A woman sticks her head out the door of the house and looks at us for a moment. Apparently reassured by what she sees, she retreats inside and the gates open slowly. We walk through and crunch over gravel to the front door. It opens abruptly. Patrick moves forward and shakes the woman’s hand.
“Good to see you again, Francine. Alison, this is Francine, Madeleine’s sister,” he says. He stands to one side and I shake hands with her, her fingers tight and bony on mine. She gestures us into the house to meet Madeleine, who is sitting in the living room, her legs tucked up under her on a sofa. She stands to greet us.
She’s a thin woman, tall, her hair thick and smooth but with highlights outgrown by an inch or so. Tendons are prominent on her neck and a pulse beating blue on her temple. Francine is thin, too, though sleeker than Madeleine, a gloss to her hair and skin. She’s tense, shifting from foot to foot, her fingers pulling at the edges of her cardigan. Looking up at them I feel smaller and stockier than usual, a workhorse to their thoroughbred elegance. They’re both dressed in shades of beige, taupe trousers and smooth oatmeal knitwear, clearly cashmere. Madeleine is subtly jeweled, diamonds at her ears and encircling her fingers, an encrusted eternity ring hanging loosely on the fourth finger of her left hand. I twist the white gold bands round my ring finger, hiding the small solitaire diamond on my engagement ring on the inside so that it digs into my hand.
“I don’t want to think about the prison. It was a nightmare.” Madeleine picks at the skin around her nails.
“We got you out as soon as we could.” Patrick’s voice is gentle. There is a fragility to Madeleine that demands soft voices and careful language. It’s not a tone I’ve heard from him before.
“Can I offer anyone a cup of tea?” Francine says.
I nod. “Milk, no sugar. Thank you.” The task might calm her down, smooth the tension that prickles around her, so we can begin to draw out Madeleine.
As Francine bustles out of the room, Madeleine uncurls her legs a little.
“There was so much shouting. I tried to sleep, but I don’t know how anyone could sleep through all that…It was hell. I could sleep at the police station, but not there. Five nights of it…”
She pauses and smiles up at her sister, who has returned with mugs of tea on a tray laden with milk, sugar, and three different kinds of cookies.
“Can I get you anything else?” Francine asks.
“No, this is great,” I reply. We all chime in with thanks.
“I’m fine, Francine. Why don’t you leave us alone to have a chat?” Madeleine smiles at her sister and Francine finally leaves, closing the door behind her.
“Let’s make a start.” Patrick pushes the tea tray to one side and deposits the files from his bag onto the coffee table. I reach into my bag and pull out my brief and my notebook. “Let me introduce you properly to Alison Wood, who will be representing you in this case.”
I nod at Madeleine.
“Alison has been practicing for over fifteen years. She’s done a lot of complicated cases, both at the Crown Court and in the Appeal Court, too.” Patrick gestures at me as he speaks. It doesn’t feel like me he’s describing. “She’s going to be great at working out what’s best for your case. We’ll make sure we look after you.”
Madeleine looks at her hands. “I don’t think there’s anything to be done, though. I did it, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Hold your horses. We don’t need to have that kind of conversation yet, let’s just go through the preliminaries first.” At last he sounds like the Patrick I know, abrupt, abrasive in tone. And I’m glad he’s stopped her—there’s nothing worse than a client who talks too soon about the offense. They need to wait for us to ask the right questions. “Alison, why don’t you talk Madeleine through what’s going to happen next.”
“Right. Okay, Madeleine, this is where we are now. The case has been transferred from the magistrates’ court to the Old Bailey, and the next court appearance will be the plea and trial preparation hearing, the PTPH. That’s when you’ll enter a plea to the indictment.”
“That’s not for a few weeks, though. Is it?”
“No, not until mid-November. Four weeks away. We’ve got very little by way of evidence from the prosecution at the moment, but they’ll serve more soon. I hope.” I watch Madeleine as I speak but she isn’t making eye contact with me, instead still looking down at her hands. Her fingernails are bitten to the quick, the only crack in her perfectly groomed facade. She nods once and I continue.
“We need to go through all the evidence before that hearing. As I said, you will need to enter a plea at that stage, and if it’s not guilty, then a date will be set for the trial.”
“And if it’s guilty?”
“Then the matter will be adjourned immediately for sentence.”
“So that’s what I want to do.” She looks up at this point, meets and holds my gaze. She looks determined, unblinking. Too much so. I wonder what she’s trying to hide.
“Madeleine, I would strongly advise you to wait until we have gone through all the evidence before you make any decision as to the next step to take. At this stage holding a firm view is not necessarily the right way to go.”
She has a stubborn set to her jaw but at least she’s listening. “I know what I did.”
“Well, I don’t. And there are legal aspects of this to consider too. So please, can we take it a step at a time?” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Patrick nodding his agreement.
Madeleine gets to her feet and paces to the window, paces back again. For one moment I think she’s going to sit down next to me on the overstuffed leather sofa, but she turns away at the last second and walks again to the window. “You shouldn’t have bothered getting me bail. I should be locked up.”
Patrick pauses for a moment before replying. “You don’t have any previous convictions. You’ve never been in any trouble before. The court accepted that there’s no one who is at risk from you. And it’s much better from the point of view of preparing your defense.”
Madeleine sighs but doesn’t argue. She moves back to the sofa and sits down.
I clear my throat. “Every conversation that you have with us, your lawyers, is privileged. That means that it’s entirely confidential, and no one can make us tell them what you’ve said. There are some difficulties, though, if you tell us something in conference, and then want to say something different in front of the court during the trial. We can’t lie about what you’ve said. It causes us professional embarrassment, which could mean that we can’t continue to represent you. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, it does,” Madeleine says.
I take up my pen and notebook. “So could you tell me what happened that weekend? Let’s start with the Saturday.”
“James was home for the weekend. I made us cheese on toast and some salad for lunch, and we went out for a meal that night, to a steak restaurant on Clapham Common. James went on to a party in Balham thrown by a school friend, and Edwin and I took a taxi home.” She stops to draw breath. I note down the last bit, nod at her to continue.