Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

35. The Trial

The Trial

Robert Miles, our barrister, has given us a full list of the witnesses appearing in court but it’s still a shock to see Alison Jacobs on the stand. She could not look more mousy and unprepossessing with her limp hair and pallid skin; the shapeless, unalluring costume she favors. Beneath lies a heart of ice.

“Mrs. Jacobs,” Donald Glossop, the Crown prosecutor, begins, “you were late to come forward as a witness. May I ask what prompted you to do so?”

“I was in two minds about it. But, after talking with various people in the village, I realized I had relevant information which would shed light on the characters living at Blakely Farm. And that could be helpful for the jury.”

The account Alison relays is heavily embellished, so much so at one point I cry out and my sister, who is next to me in the public gallery, takes hold of my hand. Alison tells the court her son William and the rest of his class were invited out to the farm in the school holidays. All the parents were wary, she says, knowing what the Johnson family were like. “We used to worry about Bobby and the way he was being brought up.”

“Why was that?”

“The Johnsons don’t live by a normal code of conduct. They’re a bit feral. I’ll give you an example: Bobby saw a newborn calf being shot in the head with a pistol when he was five years old. Such brutality. Quite unnecessary for a small boy to see it. Next day he came in and told his class about it. Some of them had nightmares for weeks afterwards.”

A ripple of disgust passes through the courtroom.

“We all knew the Johnsons didn’t take enough care. Sonia Johnson was killed when she was milking because she put her head right up close to the cow’s rear. Surely she should have known better?”

“Is that everything, Mrs. Jacobs?” Mr. Glossop asks, and I can hear even a note of disdain in his voice.

Good. I hope everyone in this court sees Alison for what she is: a sneak, a troublemaker, a gossip. A predator, feeding on new flesh.

“The afternoon our children were invited out to the farm was a fiasco,” she says. “Quite frankly, my son was lucky to come out of it alive.”

I see how she glances at the dock before she delivers her final bullet of hate. “Afterwards, we said we’d never again let our children go to Blakely Farm. There will be a fatality at that place, sooner or later, we said. Sadly, it came sooner than any of us expected.”