Page 62 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
It’s fine. I shouldn’t have lied. I’ll come tomorrow and explain. Matt.
Tomorrow.
Next time I see Jamie, I ask if there’s any good news from the past few years. He thinks, tapping his pen against his lips. ‘The news is all pretty shocking, I have to say. But how about the fact that in 2017 you were married to a man who was hurting you, and now you’re free of him, and he’s in prison? That seems pretty good.’
I don’t realise I’m crying until his expression changes. ‘What did I say? I’m sorry, Shelley. It’s just… Well, I haven’t told you this, but I remember you from last time.’
My head jolts up. ‘Last time?’
‘From 2017, when David pushed you down the stairs. I was here, looking after you, when you were recovering from that. And I see all sorts of things here, but I found your story really tough. You were obviously such a sweet soul and he’d taken so much away from you, and I was rooting for you to take it to court, for him to be properly punished for what he did. Now, this time, you’ve been seriously injured but it was just an accident. Itwasn’t anyone’s fault. In this job, we often get to see people for a few days at a certain point in their lives, and we never get to find out what happens afterwards. When I heard you were back, that you were in a coma again, I thought he was out and you’d gone back to him, or that you’d met someone else who was just as bad, and it was such a relief to hear that you’d been in a car accident – strange as that might sound.’
‘I would never go back to him,’ I say.
‘Well, good. Because you’re a good person, Shelley. You deserve good things. And it feels like you have good people in your life now. I hope it stays that way.’
He takes his monitor and wheels it to the next bed, and I sit very still and quiet, trying to keep hold of what he said so that I can process it. And while I’m doing that, something comes into my mind, as clear and bright as a photograph. It’s the trial. David’s trial.
32
THEN
I grip the sides of my chair so hard that my knuckles go white. It’s all been building up to this, to today. I look at David across the courtroom, and he looks so small, so pathetic. He won’t meet my eye, hasn’t looked at me once, this whole time. When I close my eyes, I can see him on our wedding day, on the day we met, on the day he pushed me. And I cannot quite believe I let it go on the way I did. If it hadn’t come to a head like that, if I hadn’t nearly died, would I still be living with him, still at the mercy of his whims and moods? Possibly.
He’s just a man, I tell myself. Just an average, insecure man. But he’s a monster, too. I hate him for pleading not guilty, for dragging me to court to live through it all again. For several days, we’ve battled it out, him saying I slipped, me saying he pushed me. The lawyers are clever and they don’t miss a thing. At times, I have doubted my own story. But now the jury have a verdict and the courtroom is in silence, waiting for it to be read.
The foreperson is a woman, maybe ten years older than me. She has thin, mousy-brown hair in a chin-length bob, glasses that are too big for her face. Has she ever known violence from a man? There’s no way to tell. I can picture her being pushedagainst a wall, a meaty hand around her throat, but I can also picture her sitting at a table opposite a man with kind eyes who pours her a glass of wine and asks about her day; about her jury service. I’m back in the room, focused on the matter in hand. If they have found him not guilty, I fear for my future. And if they have found him guilty, I fear for his. Because you don’t stop loving someone overnight. You don’t stop caring about how their life turns out.
This woman who is holding mine and David’s future in the palm of her hand steps forward, clears her throat. The judge asks if the jury have reached a unanimous verdict, and she says they have. A couple of people on the jury look down at that point, and I wonder if they were the ones who didn’t agree at first, the ones who were talked around. When the judge asks the foreperson what the verdict is, I take a deep breath in. Time slows, and I look at David again. There’s no fear on his face, just exasperation. His mum is sitting in the public gallery, and I question the steps that led from us all eating roast beef around her dining room table to being here, in this courtroom. Remind myself that David took the steps that brought us here. I did not.
‘Guilty,’ the foreperson says, and I exhale.
David’s shoulders slump and I keep looking at him, can’t look away. Because I was sure that he would acknowledge me at some point, flash me the smallest of apologetic smiles. But there is nothing. Has his lawyer advised him to look away from me? And what could it possibly matter now, when it is all over?
He is given ten years. GBH. A term I’ve only heard before on TV. After he says it, the judge glances at me and I try to interpret the meaning of the look, but there is nothing. I want to thank him, for taking my life seriously. But I don’t, and then it’s all over. Dee drives me home.
‘Ten years is longer than I’ve known him,’ I say.
I’m not sure what my point is. I’m just trying to grasp what a decade actually is.
‘He might not do the full ten,’ Dee says.
‘Still, he’ll do at least five. Five years is a long time. Five Christmases, five birthdays.’
‘I would have given him twenty.’
I watch Dee, whose eyes are on the road. I want to say thank you but I can’t find the words. I hope Dee knows. When you get married, you’re essentially tying your life to a person and putting everyone else second. But when the person you married isn’t the person you thought they were, sometimes you need those secondary people to step up, to get you out.
Back at the flat, Dee asks whether I want her to open up the pub.
‘No, let’s stay closed for today.’
‘We never stay closed.’
‘Well, it’s not really a normal day, is it?’
I have changed out of my stiff court clothes and into jeans and a hoodie. It’s cold and clear outside, and we go for a walk, get a coffee on the way to warm our hands.
‘I can’t stop wondering what he’s doing. Do you think that will stop, eventually?’
