KATE
25 April 2017
Thirteen
Day two and Olivia Lytton – the complainant in the language of the court; the ‘blonde mistress’ as she was once described by the Sun – enters the witness box. The jury falls quiet, for my opening was the warm-up. Olivia is the main event, as far as we are all concerned.
A couple of the women stare at her, eyes narrowed. The elderly woman, who had looked as if she had no knowledge of the case yesterday, is peering at her through wire-rimmed glasses; and one of the thirty-somethings – straightened hair, heavy brows, foundation trowelled so that her face is an orangey-pink – is perfecting a scowl. She is one of the women who have been glancing at the defendant in the dock as if she cannot quite believe that he is there. Almost as if she is starstruck. I keep my gaze neutral and, when she catches my eye, give her a bland, businesslike smile.
Olivia looks terrified. Her eyes glimmer, the possibility of tears not far off, and her skin has an unnatural pallor: as if her spirit and not just her blood has been drained. When I met her in the witness room yesterday, she spoke clearly and quickly, betraying her intelligence, her anxiety and a simmering anger. She was brittle; holding her body stiffly like a fragile twig about to break.
‘The odds are against us, aren’t they?’ she said, rattling off some statistics about conviction rates in a direct challenge.
‘We’ve got a strong case and I aim to persuade the jury he’s guilty,’ I said, looking her in the eye and trying to convey the strength of my determination – not just the CPS’s – to acquire a conviction.
She smiled weakly; her mouth twisting to one side; a look of sad resignation that said: But that’s not enough, is it? She’s a Cambridge graduate and not stupid. But you don’t need to be clever to acquire her knowledge: being raped will soon erode your belief in fairness and justice and being treated with respect.
In court, though, there is no hint of such brutal awareness – and she looks the picture of innocence, or at least more innocent than you might imagine a young woman in her late twenties who has embarked on an affair to appear. She is wearing a simple shift dress with a Peter Pan collar and I wondered if this was pushing it too far. But it works well. She’s sufficiently slim to pull off the androgynous, waif-like look and it has desexualised her body. Those small breasts – bitten and grabbed, the Crown will submit – are swamped by navy fabric; her long legs obscured by the stand. No glimpse of anything that could be perceived as overtly, tantalisingly sexual here.
James Whitehouse can’t see her, of course. The stand is cordoned off so that she can be seen by the jury, the judge and counsel but not by the defendant. There’s a move towards using video evidence of vulnerable witnesses in sexual assault cases; the complainant’s testimony relayed in grainy black-and-white images that flicker and jump like a crudely edited amateur video as it lurches between the disturbing and the mundane. Olivia could also be questioned via video-link but has bravely agreed to give evidence in court. That way, the jury can sense the full trauma of the ordeal: will catch each intake of breath; spot her shoulders shake. And though it will be distressing and might seem cruel, it is in the spaces between her words – the silences that swell as she fumbles for a tissue or responds to His Lordship’s suggestion that she has a sip of water – that her story will emerge most clearly. It is through this vivid and compelling evidence that we have the best hope of convicting him.
I watch the jurors watching her now; assessing her dress, the shine of her hair; trying to read into her expression – distinctly apprehensive, though she is trying so hard to be brave. She catches my eye and I smile, hoping to convey my reassurance: to let her know that she will survive this; that it will be bearable if not OK. I know that she is preparing to relive the most horrific event of her life with all its intense shame, anger and fear. It takes real courage to do this: to stand up in court and accuse someone you once loved of this vicious crime; and she may feel guilt at this apparent betrayal. I imagine her palms pricking with sweat; her underarms growing damp as the court clock ticks, regular and insistent, marking the silence. She is about to reveal herself as emphatically as if she were cut to the bone.
I wonder if she is thinking of him behind the screen; if she imagines his gaze focused in her direction. She sounds intensely nervous; her voice, that of a Home Counties Sloane, so quiet that when she confirms her name I have to ask her to speak up.
‘Olivia Clarissa Lytton,’ she says, more firmly, and I smile and turn to the jury. Ms Orange Face’s eyebrows have shot up. Yes, we all know it’s a ridiculously posh name but don’t hold that against her. Rape, like domestic violence, happens across all classes: could happen to each and every one of us.
‘Miss Lytton, I am going to ask you some questions and we are going to take things slowly. Now, if you could just keep your voice up a little?’ I try to settle her in: maintaining eye contact and smiling encouragement; trying to make her comfortable. It’s important: an uneasy witness won’t tell their story well and there’s little worse than a witness with a suddenly blank mind.
I phrase my questions simply; and ask them one at a time, leading on things like date, location, time and names but otherwise allowing her to talk about the events at her own speed and in her own words. I develop a rhythm: question; answer; question; answer. Maintaining an even tempo as if we were going for a gentle afternoon’s walk and a single fact was being thrown down with each step. When did you start working for Mr Whitehouse? In March. And what was your role in his office? Did you enjoy it? And what did that entail? Short, easy questions that are uncontentious and that allow me to lead her, a little, because they are not in dispute and Angela Regan, a formidable advocate, will not need to bluster and interject. And I think that when Mr Whitehouse gained his ministerial job, you still worked for him in his Commons office? Yes, that’s right? And so we go on.
We hear a little about the long hours she was expected to work and the general culture within this and the departmental office. They all respected Mr Whitehouse: the civil servants calling him ‘minister’, though he preferred ‘James’.
‘Was he friendly?’
‘Yes. But not overly so.’
‘Did you socialise together?’ I give her a smile.
‘Patrick and Kitty – the staff in the private office – and I would sometimes go for a drink but James never did.’
‘And why was that?’
‘He had a heavy workload or he would say he needed to go home to see his family.’
‘His family . . .’ I pause. Let the fact that he is a married man with two young children just hang in the air. ‘But all that changed, didn’t it?’ I go on.
‘Yes.’
‘On May 16th, you did go for a drink together.’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you’d been for a drink with friends earlier?’ I pause and smile to reassure her that I am not revealing anything shocking. We all go for the odd drink, my demeanour and my calm, no-nonsense tone says.
We establish that she had a couple of gin and tonics with former colleagues from Conservative Central Office at the Marquis of Granby and that, feeling ‘a little light-headed’, she went back to the Commons, just before 10 p.m., to pick up a forgotten gym bag. And it was while she was walking through New Palace Yard that she met James Whitehouse. ‘That’s marked A on the first map in your folders. The outside space between Portcullis House and Westminster Hall,’ I tell the jury, holding a document up.
There is a rustling of papers; an increase in interest on the jurors’ faces as they open their ring binders of evidence and search for the map. Everyone loves a map, even though there’s no real need for anyone to look at one at the moment. But I want the jurors to visualise Olivia and James meeting at this point they see marked with an X on a map in their ring binders. They need to get used to the physical layout of the Commons – a labyrinth of back passages and secret corridors that lends itself to illicit meetings, both political and sexual. I want to plant the seed of this idea, now.
‘And what happened next? Did you speak to him?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ Olivia says, and her voice wobbles. I look at her sharply. She can’t turn flaky, now. We’re not close to the meat of the evidence. I smile encouragingly, though my smile contains a hint of steel.
‘I saw him coming towards me so I said hello and I stumbled a bit. I think I was nervous. The House wasn’t sitting and I hadn’t expected to see him. I was just rushing to collect my bag.’
‘And what happened, when you stumbled?’
‘He helped me. He sort of held my upper arm to steady me and then he asked if I was all right, something like that.’
‘And had he ever helped you like that, held your upper arm before?’
‘No. He’d never touched me. It was all quite proper in the office.’
‘Did he carry on touching your arm?’
‘No. He dropped it once I’d got my shoe back on.’
‘And what happened then?’ I continue. Any slightly tipsy young woman might scurry away but that’s not what happened, here. I can’t lead her on that, though; must wait for her to place the next piece in the jigsaw of her story.
She smiles and her voice quivers at the memory.
‘He asked me for a drink.’
I lead her on. Question; answer; question; answer. Maintaining the rhythm. Keeping things slow, even and pleasant; pacing my speed to match the movement of the judge’s pen.
We confirm that the relationship started and that, after a week, it was consummated. Ms Orange Face narrows her eyes further. They had sex, yes. That is what this case is about. Get over it. I don’t convey this irritation, of course. I remain serene, my gaze moving from one juror to another but not settling on any of them for any length of time. I am too busy drawing out my chief witness, who has grown in confidence. She stands more at ease now, her voice no longer so high-pitched.
I don’t want her to go into details of this relationship: that will only open her up to Angela questioning her about their previous sexual history, something, the Crown submits, that’s totally irrelevant. We have agreed on a series of set words to convey that it happened, and now it is time to move on to what happened in the lift.
But Olivia resists keeping it this factual and clear-cut.
‘I didn’t want it to end,’ she adds, when I ask her to confirm the relationship was finished on 6 October. Her voice drops to a near whisper. A curtain of hair swings in front of her face.
I don’t ask why this was, and am preparing to move on, but she seems determined to be heard on this.
She tilts her head up, her hair swishing against her cheek. Her eyes are moist but her voice rings out, clear in the simplicity of her statement.
‘I didn’t want it to end because I was in love with him.’