The Guilty Couple
C.L. Taylor
Chapter 1
OLIVIA
2014
Only one member of the jury glances in my direction as they file back into the room: she’s early-forties with long dark hair and a soft, round face. She looks like a Sarah or a Helen and her heavy gaze has rested on me for the last five days. We’re around the same age and I hope that’s made her sympathetic towards me; there but for the grace of god go I and all that. Or maybe she believes that I’m the monster the prosecutor has painted me out to be: a liar and a cheat, a woman riddled with hatred and obsessed with money and death.
The truth is, I have no idea how Sarah-Helen views me, or what she’s been thinking over the course of my trial. If our roles had been reversed and I were on the jury rather than in the dock, I’d have been watching the defendant for signs of guilt: fidgeting, nervousness, swallowing and shifty eyes. I have avoided doing any of those things. I hold myself still, shoulders back, feet wide, hands interlaced, fighting the urge to lick my dry lips.
The only time my composure slipped was when my husband took the stand yesterday to give evidence for the prosecution. I hadn’t seen him in weeks and he looked tired and sallow-skinned. His hair needed a cut and the skin around his jaw looked ruddy and dry from a hasty shave. Dominic and I had not been in a good place before I was arrested but I trusted that he’d rebut the prosecuting barrister’s suggestion that I was a woman so keen to keep my house, my lifestyle, my daughter and my lover that I’d arranged to have my husband killed. Dominic did not defend me. Instead he talked, at length, about how toxic our marriage had become (true) and how much he’d wanted to mend things (not true) and how horrified and shocked he’d been to discover that I’d increased his life insurance policy and attempted to contact a hitman on the Dark Web (not as shocked as I was).
I gnawed at the raggedy cuticle on my thumb and beamed my thoughts at the witness box: Dominic, tell them the truth. Tell him! In my mind my thoughts were as powerful as a haulage truck’s headlights floodlighting a dark countryside road, but my husband didn’t look at me once. His eyes flicked from the barrister to the jury, to the judge, to the gallery, but they never rested on me. It was as though there was a force field masking me from view or maybe I wasn’t there at all; I was an invisible woman, or dead.
When Dominic finally left the stand, my cuticles were bleeding.
Now, as the jury take their seats, it isn’t my husband’s face I seek out; my fate is no longer in his hands. Sarah-Helen meets my gaze for a split second before she looks away sharply but what I see hits me in the guts like an anvil. My fate is written across her face.
Before the session my barrister Peter Stimson had told me he was still very optimistic that I’d be found not guilty, that he’d given the jury enough cause for reasonable doubt. I want to believe him but the look I saw on Sarah-Helen’s face is making it hard.
Hope is the only thing that’s got me through these last few weeks. Hope that the jury will see beyond the story the prosecutor has concocted, hope that they’ll realise I’ve been set up. I’m a thirty-nine-year-old woman, a mother, an art gallery owner, a wife and a friend. I can tell a Jan van Goyen from a Rembrandt and make a lovely batch of brownies for the school PTA sale but I can’t get past week five of Couch to 5k without running out of puff.
A frisson of excitement fills the courtroom. The judge has beckoned the court usher to come forward. Her low heels clack on the wooden floorboards as she crosses the room; the sound reverberates in my chest, matching the pounding of my heart. The judge speaks in a low voice as the usher approaches the podium. My barrister and solicitor both sit up taller in their seats.
The usher turns to address the court and a wave of fear crashes over me. It doesn’t feel real, this, me in a courtroom, waiting for a verdict. If they find me guilty, I’ll get between seven and ten years. Grace is only seven. She’ll be a teenager before I am free.
The usher turns to the jury. ‘Would the foreman please stand.’
Sarah-Helen rises from her seat and smooths the crumpled skirt of her cotton floral dress. She’s nervous. That makes me feel worse.
‘Madam Foreman,’ the usher’s voice rings out through the wood-panelled courtroom. ‘On this indictment have the jury reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?’
Sarah-Helen clears her throat lightly. All eyes are on her and the stress of the spotlight pinkens her cheeks. ‘Yes, we have.’
‘On count one,’ the usher says, ‘do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’
Time slows as Sarah-Helen’s lips part. Please, I silently pray, please, please. I didn’t conspire to have Dominic murdered. I don’t know who did but it wasn’t me.
‘Guilty.’ Sarah-Helen’s voice rings out clear and loud then I hear nothing at all. The judge’s lips move and the usher stalks back across the floor. There’s motion from the gallery, shifting and whispering. Faces, faces, faces, all looking at me. The dock, once so solid beneath my feet, becomes marshmallow soft. A hand to my elbow keeps me upright, leads me out.
I seek out my husband as I am ushered towards the door that leads to the cells. He’s sitting next to Lee, my business partner, and they’re deep in conversation. Stand up. I turn on the headlights again, beaming my thoughts into his. Tell them you set me up. Tell them that I’m innocent. Tell them what you did. My husband shifts in his seat and glances across the courtroom, as though he senses the weight of my gaze. His eyes meet mine and he smirks.