I Let You Go (39 page)

As soon as we got home I would stop that. As soon as we got home I would stop you thinking at all.

Bristol Crown Court is older than the Magistrates’ Court, and solemnity murmurs through its wood-panelled corridors. Ushers walk quickly in and out of the courtroom, their flapping black gowns causing papers on the clerk’s desk to float upwards as they pass. The quiet is discomforting, like a library where the pressure of not talking makes you want to scream, and I press the heels of my hands hard into my eye sockets. When I remove them, the courtroom swims out of focus. I wish I could keep it that way: the blurred edges and foggy shapes seem less threatening, less serious.

Now that I’m here, I’m frightened. The bravado with which I have approached this day in my own mind has vanished, and although I’m terrified of what Ian would do to me if I walked free, I am suddenly just as frightened of what will be waiting for me in prison when I’m sentenced. I squeeze my hands together and dig my nails into the skin on my left hand. My mind fills with the echo of approaching footsteps on metal walkways; narrow bunks in grey cells with walls so thick no one will hear me scream. I feel a sharp pain in my hand and look down to see that I’ve drawn blood, and when I wipe it away it leaves a smear of pink across the back of my hand.

The enclosure into which I have been placed has space for several more people; two rows of chairs are bolted on to the floor, their seats flipped up as though in a cinema. A glass wall runs inharmoniously around three sides, and I twist self-consciously in my seat as the courtroom begins to fill with people. There are many, many more spectators here than at my initial hearing. On their faces isn’t the mild curiosity of the magistrates’
tricoteuses
, but the violent hatred of those intent on justice. One man, olive-skinned and with a leather jacket two sizes too big for him, leans forward in his seat. He doesn’t take his eyes off me, and his mouth twists in silent anger. I start to cry, and he shakes his head, curling his lip in disgust.

In my pocket is the photo of Jacob and I slip my hand around it, finding the corners with my fingers.

The legal teams have grown: each barrister has several people behind them, sitting at rows of desks, and leaning forward to mutter urgently to one another. The ushers and barristers are the only people who seem comfortable here. They joke amongst themselves in daringly raised tones, and I wonder why the court is like this; why a system would so intentionally seek to alienate those who need it. The door creaks open and another wave of people come in, uneasy and wary. My breath catches as I see Anya. She slides into the front row next to the man in the leather jacket, who takes her hand.

You must remember that he was a boy. That he had a mother. And that her heart is breaking.

The only empty area of the court is the jury box; its twelve seats redundant. I imagine the rows filled with men and women, hearing the evidence, watching me speak, deciding on my guilt. I have spared them that; spared them the torment of wondering whether they’ve made the right decision; spared Anya the pain of her son’s death spread across a courtroom. Ruth Jefferson explained this would work in my favour: judges look more leniently on those who save the courts the expense of a trial.

‘Court rise.’

The judge is old, the stories of a thousand families written across his face. His sharp eyes take in the full courtroom, but don’t linger on me. I am just another chapter in a career full of difficult decisions. I wonder if he has already made up his mind about me – if he already knows how long I should serve.

‘Your Honour, the Crown brings this case against Jenna Gray…’ The Clerk reads from a piece of paper, her voice clear and matter-of-fact. ‘Ms Gray, you are charged with causing death by dangerous driving, and with failing to stop and record an accident.’ She looks up at me. ‘How do you plead?’

I press my hand against the photo in my pocket. ‘Guilty.’

There is a muffled sob from the public gallery.

Her heart is breaking.

‘Please sit down.’

The Crown Prosecution barrister stands up. He lifts a carafe from the table in front of him and he pours slowly and deliberately from it. The sound of water filling his glass is the only noise in the courtroom, and when all eyes are on him, he begins.

‘Your Honour, the defendant has pleaded guilty to causing the death of five-year-old Jacob Jordan. She has admitted that the standard of her driving on that night last November fell far below the standard expected by a reasonable person. In fact, police investigations showed that Ms Gray’s car left the road and mounted the pavement immediately prior to the point of impact, and that she was travelling at between thirty-eight and forty-two miles per hour – far in excess of the thirty-mile-an-hour speed limit.’

I squeeze my hands together. I try to breathe slowly, evenly, but a hardness has formed in my chest and I can’t take in air properly. The sound of my heart seems to echo inside my head and I close my eyes. I can see the rain on the windscreen, hear the scream – my scream – as I see the little boy on the pavement; running, turning his head to shout something to his mother.

‘Furthermore, Your Honour, after hitting Jacob Jordan and – it is believed – killing him outright, the defendant failed to stop.’ The barrister looks around the courtroom; his rhetoric wasted with no jury to impress. ‘She did not get out of the car. She did not call for help. She did not offer any remorse, or practical assistance. Instead, the defendant drove away, leaving five-year-old Jacob in the arms of his traumatised mother.’

She leaned over her son, I remember, her coat almost covering him, protecting him from the rain. The car headlights picked out every detail, and I covered my mouth with my hands, too frightened to breathe.

‘You might imagine, Your Honour, that such an initial reaction could be attributed to shock. That the defendant may have panicked and driven away, and that minutes later, perhaps a few hours – maybe even a day later – she would come to her senses and do the right thing. But, Your Honour, the defendant instead fled the area, hiding in a village a hundred miles away, where nobody knew her. She didn’t give herself up. She may have entered a guilty plea today, but it is a plea born from a realisation that there is nowhere left to run, and the Crown respectfully requests that this be taken into consideration when sentencing.’

‘Thank you, Mr Lassiter.’ The judge makes notes on a pad of paper, and the CPS barrister bows his head before taking his seat, flicking his gown out behind him as he does so. My palms grow damp. There is a wave of hatred from the public gallery.

The defence barrister gathers her papers. Despite my guilty plea, despite the knowledge that I have to pay for what has happened, I suddenly want Ruth Jefferson to fight my corner. Nausea rises in my stomach at the realisation that this is my last chance to speak out. In another few moments the judge will sentence me, and it will be too late.

Ruth Jefferson rises, but before she can speak, the courtroom door flies open with a bang. The judge looks up sharply, his disapproval evident.

Patrick seems so out of place in the courtroom that for a moment I don’t recognise him. He looks at me, visibly shaken to see me handcuffed in a bullet-proof glass box. What is he doing here? I realise the man with him is DI Stevens, who nods his head briefly towards the judge, before making his way to the centre of the courtroom and leaning over to speak in a low voice to the CPS barrister.

The barrister listens intently. He scribbles a note, then stretches an arm across the long bench to pass it to Ruth Jefferson. There is a heavy silence, as though everybody is holding their breath.

My barrister reads the note and gets slowly to her feet. ‘Your Honour, may I be permitted a short recess?’

Judge King sighs. ‘Mrs Jefferson, do I need to remind you how many cases I have this afternoon? You have had six weeks to consult with your client.’

‘I apologise, Your Honour, but information has come to light that may have material bearing on my client’s mitigation.’

‘Very well. You have fifteen minutes, Mrs Jefferson, after which time I fully expect to sentence your client.’

He nods to the clerk.

‘Court rise,’ she calls.

As Judge King leaves the courtroom, a security guard steps into the dock to take me back down to the cell block.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask him.

‘God knows, love, but it’s always the same. Up and down like a bleedin’ yoyo.’

He escorts me back to the airless room in which I spoke to my barrister less than an hour previously. Almost immediately Ruth Jefferson comes in, with DI Stevens behind her. Ruth begins talking before the door has closed behind them.

‘You do realise, Ms Gray, that perverting the course of justice isn’t something the courts take lightly?’

I say nothing, and the barrister sits down. She tucks a stray dark hair back beneath her wig.

DI Stevens reaches into his pocket and drops a passport on to the table. I don’t need to open it to know that it’s mine. I look at him, and at my exasperated barrister, then I put out my hand to touch the passport. I remember filling out the form to change my name ahead of our wedding. I tried out my signature a hundred times, asking Ian which one looked the most grown-up, the most
me
. When the passport arrived it was the first tangible proof of my change in status, and I couldn’t wait to hand it over at the airport.

DI Stevens leans forward and rests his hands on the table, his face level with mine. ‘You don’t have to protect him any more, Jennifer.’

I flinch. ‘Please don’t call me that.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

I say nothing.

DI Stevens speaks quietly, his calmness making me feel safer, more grounded.

‘We won’t let him hurt you again, Jenna.’

So they know. I let out a slow breath and look first at DI Stevens, and then Ruth Jefferson. I feel suddenly exhausted. The DI opens a brown file on which I see is written ‘Petersen’; my married name. Ian’s name.

‘Lots of calls,’ he says. ‘Neighbours, doctors, passers-by, but never you, Jenna. You never called us. And when we came, you wouldn’t speak to us. Wouldn’t press charges. Why wouldn’t you let us help you?’

‘Because he would have killed me,’ I say.

There is a pause before DI Stevens speaks again. ‘When did he first hit you?’

‘Is this relevant?’ Ruth says, looking at her watch.

‘Yes,’ DI Stevens snaps, and she sits back in her chair, her eyes narrowed.

‘It started the night we got married.’ I close my eyes, remembering the pain that came out of nowhere and the shame that my marriage had failed before it had even begun. I remember how tender Ian was when he returned; how gently he soothed my aching face. I said I was sorry, and I went on saying it for seven years.

‘When did you go to the refuge in Grantham Street?’

I’m surprised by how much he knows. ‘I never went there. They saw my bruises at the hospital and asked about my marriage. I didn’t tell them anything, but they gave me a card and said I could go there whenever I needed to, that I’d be safe there. I didn’t believe them – how could I be safe so close to Ian? – but I kept the card. I felt a little less alone for having it.’

‘You never tried to leave?’ DI Stevens says. There is barely concealed anger in his eyes, but it isn’t directed at me.

‘Plenty of times,’ I say. ‘Ian would go to work and I’d start packing. I’d walk round the house picking up memories, working out what I could realistically take with me. I would put it all in the car – the car was still mine, you see.’

DI Stevens shakes his head, not following.

‘It was still registered in my maiden name. Not intentionally, at first – it was just one of those things I forgot to do when we got married – but later it became really important. Ian owned everything else; the house, the business … I started to feel I didn’t exist any more, that I’d become another one of his possessions. So I never re-registered my car. A small thing, I know, but…’ I shrug. ‘I would get everything packed, and then I would carefully take everything out and put it back the way it was. Every time.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he would have found me.’

DI Stevens is flicking through the file. It is astonishingly thick and yet all that can be listed within it are the incidents that resulted in a call to police. The broken ribs and the concussion that required a spell in hospital. For every mark seen there were a dozen others hidden.

Ruth Jefferson puts a hand on the file. ‘May I?’

DI Stevens looks at me and I nod. He passes her the file and she begins looking through it.

‘But you left after the accident,’ DI Stevens said. ‘What changed?’

I take a deep breath. I want to say that I had found my courage, but of course it wasn’t that at all. ‘Ian threatened me,’ I say quietly. ‘He told me that if I ever went to the police – if I ever told anyone what had happened – he would kill me. And I knew he meant it. That night, after the accident, he beat me so badly I couldn’t stand, then he hauled me upright and pinned my arm across the sink. He poured boiling water over my hand, and I passed out from the pain. Then he dragged me out to my studio. He made me watch while he broke everything – everything I’d ever made.’

I can’t look at DI Stevens. It is as much as I can do to get the words out. ‘Ian went away then. I don’t know where. I spent the first night on the kitchen floor, then I crawled upstairs and lay in bed, praying I would die in the night, so that by the time he came back he wouldn’t be able to hurt me any more. But he didn’t come back. He was gone for days, and gradually I got stronger. I started to fantasise that he was gone for good, but he had hardly taken anything with him, so I knew he could come back at any moment. I realised that if I stayed with him, that one day he would kill me. And that’s when I left.’

‘Tell me what happened to Jacob.’

I put my hand in my pocket and touch the photograph. ‘We had an argument. I had an exhibition – the biggest I’d ever had – and I’d spent days setting it up with the man who curated it, a man called Philip. It was a day-time event, but even so Ian got drunk. He accused me of having an affair with Philip.’