KATE
26 April 2017
Eighteen
Twelve o’clock. Day three and Angela Regan, QC, is tapping her fountain pen lightly on the top of her file: Ra-tat, ra-tat, ra-tat, ra-tat: the tattoo of a drum on a battlefield at daybreak as the uneasy peace snaps at dawn.
She leans forward, her bosom resting against the file, the knuckleduster of a diamond that crowns her right hand glinting in the light. Mid-fifties, with working-class Northern Irish roots, she is an inspired choice. If James Whitehouse spent his adolescence playing Fives and saying Latin grace, Miss Regan was navigating the Ardoyne area of sectarian Belfast – and plotting her way out fast.
She smiles at Olivia now and places her surprisingly small hands beneath her bosom. Her smile is brisk and doesn’t meet her eyes for she’s no hypocrite: any warmth will vanish quicker than frost on a courtroom window once she gets to the heart of the evidence.
Olivia looks straight ahead, as if determined not to be cowed by this woman whom she detects is less than sisterly. Chin up, she places her hands in front of her in the witness box, catches my eye and gives a somewhat shaky grin.
‘Miss Lytton. I’ll try not to keep you long but there are some points we need to check,’ Angela begins, her tone sleek and designed to lull her into a false sense of security, though Olivia, on the defensive, must know that she intends to catch her out.
‘We have heard that you were in a sexual relationship with Mr Whitehouse, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how long did that last?’
‘From mid-May to the 6th of October when he finished with me. So a little less than five months.’
‘And I think you told us that when you collided with him in the lift you still loved him?’
‘Yes.’
‘So at what point did you fall in love with him?’
‘I suppose right away. He has that effect on people. He’s very charismatic. You – I – became infatuated with him.’
‘But on the date in question you had split up, hadn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she nods.
‘And how did that make you feel?’
‘How did it make me feel?’ She looks bemused at so obvious a question. ‘Well . . . I was distressed.’
‘And why was that?’
‘Because I was in love with him . . . and because I didn’t see it coming. At the party conference we had spent the night together. Then two days later, when we were back in London, he ended it.’ The incredulity – the pain of his behaviour – is caught in her answer. She looks down, aware that she has revealed too many messy emotions and departed from her sober, sanitised script.
‘Moving to the date in question, were you still distressed then? Just a week later?’
‘I was upset but I was determined to be professional. I made sure it didn’t affect my work and that my colleagues – and James – would have been unaware of it. That was the last thing either of us would have wanted,’ she says.
‘But you still had strong feelings. You have told us that you still loved him, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. Of course I was still affected. I was still upset.’
‘And you were angry, weren’t you?’
‘No.’ The denial is a little too quick to be entirely convincing. A simple ‘no’ can reveal so much with its one, plain syllable and this suggests that Olivia felt a glimmer of rage.
‘Really? The man you were in love with had finished with you out of the blue and then wanted you to behave in a way that was entirely professional? You would be forgiven for feeling just the slightest bit angry, wouldn’t you?’
‘I didn’t feel angry.’
‘If you say so.’ Angela flicks her hand in a gesture of evident disbelief.
‘If we can go to the day in question, you said that you were in the committee corridor and that Mr Whitehouse was preoccupied about a comment piece in The Times that accused him of being arrogant?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you told him – ah, here it is – that “Arrogance can be devastatingly attractive”. What did you mean by that?’
‘I meant what I said . . . That arrogance can be an attractive quality.’
‘You meant that you found him devastatingly attractive, didn’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You suppose so?’
A pause and then: ‘Yes.’
‘And after you say that he opens the door from the committee room corridor to the lobby staircase; he calls the lift; pushes the button to open the door and I believe you go in first?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You don’t remember?’ Angela is all mock-incredulity and looks at the jury to register the apparent flakiness of the witness. She turns back to Olivia. ‘Well, if I may refer to your statement, which I have here, you say very clearly: “He called the lift and I went in first. He followed.” ’
‘Then I must have done,’ Olivia says.
‘So you tell him you find him devastatingly attractive and you then lead the way into the lift that he’s opened?’
‘I didn’t lead the way. The door opened and he ushered me in.’
‘But you didn’t resist?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t question why he was doing this?’
‘No.’
‘Even though you needed to stay on the committee room corridor and you had a meeting to go to in less than fifteen minutes, you didn’t question why he was doing this and you didn’t resist going into the lift at any time?’
A pause. Then ‘No,’ Olivia reluctantly says.
Angela waits, her forehead creased in a V, then looks down at her papers as if searching for a credible explanation. When she speaks, her voice is low, and her tone oozes incredulity and a hefty dose of contempt.
‘What did you think he was doing, calling the lift?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, come on. You’re a highly intelligent woman. You had told this man with whom you’d had an affair that you found him devastatingly attractive – and then he calls the lift and you enter first, without question.’ A pause. ‘He was taking you somewhere private, wasn’t he?’
‘I don’t know . . . Perhaps,’ she says.
‘Perhaps? There was no reason for you to get in that lift together. The meeting you were about to attend was in that corridor, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your offices were in an entirely different building?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I think that that lift only leads down to New Palace Yard, where you could turn right and go back to Portcullis or left towards Central Lobby. Nowhere that had any bearing on your meeting? Nowhere that you needed to be?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what were you thinking of, getting into the lift?’
There is a long pause while she lets Olivia endure the agony of being unable to come up with an innocent explanation. She is cruelly feline: a cat toying with a vole, permitting the possibility of escape, tossing it in the air, before sinking her claws in.
The blow is vicious.
‘He was taking you somewhere private, wasn’t he?’
The silence is painful – long and taut before Olivia breaks it in a voice so quiet it is almost a whisper. ‘Yes,’ she says.
‘So he ushers you in and once in the lift, you kiss.’
‘Yes.’
‘It was a passionate kiss, I think?’
‘Yes.’
‘A French kiss. With tongues?’
‘Yes.’
‘His hands were all over me, you said. So you enter the lift with this man you have told us you still loved, that you found devastatingly attractive, and you kiss passionately.’
‘Yes.’
‘He puts his hands on your bottom.’
‘Yes.’
‘And opens your blouse.’
‘Yes . . . He wrenched it open.’
‘Wrenched suggests some force. Were there any buttons missing?’
‘No.’
‘Was it torn?’
‘No.’
‘So perhaps it’s more accurate to say that in a moment of passion, he pulled it apart?’
Olivia’s face contorts with the struggle of remaining calm in the face of such disbelief. She compromises. ‘He pulled it apart forcefully.’
‘I see.’ Angela lets her scepticism tinge the court before moving on.
‘So he pulled it apart forcefully and he gives you what might be called a love bite above your left nipple.’
‘He bruised me and it hurt me.’
‘We will submit that it is the nature of such bites to bruise and many might describe it as a bite of passion,’ Angela glances at the jury; we’ve all been there, her look says, ‘but it is only at this point that you say,’ and here she looks down at her notes, drawing out the tension and the possibility for bathos. ‘It is only here, when he has kissed your breasts, passionately, that you say: “No, not here,” that’s right, isn’t it?’
A pause and then a reluctant: ‘Yes.’
‘I’m just checking your statement. You don’t say, “No, don’t do that. I don’t want it.” You don’t even say, simply: “No.” You simply say – at this point when he has opened your shirt, forcefully or not – it is only here that you say: “No, not here.” ’
‘Yes . . . I was worried someone might see us.’
‘You were worried that someone might see you.’
‘It would have been acutely embarrassing.’
‘And that was your concern: that someone might see you. Not that he was doing it – this man you still loved, with whom you had had a sexual relationship and had willingly entered the lift. Your concern, as he pulled open your blouse and put his hands on your bottom, was that someone might see you?’
‘He had shocked me with the bite – but, yes, that was my main concern, at that point.’
A pause. Angela looks down at her notes again; shakes her head as if she cannot quite believe that she is hearing this. Her voice slows and is lowered.
‘Are you sure that’s what you really said?’
‘Yes.’
‘That you said: “No, not here.” At this point?’
‘Yes.’
A very lengthy pause. Angela shuffles some papers. Looks down as if composing herself. Olivia looks discombobulated: left hanging and waiting to be challenged. She knows that something is up.
‘This wasn’t the first time you’d had sex with Mr Whitehouse in the House of Commons, was it?’
The reporters on the press bench scrabble to attention: you can almost see their ears prick up as their pens race across their notepads. Only Jim Stephens, sitting back, looks characteristically languid but I know all the damning quotes are being jotted down.
The colour rushes to Olivia’s face. Her eyes flit to me but I can’t help her and look away. During the lengthy legal argument on day one, Angela made a section 41 application to cite previous sexual history – arguing that two incidents were identical to that in this case – and I agreed to the material being included, on the basis that the last thing I needed was for James Whitehouse, if convicted, to use its exclusion as grounds for appeal.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Olivia’s voice is a semitone higher than usual.
‘Oh, I think you do. If I can ask you to cast your mind back to the night of September 29th 2016 – that’s a fortnight before the day we’re talking of. You met Mr Whitehouse in his office. It was just after nine p.m., wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ She is meek.
‘You were due to go to a friend’s leaving party. Your colleague, Kitty Ledger, was waiting for you in the Red Lion but I think you were late for her, weren’t you?’
‘A little, yes.’
‘And why was that?’
Silence.
Angela turns to the jury and virtually rolls her eyes.
‘The reason you were late was because you were having spontaneous sex with Mr Whitehouse in his office, weren’t you? Oral sex, which you performed, I believe, and then sex on his desk. Sex that anyone could have walked in on; that anyone could have spotted. Passionate, risky sex of precisely the kind in which you indulged in the lift.’
The reporters are scribbling frantically and some of the jurors are glancing at her wide-eyed: you can sense the sympathy seeping away from the older women as they recalibrate their opinion. Orange Face is delighted at this turn of events while the elderly woman watches through narrowed eyes.
‘I think there was another occasion too, wasn’t there?’
Olivia doesn’t answer; is looking down, blood flooding her neck.
‘On September 27th, 2016 – two days before this?’
Still no answer.
‘There’s a BBC recording studio tucked away at the end of the lower reporters’ gallery and at around nine p.m. you met Mr Whitehouse there, didn’t you?’
A squeak from Olivia: a sound that seems to escape involuntarily.
‘Did you meet Mr Whitehouse there?’
‘Yes,’ Olivia eventually says.
Angela gives a small sigh. ‘And there you had passionate, risky sex. Just straightforward sexual intercourse, this time; but sex anyone could have walked in on at any moment.’ She shakes her head. ‘There seems to be quite a pattern – of reckless sex in the work environment – happening here.’
But if the jurors think that Olivia will take this further dose of humiliation meekly, they have underestimated her.
‘No.’
‘No?’ Angela raises an eyebrow, on certain ground.
‘On those first two occasions it was consensual sex. Sex that we both wanted. We are talking about something very different here.’ Her voice wavers and cracks, fury and fear coalescing, and then it falters and comes to a standstill – as if she lacks the power to argue against this ferocious opponent; as if she recognises that she has been damned by her frank admission of desire.
‘You had sex in the House of Commons on two occasions barely a fortnight before this incident in the lift. Risky sex that anyone could have walked in on; that anyone could have spotted, didn’t you?’ asks Angela. She pauses, letting the tension stretch. ‘A simple yes will suffice.’
Judge Luckhurst suggests now might be a good point for a break. ‘Ten minutes – no more,’ he tells the jury. Angela, I’ll wager, is furious: she has ensnared her victim and wants to go in for the kill.
When Olivia returns, she seems more composed – no sign of tears; a taut, pale face – but Angela is merciless. She has scored a killer point, overridden Olivia’s perfectly accurate distinction and will hunt her down until there is nothing left of her allegations but a bloodied carcass, no use to anyone at all.
She deals with the casually dismissive: ‘Don’t be such a prick-tease.’
‘Are you sure he didn’t say: “Don’t be a tease.” “Don’t tease me.” That’s the sort of thing some lovers say to one another, isn’t it? Particularly if they’re the sort of lovers who thrive on the illicit nature of an office romance; the sort who love the riskiness of sex in an office, or in a lift?’
She pooh-poohs the idea that her knickers were ripped – ‘They’re a rather flimsy piece of underwear and cheaply made. There’s no proof they weren’t torn by you – or torn already.’
‘They weren’t. They were relatively new.’ Olivia is close to tears.
‘You could have ripped them while pulling them off.’
‘No I didn’t!’ she insists.
The atmosphere quickly turns oppressive.
‘I didn’t want it. I said I didn’t want it,’ Olivia insists at one point, her composure slipping completely; her sheer anguish exposed.
Angela looks at her over her glasses. ‘You are clear about that, are you?’ she asks, boxing her in.
‘Yes.’
‘That you said that you didn’t want it?’
‘Yes.’
And my heart clutches tight for now I know that Angela has something concrete with which to catch her out again and all I can do is sit and listen, powerless to mitigate the next blow. Judge Luckhurst looks up, too: alert to every counsel’s trick; familiar with the traps we set; and so do the jurors – in delicious anticipation of the next twist.
Angela sighs, as if it is painful for her to inflict this, and she reaches for a statement. She passes it to Olivia, via the usher; reads out the declaration of truth; gets her to agree that – yes – this was a statement made at the police station ten days after the meeting in the lift; and that this is her signature and they are her own words.
Angela looks up, gestures at the document: ‘On page four, paragraph two – please correct me if I read this incorrectly, you say: “I told him to get off me. He shoved himself inside me even though I kept saying: ‘Not here.’ ” ’
She pauses and looks at the jury.
‘In court you have just said: “I didn’t want it. I said I didn’t want it”; but in the statement I’ve just read out – given to the police soon after the event – you merely say: “I told him to get off me . . . I said: “Not here.” You didn’t mention – in your statement given ten days after the event – that you said you didn’t want it, you merely indicate that this isn’t the place. And you only mention it now, several months later, when you find yourself entangled in a court case and appearing in front of us, here.’
She looks straight ahead at the judge, this formidable woman protected by her books and files and the garb of the court, holds her head high; keeps her voice deep and controlled; and delivers her killer accusation. A rhetorical question to which Olivia is not expected to rely.
‘You’re not reliable, are you? You loved this man; you’d had sex not once but twice before with him in the House of Commons; and distressed at him having finished with you, you told him you found him attractive, entered a private space with him, and kissed him – fully intending to have sex with him again.’
And Olivia is left floundering, mouth goldfishing open, as Angela finishes this section of her cross-examination with a triumphant flourish.
‘The words you used in that lift could be interpreted as an invitation. You’re not in the least reliable. In fact, you’re lying!’