The blue and white bar at the top of the Facebook page seems to flash as if in warning. Then the message becomes an illegible blur. Emily pushes the computer off her lap and jumps up from the bed. The pain in her side is excruciating. The room begins to spin so fast that she feels herself falling. It can’t be. That’s impossible. That’s the last thing that goes through her mind before she faints.
Even if the sender’s name hadn’t appeared in bold at the top of the message, Emily would have known it was from him. Only one person has ever called her by her middle name.
~
Devon, May 1996
‘We’ve got a lot to get through today,’ Lucinda Sharpe began, bursting into the meeting room at the secure accommodation. Emily was being detained in this facility. Then, almost as an afterthought, Lucinda added, ‘How are you holding up?’ She was out of breath.
‘I’m all right,’ Emily said. It didn’t sound very convincing, even to Emily.
There was a ball of nerves in her stomach that just wouldn’t go away. She’d been trying hard not to think about the ordeal she would have to face over the next few days.
‘Really?’
Emily looked at her solicitor. Lucinda was blessed with flawless olive skin, beautiful dark eyes and shiny black hair, but cursed with a rather large bottom and a lousy sense of fashion. Emily thought she must be aiming for smart casual, but didn’t think she’d succeeded in pulling it off on any of the occasions they’d met so far.
Today, she was dressed more casually and less smartly than usual, Emily noticed, her buttocks squeezed into unflattering black leggings, and her hair held back with a neon yellow headscarf. She was wearing a denim shirt with too many buttons undone, and, somewhat ironically, court shoes.
Lucinda had often arrived late for appointments and police interviews with Emily, but she was punctual on this particular morning. It was to be their last meeting before Emily’s trial began the following day.
Emily was very fond of Lucy, as her lawyer insisted on being called. Lucy talked about her children a lot, and whenever she did, a proud smile lit up her face. She complained that she was always cutting corners, doing her kids’ homework for them because explaining would take longer, or heating up frozen pizza when she didn’t have time to cook, or putting on a video instead of reading a bedtime story so that they wouldn’t squabble while she got some urgent work done.
Listening to Lucy stirred up mixed emotions in Emily. Lucy was a single mother of four, and yet Emily found her accounts of family life attractive simply because they struck her as ordinary. She thought Lucy must be an excellent mum. Emily didn’t have any stories to tell Lucy about her family.
What Emily liked best about her solicitor was that she wasn’t patronising. She talked in legalese, using complex, complicated sentences, and she explained technical terms only when necessary. During Lucy’s visits, Emily didn’t feel like a child or an animal, as she sometimes did around the staff and other detainees.
‘Tell me the truth. How are you really doing?’
‘Well, I’m still not sleeping very well,’ Emily admitted, ‘and when I do manage to fall asleep, I have nightmares.’
Emily’s nightmares had got worse and worse since her father’s murder. Since then, she’d relived the whole incident several times in her sleep. At the end of the scariest dream she’d had, Graham Cavendish had survived.
‘We’ll have to see if the doctor can prescribe you some light sedatives.’ Lucy kept her caring eyes on Emily as she took some papers out of her bulging briefcase and sat down. ‘Are you eating better?’
‘Yes.’ She told herself it wasn’t a complete lie. She was making an effort to finish her meals. She just wasn’t keeping them down.
‘Uh-huh,’ came the response.
Emily realised she wasn’t fooling Lucy.
‘Are you ready to talk about what’s likely to happen to you, Emily?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I want to go through everything again just to be clear. That will be more for my benefit than yours, though, as you won’t have to talk during the trial. The recorded tapes of your interviews will be played in court instead. Firstly there were the interviews with the arresting officers in Barnstaple Police Station on Christmas Day, then those with DC Hazel Moreleigh and DS Michael Tomlinson in the Devon and Cornwall Police Headquarters over the following days.’
Lucy had already told Emily all this, and she felt very relieved that she wouldn’t have to take the stand.
‘As I’ve said before, you’ll be tried in the Crown Court here in Exeter. Your trial shouldn’t last more than a week. My guess is four days. Your sister and your mother will be called as witnesses.’
Here, Lucy paused. Emily realised her lawyer was also dreading the impression Josephine might make. She’d promised Emily she would ‘pull herself together.’ Emily supposed that meant she would sober up. But although Josephine had attended every one of Emily’s interrogations, as the law required, it was impossible to predict how drunk she’d be from one day to the next. Sometimes her presence had been merely a physical one. At best, she smelt slightly of whiskey; at worst, she couldn’t walk into the room straight, then tried hard not to doze off during the interviews. Emily could hardly blame her. After all, her daughter had just murdered her husband.
Amanda, on the other hand, had been very supportive. Emily often wondered how she would have coped that night without her sister. When, unbelievably, the gunshot hadn’t woken up Josephine, Amanda had decided to wait a while before calling 999. Then she’d gone over the questions the police were likely to ask Emily so she knew what to expect.
The emergency services had arrived two hours later, rather conspicuously in two squad cars and an ambulance with blue lights rotating and sirens blaring. Emily was sitting on the bedroom floor and Amanda was kneeling beside her, gently rocking her and stroking her hair. They were both covered in blood. Emily vaguely remembered her mother, who must have finally woken up when the police arrived, rushing towards them, an anxious look on her face. There were also two police officers. One of them had gone pale at the sight of all the blood while his colleague asked Emily and Amanda where they were hurt.
Amanda had done all the talking. Emily had been very grateful for that. It was Amanda who had used a blanket to cover up their father’s body and his gun as they lay side by side on Emily’s double bed. Emily had felt proud of her sister for everything she’d done that evening.
Since that night, Emily had often repeated to herself the words Amanda had said over and over to her as they were sitting on the bedroom floor: It’s over now, Emily. He can’t hurt you any more. It had become her mantra. Amanda had been Emily’s rock. She felt that she owed her life to her sister.
‘I’m sure Amanda’s testimony will be very useful,’ said Lucy tactfully, bringing Emily out of her reverie and back to the present. ‘She was there that night and she speaks very highly of you.’
Lucy leaned forwards and reached across the table to pat Emily’s hand. The contact made Emily jump and her knee hit the table quite hard. It didn’t budge; the very first time she’d come into this room, Emily had noticed that the furniture was bolted to the floor.
‘Now, for the trial itself,’ Lucy began, removing her hand from Emily’s to adjust her headscarf. ‘We couldn’t really have raised the issue of fitness to plead. No judge would have found you unfit to plead. It’s obvious from your school reports that you’re a very bright young lady, so clearly you’ll have no trouble understanding the proceedings of your trial. We can’t go for self-defence either—’