SG: No, I didn’t do that.
PR: I further put it to you, Miss Gorringe, that you often did things that you knew ‘wound up’ Mr Halnsley in order to get a reaction from him because that is all a girl with your type of background knows.
SG: No, that’s not true.
The way the prosecution painted Mum still gets to me. The fact they hinted that Mum was from an unstable background when her parents were sitting right there, probably hand in hand, terrified for their girl. The fact that even if she did come from an unstable background the implication had been that justified what he did to her. The fact that Mum’s barrister allowed all those things to be said about her, didn’t stop every little thing being twisted so at every turn it sounded like she was in control and she was aggressive and she caused all of it.
I was mad about how she was portrayed and not properly defended.
And I was angry with her, too. Yes, I know she was young. But how could she let herself get into that situation? Why didn’t she just walk away the first time he hit her? The first time he raped her? Hell, the first time he raised his voice to her? And he was bedding someone else. Right in her face. He basically had her in a hideous, forced sister-wife situation and she put up with it. Or rather, she put up with it until he wound up dead.
Logan took the magazine from my lap and slung it off the bed. Then carefully he climbed on top of me and looked into my face in the most open, honest gesture he’d made since I met him. He stared into my eyes, while I stared back, deep into his hazel-brown eyes. He had eyes like glass whirlpools: on those rare times he allowed me to look into them, they drew me in, swept me up, kept me hostage.
‘I don’t want to stop falling in love with you,’ Logan stated. ‘Being with you is the best thing to come out of this. All these years, all that hurt and pain and horror, all the tears and absences and confusion, have all been made bearable because of you. Because of being with you. I don’t want to stop falling in love with you.’
PR: Miss Gorringe, you say that your arguments with Mr Halnsley, a highly regarded father of a young son, often became physical. And that you often came off the worst in these altercations. Did you need medical attention on any of these occasions?
SG: Yes.
PR: Didn’t the hospital flag you up as being a regular visitor?
SG: I went to different hospitals.
PR: You deliberately went to different hospitals so your secret would remain intact?
SG: He said it was better to do that so people didn’t know.
PR: Mr Halnsley said that?
SG: Yes.
PR: You just did as he told you?
SG: I always did what he told me to do.
PR: Even if it meant lying to the authorities?
SG: Yes.
PR: So under the right circumstances you’re willing to lie to those in authority.
SG: He told me to.
PR: Did you realise that lying was wrong?
SG: Yes.
PR: But you did it anyway?
SG: He made me.
PR: How exactly? How did he make you? Did he stand next to you and force you to?
SG: No.
PR: Did he threaten you with what would happen if you didn’t do what he wanted?
SG: It wasn’t like that. He just said I had to.
PR: And you did it, no questions?
SG: I couldn’t argue with him.
PR: I could examine why you claim not to be able to argue with him, but we’ll move on. Miss Gorringe, if we’re to believe how terrorised you were by him, why didn’t you walk away? What kept you there with him if he was so terrible?
SG: I don’t know.
PR: I’m sorry, can you speak up? I couldn’t quite hear that. Why didn’t you leave if everything was so dangerous for you?
SG: I don’t know.
PR: I put it to you, Miss Gorringe, that you do know. You know because you have fabricated the idea that Mr Halnsley was abusive towards you. I further put it to you that it was you, in fact, who had Mr Halnsley in your thrall, and it was he who spent a lot of time capitulating to your will, who had to come up with ways to keep your relationship a secret as you became more and more dissatisfied with what he could offer you. I put it to you, Miss Gorringe, that far from being the victim you are trying to paint yourself as, you, in fact, were the aggressor: a violent, manipulative young woman with a voracious sexual appetite who grew bored of the game she was playing with a dedicated father and continually upped the stakes to keep herself entertained.
SG: It wasn’t like that. Really it wasn’t.
PR: Of course it wasn’t, Miss Gorringe. Because you say it, you expect everyone to believe it.
SG: It’s the truth.
PR: If it’s the truth then why can’t you tell me why you didn’t walk away? Why, Miss Gorringe, why?
Logan’s hands were on my hips and he pulled me towards him, moving me further down the bed. ‘I don’t want to stop falling in love with you,’ he repeated. ‘This is incredible. Us is incredible. I don’t want to stop falling in love with you.’
He pushed my black sleep vest up to my chest, then over my head until he took it off.
‘I want to keep falling in love with you,’ he said passionately. He lowered his head and covered one of my nipples with his mouth. I couldn’t stop myself gasping.
‘Do you want me to keep falling in love with you?’ he asked as he raised his head and moved to the other breast. Another gasp, another arch of my back as my body ached for him. This was the easy part of it, of course. It had been since we first did this three weeks ago. ‘Do you?’ he asked again when he had made me weak with desire.
‘Do you?’ he asked as he pulled down my stripy black-and-red sleep shorts. ‘Do you want me to keep falling in love with you?’
He stripped himself of his pyjama trousers and reached under his pillow for a condom. ‘Do you want me to keep falling in love with you?’ he asked me again, sounding ever more desperate; ever more scared about why I wouldn’t answer.
I didn’t answer because my head was full of Mum. Ever since we’d stopped reading the court records, they’d been playing over and over in my head. I didn’t understand. Why she couldn’t leave. Why she didn’t leave. The only reason, I could think, was that she loved him. And that terrified me. The things that love could make you do, make you put up with.
Did I want any part of it when that was where it could lead? I liked sex when I had it. I liked sex when it was with Logan, but now he was bandying around the word ‘love’ not long after saying he thought my mother was a murderer. Love shouldn’t be that confusing, should it? Love shouldn’t be about those things, should it? Or was I being naïve? Love is part of life and life is messy; is love just about messiness? Is love about being caught up in the general melee of the confusing mass of mess that is life?
Logan lowered his face to mine, stared into my eyes again. He looked terrified. Absolutely terrified of what I might say. ‘Do you want me to keep falling in love with you?’ he asked yet again.
I nodded my messed-up, messy head. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘Yes, I do.’
He entered me with a smile of relief and a sigh of desire mixed in with happiness that I did want him to fall for me. That maybe I was going to fall for him, too. I grabbed his shoulders, pulled him closer, deeper; wrapped my legs around him so we were nearer still.
‘Logan,’ I breathed as he thrust hard into me. ‘Logan.’