Page 37 of The Elements

By the second week of the trial, Catherine has done all she can to impress upon the jury that Lauren has a moral character only slightly less reprehensible than that of a war criminal. Some of her questions have been so blunt, so debasing, that I’ve felt ashamed to have them asked in my name.

It’s probable that the jury now knows more about Lauren Mackintosh than they do about their own families.

They know that she took cocaine twice in the weeks leading up to her A-levels, although they do not know that she received two A*s and an A in those exams. That she once performed oral sex on a former contestant from The X Factor .

That she was underage when she lost her virginity, fifteen when she had her first boyfriend, and fifteen and a half when she cheated on him with his best friend.

That she was in the passenger seat when her cousin was arrested for drunk driving.

That her parents never married and that her father almost never saw her for the first eleven years of her life.

That she’s attended two football matches in the club’s home ground.

That she once told a friend she fancied Phil Foden.

That, among the nine pictures featured on her Tinder profile, are two of her in a bikini on a beach.

That she’s been to Ibiza on three separate occasions.

That she once kissed a girl. That she has, on occasion, gone out on a Friday or Saturday night wearing no underwear beneath her dress.

That her favorite lipstick is called Brazen.

That she has sent pictures of her breasts on Snapchat.

That she would prefer to marry someone rich than someone poor.

That she once stole some mascara from Debenhams. That she followed the Wagatha Christie trial.

That she doesn’t believe in God. That she has credit card debts totalling two thousand pounds.

That she’s on the pill. And that she has a nut allergy.

Her parents also now know all these things about their daughter.

And yet, there is nothing she has done that I haven’t done, or wouldn’t do, or that Robbie hasn’t done, or wouldn’t do.

Or that most young men or women our age haven’t done, or wouldn’t do.

But they are not on trial, I tell myself as I stand in the dock; she is.

It takes me a moment to recognize my error, and when I do, it’s hard not to admire how good my barrister is at her job.

I have observed the jury throughout all of this and seen varying responses.

Juror no. 1, an older lady, seems disgusted by Lauren, pursing her lips regularly at every fresh revelation.

Juror no. 4, a young man in his early twenties with horrendous acne, blushes violently whenever anything sexual is mentioned.

Juror no. 11, an Asian man in his mid-fifties, surprises me by how incensed he appears by Catherine’s line of questioning.

Once, I thought he was about to assume a barrister’s role and stand up to object.

Juror no. 8 falls asleep from time to time.

Juror no. 7 is visibly moved by how upset Lauren grows at times.

Only Juror no. 6, Dr. Freya Petrus, remains inscrutable to me.

She scribbles intently in her notepad throughout proceedings, and I wonder what she’s writing.

Is it notes about what has been said, her thoughts about the responses, or something entirely unrelated?

It’s a few days later, immediately following Robbie’s testimony, that I find myself in a bathroom off the second floor, one that I know from experience is almost always empty. I’ve gone there not just to pee but to try to clear my mind of everything he said.

When the door opens, I glance around, and to my dismay I see Robbie’s father walk in. I’ve avoided him since the start of the trial, only speaking to him on that first morning when our parents met, and haven’t looked in his direction in the courtroom, even when I’ve felt his eyes on me.

I hope he’ll turn around and leave when he sees me, but no, he must have planned this encounter, for, rather than approaching a urinal or entering the single cubicle, he walks slowly up behind me, as close as he can get without our touching, and stands perfectly still.

I can feel his breath on my neck. I tell myself to remain calm, but the cold white tiling is before my face, and I’m worried he will slam my head against it and knock me out.

“Please go away,” I whisper.

“No,” he replies.

I zip myself up and turn around.

“You’ve been avoiding me, Evan,” he says.

“I thought it was best.”

“I never took you for much of a thinker.”

This annoys me. I don’t care how well read he is, or how much he knows about music or art. I’ve read books too. I can play piano. And I wanted to be a painter.

“You didn’t avoid me at the Birmingham match,” he says. “No, you made it very obvious then that you wanted me to notice you. I’ve thought about that evening a lot since then. I must say, it was quite a clever move on your part. You were hoping to have a little leverage over me, I suppose?”

“Something like that,” I say.

“Twenty-four teams in the Second Division,” he says. “And what, another sixty in the rest of the league?”

“Sixty-eight,” I say. “And it’s called the Championship.”

“And yet you chose this club. The club my son plays for. You could have gone anywhere. But you came here.”

He glances toward my left shoulder.

“How’s the arm?” he asks.

“Healed,” I tell him. “Although when I get anxious, it starts to hurt.”

“How does it feel now?”

“It’s aching.”

“You didn’t need the leverage,” he says, sounding almost disappointed in me. “I meant what I said back then. That if you kept your mouth shut, then nothing bad would happen to you. You have kept your mouth shut. And nothing bad has happened to you, has it?”

“Well, I’m being tried as an accessory to rape,” I tell him. “So there’s that.”

“You can’t blame me for what’s happening here.”

“No, but I can blame your son. And you’re the one who brought him up.”

His jaw tenses. A memory flashes through my brain of the night we met, when he brought me back to his so-called bolt-hole near Woolwich Ferry and I unwittingly auditioned for him.

The books in his hallway. The vinyl albums. The objets d’art.

How I saw the photograph of his son wearing a football strip and wondered whether all fathers were obsessed with turning their sons into professional footballers.

Rafe didn’t seem like the sort and, of course, Lady Wolverton told us on the morning that the trial started that they had expected something different from their son.

I had always hoped he might go into medicine or the law.

Well, he’s involved with the law now, but not, perhaps, in the way she’d imagined.

But when I saw the photograph of him in his club kit, I stored that information away in case I ever needed it. And, one day, I did.

“I’m disappointed in you, Evan,” says Rafe.

“And I’m frightened of you,” I reply. “So I took out a little insurance. That’s not so stupid, is it?”

“Are you in love with him?” he asks.

“With who?”

He rolls his eyes. “With my son,” he says irritably. “With Robert.”

I take a moment to consider my answer. The truth is, there’s a lot that I hate about Robbie.

I hate his smugness, his misogyny, his casual homophobia, his cruelty, his off-the-cuff racism, his taste in music, his ridiculous car, his habit of hogging the ball and not passing if he has even the slightest chance of scoring, his love of Pot Noodles and Toblerones.

I hate how he silences people around him before burping, how he idolizes Nigel Farage, how he rates women on a scale of 1–10, how he imitates my accent when he wants to humiliate me, how he keeps a list on his phone of every girl he’s fucked and calls it his burn list, how he never says thank you to waiting staff, how he calls the older women in the club canteen “the hogs,” how he resents playing in the Championship, how he believes he’s this city’s answer to Lionel Messi.

I hate his habit of taking selfies with his tongue out, of ordering bottles of Moet in clubs and leaving one of the reserves to pick up the tab, of standing before me in the dressing room stark naked because he knows where my eyes will go, of always wanting to go to karaoke at the end of a night out, of texting me to let me know whenever he gets laid.

In fact, it’s almost impossible for me to think of anything I like about Robbie.

But Rafe has asked me a question, and I’ve never lied to him before. I won’t start now.

“Yes,” I say. “I am.”

He looks baffled. Completely incredulous.

“But why?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I admit, and for a moment I feel like laughing, as if I’m talking to a friend and not my erstwhile pimp, the man who made me money but who also subjected me to degradation at the hands of Sir. “I just do. I have, from the moment I met him. He’s electricity to me.”

“He’s not gay. You realize that? You can’t change him.”

“I know,” I admit. “But it’s how I feel. I can’t rationalize it. The truth is, I’ve always thought that if you can explain why you love someone, then you probably don’t.”

He frowns, as if considering this. He looks as if he actually feels sympathy for me.

“But your little plan has backfired, hasn’t it?” he asks. “You thought coming here would protect your future, and instead you’re on trial and in love with someone who will never feel the same way toward you.”

I feel tears begin to form and rub my eyes, not wanting to appear weak before him.

“Do this for me,” he says quietly, reaching out and placing his right hand against my cheek. I lean into it. “Take the blame.”

“But how?” I ask. “There isn’t even a way that I can do that.”

“You’re a smart boy. You’d figure it out.”

“Robbie is the one accused of rape. I’m just the pervert with the camera.”

“I did so much for you,” he says.