The Best of Friends by Alex Day (accelerated reader books .txt) 📕

oath, but of course most ordinary people are either outraged by, or condemnatory of, the idea of having full-time live-in servants to wait on one hand and foot.

‘And in her distraction,’ continues the barrister, ‘what did she do when you handed over the casserole dish which contained the … lamb massaman?’

He enunciates the last two words so precisely and deliberately, emphasising the plosive ‘b’ and the sibilant ‘s’ sounds; it’s as if he’s tasting them. And finding them wanting. I’m still not sure where he’s heading with this line of enquiry, and that makes me nervous. But I do everything I can to hide my disquiet.

‘She tasted it,’ I say calmly. ‘She found it very hot, as in spicy, but she knew that I’d made it that way because it’s how Dan likes it. But she suffered no ill-effects, which proves that she added the poison after I’d gone.’

‘And what happened next, that evening, after Mrs Hegarty tested the dish?’

I narrow my eyes as I try to remember accurately. ‘I left pretty much straightaway.’

‘Hmm.’ The barrister sniffs and nods his head as if weighing up what I’ve said. ‘Straightaway,’ he repeats. ‘You’re sure about that, Ms Carr?’

I work hard to keep my face expressionless. ‘Yes. Absolutely sure.’

‘Really?’ His voice is laden with disbelief. ‘So you judged Mrs Hegarty to be distraught and distracted, as well she might be when what lay ahead of her was a meeting crucial to the saving of her twenty-five year marriage.’

Twenty-five years. The number hits me like a cosh. The jury will be beguiled by such a long-lasting union, censorious about the person who threatened it.

‘Yes,’ I repeat. What is his point? When he next speaks, I find out.

‘So she was in enough of a muddled state that, when she turned away from you to finish ironing her blouse or to put something on the table, she wouldn’t have noticed you slipping the poison hemlock into the curry?’

Her blouse. How old is he? Doesn’t he know that women wear shirts these days, just like men? I hope this will show the jury how out of touch with reality this man is.

‘Because that’s what happened, isn’t it, Ms Carr?’ he continues. ‘You set the whole thing up to frame Mrs Hegarty and you hoped her unsettled frame of mind would allow you to get away with it.’

‘No,’ I state, calmly but insistently. ‘Categorically no. I did not poison the curry.’

‘No further questions, m’lord,’ says the barrister.

I step down from the box feeling a mixture of relief and confusion. I’m not sure what was achieved during that questioning. But I have a lingering sense of something unfinished. None of it seems to be as clear cut as it should be – and that worries me.

However, as the case progresses I begin to relax.

There are plenty of other factors that add up against Charlotte, that leave her hung out to dry. Naomi tells the court about the ‘welcome’ meal Charlotte invited her to shortly after her arrival in the village, how she’d been very ill after eating mushrooms Charlotte had foraged. Crucially, it was another instance where more than one person ate the same meal but only one of them suffered symptoms.

If it sounds suspicious, looks suspicious, and smells suspicious …

Everything conspires against her. Why did she eat so little herself? She doesn’t like curry, she explains. She hates spicy, chilli-laden food. But she also doesn’t normally eat carbs and yet on this night, had a mountain of rice, naan and poppadoms on her plate – as testified to by Dan – a calorie-fest her body hasn’t seen since about 1999.

The jurors stare intently. No one fidgets. No one loses concentration for a moment.

In addition to the mushroom story, Naomi uses her time in court to lay it all on the line – all the petty insults Charlotte has fired in her direction over the years, all the jealousy she’s displayed towards the poor, sweet, buxom waitress her husband had befriended. Charlotte’s barrister is good but he hasn’t prepared for her to lose the sympathy of the court and once she has, it seems there is no way back.

By this stage, there may still have been a grain of hope for her. A soupçon, a gram. But then the fatal text message is read. I had to hand it over; it’s a crime to withhold evidence. As the words are enunciated, everyone knows it is the moment that changes everything. It’s an admission of intent, and laden with profanities, which never go down well with a jury. Especially not coming from a posh woman who should know better.

I wish I could just get rid of him. For ever. I feel like fucking poisoning the bastard. In fact, I think I will. I’ll kill the motherfucker for what he’s done to me.

There’s only one thing I don’t tell the court, and it doesn’t involve a lie. They don’t ask me. So I don’t have to admit that I left the necklace on purpose, that I broke the chain and put it under the bed. I did it after Dan delivered his bombshell, popping upstairs on the pretext of fetching my cardigan. It was the only thing I could think of that might ensure Charlotte found out that Dan had slept with someone while she was away which, I believed, would bring their marriage to an end.

It was my only hope.

Chapter 45

Susannah

Eventually, just as spring was turning to summer and the leaves on the trees were thick and green, the date for my sentencing arrived. The press came out in force; it could hardly have been a better story.

The jilted girlfriend, the French temptress, the handsome, talented man caught between two beautiful women – precisely the stuff newspapers, particularly the tabloids, thrive on. The public gallery was full to bursting point.

Because of my guilty plea there was no need for anyone to give evidence, so there would be no weeping Josephine in the dock, relating how she nearly