast and water.’ Nana’s remedy for any bellyache.
‘G’night.’
‘God bless, sweet pea.’
Cheryl dreamt she was at the beach with Jeri. It was warm and the sea was still and aquamarine. She was dancing with him, Jeri’s hands on her hips, his face close to hers. Then she was looking for Milo, she had lost Milo, she was begging people to help her find him but they were just laughing at her like she made no sense. Cheryl was running to find him but the sand was dragging her down, her ankles, her muscles burning with the strain, only able to move in slow motion. Sam Millins had Milo! Sam and Carlton had him! In the distance they were walking away. Milo was bigger, almost grown, and he was in the middle, Carlton on one side doing his rolling walk, Sam with a gun in his hand. Cheryl called for Milo again and again but he never looked back.
Cheryl started awake, still wrapped in the dream. The sheets were damp with sweat and she felt greasy, shivery. She still felt sick. She threw up in the bathroom and had dry toast for breakfast. She just hoped Milo didn’t catch it too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Fiona
Joe Kitson came with her to visit the court, at the beginning of September, a couple of weeks before the trial. He met her in Albert Square, near the Town Hall, and they set off to walk down to the Crown Court. She was grateful for his company. She trusted him, she realized. And his calm manner, his steadiness, allayed her own anxieties. Good midwives, good doctors had something of the same quality. She herself had it at work but in this alien context it deserted her.
‘Do you do this for all your witnesses?’
‘Not all,’ he said. There was a warmth in his eyes. Fiona checked: he didn’t wear a ring. With a jolt she understood that she really was attracted to the man. She felt a flush spread across her neck and cheeks. It was years. There had been a few relationships since Jeff but it was awkward with having Owen and though she liked the men she’d never fallen in love with any of them. And so she’d never gone all out to make something long-lasting develop. Shelley reckoned it was a deliberate tactic. Once bitten twice shy. Fiona just argued that she hadn’t met the right person yet.
‘But a case like this,’ he was saying, ‘it’s very hard to get people to testify. I’ll do all I can to get them on board, and keep them there.’
‘There are other witnesses?’
‘There are. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you more than that.’
Fiona thought back to the day: she’d been so focused on Danny that she recalled little else. She remembered the churchgoers streaming across the grass, Danny’s mum and sister among them. But before that? Kids on bikes. A man on his mobile. She couldn’t even remember what he looked like.
They reached the side street and Joe showed her to the entrance which was specially for witnesses; he rang the intercom and a guard opened the door. They had to walk through a metal detector, and the guard searched Fiona’s bag.
Upstairs, they reached a suite of rooms. Joe took her in and they were met by Francine, a volunteer with the witness service, who would explain all the procedures and look after Fiona during the trial.
‘Come through,’ Francine said. ‘It’s a bit of a warren.’
They went along a narrow corridor with rooms off to the sides. Fiona glimpsed people waiting in chairs, some in the corridor itself. Waiting to give evidence. It would be her turn in a couple of weeks.
Francine took them into the kitchen and made tea for them. There was a whiteboard on the wall, columns with names and abbreviations. Francine noticed her reading it and explained: the case, defendants and witnesses, which volunteers were assigned to who, which court it was in.
The place reminded Fiona of a local clinic: the interface of public and professional, the whiteboard, the waiting area with toys and magazines.
‘You can’t discuss your evidence with me,’ Francine explained, ‘but any questions you have about the process I’m here to answer. And if I can’t, I’ll find someone who can.’
‘Are any of the courts free?’ Joe asked.
‘I’ll check,’ Francine said. She turned to Fiona. ‘It helps to see where you’ll be. Sometimes we just use photographs to explain the layout, but I’ll find out if we can go in.’
Fiona sipped her tea. People – volunteers, she assumed – were coming and going, chatting to each other. Occasionally someone altered an entry on the whiteboard.
Francine came back. ‘Yes, we can get a look now,’ she said.
‘Are you all right if I leave you with Francine?’ Joe asked Fiona. ‘I need a word with them in the office.’
‘Fine.’
‘I’ll see you back here.’
The courtroom was more or less as she imagined except for the frosted glass box that surrounded the dock. She remarked on it.
‘That’s to prevent the defendant from communicating with their supporters. They’ll be behind them in the public gallery.’ Francine gestured to the bank of seats at the back of the court. ‘This is the witness stand. You can go in if you like.’
Fiona did. Opposite her was the jury box and to her right the raised dais where the judge would sit. In the well of the court were the lawyers’ benches and then above those to Fiona’s left rose the dock and public gallery.
She felt exposed. ‘They said there’d be screens?’
‘That’s those.’ Francine pointed to maroon curtains bunched at the back of the witness stand. ‘Don’t know why they call them screens – sounds better, I suppose. They pull those round before you come in and just leave them open so the judge and jury and the barristers can see you. You’ll come in from the stairs there.’ Francine showed her a flight of steps that led up to the witness stand from below the court. ‘It means you won’t need to walk through open court otherwise there’d be no point in the screens.’
The air in the room was dead, sound muffled. Fiona felt a chill along her arms as she imagined it full of people. She wondered what other murder trials had unfolded here, what horrors had been spoken about by people standing on this spot.
‘It can be a bit daunting,’ Francine said. ‘Some people get nervous, then often it’s not as bad as they thought. And I’ll be with you all the time. You’ll be given a copy of your statement to read through when you arrive and then when you get called I’ll accompany you. The prosecution barrister will talk you through your evidence then each of the defence barristers will have an opportunity to question you.’
‘Each?’ It hadn’t occurred to her that there’d be more than one, but of course there would.
‘Two defendants – they’ll be running separate defences.’
Fiona came down the steps from the witness stand. ‘How long will it take?’
Francine smiled. ‘Hard to say. You’re here on Tuesday but they might not call you till after lunch.’