31. Guest v. Finbow Day Seven #2
Silence falls over the courtroom. As if I have fallen into a well, I am left with the lonely echo of my words.
I look over at Jean, and for a moment we are back in that living room, my head cradled in her warm lap.
The chandelier above us, gently moving, refracting rainbows. Who is showing you love, Gus? I am .
No, Jean , I think to myself. This here is love. An act of sacrifice. For Mary, not for you .
“My witness statement contains a lie,” I begin to say quietly. “Several lies. And I need to correct them.”
Anna watches my performance in horror. Ms. Carr, too, who had begged no surprises.
“What lies?” she snaps back furiously.
“It was my idea to help her. Jean never asked me to do anything. It was my idea first. I passed information to Jean to try to make myself useful. To win back her favor.”
“Because she threatened you?” Ms. Carr urges now, through clenched teeth. “Because you were frightened of her?”
“Frightened of my life without her.”
A ripple of excitement passes along Jean’s legal team.
I gaze, half-pleadingly, at Anna and Ms. Carr, for what I am now admitting to.
The idea had always been mine; a desperate attempt to win back Jean’s attention.
I couldn’t stomach admitting it to Bonamy that night of the carnival party.
I persuaded myself it was immaterial, how and why I’d first intruded into Anna’s life.
Until now, I had barely acknowledged my original part in what happened, could barely admit it to myself.
“But you assert, in your statement, that you were obliged to act because she had recordings of your private sessions,” Ms. Carr insists, growing frustrated. “You’ve stated that she threatened you!”
“Then my statement is false.” I try to speak as calmly as I can. “She never threatened me. It was the other way around. It was my fault. It was me who put Jean in that situation.”
I glance briefly at Anna, desperate to communicate how sorry I am, but her gaze, full of tears, is fixed to the table.
She doesn’t understand, yet, that undermining my own performance on the witness stand might actually help get her daughter back.
Anna has never fully grasped the true risk of her legal undertaking: that if Jean loses in court, Mary’s debt to her beloved healer will deepen.
Jean’s public disgrace galvanizes Mary’s social isolation because she will blame herself.
Last night, when Jean saw that I had recorded her, and that she was compromised, she vowed to abandon her relationship with Mary.
In that moment, I understood it: Jean wants money more than Mary.
She craves power over phony parenthood. In the deal we struck, I am to discredit my own pivotal evidence and acknowledge in court that I offered Jean clues into the Finbows’ defense of my own accord.
Admitting that I lied may mean Jean wins the trial, but it is a risk I have calculated: By losing the Finbows’ case, I will set Mary free.
And, however flawed they might be, in her freedom, Mary might find her way to her family again.
But that is another gamble: an outcome no one can be sure of.
Ms. Carr makes a shaken appeal to the judge, her case crumbling along with my credibility. “I wonder whether we ought to take a break,” she stammers. “It’s been a long time giving evidence. I believe my witness has become confused—”
“I don’t need a break,” I interrupt, eyes trained forward, fingernails dug deep into my palms. “I need to be honest.”
The judge turns to me with harsh reproach. “May I remind you that you verified your witness statement with a statement of truth? Any false statement made there, or, indeed, inside this courtroom, risks the serious charge of perjury, and, with it, very grave consequences.”
Jean scribbles fast in her notepad. I hate how she crouches over it; the childish and possessive way she takes space on the desk.
I hate how I am letting her win. I glare at her so she is left under no doubt why I am admitting this.
An image guides me: Mary back in her flat, raising her daughter safely at home. Will she allow me to visit eventually?
“I was ashamed to admit it before,” I say, staring at Jean so she understands the full meaning and weight of my words. “Or I just couldn’t bear to remember .”
“You little liar !” cries Anna. “You bitch!”
The judge issues a furious warning against all contemptuous conduct in his courtroom.
“Ms. Bird,” he continues, “this witness box is not a therapy couch. We are, frankly, not interested in hearing about your feelings of shame or embarrassment, only the veracity of your statements. Can you assure us that you are speaking the honest truth?”
“I am.”
Ms. Carr shakes her head, mystified at my collapse. “Then that brings us to the end of our engagement, Ms. Bird,” she says in a quiet, clipped voice. I hang my head low. “No further questions.”
“Do you understand the difference between truth and a lie, Ms. Bird?” Ms. Ibrahim asks, standing well apart from the witness box. Moments before, she watched me placing my hand on the oath with open disgust, her lip curling with contempt.
My body pulses with shame, and the voice that answers is choked and small. “I do.”
“Because my client’s case is that you do not always tell the truth. So, despite our lengthy preparations, we will try not to waste too much court time on your testimony.”
I nod, merciful that Ms. Ibrahim’s dismantling will at least be swift.
I had waited out the short adjournment in the bathroom, first backing up the voice memo of Jean I’d recorded, then silencing the calls that came in from Bernard and other members of Anna’s PR team.
Now, as I stand in front of Jean’s lawyer, I realize Anna has not returned to Courtroom Six.
I wonder if she’s waiting for me outside, preparing to pounce.
For a second, I imagine the brawl, even crave it; the sharp square of her fingernails, the ball of spit summoned upward, then hurled in my face.
“Were you angry?” Ms. Ibrahim continues curtly. “When my client could no longer afford to treat you for free?”
Ms. Ibrahim’s question turns me to ice. “No,” I stammer. Then I cast my mind to the stranger at the open door to Jean’s apartment. The door I kicked. I hesitate. The truth. Nothing but the truth. “At first, yes. Then I was sad. Sad and confused.”
“Would you say that you still feel confused?”
I look across at Jean. Her expression is lowered. “Not anymore.”
“Then perhaps it is just we who feel confused!” Ms. Ibrahim counts on her fingers. “First, you claim Ms. Guest bullied you into stealing evidence for her. Then, you say you proposed it of your own accord. Are there any other falsehoods in your witness statement that we should be aware of?”
“Nothing else. Honestly, just that part.”
“Did Mrs. Finbow pressure you into the very serious allegations you originally made?”
“No.”
Ms. Ibrahim pushes back. “Is it not the case that you submitted your witness statement simply to please Mrs. Finbow?”
“No. It is not the case.”
“It would be understandable, though, wouldn’t it?
The wealth and influence of a family like the Finbows must have been dazzling , Ms. Bird.
And unrequited love?” Ms. Ibrahim winces.
“No pain like it, is there? Ms. Guest states that you put her under immense pressure to, for want of a better term, matchmake you with Mary Finbow. Do you agree?”
My cheeks flush with anger. Indignant, I shake my head.
“Were you resentful when she failed to bring the two of you together?”
“I was sad at the situation,” I stammer. “And I admit, I am still sad at the situation.”
“So, do you try to alleviate that sadness by working with Mrs. Finbow? From daughter to mother: swiftly replacing one obsession with another?”
“Obsession?” My temper flares. “No! I liked Anna. And, once I started to understand her situation, I felt sorry for her.”
“And yet you stole evidence from her home?”
“Jean had made me so dependent,” I say, my voice trembling now. “That without our sessions, I felt like I was drowning. For a while—yes—I did everything I could to please her. I desperately wanted our sessions to resume again. I missed her—”
“Yet you claimed she ruined your life?” Ms. Ibrahim frowns cynically.
“In hindsight I realize—”
“But which is it?”
I pause then, unable to articulate the messy truth of it: Both, it was both. Your client shaped me, just as she broke me down. Made me, just as she undid me.
“Do you agree that you harassed Ms. Guest over calls and text messages, Ms. Bird?”
“I wouldn’t say so.”
“My client says she felt harassed. And we saw the evidence yesterday. The text messages. The call log.” She sighs pityingly. “You press her, Ms. Bird. You are quite insistent!”
“Jean reciprocated the contact. Once I offered help with her legal case, she wanted more and more from me.”
“But we see no evidence of this in your exchange—”
“Of course you don’t!” I explode. “Jean phoned me from a private number!”
Ms. Ibrahim leaves a dubious pause. Ms. Carr sits back in her chair, arms folded.
“Ms. Ibrahim,” the judge interjects. “We took you at your word that this would be quick.”
The lawyer raises a deferential hand. “Only a few further questions, my lord.” She turns back to me.
“Let’s go briefly to Rome, where you first met my client.
You strike up a special connection. You commence formal coaching sessions together.
At the end of term, you introduce Mary Finbow—your crush—to Ms. Guest, because of the improvements you are seeing in your life. ”
My vision swims. “One of the reasons—”
“So, may I ask, when did you last recommend something to someone?” Ms. Ibrahim leaves a little hesitant pause, pretending her next question is merely an afterthought. “A film? A book? A holiday destination?”
My breath catches in my throat as I reflect on the emptiness of my recent days. “I’m not sure I can remember.”