Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone (books for 6 year olds to read themselves txt) ๐

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- Author: Carole Johnstone
Read book online ยซMirrorland by Carole Johnstone (books for 6 year olds to read themselves txt) ๐ยป. Author - Carole Johnstone
Trust me. This is the truth now.
I look out at the cars, the people, the blurred beige and grey, open the glove box and push the letter inside. This new grief might be heavy and cruel, but this new sense of responsibility is worse, heavier; a dread no longer silvery but black and thick like cooling tar. I used to think that people whose lives were stuck in limbo carried on only because it was easier. Easier than giving up. Easier than stopping. But now I know itโs because thereโs no alternative, no escape. That the tide will come, and all you can do is stay afloat. And wait for it to turn.
I fold up the smaller piece of paper and push it into my jeans pocket. Open the car door and get out. Face those smooth stone walls and high windows.
Because I canโt put it off any longer either.
*
I try not to look at the receptionist who checks my ID, or at my unsteady hands as I put my phone and bag inside a locker, or at the guard as I walk through the metal detector and consent to a rub-down search. The secure waiting area is upstairs, and I sit down, keep my eyes trained on the neutral carpet. Maybe no one knows who I am anyway, or who Iโm here to see.
Rossโs sentencing was big news. It was televised. I watched it alone, in the dark, while reporters banged on my door. The judgeโs voice reminded me of Mumโs: high and hectoring, inviting neither opinion nor dissent.
Mr Ross Iain MacAuley, a jury has found you guilty by majority verdict of the callous murder of your wife, Ellice MacAuley. After subjecting her to months, perhaps years, of physical and mental abuse, you decided and then planned, motivated in part perhaps by the realisation that she was intending to leave you, to murder her and pass it off as an accident at sea. I find that showed significant premeditation and cold-headedness. I also find that you believed you would profit financially from her death. You pled not guilty. You have shown no remorse. Against these aggravating factors, I find little in the way of mitigation. Therefore, I feel I must pass a sentence of life imprisonment, with a punishment part of fifteen years for the murder of Ellice MacAuley, and three years for attempting to defeat the ends of justice.
The reporters have stopped hounding me now. The trial, the conviction, have already been all but forgotten. And Rafiq was wrong. No one has made any connection between us and the two twelve-year-old girls found at Granton Harbour in 1998. And no one has mentioned the murderโsuicide at 36 Westeryk Road, except as macabre coincidence.
I catch the eye of an old man with yellow whiskers, and when he grins, I look away. The intermittent bang of vending machines turns my headache into a dull throb.
A guard opens a door, beckons us all with a half-arsed finger. โTwelve,โ he says to me as I pass him inside the doorway. I find the table, sit down, clasp my fingers together. I donโt want to see him. I never wanted to have to see him again. And yet.
The prisoners file in. I feel Ross before I see him: a trickle of cold against my spine, a flutter in my heart. He stops next to the table, long enough that I have to look up. He looks great. His hair is short. His eyes are no longer bloodshot, the skin beneath them clear. On the day he took the stand, the flesh beneath his cheekbones was sunken, dark with stubble. He was charming, passionate, credible. He cried. Though Iโd felt his stare throughout most of the trial, that day he never glanced in my direction once.
โHello, Cat,โ he says, and his smile is warm, unsure. โItโs good to see you. I didnโt think I would.โ The last is a question, but I refuse to answer it, not yet. I need to be in control of this whole conversation; I canโt let any bit of him in until Iโve made my choice.
He sits down, keeps his smile. When he stretches out his legs, I cross mine at the ankles under the seat of my chair. But when he clears his throat, I make myself look at him. If I canโt do that, Iโm screwed before Iโve even started.
โWhy are you here?โ His gaze is too intense. Peat-brown eyes flecked with silver.
I close mine, and they sting. Because Iโve been grieving for him too, I canโt pretend I havenโt. โI donโt know yet.โ
He leans closer. Close enough that I can smell him. โI want โ I need โ you to know how sorry I am about what happened that night โฆโ He swallows, and his throat clicks. โIโm so sorry that I hurt you, Cat. Iโve thought about it every day, and I donโt blame you for what you said at the trial, I donโt blame you for anything. I promise you I donโt.โ
Because I am the main reason heโs here. I am why there was so little in the way of mitigation. I was the Crownโs best witness, and the most damning part of my testimony was not what Iโd found or heard, not even the oxycodone and diazepam that they found in my wine glass and my blood โ but the fact that Ross and I had been having sex. I endured the telling of that truth, even the snide cross-examination of it by Rossโs QC and then the wider, snider world, because it was so damning. So much of the prosecutionโs case was circumstantial: Elโs letter, Rossโs false statements, the physical finds, the mobile phone data, camera footage, even the turning up of a will that Ross knew nothing about, in which El left
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