Reasons Why

Chapter Twenty

Chloe looked at her reflection, her face pale against the harsh dark suit. It was barely comprehensible that less than a year ago she wore a suit like this every day. Pinching her cheeks she begged for colour, but she’d lost that, along with her breakfast in the bathroom an hour earlier. Those six weeks of pleasure and happiness in Canada were a distant memory. Fading daily like her tan.

This moment had weighed on her so heavily, and now it was here. The day she had to testify at the trial of the man who killed her brother...’allegedly’ as the news reports had insisted since it started a few days earlier. The evidence against him was damning, CCTV footage showed him following Owen around the corner into her street moments before the assault, he’d also been caught trying to sell Owen’s mobile phone the following day in a cash for goods store. He had a drug habit, lived on the streets, had a record of petty theft and assault convictions. When he was arrested he was bruised to the knuckles as well as over one eye, the only sign that Owen may have had the chance to fight back, but there was no DNA evidence on either him or Owen’s body. Then there was the fact that he’d boasted about ‘doing him in’ to his cell mate whilst waiting for trial. Everything pointed at him doing the deed but all the evidence was circumstantial.

\despite all that, he was, of course, entitled to a fair trial, and as part of that they were trying to use Owen’s apparent argument with her to cast doubt on his innocence, they wanted to hint that he was angry and looking for trouble himself, that Owen had been attacked in self defence. Hence her testimony.

Taking a deep breath, she left her parents’ home. She’d been there since coming home two months earlier. She was trying to fight the depression and guilt that had threatened her since the day her twin was killed, and she was only just winning. Once this ordeal was over she could start again. It was the very last thing in a long list of ‘things she had to get over’. Maybe tomorrow she’d be able to find her way to a normal life.

Her father looked like he’d aged twenty years since Owen had died, Chloe acknowledged as he drove them all to the central London courthouse.  This, other than the verdict, was the last stage in the nightmare for her parents too. She hoped with all her heart that it was.  They’d suffered more than they deserved, and a large part of that was her role in all this. They’d both promised to go visit Phil once the case was over, and she knew that was the break they both needed to start the recovery process.

Her mother squeezed her hand as they pulled up at the car park. This was the last she’d see of them until she walked in to the packed court room and into the witness box.  She hugged her parents, then followed the clerks to the room dedicated for those about to testify. That was when the waiting started. She’d been in the same room for the last two days, but she’d been assured that today would be her day in the box.

Chloe took the book from her bag and tried, as she had the last two days, to concentrate on it, but she could barely think for the pounding of her heart and the bile that gurgled at the back of her throat. It had been like this for weeks, she was briefed by the prosecutors, reassured that her testimony was Pinker’s team attempting to clutch at straws. But nothing really defeated the fear and anxiety that thought of the testimony brought.

When the gowned clerk came in and called her name, she stood, and then followed on legs that would hardly step one in front of the other they were shaking so much. It felt as though she was the one on trial, that the world was about judging her. Stopping halfway along the corridor, she had to reach for the wall, steady herself.  The clerk waited with little compassion, so she rushed along embarrassed at her lack of coping. As the large oak door swung open, the hushed sounds of the court came like an invasion to her senses. With a deep breath she stepped forward.

Luke’s eyes were trained on the door behind the witness box. He’d barely made it to the court on time, and was relieved to find out that Chloe hadn’t been called up the day before. Sitting in the back of the room, he’d listened to the end of the evidence from the last witness, the pathologist who’d performed the post mortem on Owen. He’d grimaced at some of the words spoken, and the images they portrayed. He immediately identified Chloe’s parents as the ones reacting most dramatically to the words from the gathered crowds. Poor bastards! He thought, unable to imagine having to hear in exact anatomical details each blow and injury their now dead son had suffered.