The Mother (3 page)

St. Clare wishes to submit an application for the CCTV footage of the person in a monogrammed brown sweat top to be removed from the jury bundle. He says it is not conclusive that the image is in fact of the defendant at all and that to present it to the jury as if it were could be misleading. Quigg respects the view of her learned friend. She agrees the images are not conclusive of identity and is happy for the jury to have a directive from the judge advising them of this. I am surprised at how cordial these legal arguments are. Apart from last Friday, when I visited with Nipa, I have never been in a courtroom before in my life, not even for a civil matter like debt or nonpayment of council tax, and there is something of a theatrical feel about it, like watching a period drama; the polished wood and paneling of the walls, the Victorian green leather and upholstery, the wigs and gowns and collars, the deference. I was expecting something more aggressive, I think, like the legal bloodletting I've seen in films, verbal warring, the cut and thrust of jibes. Instead I'm in a scene straight out of
Pride and Prejudice
and it feels surreal.

The jury is called back in and the judge directs the defendant to rise, which he does with his customary slowness, then he watches as his twelve peers are sworn in. The judge tells the jury that Tyson Manley stands charged with the murder of Ryan Williams. Then Quigg introduces herself and St. Clare to the jury and begins telling them the facts of this case.

“Ryan Williams was a sixteen-year-old boy who was predicted to do well in the GCSE exams he had been due to sit in May of this year. He lived with both his parents. He had never been in trouble with the police, though you will hear that Ryan Williams was in possession of a knife on the day he was murdered. He was a popular and highly respected pupil at school and a keen sportsman. His favorite sport was football.

“On Wednesday, March 18, Ryan went directly from school, which ended at three twenty-five p.m., to football training, which was held at the Sports Ground. Football training lasted two hours, from four o'clock till six p.m. At six p.m. when training had ended, he collected his school uniform and bag, exchanged the football boots on his feet for his trainers, left the Sports Ground with a group of other young boys his age, and they walked to HFC, a chicken and chip shop on the high street nearby. While at HFC, Ryan realized he had left his football boots in the changing room at the Sports Ground. He bought himself a meal of eight hot wings and chips and separated from his friends outside the shop. The other boys continued their journeys home while Ryan walked back to the Sports Ground to retrieve his boots.”

I feel Lorna's hand in my lap. She finds mine. Holds it.

“On the way back into the Sports Ground, Ryan met Kwame Johnson, the football coach who had led the training session. Mr. Johnson was on his way out of the Sports Ground, carrying balls and equipment to his car. He asked Ryan if he wanted a lift home and Ryan said no. He had no need of a lift as it was only a short distance from his home.

“As he exited the Sports Ground, Mr. Johnson passed an individual he believed to be the defendant, Tyson Manley, on
the street. Although he continued to his car, where he loaded the equipment, Mr. Johnson then went back to the Sports Ground to make sure everything was okay.

“At the entrance, a woman who had been jogging in the park, Nadine Forrester, literally ran into him. She shouted words to the effect that someone had been stabbed. Mr. Johnson ran into the Sports Ground, where he discovered Ryan Williams lying on the pathway in a pool of blood. He checked for breathing and on finding no signs of life, carried out CPR till the paramedics arrived and pronounced Ryan Williams dead at the scene.

“You will see in your jury bundle, exhibit one, on page three, a map of the Sports Ground and the surrounding area. It gives you an idea of the geography but does not give much detail. If you go to page four, you will see a more detailed map of the Sports Ground. It shows the football pitches, the changing room, the entrance to the park at the top of the page slightly to the right of the center. You can see where Mr. Johnson's car was parked outside the Sports Ground on the adjacent high street, and it is marked ‘number one.' You can see the spot, marked ‘number two,' at which Ryan Williams was stabbed and where he subsequently collapsed and died.

“If you go to page seven, you will see images of the stab wounds Ryan Williams sustained, not actual photographs but body graphics that will help you understand the extent of the injuries. On the back body image you will see there are four incised wounds. One of these is labeled ‘three' and is in the middle upper left back region. That incision wound punctured the lung, causing it to fill with blood and subsequently resulted in loss of life . . .”

I am hyperventilating. Though I am gulping in air, I can
not breathe. It feels as though no oxygen is entering my lungs despite the fact that I can hear myself sucking it in, gasping.

“It's okay, it's okay, . . .” Lorna is saying. “You need to slow down, take a deep breath in, hold it, let it out. And another, deep in, hold it . . .”

I have attracted the attention of the jury, the legal teams, the judge; they all look up at the gallery.

Nipa asks, “Do you want to go outside?”

I shake my head, inhale deeply, feel oxygen return to my body. I am angry with myself, not for not coping, but for not coping in front of Tyson Manley. I feel like he has already taken so much from me and truly did not want to give him this in addition, my vulnerability, the confirmation that however this trial ends he has already won, already made it nigh on impossible for me to ever breathe normally again. But when I look at him, wondering if he's enjoying this scene, to see if he's snickering and smirking, he is doing neither. His attention is fixed on the judge as before, as if he is oblivious to everything, including me.

“She's okay,” Lorna says to Nipa.

The judge says, “Counsel, might I suggest you continue with your opening statement?”

“Thank you, My Lord. I shall endeavor to be as brief as possible. Members of the jury, when the police arrived at the scene, Mr. Johnson, the football coach, told them he had seen Tyson Manley entering the Sports Ground as he was leaving it. They went to Mr. Manley's parental home, where he resides with his mother and younger brother, were unable to locate him there, and kept his home under surveillance throughout the night.

“The following morning, on March 19, Mr. Manley arrived
home freshly bathed and wearing newly purchased clothing. He told the officers he had been at the home of his girlfriend, Sweetie Nelson, from the previous afternoon till that morning. If you look at page three of jury bundle exhibit two, you will see itemized calls made from Ryan Williams's mobile phone—telephone one—to telephone two of various dates and durations up to and including Wednesday, March 18, the date on which he was murdered. Telephone two is the mobile phone belonging to Sweetie Nelson. If you turn to page four, you will see itemized calls made from Sweetie Nelson's phone to Ryan Williams's mobile phone, of various dates and durations, the last of which occurred two days prior to the murder. When questioned by police, Sweetie Nelson provided a statement corroborating Mr. Manley's assertion that for the period during which Ryan Williams was killed, Mr. Manley was at her home with her and that he did not leave her home till eight a.m. the following day. Tyson Manley also made a prepared statement to the police, effectively a blanket denial of any knowledge of or involvement in the murder of Ryan Williams. Subsequently, Mr. Manley was arrested and arraigned on the charge of murder.

“Before you can convict, there are three things you have to be sure of. The first is that Tyson Manley, the defendant in this case, did a deliberate and unlawful act. You have to be sure that at the time of committing the act, the defendant intended really serious injury. You also have to be sure that the act resulted in the death of Ryan Williams. These you will decide once you have heard all the evidence in this case. Thank you.”

As Quigg sits down, St. Clare stands. It is almost twelve thirty and St. Clare advises the judge that he has a minor legal matter to address that should take no more than fifteen minutes. The judge suggests the jury be discharged for an
early lunch and that they resume sitting at 13:55. It feels as though the case has already been ongoing an age as we leave, and having wondered about the point of the case beginning on a Friday, I find myself gratefully anticipating the weekend and the time to work on finding the strength I am going to need to see this through.

We leave the court amongst a large group of other people and are unmolested by the media, who have set up shop on the other side of the road and appear not to notice us as we slip away to a nearby pub for lunch. We study the menus awhile then Nipa goes off to the bar to order. I feel like I have been through a mangle, so distraught already and the case has barely begun.

“I don't know how I'm going to get through this,” I say to Lorna. “It's so hard. . . .”

“I know,” she says. “But we will get through this, for Ryan, we must.”

“I can't believe Quigg mentioned that knife. Why did she mention it? It made him look bad and he wasn't. Ryan never carried a knife, ever.”

“I think it's good she mentioned it, got it out of the way. Otherwise the defense would have brought it up and it would've been worse, like we had something to hide, and we haven't . . .”

Ryan was a talker, the opposite of Lloydie; my God, my boy could talk for England, even more when he was alone with me. I never really talked to my mother when I was growing up. We were not close. I was born into a “children should be seen and not heard” generation and my mother took that aspect of parenting seriously. The priorities for her generation were to ensure they didn't raise children too facety, who
had manners, remembered to say please and thank you, who knew their place and didn't butt into big-people conversations, children who did what they were told when they were told to do it; no, I was not close to my mother, I was obedient.

Then I met and, after a period of courtship, married Lloydie, left home and moved in with him, and discovered he wasn't much of a talker and that was okay, because he was a considerate husband and a good listener to the things I had to say. I never even knew there had been a factor lacking, that I had never in my life before been truly fulfilled till after Ryan was born and began learning to talk.

Ryan and I talked about everything; those little ups and downs when he was three, four, five, the angst of his friendships, minuscule upsets that might have been so easy to dismiss or brush aside we discussed as gravely as a consultant might discuss a terminal prognosis with a patient. And I wanted to,
wanted
to enter his world, so sparkling and vital and innocent, so vast and unchartered, wanted his childhood to be different to my own, warm and full. When he was older, we talked about knives; no sensible parent of a teenage boy wouldn't. We talked about other people carrying them, how ridiculously easy they made it for slighted and hormonal boys to write off not only someone else's life, but their own lives and futures, in a single hotheaded moment. Ryan knew all the pitfalls and he had never carried a knife, never.

“It had to've been planted. That murderer planted it on him. That's the only thing that makes sense to me.”

“Marce, Ryan wasn't some hoodie up to no good. The defense can do what they like, they can't make him look bad. The jury will get it. Don't worry.” Lorna pauses then asks, “That girl, Sweetie, what's she like?”

I know she's trying to shift me, stop me focusing on the knife, move the conversation onto ground she imagines is less fraught for me, but there are only a handful of subjects less fraught for me and Sweetie Nelson is not one of them. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that it was her I saw this morning on the road outside my home. I just don't know why she was there. To speak to me? Intimidate me?

“Did I tell you how she got her name?” I ask.

“Don't think you did.”

“When she was born, even after nine months of pregnancy, the mother still hadn't come up with a name for her. Some sister on the postnatal ward picked her up one day and said, ‘Hi, sweetie.' Imagine that, ‘Hi, sweetie.' She must've said it to every baby she touched that day, probably said it to every baby she ever touched in her career, and that girl's mother thought, ‘That'll do. I'll just nip out quickly and slap it on the birth certificate so she'll be stuck with a term of endearment instead of a name for the rest of her life.'”

“That's really sad.”

“She's like what you'd expect from someone from those beginnings: low.”

“Bit harsh, Marce. You can't call the girl low for choices she never made.”

“She's Tyson Manley's alibi.”

“I know. I'm just saying you can't judge people by the decisions their parents made.”

“Parent. Singular.”

“Great! Now you're the bloody morality police? I'm a single parent as well, remember?”

“I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about Sweetie's mother.”

“I'm just saying that . . .”

“Look, I don't need to be educated. Stop talking to me like I'm one of your bloody patients!” I get up from my seat, aware of the exact degree of my overreaction. The million and one things in my life I am angry about do not include Lorna. There are so many other people I wish I was shouting at, but I'm not, because none of them are right here at this moment supporting me. I should apologize, but I don't. Instead I pick up my bag. “I'm going to the toilet,” I say.

Lorna stands to go with me.

“On my own!”

I lean against the wall inside the cubicle trying to compose myself, to calm down. During my pregnancy, I read the
Dictionary of Baby Names
, from Aaron through to Zuriel. I didn't know whether I was having a girl or a boy so I studied names for both sexes. I wanted a solid name to see my baby through life while keeping every option open. With a name like Ryan, my son could have been a footballer, which was one of his dreams, or a solicitor, which was another; he could have worked in a fried chicken shop fulfilling one of his fantasies, or become the distinguished Dr. Ryan Williams, fulfilling one of my own. I wanted a name that presented no boundaries to his life choices, with meaning as well as a lovely sound.