‘Is this what it’s going to be like? If we try to make a go of this, we’re going to be sniping at each other?’
‘Probably,’ I replied. ‘So let’s just call it all off now. You go back to your plan to confront “Serena” now that you know there is no evidence to suggest she did do it and your sister didn’t. And I’ll go back to pretending I don’t know way too much about my mother.’
Prosecution: Miss Gorringe, what was your favourite sexual position with Mr Halnsley?
Serena Gorringe: Pardon?
PR: What was your favourite sexual position with Mr Halnsley?
SG: I don’t remember.
PR: You don’t remember?
SG: No.
PR: Are you saying you have had so much sex that intercourse with Mr Halnsley became nothing remarkable or different and you had to find ways to make it interesting? Like through sex games or torture?
SG: No. I never did anything like that.
PR: But you can’t remember your favourite position? How are we to know that you didn’t participate in sex games or torture?
SG: I didn’t. I just didn’t.
PR: Did you enjoy the sex you had with Mr Halnsley?
SG:
PR: Please can you reply verbally, Miss Gorringe. For the record. The record can’t see you shrugging as though you don’t have a care in the world. I’ll ask again: did you enjoy the sex you had with Mr Halnsley?
SG: Sometimes.
PR: Sometimes. Sometimes. It wasn’t boring and humdrum?
SG: No.
PR: You didn’t find yourself needing to become more and more extreme to make it interesting?
SG: Nothing like that. He was my first.
PR: But you’ve just told the court how you couldn’t remember how much sex you had, so much so, you couldn’t remember what your favourite position was.
SG: He was my first.
PR: I put it to you, Miss Gorringe, that those times you didn’t enjoy sexual intercourse with him were the times Mr Halnsley couldn’t satisfy your voracious sexual appetites and threatened to walk away.
SG: No.
PR: I put it to you, Miss Gorringe, that you knew Mr Halnsley was growing tired of the sexual games you and your co-defendant, Miss Carlisle, were playing with him and you couldn’t stand the thought of someone else deciding when your relationship was over, that your often uncooperative victim was gathering the strength to walk away, so you conspired with Miss Carlisle, to murder him.
SG: No, no, it wasn’t like that. It honestly wasn’t like that.
Some of the things I had found out were life-altering, core-shaking, and not the sort of thing you could pretend away. Not like my relationship with Logan. Relationship, hah! We’d slept together a few times: he’d stayed over three Saturday nights and bought me breakfast, which we ate in bed while we read the newspapers. We’d kind of skipped many, many stages of what you would call relationship-building and were acting like we’d been together for years. I suppose learning all about the criminal, potentially murderous, past of your loved ones would do that.
‘I don’t want to call it off,’ Logan stated quite firmly. ‘I . . . I think I’m falling in love with you—’
‘Well don’t. This issue we’re having isn’t you leaving wet towels on the floor or me closing the blinds in the wrong direction, it isn’t something that’s going to go away, so don’t fall in love with me.’ I was being snippy, snarky and a bit of a bitch. But hearing Mum in my head, her voice replying, ‘Yes. Sometimes he forced me’ to the question: ‘Do you mean to tell the court, Miss Gorringe, that Mr Halnsley sexually assaulted you?’ was still messing with my head.
PR: Do you mean to tell the court, Miss Gorringe, that Mr Halnsley sexually assaulted you?
SG: Yes. Sometimes he forced me.
PR: How many times?
SG: I don’t understand what you mean.
PR: How many times did Mr Halnsley, who I would beg the court to remember isn’t here to defend himself, “force you”?
SG: I . . . I don’t know.
PR: You don’t know how many times you claim to have been raped? I find that hard to believe. Was it once, twice, ten times, a hundred? How many, Miss Gorringe?
SG: I was just . . . He just . . . Like when we’d have an argument, he’d . . . afterwards . . . to . . . he’d say . . . Sometimes . . .
PR: You’re not making much sense, Miss Gorringe. Is that because you hadn’t thought through your lie—?
Defence Barrister: Your honour—
PR: I’m sorry, I’ll rephrase. You seem very distressed, Miss Gorringe, would you like a few moments to compose yourself?
SG: No. No, thank you.
PR: If you’re sure? I’ll continue. You said that after an argument, Mr Halnsley would sometimes force you to have sexual intercourse with him.
SG: Yes.
PR: Was this all the time?
SG: No. Just sometimes.
PR: But always after an argument?
SG: Usually.
PR: A lot of couples in healthy relationships often talk about ‘make-up sex’ after a quarrel being the best type of sex they have. It literally is part of the making-up process. Something they do as part of their healthy relationship. Which sounds very much like what you are describing.
SG: It wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to.
PR: You didn’t want to make up? You wanted to keep the argument going?
SG: No, I mean I didn’t want to have sex sometimes.
PR: So you used the withholding of affection to control Mr Halnsley?
SG: No, I just didn’t want to have sex after an argument.
PR: Let’s focus on that for a moment, shall we? You say that after an argument Mr Halnsley would sometimes force you to have sex?
SG: Yes.
PR: But didn’t you earlier testify, Miss Gorringe, that you were so scared of Mr Halnsley that you didn’t dare to . . . what, was it . . . oh yes, here we are: ‘I always did as I was told and didn’t dare to answer back’? You said those words earlier.
SG: Yes.
PR: Which is it, Miss Gorringe? Either you were too scared to answer back or you had arguments that led to make-up sex that he ‘forced’ you into.
SG: They weren’t normal arguments. It was after he said I’d done something wrong. After he’d hit me or something. He’d say he was sorry and I had to say I was sorry too—
PR: And were you? Were you sorry?
SG: No.
PR: You weren’t sorry for upsetting him?
SG: No, I was. I mean, I hadn’t done anything to be sorry for.
PR: I’m not sure I understand. You, by your own admission, were often the cause of the arguments with Mr Halnsley; these arguments, again by your own admission, sometimes turned physical but you weren’t sorry for causing them and don’t see why you had to be sorry, much less say it. Did you feel blameless in what happened in your relationship, Miss Gorringe?
SG: I don’t know what you mean.
PR: Did you feel like you were perfect and Mr Halnsley was always in the wrong and that his need for love and affection from you was wearing and somehow weak?
SG: No.
PR: Did his need to put any unpleasantness that arose between the two of you behind you as soon as possible and get back to normal, which included sexual relations, irritate you?
SG: No. It wasn’t like that.
PR: I put it to you, Miss Gorringe, that you have fabricated this whole idea that Mr Halnsley sexually assaulted you by twisting the very normal elements of your relationship into something nefarious to elicit the sympathy of this court.