The Woman Before Me (3 page)

“No. I didn’t.”

“One further question, if I may. Do you smoke?”

Emma looks ashen. “I did. Only when I was stressed.”

“You were stressed the night of the fire weren’t you, Mrs Hatcher?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind me asking why that was?”

The silence drags out until she finally says, “I had an argument with my husband.”

“Did you smoke that evening?”

I have to lean forward to hear her answer: “No. I didn’t have any cigarettes in the house.”

“No further questions, Your Honour.”

Emma is helped from the witness stand. Not once did she look my way.

Dominic Hatcher stares at me the whole time. His look tells me that if he had a gun, he would shoot me dead. He’s flushed, black-eyed, and very angry. The prosecution tries to calm him down, but every answer he gives is louder than the one before. I shrink back into the wood.

He says I was always at their house. He says he never trusted me.

Mr Thomas softens his voice, as if to show his self-control next to Dominic’s aggression.

“Mr Hatcher, you say you always mistrusted Rosemary Wilks. Is that right?”

“Yes. I never liked her.”

It stings to hear it, even though I always knew he hated me.

He was jealous of my friendship with Emma, of how close we were.

“I wonder if you can explain to the jury how it was that this woman whom you never trusted, never liked, was left to care for your son while you enjoyed a day out at the races?”

“I didn’t like her. She gave me the creeps. But I never thought she was a murdering bitch.”

“Objection, Your Honour.”

“Sustained. Mr Hatcher, please restrain yourself,” says the judge.

Mr Thomas continues, “One more question, if I may. Were you at home the night your son died?”

“No. I was sleeping at the boarding school. I work there as a head teacher and when –”

“You were away from the house, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Why was that, Mr Hatcher?”

He sighs, breathing out slowly. “Because Emma and I had an argument. About that bitch.”

Dominic glares across at me as he leaves the stand.

It is four days since the trial began, and Nurse Hall is called forward. My favourite nurse from the hospital, she doesn’t look comfortable in the courtroom. She speaks softly, touches her mouth often. Mr Thomas goes up to the witness box first.

“Thank you for coming today, Miss Hall. It can’t be easy getting time off from a children’s ward. I imagine it is a heartrending job?”

“It can be, yes.”

“You say you met Rose Wilks in the hospital when she was in labour with her son?”

“That’s right. Her son Joel was in intensive care. I took special note of Rose, as I knew it was so hard for her, him being so poorly. But it was still a shock when he died.”

I clench my stomach.

“And how did Miss Wilks react to her son’s death?”

“She was devastated. And so was her partner. They were just in pieces.”

“Not the behaviour of someone capable of murder?”

“Objection!” shouts the Prosecution, “Nurse Hall is a nurse, not a psychologist.”

“Sustained,” the Judge says, “please rephrase, Mr Thomas.”

“Miss Hall, did you ever doubt that Rose loved her son Joel?”

“Never.” Her voice is louder than before.

“And when you saw her in the café with Luke did she show him anything other than care and affection?”

“She was very attentive.”

I catch the eye of the woman on the jury, the one in pink, to make sure she’s heard.

“So, although she may have been overly involved with Luke, perhaps as a result of losing her own son, there were no signs that she wanted to harm him?”

“Not harm, no.” Miss Hall pauses. “But when I saw she was breastfeeding him I thought that was odd.”

Mr Thomas is prepared for this, “Odd, maybe. But not harmful?”

“I suppose not.”

“In fact, in other cultures it is quite common for babies to be nursed by women who are not their mothers. In this country it was not so long ago that wealthy women would employ wet nurses.”

“I believe so.” She sounds uncertain.

“Thank you. No further questions.”

I feel warmth flood my heart for Nurse Hall. I want to call over to the woman in pink,
see, I loved Luke. I would never hurt him!

Mr Thomas waits until Nurse Hall has left the witness stand before turning to the audience.

“Ladies and Gentleman of the Jury, it is for you to decide. Does the woman before you seem capable of murder? Or does she seem a normal woman, a woman who loved her son Joel, who bore the terrible loss of his death, and was then caught up in a tragic set of circumstances? Could we not look at this sorry woman who has been accused and admit that ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I?’

Rose admits to being in Luke’s bedroom on the night he died. She should not have been there, she admits it. She should not have given in to her love and breastfed the boy. But she was grieving for her own son and depressed.

She is adamant that she did not smoke in the Hatcher’s house. By Mrs Hatcher’s own admission she too is a smoker. Mrs Hatcher had argued with her husband that night and was unhappy; the cigarette that started the fire may have been hers. Whatever the case, however the tragic accident occurred, one thing is certain: Rose Wilks did not deliberately start the fire that killed Luke Hatcher.

I put it to you that the proper verdict is that Rose Wilks is not guilty of murder. She is not guilty of manslaughter.”

NOW

5

“Hurry up, Amelia. We’ll be late!”

Cate was pouring milk over Amelia’s Rice Krispies. She had already buttered a piece of burnt toast for her own breakfast. Hearing no sign that her daughter was on her way down, she took the stairs two at a time, and found Amelia on her bed amid a heap of dolls and teddies, still in vest and knickers.

“Why aren’t you dressed?”

“I’m tired.” Amelia flopped onto the bed. “I want to stay here.”

Cate retrieved the pink dress she had laid out from the floor. “Arms up,” she commanded, pulling it over her daughter’s blonde hair. This was Tim’s fault; he’d returned her late the night before even though Cate had asked him not to. Amelia was always tired and cranky after spending a weekend with him.

“Ow, Mummy. You’re hurting.”

Ignoring her protests, Cate grabbed Amelia’s sandals, pushing them onto struggling feet and tightening the straps. “Right.

Come on – breakfast. Quickly!”

Amelia reluctantly followed her downstairs, plonked herself on a chair in front of the soggy cereal, and whined, “I don’t want Krispies. I want Cheerios.”

“Just eat them.”

Irritated, Cate saw it was nearly 8.30. She still had to drop Amelia at her childminder Julie’s house, and then drive down the coast to Bishop’s Hill Prison. She was going to be late. Throwing an apple and a sandwich in her bag, she turned to see that Amelia’s hunched shoulders were shaking. Torn between anger and pity, Cate begged, “Please don’t cry, Amelia.”

“But I wanted Cheerios,” she sobbed, “Daddy lets me.”

Giving in, Cate grabbed a clean bowl, filled it with Cheerios, sloshing the milk on the kitchen counter in her haste, and placed the bowl in front of Amelia. “Now eat them. Quickly!”

Amelia’s insistence on Cheerios had cost Cate valuable minutes. After dropping her off at Julie’s she had driven to the prison and rushed into the entrance.

She waited patiently, catching her breath. The prison officers behind the reinforced glass continued talking to each other, ignoring her, so she banged on the window and pushed her ID card under the grille.

“Cate Austin. Probation Officer. Reporting for my first day.”

Once inside the prison Officer Dave Callahan showed her around. He looked to be in his early fifties, with suspiciously dark hair and a body that was muscle gone to fat. He had probably been attractive in his youth, and held on to the illusion that he still was. Flirting with Cate, he escorted her around the units, making a show of chivalry by opening every one of the barred gates, but not showing her the respect of addressing her by name. When she asked him to cut out calling her ‘love’ and ‘sweetheart’, he just laughed in reply. She was going to have problems with him.

“So what makes a pretty girl like you want to work in a prison?”

“Well, I would have been a pilot, but I don’t like heights,” she retorted, dryly, as Callahan’s booming laugh reverberated round the walls.

“This used to be a training farm for men who were going off to the colonies.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, young farmers got taught to work the land, then pissed off for a new life in Australia. Wouldn’t mind emigrating myself. Now it’s two prisons, one for men and one for women. The men’s side is ‘open’, so you’ll see cons wandering around, just like those farm-boys, getting ready to leave. Some have been inside for years, at the end of long sentences, but if they’re here it means we can trust them to work locally. They’re Category D – low risk.”

“I’m going to be based on the women’s side.”

“That’s a different kettle of fish altogether, that’s why they’re behind the wall. Female cons aren’t categorised, but if they were those bitches would be category A. Evil, some of ’em. It’s too late to teach ’em to be proper women. They’d rather be out burgling and scoring drugs than looking after their kids.”

They walked down a slope leading to a separate building with a flat roof. The sign on the wall said ‘Hospital Wing.’

Callahan unlocked the external doors and lead Cate into a corridor of cells, where the walls had been painted white rather than grey. The hospital wing didn’t deserve its name. It was still just a prison landing, but with posters telling visitors to wash their hands and a torn diagram of a skeleton tacked to the wall. The cells were still locked, with an observation window of about thirty centimetres by ten, meaning there could never be any privacy, even for the sick. A woman was in the office, bent over a newspaper. She was wearing a starched nursing jacket instead of the usual white shirt and black tie. Cate guessed that whatever medical training she had received would be scant and it was unlikely she deserved that watch fob pinned to her chest like a medal.

At the sound of their footsteps, she looked up and came forward. She was slightly built and wore black trousers with steel capped boots. She reminded Cate of one of those games of Amelia’s, where you were dealt the tops and bottoms of people, and had to match them up. With the top half of a nurse and the bottom of a prison officer, this woman was a match Amelia would never have made. She offered the woman a hand, and introduced herself.

“I’m Cate Austin. The new probation officer.”

“Kelley Todd. Principal medical officer.”

“It’s my first day working here.”

Todd dismissed her in one glance, as if to say she knew as much.

Callahan had pushed behind them into the office, and was leafing through the
Daily Star
. “How’s that poor bitch who got roughed up?” he said.

“Susan Thomas? Well, she needed stitches, but she’ll mend. She’s keeping her trap shut though – she won’t say who attacked her.”

“Mind if I have a go at jogging her memory?”

“Be my guest.”

Callahan threw the paper into the bin and led Cate towards the furthest cell in the block.

The cell was quite large and the bed was hospital issue, with a mechanism for lowering the height by foot. In the bed, a grey blanket pulled high to her chin, was a young woman of about eighteen. She had black stitches criss-crossing a wound on her brow and forehead, and her jaw was swollen. What struck Cate most were her eyes, wide with fear.

“Watcha, Thomas. Say hello to the new probation girl.”

Thomas cautiously watched Cate, and she responded by smiling warmly, willing the poor girl to relax. She wished she could have a moment alone with her, just to calm her.

“You gonna say who did this to you?”

Thomas’ voice was barely a whisper. “No, Sir.”

Callahan leaned heavily on the bed, his hand pinning the blanket at one side and his voice low. “You sure you won’t be persuaded?”

Thomas shook her head as much as she was able, fighting tears.

“Okay… If that’s your final word. You’ll be pleased to know you’ll be shipped out tomorrow.”

The patient managed a slight smile, and Callahan chuckled, tapping Cate on the arm. “Let’s get out of here.” As he locked the cell door he said, “she’s scared stiff, poor cow.”

“You said she’d be shipped out. Where to?”

“Anywhere that’s not here. It’s standard to send cons to another prison after they’ve been roughed up. Gets ’em out of the way.”

Callahan led her out of the hospital wing and into the fresh air, where seagulls screeched, begging for scraps. They walked across an unkempt grass area, where empty cigarette packs and other litter had been discarded.

“Animals. They just chuck the rubbish out of their cell windows.” Cate looked up at the cells, where two arms from adjacent windows were reaching across, to each other, finally managing to grasp fingers. Callahan shouted, “Oy!” and they dropped their hold.

“This is the Reception Unit.” Callahan lead her to an area near the entrance to the prison. “Let’s go see Wimpy Wayne.”

In the room there was a long table with several empty plastic trays lined up, a few medical screens and, in the corner, a gormless-looking man in black-rimmed spectacles huddled over a pile of paperwork. When Callahan shouted, “Oy!” again, he jumped and a fly that had been resting on his head buzzed into the air. He pushed the glasses further up his nose, still holding the pen, a smudge of red ink marking his forehead.

“Come over here,” Callahan ordered, and Wayne slid from his chair and obediently shuffled over, shoulders hunched. He still held the red biro, the end of which was chewed to pieces.

Cate offered a hand, which Wayne looked at with surprise before grasping. “Cate Austin. The new probation officer.”

He bobbed his head enthusiastically. “Wayne Bugg. I do the processing for the induction procedures.”