MONDAY MORNING
SAM

Right after the car accident, Zoe remained on bail for a couple of weeks, while the police gathered evidence. I met with her and her parents during this time to discuss strategy for what might happen next. I hadn’t yet had sight of any of the papers that the Crown Prosecution Service were preparing, but it was important to get Zoe’s story complete.

The family came to my office in Bideford one morning, dressed smartly. Sometimes families hold hands with one another when they arrive; sometimes husbands pull chairs out for their wives or children to sit down on. Zoe and her parents weren’t distant with each other exactly, but nor did they seem close in that way.

It was my first meeting with Mr Guerin, Zoe’s dad, and he was clearly very uncomfortable. I imagined that he was more used to being out on the fields than in an office, dogs and livestock his usual companions. He looked older than his wife, though perhaps that was because he was weathered.

‘We were away that night,’ he said. ‘We went to my sister’s house near Exeter because her husband was just back from a tour in Afghanistan, and they were having a party. Zoe told us she wanted to stay with Gull for a sleepover, for Gull’s birthday treat, you see. That’s all we knew of it. First we heard was the phone call from the police when they got her in the hospital. We didn’t know Gull’s parents were away, see, and they didn’t know we were. The girls lied to us.’

Zoe’s head hung down as he spoke, though I noticed that she snuck one or two glances at me, watching my reaction to her father’s words.

‘She’d never even been to a party that we knew,’ he continued. He was warming up, almost as if he couldn’t stop speaking now, as if he’d been waiting to unburden himself of this story. Beside him, his wife and daughter sat silent as his words filled the space between us all. ‘She had trouble making friends at the new school, some girls weren’t very nice to her, internet bullying that’s what she’s told us. She was bullied, Mr Locke, and we want to know if that can be a defence against what she’s done.’

So this was what he’d been working up to, a spark of hope that the family thought they’d discovered, and which they were sheltering and nurturing with cupped hands.

‘They sent her messages through an app, called panop, they bombarded her with awful, vitriolic stuff,’ said Maria Guerin. She sounded instantly more articulate than her husband, and I could tell she wasn’t born and raised round here. I wondered how hard it had been for her to manage as a farmer’s wife, because the rural community can be a difficult one to find acceptance within if you’re an outsider.

‘We didn’t know about it.’ Mr Guerin added this.

‘What kind of messages?’ I asked Zoe.

She looked at me, holding something back.

‘Give him your phone, Zo,’ said her dad. ‘You can see it all on her phone.’

She pressed a button or two on her phone and pushed it across the table. It was such a typical young teenage girl’s phone: metallic pink, with stickers on the back of it, musical notes.

On the screen I could see the messages that Zoe had received. The content of them jolted me. They were nasty, taunting, shocking messages. They oozed with clever, calculated malice, and targeted every aspect of her figure and her personality. They left me momentarily speechless.

When I looked up, Zoe had her eyes on me, but she dropped them and a flush crept up and over her cheeks.

‘Who sent these?’ I asked.

‘They’re anonymous,’ Maria answered me.

‘Do you know, Zoe?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must have some idea,’ said her dad. I could tell this wasn’t the first time he’d said this to her.

Maria put her hand on his. ‘Don’t shout. There’s no need to shout. Not here.’

He pulled his hand out from under hers and ran it through his hair in frustration. He had proud aquiline features, which lent dignity to his weather-beaten skin. Maria withdrew her hand to her lap.

I wondered what Zoe would tell me if it were just she and I in the room. I wondered what she hid from her parents.

‘Do you feel that these messages affected your behaviour on the night of the accident?’ I asked her. This was important, because it could lead to a possible coercion defence.

‘I didn’t get any that night.’

‘Which tells me,’ her father raised his voice again, ‘that somebody there that night was sending them. It’s not rocket science. I might not have degrees coming out of my ears but it’s common sense, isn’t it? Common bloody sense. They lured her there, and they bullied her into doing something she wouldn’t have done otherwise.’

‘They didn’t.’ Zoe’s voice was soft and quiet.

‘What?’ he said to her.

‘They didn’t bully me into it! I decided to drive. I chose to drive. You taught me, Dad, you taught me yourself. I decided to drive but I didn’t know I was drunk. I swear it.’

Both of Zoe’s parents were about to speak, but I raised my hand to silence them. I had to intervene because we needed to make rational, careful decisions; the law doesn’t legislate for feelings.

‘Tell me about that, Zoe,’ I said. ‘Talk to me about that, because that can be a valid defence.’

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