And the prosecutor was keen to repeat that fact regarding Becca Bell. As a reminder, Becca recently changed her plea to guilty, accepting a three-year sentence, despite a defence team who were confident they could get her no jail time due to her being a minor at the time of Andie’s death, and the circumstances surrounding it. So yesterday, Becca gave her evidence by video link from prison, where she will be for the next eighteen months.
Ravi:
Exactly. And, like with Becca, today the prosecution was keen to establish that they both only had one or two alcoholic drinks the night of the alleged attacks, which couldn’t possibly account for the level of intoxication. Specifically, Nat said she only drank one 330-millilitre bottle of beer all night. And she stated, explicitly, who gave her that drink on her arrival: Max.
Pip:
And how did Max react, while Nat was giving her evidence?
Ravi:
From the public gallery, I can only really see him from the side, or the back of his head. But he seems to be acting the same way he has since Tuesday. This sort of calm, very still demeanour, eyes turned to whoever’s in the witness box as though he’s really interested in what they’re saying. He’s still wearing those thick-rimmed glasses, and I’m one hundred per cent certain they aren’t prescription lenses – I mean, my mum’s an optometrist.
Pip:
And is his hair still long and sort of unkempt, like it was on Tuesday?
Ravi:
Yeah, that seems to be the image he and his lawyer have settled on. Expensive suit, fake glasses. Maybe they think his blonde, messy hair will be disarming to the jury or something.
Pip:
Well, it’s worked for certain recent world leaders.
Ravi:
The courtroom sketch artist let me take a photo of her sketch today, and said we could post it after the press published it. You can see her impression of Max sitting there while his solicitor, Christopher Epps, cross-examines Nat on the stand.
Pip:
Yes, and if you’d like to look at the sketch, you can find it on the appendix materials on the website agoodgirlsguidetomurderpodcast.com. So, let’s talk about the cross-examination.
Ravi:
Yes, it was . . . pretty rough. Epps asked a lot of invasive questions. What were you wearing that night? Did you dress promiscuously on purpose? –showing photos of Nat that night from social media. Did you have a crush on your classmate, Max Hastings? How much alcohol would you drink on an average night? He also brought up her past criminal conviction for assault occasioning bodily harm, implying that it made her untrustworthy. It was, essentially, a character assassination. You could see Nat getting upset, but she stayed calm, took a few seconds to breathe and have a sip of water before answering each question. Her voice was shaking, though. It was really hard to watch.
Pip:
It makes me so angry that this kind of cross-examination of victims is allowed. It almost shifts the burden of proof on to them, and it isn’t fair.
Ravi:
Not fair at all. Epps then grilled her about not going to the police the next day, if she was sure she was assaulted and who the perpetrator was. That if she’d gone within seventy-two hours, a urinalysis could have confirmed whether she even had Rohypnol in her system which, he claimed, was up for debate. Nat could only reply that she hadn’t been sure afterwards, because she had no memory. And then Epps said, ‘If you have no memory, how do you know you didn’t consent to any sexual activity? Or that you even interacted with the defendant that night?’ Nat replied that Max had made a loaded comment to her the following Monday, asking if she’d had a ‘good time’ at the party because he had. Epps never let up. It must have been exhausting for Nat.
Pip:
It seems this is his tactic for Max’s defence. To somehow undermine and discredit each of us as witnesses. With me, it was his claim about how convenient it was that I had Max to use as a male patsy, to try make Becca Bell and her alleged manslaughter sympathetic. That it was all part of the ‘aggressive feminist narrative’ I’ve been pushing with my podcast.
Ravi:
Yeah, that does seem to be the route Epps is going down.
Pip:
I guess that’s the kind of aggressive strategy you get when your lawyer costs three hundred pounds an hour. But money is no issue for the Hastings family, of course.
Ravi:
It doesn’t matter whatever strategy he uses; the jury will see the truth.
Words spliced, growing across the gaps like vines as her eyes unfocused, until her handwriting was just one writhing blur. Pip was looking at the page, but she wasn’t really there. It was like that now; giant holes in her attention that she slipped right into.
There was a time, not too long ago, she would have found a practice essay about Cold War escalation enthralling. She would have cared, really cared. That was who she was before, but something must have changed. Hopefully it was just a matter of time until those holes filled back in and things went back to normal.
Her phone buzzed against the desk, Cara’s name lighting up.
‘Good evening, Miss Sweet F-A,’ Cara said when Pip picked up. ‘Are you ready to Netflix and chill in the upside down?’
‘Yep CW, two secs,’ Pip said, taking her laptop and phone to bed with her, sliding under the duvet.
‘How was the trial today?’ Cara asked. ‘Naomi almost went this morning, to support Nat. But she couldn’t face seeing Max.’
‘I just uploaded the next update.’ Pip sighed. ‘Makes me so angry that Ravi and I have to tiptoe around it when we record, saying ‘allegedly’ and avoiding anything that steps over the presumption of innocence when we know he did it. He did all of it.’
‘Yeah, it’s gross. But it’s OK, it will be over in a week.’ Cara rustled in her covers, the phone line crackling. ‘Hey, guess what I found today?’
‘What?’
‘You’re a meme. An actual meme that strangers are posting on Reddit. It’s that photo of you with DI Hawkins in front of all the press microphones. The one where it looks like you’re rolling your eyes at him while he’s talking.’
‘I was rolling my eyes at him.’
‘And people have captioned the funniest things. It’s like you’re the new “jealous girlfriend” meme. This one has a caption of Me . . . by you, and beside Hawkins it says Men on the internet explaining my own joke back to me.’ She snorted. ‘That’s when you know you’ve made it, becoming a meme. Have you heard from any more advertisers?’
‘Yeah,’ Pip said. ‘A few companies have emailed about sponsorship. But . . . I still don’t know if it’s the right thing, profiting off what happened. I don’t know, it’s too much to think about, especially this week.’
‘I know, what a week.’ Cara coughed. ‘So tomorrow, you know . . . the memorial, would it be weird for Ravi . . . and his parents, if Naomi and I were there?’
Pip sat up. ‘No. You know Ravi doesn’t think like that, you’ve spoken to each other about it.’
‘I know, I know. But I just thought, with tomorrow being about
