Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

55. 1968

1968

When the date for the trial was set, Eleanor came to stay with us at the farm. As a solicitor she had been in court hundreds of times, she knew the drill. Night after night, we sat by the fire while Eleanor explained what would happen. She told us who everyone was and showed us where each would sit, drawing a diagram of the court with crosses to mark each person’s place. “The court clerk sits here,” she’d say, brandishing her felt-tip. “This is the press bench, it’s going to be packed when Gabriel testifies.” I remember staring at her sketch of the prisoner’s dock, with its bleak labeling— FRANK —and thinking, This cannot be happening. Not to us.

Eleanor grilled Frank on the events of that night, taking him through it, minute by minute, until he begged for a break. She was relentless. “I know it hurts to think about it, Frank. But it’s going to hurt a lot more when you’re facing Donald Glossop in court. Believe me, he’s as vicious as a rabid dog. You’ve got to be watertight.”

How many times did she make him go over that final fateful scene? Jimmy wild with drink, abusing Frank while he tried to wrest the shotgun from him. A tussle between the brothers which ended in death.

The essence of the case is this: Did Frank, following those last moments of goading from Jimmy, intend to cause serious harm, which would then make Jimmy’s death murder? Or was it, as Frank claims, an act of self-defense that ended in devastating tragedy?

Robert Miles, our defense barrister, was young to take silk. He is in his early forties, slim and fresh-faced, an almost exact antithesis of his opponent. I picture Robert running along the Thames at sunrise while Donald Glossop sleeps off another big night of port and Stilton. Robert is graceful, elegant, courteous; the Crown prosecutor has the bulk of a rugby player, the attitude that goes with it.

Before he hired Robert, Gabriel spoke to everyone he knew in the legal world and quite a few people he didn’t, friends of friends, fathers of friends, uncles, boyfriends, brothers. Robert’s was the name that came up most frequently.

Gabriel is visibly relaxed as he awaits cross-examination. Robert is on the payroll, after all. And Gabriel’s ordeal is almost at an end.

“I see no reason to rake over the details of your relationship with Mrs. Johnson again,” Robert says. “I’m much more interested to hear about Jimmy’s state of mind in the time you spent with him, both in your garden at home and in the car journey to the farm.”

“He was aggressive. Full of vitriol. But also, at the stage of drunkenness where he was not making a great deal of sense.”

“But you felt threatened by him?”

Gabriel pauses and Robert quickly adds: “An inebriated, vengeful man in charge of a shotgun could pose quite a serious threat, I imagine?”

He might as well have said: This is your chance to set up the self-defense scenario, remember?

“Yes, I felt we were in a very dangerous situation. Jimmy shot our kitchen window out. Any one of us might have been wounded. That’s why I wanted him and his shotgun off my property. I needed to keep my son safe. Any father would feel the same.”

“Initially, you were able to calm Jimmy down by telling him your relationship with Beth was over. Was he still in a calm state when you delivered him home?”

This time, Gabriel quickly takes the bait. “Initially, yes. He seemed completely worn out by it all. But as we neared the farm, it was as if he had forgotten what I told him about me and Beth. He started making the same threats. He was in a violent mood again, no question.”

I look at Frank in the dock, see the pain flash across his face, though I doubt anyone else would notice. Jimmy was a necessary sacrifice to make our story stick.

“Sounds an explosive mix for Frank to deal with once he got his brother inside?” Robert asks but, before Gabriel can answer, Donald Glossop leaps to his feet.

“My lord, conjecture? Mr. Wolfe cannot have known what went on inside the farmhouse or indeed Jimmy Johnson’s temperament in those final moments.”

Judge Miskin raises a hand in weary acknowledgment. It must be tiring, the constant wrangling between counsel, like overseeing a playground fight with no end in sight.

Robert apologizes to the judge.

“Mr. Wolfe,” he continues. “You were the last person to see Jimmy Johnson alive other than his brother. Did you believe him to be a danger to himself and others on the night of September the twenty-eighth?”

“Absolutely I did. He was drunk in charge of a lethal weapon and in a mind to cause harm.”

Gabriel is a leading witness, and one of the conditions of Frank’s bail was that the two of them must not meet in the months leading up to the trial. But in those first, awful early days it felt impossible that Gabriel and I should never see one another again. So much between us had been left unsaid. One morning, when Frank was out on the farm, I called him and asked if we could meet.

“But where?” he said. “If anyone sees us…”

I told him of a place where Bobby and I used to play hide-and-seek, a field that was halfway between Meadowlands and Blakely Farm and had a huge sweet chestnut tree at one end. We loved that tree, Bobby and I, almost as much as the old oak on the farm. When he was small I used to take storybooks and a little picnic and we’d spend a few hours there, reading about Peter Rabbit or digging for worms, one of Bobby’s top pursuits.

I arrived at the tree before Gabriel and waited for him to come. It was a clear blue day, cold, with sharp sunshine. I wished I were anyone but me. And Gabriel was anyone but him. I couldn’t tell if the anxiety humming through my bloodstream was because I was seeing him again or because of the things I must tell him.

“There you are,” he said, appearing around the tree, a few minutes later.

It was like a miniature heart attack just looking at him.

He had lost weight, there were deep hollows in his cheeks and dark rings beneath his eyes. But still the beautiful boy I fell for long ago.

“Beth,” he said.

Nothing else for a minute, just my name. Then he joined me, his back against the tree, the two of us staring out at the long stretch of sodden grass. It was early November by then, weeks since we’d seen each other, since that terrible night.

I asked Gabriel about Leo and he told me he was having nightmares, another arrow of guilt to poison myself with. I thought of him trembling beside me as we sheltered beneath the table, the scent of his raw fear in my nostrils. A young boy who believed his father was about to get shot. We had so much to blame ourselves for, Gabriel and I.

“How’s Frank?” Gabriel said.

How could I possibly describe the walking wreckage that was my husband?

“He’s so bad,” I whispered.

Gabriel took hold of my hand. “I’m so sorry. Sorry for everything.”

“I know you are. I’m so sorry too. I blame myself for all of it.”

“I’d tell you not to except I’m doing exactly the same thing. I always will.”

We spent a minute in silence thinking our own thoughts. I was thinking about Gabriel and how he was one of the only people I knew who always acknowledged when things were wrong or bad, without trying to make it better or shift the blame. That’s rare, I think. Most people rush in to assuage your guilt with meaningless platitudes and it doesn’t help.

What helps, I have learned, years too late, is to accept responsibility for the things I have done. To be accountable, I suppose.

“I regret what happened so much and I wish, more than anything, I could change it,” I say. “But I will never forget the time you and I had together.”

“It sounds so final when you say it like that.”

“I’ll always love you, Gabriel.”

“Actually, please don’t say any more. I’m not sure I need to hear this.”

“I need to say it, though. For myself. For Frank. I’m sorry.” I felt bad for making Gabriel listen. But this was my way now. “I’ve loved you for so long and I know that if certain things hadn’t gone wrong back then we would still be together now. Being with you has meant everything to me. I fell in love with you, all over again. People say you can’t love two people at the same time, but you can, and I do. I love you. And I love Frank. But it’s Frank I have to be with. Even if Jimmy hadn’t died, I would still need to be with Frank. It’s our history. Everything we’ve been through together. Frank needs me. And I need Frank. I know you will find that with someone else in time. I’m so sad it can’t be me. You’re a good man, Gabriel. You really are.”

I squeeze Gabriel’s hand. Both of us staring straight ahead.

“You think I can move on from you that easily? I don’t know how to be without you. I never did.”

“It will get easier. In time. You and I know this.”

“I wish we’d had longer. I wish you were still with me.”

“You deserve someone so much better.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” There was lightness in his voice now and we turned to look at each other properly for the first time. We smiled.

“I think I’m going to go,” he said.

“All right.”

Gabriel let go of my hand and without his warm clasp it dangled limp and cold by my side.

“I’m not saying goodbye,” he said.

“Let’s agree never to say that.”

I stayed there, leaning against the old chestnut tree, eyes closed to the bright winter sun, listening to the sound of his footsteps walking away toward the road.

Eleanor had warned me to expect a crowd outside the courthouse but, even so, it’s a shock to see how many photographers are waiting for Gabriel. Twenty, thirty? They seem to be three-deep, jostling and straining for a closer shot; any moment, one of them will surely fall over.

“Beth! Beth! Over here.”

“Don’t look,” Eleanor hisses under her breath. “Stare straight ahead.”

But ahead is where Gabriel is, perhaps no more than a yard or two between us. I could reach out and touch him, if I wanted to. And in some ways, I do want to. I long for the chance to say, Thank you. You have done everything you could. I know you did it for me.

“Gabriel, look, Beth’s right behind you.”

Instinctively, Gabriel turns.

It is a moment, five seconds, perhaps ten, before he comes to his senses. He and I, no one else—the rest of the world, the clamor, the flashbulbs, the shouting, my sister at my side—it all just drops away.

For this tiny flash of time, I drink in the sight of him. And I think he does the same. No smile or nod of recognition, there’s no need. Our eyes say it for us. It’s you.

When Gabriel turns back, a reporter presses right up against him. He is tall, like Gabriel, their faces are only inches apart. Gabriel shoves his chest with the flat of his hand and the man stumbles. “Back off. I said, no comment.”

His voice is pure rage, I’ve never heard it in him before.

“Do you still love her?” someone shouts, but Gabriel has spotted a vacant cab on the other side of the road.

I watch as he darts across the street, one hand out as he flags it down. Wrenching open the door, leaping inside. And he is gone.

“Worst I’ve ever seen it,” Eleanor says as we turn the corner walking, so fast I’m breathless. “But they didn’t get anything. Don’t worry.”

She’s wrong, of course. They are good at their jobs, these photographers, poised to act fast. The photo that will make every paper in the morning is the one fleeting moment when Gabriel and I looked at each other.

I thought we were expressionless, both of us, but that is not how it looks in the pictures.

“The Look of Love?” is the Mirror ’s headline. The Sun more accurate with its single word, “Heartbreak.” Even The Daily Telegraph puts its own spin on our love story, quoting from Gabriel’s testimony: “I knew it was wrong… But I loved her… I always had.”

The cameras have picked up on something I didn’t even register myself feeling, but it’s plainly there in my eyes: I look so happy to see him. Is that surprising? We are involved in this case in exactly the same way, the shame I feel mirrors his, we are the ones who know what it is like to feel responsible for a death. Not Frank, the man in the dock.

Gabriel’s expression is different to mine. All you see as he gazes at me, exposed for a handful of seconds, is his unutterable sadness.

Eleanor and I have developed a ritual for when we return to her airy, light-filled flat in Parsons Green at the end of each day. We wrench off our shoes, collapse on the sofa, and argue about whose turn it is to make tea. If I close my eyes, the years drop away, and I can picture almost exactly the girls we once were.

As teenagers we’d arrive home from school before either of our parents was back from work. We’d make a pot of tea and several rounds of hot buttered toast—which we invariably burned under the grill—and we would play our favorite record on the gramophone. Our obsessions changed monthly—Little Richard, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, we loved them all. I only have to hear “Sisters” by Rosemary Clooney to be transported back to the innocence of those days. Eleanor and I were word-perfect in that song, we’d ham it up for our parents when they got home, twirling our hair and executing synchronized spins while we sang of sisterly devotion.

Now we drink our tea in silence, feeling the weight of the day slip from us. Often, I feel too exhausted to speak. I picture Frank in his prison cell, lying on a thin mattress staring up at the ceiling. He wouldn’t let me visit him in prison, said he would bear it better if he knew I hadn’t seen him there.

Eleanor went once without warning him she was coming.

“What’s it like?” I asked her.

I knew she wouldn’t try to soften the truth, it’s not her way.

“How you imagine,” she said, “but ten times worse.”

“And Frank? How is he?”

“How you imagine, but ten times worse. Stoic. Broken.”

Tomorrow Frank is in the witness box. A gentle start with Robert leading the questioning, but even so, I can’t think of anything else. The days go past without my being able to talk to him, touch him, tell him I love him, reassure him that no matter what happens we will be all right. Is that even true? Neither Frank nor I wanted to dwell on the possibility of his being found guilty. If the jury settles upon murder, it could carry a life sentence of up to thirty years and he is unlikely to be allowed to apply for parole for at least ten years. Frank existing in a tiny prison cell for years, his only exercise a daily stroll around the yard. A man who has spent his whole life outside in vastness. What would it do to him? How would he cope? How would I?

“Even though the Crown is gunning for murder, the manslaughter option in the indictment makes their case look weak,” Eleanor tells me. “They are hedging their bets.

“Bottom line, they do not have enough to put Frank away.”

Every night she will tell me the same thing.

“Keep the faith. It’s going to be all right.”

Every night I try my hardest to believe her.

I’ve seen plenty of swearing-in over the past days but it’s a different thing when your husband is on the stand. I watch Frank place his hand on the Bible, listen to the timbre and pitch of his voice as he promises to tell the whole truth and nothing but. He sounds confident. Robert has been preparing him for the defense hearing for the past two weeks; Frank knows there will be no surprise questions. It is the cross-examination we need to worry about.

“Mr. Johnson, could you outline for the court the events that led up to the fatal shooting of your brother, Jimmy, on the night of September twenty-eighth?”

“My brother had a drink problem,” Frank begins, and for a second the room swims.

It is something I would never have expected him to say. This is the new Frank, the person he has become during his months of reflection.

“It wasn’t constant. He could stay on an even keel for ages and then something would trigger him. I sensed it had got bad again, but I ignored it. I think I was trying to kid myself Jimmy was all right. The night he found out my wife, Beth, was having an affair he’d been in the pub. He came raging back to the farmhouse and got Beth and me out of bed. Was it true? he wanted to know. I told him it was and Jimmy was shattered by it.”

No matter how many times I hear this, it never gets any easier to bear. Jimmy is dead and it is my fault and nothing will ever change that.

“Jimmy wanted to know what I was going to do about it. How was I going to get even with Gabriel? I told him I wasn’t going to do anything. As far as I was concerned, Beth and Gabriel could carry on. That was the thing that set him off.”

“Why did you feel like that, Mr. Johnson? Your wife was having an affair and you were content to let it continue?”

“If it made her happy, I wanted her to have it. Because I felt I’d ruined her life. I’d taken away the one person she loved more than anyone else. And, without him, her life had become too hard.”

Robert’s voice is low, gentle. “You are talking about your son, Bobby, aren’t you, Mr. Johnson? Who died in a tree-felling accident three years ago.”

Frank’s face is drawn with pain now. “Yes. Beth made me promise I’d watch Bobby and keep him safe when the oak came down.” His voice peters out, he is unable to carry on.

There’s not a breath of sound in the courtroom, not a cough or a crackle of paper, all eyes on the man fighting his emotion in the witness stand.

“I knew it was dangerous and I still didn’t watch him. I was too caught up in the work, you see. I told him to stay put in a safe spot, but he didn’t listen. Well, he was nine. And when the tree came down he—Bobby—got in the way.”

I see several of the female jurors surreptitiously wiping beneath their eyes. Perhaps they are mothers themselves. They can picture, all too clearly, the excruciating loss, the burden of Frank’s guilt. How it would destroy a marriage, a life. Our marriage, our life.

Robert allows a lengthy pause, time for Frank to recover, before he begins speaking again. “Mr. Johnson, if we could move now to the shooting. I must ask you this because my learned friend will make much of it in cross-examination. You contest the accident happened in a moment of self-defense. You were trying to protect yourself, and indeed your brother, from injury.”

“Yes. My brother was far too drunk to be handling the gun. I wanted to get it off him.”

“Initially, you told police both you and Jimmy were holding the gun in a sort of tussle and that’s when it went off. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And you thought it fired at very close range?”

“I thought so, yes. But the whole thing happened so quickly, I couldn’t be sure.”

“The pathology report determined Jimmy had been shot at from a distance. At this point, you told police both of you had staggered backwards as the gun went off. It might appear you changed your story to fit the new evidence.”

“It all happened in a split second. I was in total shock. My brother was bleeding on the floor and I was kneeling next to him, pressing my hand against his wound, trying to stop the blood… but I knew, even then…”

Frank is openly crying now. My heart breaks as I watch him. One time I asked him, in the depth of night when neither of us could sleep: Is it worth it? I didn’t need to say any more, he knew what I meant. Was there any point in the two of us carrying on? Why should we bother? We had lost all the people we loved the most.

Frank had thought for a long time before he answered me. “We’re guardians, you and me, of something even bigger than family. We have to preserve the land for the future. What would happen to it if we weren’t here?”

Judge Miskin leans forward. “Do you need a break, Mr. Johnson? The court understands this is hard for you.”

Frank shakes his head. “I’d like to carry on please, my lord. To answer the question, if I got my facts wrong, it’s because my mind blanked in the moment, and afterwards it was hard to remember exactly how it happened.”

Robert says: “In your police statement you said your brother had been provoking you. He called your wife some pretty unpalatable names which we need not repeat here. I must ask you, did that make you angry?”

“Not really. I knew he didn’t mean it. Wouldn’t remember it in the morning, anyway. I knew how much Jimmy loved Beth, he thought of her as his sister.”

“Did you mean to harm your brother that night, Mr. Johnson?”

“No. I was trying to save both of us from injury. My whole life, I have only ever wanted to keep my brother safe.”

At last, we have reached the crux of the trial—the prosecution’s cross-examination of the defendant. My husband under attack, no way of helping him. The jury watching intently for any change in his voice, his expression. All too soon he will be found guilty or acquitted. And these minutes matter more than any others.

“Mr. Johnson.” Donald Glossop begins in a light, conversational tone. “When did you first learn to shoot?”

I can tell from the way he hesitates Frank is thrown by the question. He glances at Robert on the counsel bench, trying to work out how best to answer.

“Allow me to simplify that for you. Growing up on a farm, I assume you learned to hunt at a young age?”

“Around six or seven, I think.”

“And this was a skill you passed on to your son?”

“My father taught Bobby to shoot.”

“At a similar age, six or seven?”

“Yes.”

“It would be fair to say, then, guns were part and parcel of life on the farm?”

“Yes.”

Frank’s “yes” is cautious. He knows there is a sting coming, but he can’t tell what it is.

“Guns left loaded in the porch, guns lying around in the kitchen, guns in the dairy, guns in the lambing sheds. An entire arsenal of guns, in fact, and none of it kept locked up for safety.”

Robert leaps to his feet, but before he can interject, the judge says: “We are not here to talk about the safekeeping of weapons, Mr. Glossop. Your point?”

“Just trying to paint a picture, my lord. Mr. Johnson, how many times have you fired a gun in your lifetime, do you think? Five thousand? Ten thousand? Let us say innumerable times. How is it, then, you did not know whose finger was on the trigger when the gun you were holding killed your brother?”

For a second Frank doesn’t react, uncertain from Donald Glossop’s delivery if he is asking a question.

“I know I grabbed hold of the barrel. I believe in wrenching it too forcefully the gun misfired.”

“Are you a liar, Mr. Johnson?”

“No. I am not.”

“Yet you changed your story, didn’t you, once the pathology report came in? You came up with a scenario in which you might possibly have staggered.”

I hate this man. For his silky-smooth sarcasm, for the inverted commas you hear within his speech.

“The two of us were holding the gun, that’s what I remember. And then it went off.”

“Yes, yes.” The prosecutor is dismissive now. “So we have heard. You were angry with your brother, weren’t you?”

“No.”

“He had humiliated you.”

“No.”

“He knew where your Achilles’ heel was, didn’t he?” Donald Glossop turns to the jury. He is facing away from me, but I hear the smile in his voice. “Our siblings know us best, don’t they? They know exactly how to hit where it hurts.” He swings back around to face Frank. “Your brother insulted you that night, didn’t he, Mr. Johnson?”

“Jimmy was drunk. He said a lot of nonsense. I took no notice of it.”

“You love your wife, don’t you?”

Frank looks confused, as I am, by the change of tack.

“Yes.”

“You’ve loved her a long time. How long, in fact?”

“Since I was thirteen.”

“ Thirteen .” Donald Glossop has softened his voice, he is lulling, cajoling. It doesn’t fool me. “And you carried on loving her through some pretty tough times, as the court has heard. The son you lost in an accident for which your wife blamed you. Her subsequent affair with Gabriel Wolfe. But nothing swayed your love for her, is that right?”

“Yes.”

Frank’s voice is quiet. He is bracing himself. He has seen enough of Donald Glossop’s performance, the rapid switches from light to dark, to know something vicious is coming.

“When Jimmy insulted Beth, you saw red, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“He abused her and you got angry.”

“No.”

“He wasn’t abusive?” Donald Glossop glances down at the notes in his hand, but I can tell it’s an affectation. He doesn’t take time to read them. “According to the statement you gave to the police, he called her a slut. I would call that pretty abusive language, wouldn’t you?”

The shocking term rings out, reverberating around Court Seven.

I watch the jury closely as Donald Glossop warms up for his kill. The woman with electric-blue specs clamps her lips into a thin line of disapproval. City Gent frowns at the offensive word. Even the young man in the front row, with his long, hippy hair and flowing shirt, looks shocked.

“He called your wife a slut and you lost it, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“You were in a rage when you grabbed the gun, weren’t you?”

“No. That’s not how it happened.”

“You grabbed the gun and shot your brother, didn’t you, Mr. Johnson? It was your finger on the trigger, wasn’t it? A huntsman’s instinct, all those years of firing guns at defenseless creatures. You did it without thinking.”

“No.”

Donald Glossop raises his voice to a theatrical shout. “You killed your brother, didn’t you, Mr. Johnson? You were in a wild rage, and you shot him.”

“No. No, for the last time, NO.” Frank’s voice is too loud, too stressed, a man provoked. Exactly as the prosecution intended.

I see the jury watch Frank, drinking in this first crack in his armor, a glimmer of the rage that lies beneath. Donald Glossop returns to the bench, leaving a stunned silence and the residue of accusation behind him.

This trial has been about performance, not facts. Donald Glossop is as rousing as any Shakespearean actor—he is Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear all at once—manipulating his audience into a frenzied, adrenaline-pumped acceptance of his speech.

I knew he was good. But, in cross-examination, he is brilliant. I fear he is unbeatable.

We are back in court, my parents, sister, and I, waiting for the closing speeches to begin. My mother, Eleanor, and I had sat through my father’s mauling in the witness box as he stood up to defend Frank’s character. I have never felt prouder of him, or more devastated. He tells me it was the least he could do, he says it was nothing. That’s not how it looked. It felt as if he’d had his heart ripped out of him by the time the prosecution was finished.

The judge makes an announcement. “The defense has asked permission to bring one final character witness to court and I have decided to grant it.”

“That’s odd,” Eleanor whispers. “Must have been really last minute or Robert would have said something yesterday.”

Eleanor and Robert talk on the phone every evening. He tells her how Frank is doing—“Very well, all things considered”—and what he makes of the day’s hearings.

“It’s feeling good,” he said last night. “That was a tough day for Frank, but it was always going to be. He handled it well.”

I am watching Frank in the dock when Judge Miskin says: “Are you ready to call your witness, Mr. Miles?”

And it is his face I see crumpling when Nina walks up to the witness stand. The last time I saw Nina was at Jimmy’s funeral, where we didn’t exchange a single word, not even a glance. Her parents let it be known Nina wanted nothing more to do with me—or Frank, by association. It was fair enough, what I expected, what I deserved, but how I have missed her. How much strength it has taken to respect that wish, not to call her and say sorry, sorry, sorry. All the sorrys in the world would never be enough, I know that.

I stare at her hungrily as she swears her oath and when I glance again at Frank, I see he, too, is rapt, immersing himself in the sight of her, this woman we both loved so much from the first day we met her.

“Mrs. Johnson,” Robert begins, and it stuns me. Her married name, the same as mine. The Johnson women we were meant to be. Oh, if only.

“You decided to come forward as a character witness for the defendant last night. Why was that?”

I watch Nina dart her eyes toward Frank in the dock, a second or two, no more. I doubt she really sees him. “I’ve been following the trial in the papers. And I felt strongly, in a way I could no longer ignore—” Nina has begun with confidence, her voice clear and strong. Now she pauses to collect herself. “I felt that Jimmy, my husband, would have wanted me to speak on behalf of his brother. In fact, I know he would. And I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Johnson. May I commend you on your bravery. It can’t have been an easy decision.”

Nina gives Robert a sharp little nod of acknowledgment.

“What was Jimmy like in the days leading up to the shooting? Did you have any idea he would unravel in the way that has been described in court?”

She sighs. “In some ways, no. We were deliriously happy. We’d had the most wonderful wedding. We were trying for a baby. Everything was ahead. But Jimmy was very vulnerable and I was worried about him. I’d smelt alcohol on his breath when there was no reason for him to have been drinking.”

“Was your husband unstable, Mrs. Johnson?”

I see how the question jars Nina, how she steels herself to answer. “Yes, he was. At times very.”

“What was his reaction to learning of his sister-in-law’s affair with Gabriel Wolfe?”

“He was brokenhearted. He didn’t want to believe it was true, at first. Neither of us did. Beth and Frank meant everything to us.”

I look down at the spots of tears dripping onto my knees and my father’s hand placed on top of them. There’s nothing new in this daily dose of shame. It’s a very particular pain, learning the different ways in which I managed to hurt each member of my family.

“Was he angry?” Robert asks.

“Yes. He was beside himself. Mostly with Gabriel. I suppose it was easiest to hit out at him. But he was angry with Frank, too, once he realized he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Jimmy couldn’t understand Frank being so accepting of it.”

“On the morning of the shooting, what was Jimmy’s state of mind then?”

“Very hungover. Probably still drunk. He’d drunk almost an entire bottle of whisky—I found it later on, hidden behind the fridge. We didn’t talk much, it was very early. But he was obsessing over Gabriel, how someone needed to teach him a lesson.”

“That was the last time you saw him?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounds small and bleak in the courtroom.

“I know this is painful, Mrs. Johnson. I won’t keep you much longer. Can you tell the court how you learned of your husband’s death?”

“Beth rang the pub.”

“She told you Jimmy was dead?”

“She was crying so much I couldn’t understand her. But she kept saying, ‘Jimmy, Jimmy’… so I knew. She said there had been an accident at the farm. And Jimmy had been wounded.”

“Those were her words? There had been an accident?”

“Yes.”

“Were you surprised when you realized it was a shotgun accident?”

“Not really. Beth used to worry about the guns left lying around but that was when Bobby was alive. I was used to it.”

“When you heard Frank Johnson had been arrested for murder, what did you think then?”

“It was absurd. The most far-fetched thing I’d ever heard. There isn’t a person in the world who loved Jimmy more than Frank, not even me.”

Finally, Nina turns to look at Frank. They gaze at one another for the first time in eight months, a gaze that feels as if it goes on and on, a ribbon of raw emotion flowing back and forth from the witness stand to the dock.

“Do you believe Frank Johnson intentionally shot your husband, Mrs. Johnson?”

Nina lifts her head. “I know he didn’t. There is no way that would ever have happened.”

When the phone in Eleanor’s flat rings dead-on seven, as arranged, I snatch up the receiver on the first ring.

“Waiting by the phone, were you?” Frank is laughing.

“Frank—” I’m crying, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t.

“Don’t. Please don’t.”

“I miss you.” I gasp out the words.

“Same.”

“I love you.”

“Same. You know I do.”

There’s so much I want to say to him: Are you OK? What if we don’t get the result we want? How will I manage? How will you? But I know it’s not what he needs from me tonight. We are expecting a verdict tomorrow, both of us need to stay strong.

We have only a few minutes for the call, the seconds are ticking by in silence. But it’s a silence filled with us.

“Nina,” he says, eventually.

“I know. So good of her.”

“To see her, though.”

“Incredible. She was so strong.”

“He’d—be so proud of her.”

“He would. He really would. And of you.”

“Don’t.”

“He would be, though.”

I listen to Frank trying to catch his breath and wonder how many men in prison cry when they phone their loved ones. Most of them, probably.

“Frank—”

“Yeah?”

I hesitate. There’s something I want to tell him, something I have a suspicion about, but what if I am wrong?

A few months ago, I made a pretty momentous decision to throw away my diaphragm. I had ended things with Gabriel by then and Frank and I were trying to rebuild ourselves, piece by piece. We’d told each other everything, all the bad things, as if to say, this is me, in my worst, most ugly state, are you sure it’s what you want? When we finally made love, reaching for each other tentatively in the darkness, it was almost like the first time. The surprising pleasure of it in those darkest of days, it became a tiny fragment of light, of hope. But, as each month passed, and my period arrived, I began to despair. I’d set my heart on another baby, for Frank even more than myself, and I started to think I had left it too late.

The last few days I’ve felt something, a nausea that isn’t linked to the constant feeling of dread, a revulsion for certain tastes and smells, which reminds me of before. But what if I’m imagining it? I couldn’t bear to raise Frank’s hopes, then dash them. Not now, when the two of us are hanging on by a thread.

“I love you.”

Frank laughs. “You said that already.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know. Me too.”

“What if they find—” The beeps begin, perfect timing.

“The money’s run out. I love you.”

“Tomorrow,” I say.

“Tomorrow.”

The line goes dead, and I stand, for a long time, the phone pressed to my ear as if Frank is still there on the other end.