The Girl Before

I hadn’t known, but I nod anyway.

Deon Nelson is claiming misidentification, she goes on. She takes a document from the pile in front of her and puts on some reading glasses. Then she peers at me over the top of the glasses, as if waiting for me to respond.

I didn’t see him at the bail hearing, I say quickly.

There are several witnesses who say you did. But that’s not the specific issue we’re here to discuss.

For some reason I’m not relieved to hear this. Something about her tone, and the silent, watchful faces of the others, is making me uneasy. The atmosphere has turned serious. Aggressive, even.

Deon Nelson has provided medical evidence—intimate medical evidence—that he cannot be the man who recorded himself receiving oral sex from you, Shapton says. The evidence is compelling. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s incontrovertible.

I feel a sense of vertigo that swiftly turns to nausea. I don’t understand, I say.

From a legal standpoint, of course, that’s all his defense needs to do to secure an acquittal, she continues as if I hadn’t spoken. She picks up some more documents. But in fact, they’ve gone considerably further. These are sworn statements from some of your colleagues at Flow Water Supplies. The most relevant for our purposes is the one from Saul Aksoy, in which he describes a recent sexual relationship with you. During the course of which, he says, at your request, the two of you made a video fitting the description of the one Detective Inspector Clarke found on your phone.

There’s that phrase I wanted the ground to swallow me up. It doesn’t begin to describe what happens when your whole world implodes, when all the lies you’ve told suddenly come crashing down around your ears. There’s a long, horrible pause. I can feel tears stinging my eyes. I fight them back. I know Patricia Shapton will think they’re just a ruse to get sympathy.

I manage to say, What about the other phones you found? You said Deon Nelson had done this before. He’s hardly innocent.

It’s Chief Superintendent Robertson who answers. It used to be thought there was a link between committing burglary and watching hard-core pornography, he says. Because burglars often had unusually large collections of explicit DVDs. Then someone realized that burglars just hung on to the pornography they found in other people’s houses. Nelson did the same with phones. He kept the ones with sexual images. That’s all.

Patricia Shapton takes off her glasses and folds them up. Did Deon Nelson force you to give him oral sex, Emma?

There is a long, long silence. No, I whisper.

Why did you tell the police that he did?

You asked me in front of Simon! I explode. The tears do come now, tears of self-pity and anger, although I keep talking, desperate for them to understand, to see that this is their fault just as much as mine. I point at Sergeant Willan and DI Clarke. They said they’d found the video and it looked like Nelson, forcing me, I say. They said you couldn’t see his face or the knife. What was I supposed to do? Tell Simon I’d had sex with someone else?

You accused a man of raping you at knifepoint. And of threatening to send obscene images of that attack to your family and friends. You kept up the deception when your story was challenged. You even read a Victim Personal Statement in court.

DI Clarke made me, I say. I tried to back out but he wouldn’t let me. Anyway, Nelson deserved it. He’s a thief. He stole my stuff.

The words, so pathetic and petty, hang in the air. I catch sight of DI Clarke’s face. Written across it is a whole library of emotions. Contempt. Pity. And anger—anger that he’s allowed himself to be deceived by me, that I’ve exploited his desire to protect me by piling lie on lie on lie.

There’s another awful silence. Patricia Shapton glances at Chief Superintendent Robertson. Clearly this is some prearranged signal because he says, Do you have a lawyer, Emma?

I shake my head. There’s the man who drew up the deed of variation when Simon moved out but I don’t think he’d be much use in this situation.

Emma, I’m going to arrest you now. It means you can have access to a duty lawyer later, when we question you about this formally.

I stare at him. What do you mean?

We take cases of rape very seriously. That means assuming every woman who says she’s been raped is telling the truth. The flip side is that we take false rape allegations equally seriously. On the basis of what we’ve heard today, we have enough evidence to arrest you on suspicion of wasting police time and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

You’re going to arrest me? I go, disbelieving. What about Nelson? He’s the criminal.

We’ll have to drop the charges against Deon Nelson, Patricia Shapton says. All of them. Your evidence is totally discredited now.