Christmas Nights

When it would be a complete waste of time, Paris thought despondently. Her nightmare of the last three years had been that she might chance to meet the man she’d been so in love with, have to face him again and see the contempt in his eyes. Now it looked as if she was not only going to see him, but would have to spend an indefinite period in his proximity.

With a sigh, Paris said dully, ‘If you’ll promise to find me somewhere else as soon as possible, then, all right, I’ll come. Where are we going?’

‘I’m afraid we’re not allowed to tell you that.’

She gave him a look that spoke volumes. ‘I am going to wash my hair,’ she said forcefully. ‘And then I’m going to have something to eat, unpack, and make several phone calls. Then I’ll get ready to go. Is that all right by you?’ Her hands were on her hips and the last sentence was said in a dangerous tone that dared him to argue.

The inspector, having got his own way by forceful coercion, could have been magnanimous, but all he said was, ‘So long as you can do all that within the next two hours, yes.’

They took her in a car and drove for quite some way, but then, to Paris’s surprise, the car stopped and they hurried her into a station and onto a train where she was to share a sleeping compartment with a policewoman. The blinds were pulled down across the windows on both sides and she couldn’t see out. The door was locked and the light turned low.

Paris’s thoughts were far too full for her to want to sit and chat with the policewoman, so she said that she was tired, took off her shoes and coat and climbed into the upper bunk, firmly closing her eyes.

Her heart was filled with a dread so deep that it was almost like a physical fear. How would she bear it if Will openly showed his hatred of her? Even now, after so long, it was still sometimes hard to understand how it had all gone so wrong—so horribly, humiliatingly wrong. Maybe it was because of the circumstances in which they’d met: at a murder trial, of all things. But there had been such radiant happiness, too, at the beginning…

The train journeyed on through the night, swaying, clanking along the rails, the rushing air loud outside, and Paris’s mind went back to the very beginning, when she had been sitting at breakfast with Emma, one morning in late spring.

‘Jury service!’ Paris gazed at the letter in her hand in consternation. ‘But I can’t possibly do it. I don’t have the time.’

‘When are you supposed to go?’ Emma, her flatmate, reached over and took the letter from her. ‘The seventh. That’s only three weeks away. And at the Old Bailey, too; that’s where they have the longest cases, isn’t it?’

Paris’s frown deepened into gloom. ‘I know—and I’m supposed to be going to the conference in Brussels that week.’

‘Perhaps you can get out of it,’ Emma suggested languidly as she handed the letter back. ‘Tell them you’re going on holiday or something.’

Paris hesitated. ‘Wouldn’t that be against the law? Couldn’t you be fined or something if you were found out?’

Emma gave an astonished laugh. ‘For heaven’s sake! Who’s going to find out? People do it all the time.’

‘Well, I can try, I suppose,’ Paris said, still rather dubious, but she reflected that Emma, who was more than ten years older and worked for the same company, usually knew what she was talking about.

Later that morning, as soon as she arrived at her office at the cable network company for which she worked as a sales representative, Paris called the clerk of the court’s office and asked to be released from doing the jury service. He asked for proof that she had booked a holiday, and when she lamely admitted that she had none he refused point-blank to let her off.

‘Isn’t it possible to postpone it indefinitely?’ she begged.

‘No, madam, it is not,’ the man said shortly.

So there was no getting out of it. Paris had to go and see her boss, who arranged for Emma to attend the Brussels conference in her place. Paris was furious at her bad luck; she’d had this job for less than a year since leaving university and was putting everything she had into it. Representing the company at conferences, going abroad to promote their network strategies, being always available to visit potential clients constituted a big part of the job.

Paris had passed the training course with flying colours, was one of the brightest young reps, and knew that a good career lay ahead of her. Which she certainly intended to achieve. She was ambitious and wanted to get to the top just as soon as she possibly could. But there were always others with the same ambitions, the same aims. Having to sit through some criminal case for weeks on end, or even months, she thought with a groan, wouldn’t do her career any good at all.

Angrily reluctant to serve as she was, Paris had to admit to a feeling of awe when she arrived at the Central Criminal Court—the Old Bailey as the building was commonly known—in the heart of the City of London. The courtroom was so old, the polished wooden benches and the judge’s throne-like seat high on a dais so reminiscent of all the trial films she’d ever seen that she couldn’t help but feel the solemnity and power of the place. Looking at the dock, she thought of all the-people who had been tried there—murderers, rapists; she gave a shiver, her anger momentarily chastened.

Her fellow jurors seemed to have similar feelings. Earlier, they’d had to stand one by one and give their name and age and take the oath. Paris hated that, considering her age to be her own business. When it was her turn, her voice had a strong note of defiance as she said, ‘Paris Reid. I’m twenty-two.’

A couple of the younger barristers smiled, as did one of the male jurors, she noticed. He was sitting on the end of the row and hadn’t yet been called—a dark-haired man with a strong jaw and clean-cut features adding up to a good-looking face. He was the last to take the oath and did so in a firm voice.

‘William Alexander Brydon. Twenty-nine. I swear by Almighty God that I will faithfully try the defendant and true verdict give according to the evidence.’

The oath, which Paris had hardly taken in, sounded very impressive when spoken in his deep, attractive tone, making her realise again the solemnity of the court. The judge must have been impressed too, because when he asked them to choose a foreman from amongst themselves he looked straight at William Brydon. But before the latter could speak a middle-aged woman stood up purposefully and volunteered herself, which pleased Paris; she was all for women sticking up for their rights. The judge merely raised his eyebrows slightly.

The case they were to hear was one of aggravated assault and murder. The prisoner, a man in his early forties named Noel Ramsay, was accused of beating up several people, one of whom—a man who had tried to steal Ramsay’s girlfriend—had later died. The man in the dock was smartly dressed, had a boyishly good-looking face and a figure that was only just beginning to run to fat.

Paris found it difficult to imagine him hurting anyone. Perhaps it was the engaging, crinkly-eyed smile that he flashed at them all, the look of surprised innocence in his eyes, as if he still couldn’t believe that he was there, that it was all happening to him.

That first morning it seemed to be all technical stuff. They broke for lunch, most of which time Paris spent on the phone, first to her office, trying to keep up with everything that was happening, and then to customers. She had just a few minutes left in which to grab a couple of bites from a sandwich before it was time to go back into the courtroom.

The jurors automatically sat in the same places as before. That afternoon they listened to a pathologist and had to look at photographs that made Paris’s stomach turn over. If she hadn’t really been aware of the seriousness of the case before, she certainly was after that.

At the end of the day. Paris rushed out of the building and drove to her office in a town to the north of London. There she spent three hours at her desk before driving home to a scratch supper and bed. She was young and healthy and could keep up the hectic pace for a while, but during the second week she began to feel the pressure. To add to everything the unpredictable English weather decided to have an early heatwave.

Paris overslept one morning and arrived just as the jurors were filing into their places. She gave a hasty apology to the clerk of the court, a man moved up for her, and she slipped in at the end of the row. Because she’d been so busy she had hardly talked to her fellow jurors and it took her a minute before she remembered that her neighbour’s name was William Brydon. He gave her an amused smile which she met with a small shrug.

The evidence that morning was again technical. There was no air-conditioning in the court and it was very hot. The barristers were sweltering under their white wigs and several members of the jury took off their jackets.

Paris tried to concentrate but found her eyes drooping. She straightened in her seat, licked dry lips and wished she could have a drink. The police witness droned onsomething about makes of cars that the accused had owned and sold. William Brydon’s shoulder was invitingly close. Paris’s head rested gently on it and she fell asleep.

‘She seems to have fainted, my lord.’

The words, spoken loudly close by in a man’s voice, woke her.

Paris blinked, came to guiltily, and would have jerked upright, but William Brydon was gently slapping at her cheeks, leaning over her so that she was hidden from everyone else. ‘You fainted,’ he murmured so that only she could hear. ‘You don’t want them to restart the whole trial, do you?’ he added insistently.

Realising what he was doing, Paris gratefully fell in with the act. She gave a realistic moan and let him put her head down between her knees—none too gently, she noticed. The clerk and the woman foreman of the jury came over, the latter with some smelling salts which she insisted on holding under Paris’s nose, making her sneeze.

‘Perhaps if she could have some fresh air?’ William Brydon suggested.

‘We’ll adjourn the court for lunch,’ the judge decided.

Putting a strong arm round her, her neighbour escorted her out of the court, down the long corridor and out into the street. Not far away there was a small green oasis of trees surrounding the remains of a ruined church. When they reached its screening shade he immediately withdrew his arm. ‘A heavy date last night?’ he asked sardonically.

‘No, I was working,’ she retorted indignantly.

‘After a day here? Are you self-employed or something?’

‘No, I work for a cable network company. I’m a sales rep.’

Again his mouth, the lower lip fuller than the other, twisted with irony. ‘Can’t they manage without you?’

Paris’s face hardened. ‘I want to make sure they don’t find out that they can,’ she said shortly, adding, in a voice as scathing as his had been, ‘You obviously don’t have to worry about your job—if you have one.’

He looked amused. ‘Oh, I have one. I’m a financial consultant, here in the City.’

Paris said moodily, ‘Right now I should be in Brussels, representing my company at a medical conference, trying to persuade television and telephone companies to use our networks. It was to be my first time alone. And instead I’m stuck with this case. It’s all so slow. And it could go on for weeks.’

‘It might at that,’ he agreed. ‘So we’ll just have to make the best of it, won’t we?’

There was something in his voice, a note that immediately made her realise he was aware of her as a woman. Glancing quickly up at him, Paris saw that he was looking her over, from her short red-gold hair, down her slim figure, to her legs beneath the fashionably short skirt. ‘Seen enough?’ she said with a tilt of her chin, but not at all displeased.