The shabby hospital foyer felt cool and civilised after the prison. Trish paused at the shop on the ground floor to buy grapes to add to the two paperbacks she had with her in case Paddy was well enough to be bored. He had been moved up to an ordinary ward on the eleventh floor. That had none of the professional calm of the intensive care unit, but it was encouraging.
There were eight bays in the ward and six beds in each bay. Most of the patients had two or three visitors. The place was almost as noisy as the prison, and as hot, but it smelt marginally better. Paddy’s bed was beside the window, which was a mixed blessing. He had more space and a better view, but the sun blazing through the sealed glass battled with the air-conditioning and made it the warmest corner of the room. He didn’t seem to mind, sitting propped up on a mountain of pillows teasing the youngest of the nurses.
She smiled at Trish, flung a cheery little insult at Paddy over her shoulder and flounced off.
‘Now what a saucy little colleen, that is.’
‘Don’t you go all Oirish on me, Paddy,’ Trish said, leaning down to kiss him, ‘or I’ll be seeing little green leprechauns all over the place. Colleen indeed! Really! Now, how are you feeling?’
He looked at her as though checking how far he could push her credulity.
‘Come on, tell me honestly.’
‘Tired, aching and depressed,’ he said, not sounding at all Irish. Then he grinned. ‘But it’ll go. I’ve never been depressed for long, after all, and haven’t they been telling me I’ve not much cause to fear another of these things?’
‘That’s great news. Have they done more tests then?’
‘That’s right. Today it was an angiogram. The results will be through in the morning.’
‘And are they giving you rules about diet and—’
‘Don’t fuss now, Trish. I’ve had enough of that from your mother.’ The mischief was back in his eyes. ‘And from Bella.’
‘Right.’ Trish had never found the idea of her father’s lovers easy to absorb. He’d been apart from Meg for twenty-five years, and there was no reason why he shouldn’t have taken up with someone else, but Trish didn’t want to hear about it. She didn’t mind her mother’s relationship with Bernard, but for some reason Bella was difficult to take.
‘She’s a great girl is Bella.’
‘Woman.’
‘Woman then.’ Trish saw that he was laughing at her. ‘She’ll be here in about ten minutes. Will you stay now and meet her?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Trish looked at her watch. These days she hardly ever felt flustered, and she didn’t like the sensation. ‘I have to get back. George … I’ll have to cook for George.’
‘You ought to meet her, Trish. You’ll like her.’
‘I’m sure.’ She smiled and knew it must look false. ‘But maybe not this time. There’ll be plenty of chances.’
He shrugged. ‘She’s busy too, you know. She has a – what do you call it, Trish? A pretty crunchy job of her own. Today would be a good time.’
He was pushing her. And she didn’t like that either. She never let anyone tell her what to do. She put the grapes in their bag on his table, and added the two books to the pile at
the back. Then she bent down to kiss his forehead. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll get used to the idea soon. But this time I really do have to run. I’ll be back tomorrow, the same sort of time.’
‘Sure.’ Paddy had turned away to pull some of the fat muscat grapes off their stalks, instead of breaking off a neat bunch. Trish felt her nerves shrieking. She could never bear seeing a bunch massacred like that, with blobs of grape flesh hanging wetly against the whole fruit, ready to rot them.
Outside the ward, waiting for the extraordinarily slow lift with a group of other visitors impatient to get back out into real life, she wondered whether he had done it on purpose to punish her. Or perhaps it had been provocation. Perhaps both the grapes and the demand that she stay to meet Bella had been designed to make himself feel tough again after the massive humiliating terror of the heart-attack.
Impatient with her need to analyse everything, Trish banged the lift button again with her clenched fist. Life would be so much easier if you didn’t spend your time wondering about people’s subconscious drives and took them as you found them, trusting them to do the same for you.
At last the lift arrived. People were pressing forward behind her even before the doors were open and the new influx of visitors could get out. There was one tall, beautifully dressed woman in her fifties. She had very smooth pale-grey hair and a well-kept face. Catching Trish’s eye, she grinned suddenly, revealing a character much quirkier and more interesting than her clothes suggested. Then she was gone, leaving Trish to wonder if she might have been Bella.
Trish rather hoped she had been, but it didn’t seem likely that Paddy would attract a woman like that.
George was waiting in the flat when Trish got back, busily cooking for her, or at least arranging the sort of cold food that made eating seem possible on such a stuffy night. He
came out of the kitchen at the sound of her key and tried to hug her.
‘I’m boiling and sweaty and disgusting,’ she said. ‘It took ages to get back from the hospital and the car felt like an oven because I was clot enough to have the top down. I’d have been better with the air-conditioning. I need a shower.’
George rubbed her head affectionately and asked if she wanted a drink.
‘Later,’ she called, as she ran up the spiral stairs, wrenching off her clothes. Their relationship had lasted more than long enough for him to know she wasn’t rejecting him, so she took her time in the shower, getting the prison stink out of her hair as well as the grime from her body.
There didn’t seem a whole lot of point getting properly dressed again, so she pulled on an old pair of leggings, which felt as soft as pyjamas, and a long T-shirt, slopping downstairs again in her bare feet. George hugged her then and she fitted her long boniness around his ample curves.
‘So how was the visit?’ he asked later, as she was sitting in front of a plate of tabbouleh and cold spiced chicken. ‘And what did you think of Deborah Gibbert?’
‘This looks fantastic, George. Thank you.’
‘Pleasure. Now, Deborah Gibbert?’
‘Well, I can see why Anna likes her,’ Trish began, ‘but I’m still not sure whether she’s innocent. It’s a tricky one.’
‘I’d be surprised if she was, I must say. Phil Redstone would have got her off if anyone could,’ George said. ‘He’s a good advocate.’
‘I know. Usually, anyway. But it sounds to me as though he’d decided to loathe her.’
‘Ah.’
That was one of the best things about knowing someone so well, Trish thought, distracted. You didn’t have to explain everything.
‘And, detesting her, he was sure she’d done it. I don’t think he tried half as hard as he would have done if it had been the sainted Cordelia in the dock.’
George looked as if he knew exactly what Trish was talking about, even though she hadn’t yet told him about Cordelia. ‘Is Deborah untidy?’
Trish nodded. ‘And noisy, and bad-tempered.’
‘Just the kind of woman to turn Phil off. She must have had a pretty ignorant solicitor if they thought he’d do her justice.’
‘Although she could have been tidied up for her first meeting with them,’ Trish said.
You often had to act for defendants you disliked, as she always explained when asked by outsiders how any decent barrister could bring herself to speak for someone she thought was guilty. But if you knew your personal feelings were going to affect the work you did for a client, you were supposed to disqualify yourself. That – along with lack of time or expertise – was one of the few acceptable reasons for challenging the cab-rank rule.
Trish used it whenever she could. Dirty doctors had luckily never come her way, or rapists, but she’d been offered several briefs for parents accused of child cruelty or neglect and she had always wanted to turn them down.
Of course, it didn’t always work. Sometimes you didn’t know what you were doing to your client’s chances until it was too late. Maybe that was what had happened to Phil.
‘What did you like about her?’ George asked, watching her over the top of his glass.
Trish knew he was asking because she needed to talk, rather than from any passionate interest in Deb or her case. She swallowed her mouthful and told him everything. As usual when she was really interested and knew her subject, she didn’t think about what she was saying or its effect; she
just let the words flow out from some not wholly conscious part of her brain, without any censorship.
At the beginning of her career, she had practised every part of what she’d planned to say in court, over and over again, learning specially important bits by heart. But one day, something else had taken over. When she had fallen silent at last, she had felt as though she’d just come round from some kind of anaesthetic. She’d had absolutely no idea what she’d said. It had terrified her. But her instructing solicitor had later told her he’d never heard her so eloquent or so forceful.
Since then, she had learned to trust herself, and even to welcome the moment when the words took over and she could almost switch off. Of course, with George it was easy. It didn’t matter what she said to him. He would neither mock nor betray anything she told him. She became aware that she’d stopped talking.
‘Why did she—?’ George said, interrupting himself to ask, ‘D’you want some more tabbouleh?’
Trish looked down at her plate and discovered she’d eaten everything on it. She’d hardly been conscious of swallowing anything between the torrents of words. ‘Yes. Thanks. It’s great,’ she said, wanting to know how it tasted.
George ladled a lot more on to her plate. The mixed scents of mint, lemon and coriander were all round her. He refilled her glass and sat back to listen. She smiled, cherishing his patience and his interest, determined to repay both the next time he wanted to talk about a difficult case.
‘So, to sum up,’ he said, as he watched her eat, ‘your proto-client was convicted because she was the only able-bodied person in the house when her father died.’
‘That’s right.’ Trish wiped her mouth. ‘The doctor didn’t believe the death was natural. He refused to sign a death certificate and called the police. They came in force.’
‘Not just a country bobby on a bike, you mean?’
‘Exactly. They must have trusted the doctor’s judgement because they sent two full cars’ worth. So, there were two officers searching the house, two interviewing Deb, and two her mother. The mother confessed to suffocating her husband, but said she’d done it with a pillow. Deb said she hadn’t touched him, but the SOCOs found the incriminating bag in her wastepaper basket.’
‘Which she has just explained to your satisfaction, if not to theirs?’
Trish smiled at George. He was very clear-headed, reducing her rambling explanation to a few crispish propositions.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Her account made quite as much sense as the prosecution’s, and as far as I can see, there was no scientific evidence to prove their version.’
‘OK. Then the autopsy produced the fact that he had had an overdose of an antihistamine called terfenadine, which he had been prescribed only two days earlier, and which had been collected from the surgery by your Deb?’
‘Yes.’
‘As well as small traces of another, conflicting, antihistamine called astemizole, which he’d never been prescribed?’
‘Yes, that’s right, too. But Deb herself had been prescribed it the previous year – for hay fever. She admits she didn’t finish that packet, but swears she threw the remains away, not liking to have drugs around in a house full of young children.’
‘Quite right, too,’ said George, picking up his glass and drinking the last of the wine in it. ‘But did she just chuck it out with the rest of the household rubbish?’
Trish nodded. ‘When I queried that, she pointed out that any council would just laugh if you said you wanted a hazardous-waste pick-up for ten measly tablets.’
‘And would ten tablets have been enough to affect him?’
‘Presumably, but I’ll have to get that checked. Phil should have, but there’s nothing in the trial transcript about it.’
George tried to drink again, having forgotten that his glass was empty. Trish pushed forward the bottle. It still seemed extraordinarily full. Perhaps talking so much had stopped her drinking her usual quota.
‘Do you suppose,’ he said, tipping in about half a glass, ‘the reason Phil didn’t let her give evidence was because he was afraid she’d betray herself in cross-examination?’
‘I think that must have been it, although obviously he didn’t tell her that. She says he told her the prosecution had nothing but circumstantial evidence and the best way of dealing with that was to treat it with the contempt it deserved, offer no evidence of their own, and point out to the jury that no one can be convicted without proof.’
‘Quite right, too.’
‘Maybe. But Deb says she wishes she hadn’t gone along with it. She thinks the whole case turned on what her sister and the GP said about her temper and the way she treated her father. She thinks if she’d been allowed to give evidence and been frank about what she felt and why, and how she’d dealt with her fear and anger to enable her to go back and look after him she’d have made a better impression on the jury.’
‘It’s possible. But it does sound as though she has quite a temper.’ George didn’t look sympathetic. ‘The prosecution’s questions would almost certainly have provoked her, and she might well have shown herself in her true colours. She’d have been well and truly dished then.’
Uncontrolled anger had always been one of George’s bugbears, Trish reminded herself, as she registered his implicit criticism of Deb. He thought it wrecked your judgement when you let it ride you and had a destructive effect on you and all your targets. Even righteous anger was anathema to him. It was their one major point of conflict. Trish had never seen George lose his temper with anyone or anything. Sometimes that seemed creepy. At others it was reassuring.