Page 45 of Cuckoo

‘Yes, blood samples did confirm that Lilah Andersson was anaemic at the time of her death.’

‘And am I correct in understanding that anaemia can cause people to bruise particularly easily? From less force than it takes to cause the average person to bruise?’ Grosvenor asks.

My eyes widen.

‘I would agree that the victim was more likely to bruise than someone who was not suffering from anaemia.’

‘So to summarise: you agree that the victim required less pressure than the average person to cause her to bruise? That it is impossible to be sure the palm-print in question was caused by the defendant? And that it is entirely possible that the victim merely tripped in her own home and had the terrible luck of hitting the weakest part of her skull, leading to her accidental death?’

I blink.

Dr Campbell shifts in her seat, but she’s already nodding slowly. ‘Yes, that summary is accurate,’ she concedes.

‘No further questions, Your Honour,’ Grosvenor says with a glance towards the judge.

My counsel turns to face me and she is smiling.

For the first time I find myself thinking that, thanks to Grosvenor, I may actually have a fighting chance of clearing my name.

Chapter Forty-Two

Laura Thorpe

Dodgson has called his second witness to the stand. My heart begins to race as soon as I see the face of the woman who is trotting up the aisle. It’s Laura Thorpe. She flicks her hair over her shoulder and bats her lashes at the jury. I have not seen this woman in thirteen years. Thirteen years since she last tormented me and she’s somehow been found from the rubble of my childhood and presented in court today. I feel white-hot rage take over my entire body as she sits down primly, still with that same annoying smirk on her face she wore constantly at school.

‘Mrs Thorpe, is it accurate to say that you were a school friend of Claire Arundale from the ages of eleven through to fifteen?’ Dodgson asks.

How did he find Laura?

I slide a note discreetly to Grosvenor across the table. It reads:WTF?

She slides one back.He’s trying to paint a picture of who you are. Stay unfazed.

That’s easy for Grosvenor to say. Her decades-old archnemesis isn’t a witness for the prosecution, trying to get her convicted on a murder charge.

‘Well, I wouldn’t go as far as to say we were friends,’ Laura replies in that same snide sing-song tone I recall from years ago. I bristle immediately, feeling like a teenager again, wanting to hide away in the art room from her and her bullying friends.

‘But you were in the same tutor group? Spent a lot of time together?’ Dodgson rephrases.

‘Yes, I’d say that’s accurate,’ she agrees, and shoots me a look that is so smug I want to slap it off her face.

I glare at her, full of resentment and fury that she is here, in this courtroom, trying to ruin me, again.

‘And tell us, what was Miss Arundale like at school?’ Dodgson asks.

Laura makes a show of batting her eyelashes, chewing on her over-plumped lips before answering. ‘Well… Claire was quite… quite unpopular, really,’ she says, pulling a sorrowful expression. But she has the same spiteful eyes that she did as a teenager, and I can sense her relishing this unexpected opportunity to make me feel awful about myself.

‘Unpopular in what way?’

‘She didn’t really have many friends, she kept herself to herself. She was a bit strange. I think people didn’t know how to behave around her,’ Laura says.

I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel fifteen again, but she’s managing to make it happen. For some bizarre reason, I feel my self-loathing begin to re-emerge, see myself through her eyes: a sad, pathetic virgin loser. It makes me hate her the same way that I hated Mother.

‘What do you mean bystrange?’

‘I don’t know, really. Just different from the rest of us. She spoke to herself sometimes, and she lied a lot, too.’

‘Lied?’

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