Sweet as Honey (The Seven Sisters) (15 page)

Honey glanced at Alice, who sat a few
chairs down from her. The older woman looked flustered, and Honey thought maybe
she had voted Sarah innocent because she couldn’t bear to be responsible for
sending someone to prison.

Alice glanced back at Honey and shrugged.
“I don’t know. I just think it’s worth talking about.”

“He was a bastard,” said Babs, a
mutton-dressed-as-lamb blonde, pursing her red lips, “and he deserved it. He’d
obviously been asking for it. But I don’t think I can say hand on my heart that
she didn’t do it on purpose.”

“But he’s proved himself to be
manipulative,” Honey said. “Sarah’s counsellors testified that she’d been under
his thrall for years.”

Peter2 snorted. The owner of a small
computer store who obviously thought himself an expert on the law because he
read legal thrillers, he wore a suit he’d clearly worn for every smart social
occasion for the last ten years that stretched a little too tight across his
stomach. “What do you mean ‘under his thrall’? This isn’t
Twilight.
He
hasn’t hypnotised her.”

“Some people are more easily influenced
than others,” Honey said. “Sometimes in a relationship, it’s easy to end up
doing the things your partner wants because you like to please them, or to keep
the peace. If one partner realises that by sulking or making the atmosphere
unpleasant they can get their own way, it can easily develop into
manipulation.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that she knifed
him,” Matt said.

Tom cleared his throat and leaned forward.
He reminded Honey of her grandfather, Cam’s dad, who had died a few years
before they moved from England. Thank God he had stepped forward to take on the
role of foreperson.

“I suggest we get ourselves a cup of tea or
coffee, then sit down and go around the table,” he said. “Each of us should
take a few minutes to give our point of view. Everyone should have a say as to
why they think Sarah Green is guilty or innocent. After that, we’ll take another
vote and see where we stand.”

Everyone agreed that was a good idea. A few
people got up to get themselves a drink, Honey included. She chose a hot
chocolate from the machine in the corner, more for comfort than because she was
thirsty.

As she returned to the table, she heard
Peter2 asking Matt how long he thought the process was going to take. “Who
knows?” Matt said in a voice just loud enough to be heard. “Depends how long it
takes to convince these two.”

She sat on Tom’s right, feeling he was
supportive even though he’d voted different than her, and cupped her hands
around the mug, keeping her gaze fixed on the drink. She knew she shouldn’t let
the others intimidate her, but with such a small advantage it would be natural
for the others to think their role lay in convincing herself and Alice to think
their way.

Inside, she burned with resentment. A
decision should be made based on a majority vote. She’d heard that it happened
occasionally, but in this case the judge had specified that he wanted everyone
to agree. It put huge pressure on those in the minority. Decisions that
affected people’s lives were based on whether the jurors had strong enough
personalities to stand their ground. The system sucked. She’d never realised
how much before.

Everyone gradually took their places and
the group settled. Tom indicated the person on his left, a middle aged woman
called Sue who’d spent most of her time staring out of the window, obviously
wanting to be somewhere else.

She shrugged. “I think she did it.”

“Can you explain why?” Tom asked.

“I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it,” Sue
said. “He was a shit to her. That much is clear. I think he told her he was
coming to collect his CDs and she had the knife ready.”

“Why would he collect his CDs at eleven
o’clock at night?” Honey asked.

Sue shrugged. “It’s late and he said he was
returning from Auckland. It’s not right that he came into the house when they’d
broken up though.”

“It was his house,” Peter2 pointed out.
“Once they’d split, she had no right to stay there.”

“Even so. He walked out—I think he should
have knocked on the door and waited for her to answer, not barged in. But I
think she expected him, which means she knew it was him and she went for him
with the knife.”

Sue had nothing more to add, so they went
around the table. Everyone seemed to have the same view. Everyone thought Sarah
had known it was James and had attacked him with the knife with the intent to
harm him.

When it came to Alice, Honey could see the
older woman’s convictions fading in light of everyone else’s words. “I think it
was self-defence,” she said. “He’d been so horrible to her and he even hit
her.”

“He denied that,” Peter2 said.

“Well, he would,” Alice said. “But it
wouldn’t surprise me that he’d do it. I think they argued, he got angry and
went for her, and she lashed out to stop him.”

“What bothers me,” Tom said slowly, “is
that the wound is on his face. That says to me that he didn’t have time to see
the knife coming. If they were arguing first, he would have seen her pick up
the knife and the wound would have fallen on his arms or hands as he tried to
protect himself. It suggests to me that the attack came in the dark, without
him expecting it.” Most of the others nodded.

“There’s also the point about Sarah not
putting the chain across the door,” Babs said. “Apparently she did that every
night when they lived together. Why would she not do it when she was on her
own, unless she was waiting for him to come in?”

“Perhaps she forgot,” Alice said, although
the excuse sounded weak, even to Honey’s ears.

“I don’t get why she stayed with him so
long,” Peter1 said. “If he was a shit, why didn’t she leave him ages ago? That,
to me, means she’s a victim—that she got something out of the drama of the
relationship. She didn’t want it to end, and when he did bring it to a close,
she wanted to punish him for leaving her.”

Honey felt sick and had to take deep
breaths to keep the nausea down.

Tom glanced at her. “Let’s move on,” he
said, and so they continued around the table.

When it came to Honey, she fixed her gaze
on the pitcher of water as she spoke. “Nobody can know what it’s like to suffer
from an abusive relationship unless they’ve been there,” she said quietly.
“Most don’t start abusive, or you’re right, why would you stay in them? They
begin like any other relationships, with promises of love and happiness and
forever. And we all want to please our partners. We start off thinking ‘I’m
never going to let a man tell me what to wear,’ but then as time goes by, you
think ‘He always says I look nice in the pink jumper,’ so you start choosing
the pink jumper more and more, because sub-consciously you want his approval.”

She glanced around. The room had fallen
quiet, everyone watching her, even Matt, a frown between his eyebrows.

She looked back down and cleared her
throat. “Often, the abusive partner—usually the man, although I know it can be
the woman too—has a strong personality and some kind of ‘hold’ over the other
partner, who may just not be as strong as them. It’s not about being a
victim—none of the unfortunate women would ever class themselves as that. But
we all want to be loved. And nobody likes a relationship to fail. We all work
hard to put things right when they’re going wrong, especially when you’ve been
with that person a long time.”

She poured herself another glass of water.
Her hand shook, but she was past caring. “Sarah loves James, even now you can
see it on her face. And he knows this. He used it to control her, to manipulate
her into living her life for him and only him, and then when he tired of her,
he dumped her. And now he wants to punish her even more because she tried to
stand up for herself. She’s been to hell and back. And I can’t sit here and
declare that I believe she should be sent to prison for one second for what she
did to that bastard.”

After her long speech, Honey sat back and
let the others talk. Her hands continued to shake and she still felt sick, but
a sense of relief had settled on her at finally being able to get her point of
view across. Thankfully, for a while the others didn’t press her but talked
among themselves, even the obstreperous Matt, who had seemed taken aback by her
comments which had obviously been about her own experiences.

At one o’clock, after much discussion, they
took another vote. Tom asked who thought Sarah Green was guilty. Ten hands rose
and then, slowly, so did Alice’s.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Honey.

“You don’t have to apologise,” Honey said
softly, although disappointment tightened her throat until she found it hard to
swallow.

“It’s just…I’m not a hundred percent
convinced she didn’t do it. I don’t
want
her to have done it, you know?
I feel sorry for her. But that’s not really a good enough reason, and we all
have to agree, don’t we?”

Honey said nothing. Alice spoke the truth. But
was that a good enough reason to vote guilty? How would she be able to live
with herself if she put Sarah Green behind bars for finally taking her revenge
on her manipulative, cruel boyfriend?

She put her face in her hands. “I can’t do
it. I’m sorry.”

A collective sigh whispered around the
table and a couple of people swore under their breath. Tom, however, leaned
forward and patted her hand as she dropped it to the table. “It’s all right,
love. I understand. We’ll tell the judge we’re eleven to one and we can’t make
the twelve.”

He called for the court assistant and after
a while they filed back into the courtroom. Sarah stood there, pale as milk,
and the two lawyers stood behind their desks.

“I understand you are eleven to one,” the
judge said.

“Yes, your honour,” Tom answered.

The judge studied his hands for a moment,
then replied, “I would really like a majority vote on this case. I’d like you
to return to the courtroom please for further discussion. We’ll have lunch
delivered to you, so you can take as much time as you need.”

Honey’s shoulders sagged. Beside her,
Peter1 whispered, “Fuck,” and several others gave muttered protests.

The jury stood and shuffled out of the
court and back to their room.

Honey stood by the window looking out into
the small garden where the smokers occasionally relieved their craving. It was
now the job of the other eleven jurors to bully her into submission. How could
that be right? Eleven people had found the woman guilty, including one who had
pretty much been browbeaten into it. This was so cruel.

The door opened and the court assistant
brought in plates of sandwiches and cake. The others immediately started
tucking into them, but Honey couldn’t bring herself to take a bite. She
remained at the window, trying to comfort herself with thoughts of the wedding,
but she could only dredge up a vague feeling of apprehension that didn’t make
her feel even a tiny bit better.

“Well, what do you want to do?” The
question came from Lenny, the last of the five men. Tall, skinny and impatient
looking, he frowned and tapped on the table. “Do you want to go over it all
again?”

“I don’t know.” And she didn’t know.

“Can’t we just say we have a hung jury and
have done with it?” asked the young woman who’d spent most of her time at court
eyeing up Matt.

“The judge has just told us to talk about
it,” Tom said. “I don’t think he will accept that verdict right now.”

Peter2 threw up his hands. “What’s the
point in talking about it? Clearly she’s not going to listen.”

“I am listening,” Honey protested. “I don’t
want to vote against my conscience, that’s all. How I can I live with myself if
I do that?”

Nobody seemed to have an answer to that.

“Come and sit down, love.” The words came
from Huia, a Maori woman who reminded Honey a little of her mother.
Reluctantly, Honey returned to the table and sat. “The thing is, as I
understand it,” Huia continued, “is that if we return a hung jury, they have to
choose a new one and then poor Sarah Green has to sit through this all over
again.”

“That’s true,” Babs said.

“And that’s not really fair on Sarah
either,” Huia said.

Honey said nothing, her stomach in a knot.

“Maybe what you could think to yourself is
that by voting with the majority, it doesn’t actually mean you’re agreeing with
us. It means you’re accepting you’re in the minority and that we aren’t going
to change our minds. By voting guilty, you are saying you agree to abide by the
majority vote.”

It sounded logical, but Honey knew Sarah
Green wouldn’t think of it in that way. All she would know was that twelve
people had found her guilty—she wouldn’t understand the wrangling that had gone
on behind the screens, nor the justification Honey would be making to herself
to assuage her conscience.

“I’m just not a hundred percent sure beyond
all reasonable doubt that she meant to harm him,” Honey said. “Are you all? A
hundred percent?”