In her defense, p.1
In Her Defense, page 1
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For Hilary and Nick
You remember too much,
My mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?
ANNE CARSON, “THE GLASS ESSAY”
A cage went in search of a bird
FRANZ KAFKA APHORISM NO. 16
People can be removed from the world
They don’t tell you that, but it’s true
I mean, they do tell you, but they don’t tell you
People you love can be removed from the world
(They can remove themselves)
They will be removed from the world
Didn’t anybody ever tell you that
EMILY BERRY, “GHOST DANCE”
PART ONE
GUEST V. FINBOW: DAY ONE
Watch her, Anna Finbow, as she approaches the Royal Courts of Justice in a glossy Land Cruiser. The windows are dark, so it’s not immediately clear who is inside yet, but the photographers sense that, finally, this must be her. Abruptly, they break out of their conversations, turn, and point their lenses, jostling for the right position to take her picture. The car door opens to the sound of cheers and some heckling. A woman in her fifties gazes out.
Pivoting on the leather seat, she raises her chin and slips carefully out of the car, pausing only when an assistant, someone new, passes her phone and a box-shaped handbag. She’s wearing her favorite square sunglasses, and her dark hair is blow-dried firmly in place like a helmet. When her lawyer approaches, Anna greets her with a kiss on each cheek. Together, they link arms.
You must know my old boss, Anna Finbow. Her smile will be familiar from Anna’s Advent, the festive cookery show—now in its tenth season—that runs throughout December. She will have smirked at you in print from the masthead of the lifestyle column that she pens in the weekend newspaper. Chances are, you’ll own one of Anna’s collectible ceramics somewhere, too. An eggcup, or perhaps even a cereal bowl, in one of her famous designs. Finbow Flora—a cottage-kitsch, filigree pattern of intersecting willow leaves and little daisies—which she glazed onto almost everything she made. Nauseatingly chintz, I always thought, but that’s what Anna’s brand represented. Her name was synonymous with a lost vision of Britain: rosebuds over the door, cricket on the village green, a huge kitchen filled with happy children. A myth, basically. A fiction that Anna’s bitter courtroom feud will soon expose.
There was a time when Anna wasn’t so sweet. She had hellcat years, back in the early nineties, when she was still with Albion. That was her band, which she joined as a singer when she was twenty-four years old and completely off her head. I would feel uneasy as a little girl when I saw her on my parents’ television—an impish, punky muse in flamboyant outfits and penciled-on beauty spots. Witty and outrageous; our nation’s cause for concern.
As I watch her approach the courthouse, I realize that has never changed. There never was a moment, during my brief employment, where I didn’t feel uneasy around Anna. That’s the effect of famous people on those like us. You’re not meant to feel at ease. In their enlightened view, there is always a “them” and always an “us.” Anna’s universe was binary: those who were with her and those who were against. It made her paranoid and suspicious of those whom she surrounded herself with.
Almost everyone. For a short while, she was willing—far too willing—to trust me.
* * *
Anna stops to interact with the well-wishers who have gathered along the Strand in the late-September sunlight. I am still awed to see her squeezing hands and signing old photographs, her smile dazzling and mendacious. In the months we worked together, Anna often complained about how this whole legal nightmare had aged her. During the long conference calls with her legal team, she’d drag a jade roller over her face in a panic, as if trying to seal some essence of youthful vitality back into herself. She needn’t have worried. Her beauty is resilient, baked into her heart-shaped face and the perfectly symmetrical features which often made me want to sculpt her.
Before long, Anna is bustled away from her fans. Leaving them without a backward glance, she ascends the small flight of steps leading up to the entrance of the courthouse. There, by the great doorway, Anna is joined by her husband, Bonamy. As he bounds up to her, my body stiffens with shame. He’s dressed smartly in a gray linen suit, and yet there’s always something elegantly scrappy about Bon’s appearance, like he’s been sketched with a pencil. He and his wife turn back around for one last photo. For a moment, it’s big waves and cautious, toothless smiles. Everything about their bearing suggests gratitude, then, beneath that: grim defiance. Above the sound of camera lenses closing, their fans call out, pledging love and wishing them luck. It is a surprise to catch myself saying it, too.
The couple turn, now encircled by police officers. Behind the railings, the crowd loosens; mobile phones are lowered, but I manage to keep sight of them. This is when I notice their hands. Bonamy and Anna are holding each other in the secret way I know they sometimes do. Not the usual palm-to-palm clasp; instead, they are linked by their fingertips, which curl around each other.
Abruptly, the scene ahead of me blurs with tears. I cling tightly to the railing in order to stay upright. This was the special way that Mary used to hold their hands, Anna once confessed, referring to their only daughter. When she was very little, it was the way Mary grasped them, how they all led each other through her early years. It was the family’s secret handshake. When Mary first disappeared, Bonamy and Anna regressed into this childish hand-holding all over again. Just one of many strangely comforting habits the couple fell into almost two years ago, when their dark ordeal first began.
* * *
When I first got a job in Anna’s household, she’d talk about Mary as if she were still just an infant asleep in the next room. She went on about how adorable her little girl was. How loved. She spoke of the embroidered Bonpoint dresses Mary wore, and the croquembouche they had delivered from Stohrer each year for her birthday. How Mary had delivered their wedding rings on roller skates, gliding down the church aisle to “Love Me Do,” before reciting a Yeats poem from memory. “Tread softly,” Mary had lisped, aged seven. “Because you tread on my dreams.” Every year at Anna and Bonamy’s wedding anniversary party, Mary would recite it again and bring the house down. I would smile patiently as Anna made me watch the old grainy videos on her phone, and say how much I wish I’d seen the real thing. I’d pretend I hadn’t noticed the strange language that my celebrity boss lapsed into—that instinctive way she talked about her daughter’s childhood, in the present tense.
I’m ashamed now, of how I indulged those nostalgic fantasies. When in reality, Mary is an adult and bitterly estranged from her mother. Their last interaction was almost two years ago and coincided with the same time Mary began seeing Jean Guest, a maverick new therapist. Welsh, mid-fifties, and unlicensed, this is the same woman who dares to sue Anna Finbow in court this week.
When Mary first vanished at the age of twenty-two, devastating letters were penned to those who loved her most. She explained how she would be cutting herself off, dedicating her life to Jean, and that the girl they once knew should be forgotten. But Anna would not forget. She went straight to the internet to tell the world what had happened, warning everyone about the wicked witch who carried her daughter away. Jean Guest quickly retaliated with a lawsuit claiming defamation. Anna countered that she was simply telling the truth. Mary had abandoned her mother and instead taken up her therapist’s cause.
I am dedicating my life to my healing now, Mary had written to her parents, in the brutally cold email she’d sent as she cut herself off. Do not try to find me.
The worst bit of that message, Anna later reflected, wasn’t their daughter’s tone—haunted and angry though it was. Nor was it the way Mary accused her parents of destroying her life and every chance of happiness. It was the fact that she addressed her parents by their Christian names. Anna claimed she was never Anna to Mary. She insisted on Mummy.
By the way, I no longer think of, or refer to, you as my mother and father, Mary wrote in her bitter postscript to the email. Because those are names you earn.
* * *
With the couple now inside, the crowds disperse. I pause for a sensible amount of time, then head for the law court steps, passing a group of protesters wielding placards and signs.
A thin man with bright blue eyes pushes a petition toward me, calling for regulation in the therapy industry. Another pamphlet calls out the reckless use of psychedelic drugs by unlicensed practitioners posing as healers. The Finbows have paid these attendants, but still I take a leaflet, burying it deep into my rucksack, which is then taken from me and scanned for chemicals or explosives.
The atrium of the Royal Courts of Justice is vast and splendidly gothic, like some great hall of a fairy-tale castle. My voice shakes as I give my name at the reception, and then I receive directions to Courtroom Six. When I reach the upper gallery, it is chaos: Court reporters are vying for the best seats, and ushers patrol about, remind ing us to sit down so that spaces can be filled. I manage to find one at the back so that my presence won’t be too obvious, but close enough to get a clear view over the dark wooden benches below.
There are only fifteen minutes to go before proceedings will begin, and the atmosphere is turning nervy and airless. An older woman next to me sighs and asks if I think the air-conditioning is malfunctioning. I shrug, but as our arms touch, I notice how cold and damp her skin is. Fanning the air, she admits she’s feeling faint. I rummage in my rucksack for my water bottle and offer it to her. I find it touching when she accepts.
“What’s your connection to all this?” I ask, quietly tucking the bottle away. I glance downward at the woman’s loafers and her expensive handbag, then back up at her lined face. Her brown eyes brim with pain.
“My daughter got involved with this woman, too. Five sessions a week at one point. She ruined her life.”
My voice catches in my throat. “I’m so sorry—”
She thanks me solemnly. “I used to fantasize so often about her facing justice. But the police never got enough evidence to criminalize her.”
My pulse rises. “What is your daughter’s name?”
The woman’s lips tighten. “Oriel.”
For a moment, we fall quiet, watching the remaining spectators take their seats.
“And you?” The woman’s gaze returns and flits over my cropped hair and the antique men’s watch I like to wear. I can feel her trying to get the measure of me. “What brings you to the show?”
There is a pause. I glance around me. “My name’s Augusta,” I say quietly, using my full name, in case any journalists overhear.
“Lucy Ayres.” She extends a small hand. “I take it you know the Finbows?”
“Just a friend of the family,” I say.
Somewhere in the court papers, I am referred to as Anna’s “aide,” but the truth is that I am much closer to her than that. For now, though, I don’t go there.
The woman smiles a faint approval, then straightens in her seat. In the courtroom beneath us, two groups of lawyers bustle in, wheeling suitcases of paperwork. The clock hands skip toward ten. The clerks ready their bundles of evidence. Any moment now, Justice Larkin will appear. Our sensational trial will soon unfold.
STOKE-ON-TRENT, APRIL
SIX MONTHS AGO
Whatever they will accuse me of later, I never sought to be Anna’s aide, and I’m not the kind of person who makes a habit of messaging celebrities out of the blue, either. But the thing about Anna Finbow is that you felt as if you knew her. It was—and still is—her greatest skill. Her fortune was carved out of that knowing familiarity she fostered. I resisted it at first, but I turned out to be no different from everyone else. Before long, I fell for it, too.
I could argue in court that, as a ceramicist myself, I had no choice but to apply for work with Anna’s business, that the forces acting on me were purely economic. We certainly weren’t a creative match—Anna was famous for her bone-thin, floral uniformity, whereas my style is more like me: earthy-toned and slightly misshapen. I never make dainty teacups, but mugs the size of tankards, with their surfaces roughly hewn. The texture of cauldrons, as a teacher once put it.
In my defense, I could claim that I needed a part-time job to support my own fledgling pottery business, that there wasn’t much other work around. So, when I happened to see her out walking her dog one evening near her factory in Stoke, of course I seized the moment and got in touch.
But that would only be one version of the story. Told differently, another version would say that I was obsessed with Anna, seeking her out and exploiting my privileged access to her, once I had gained it.
The truth sits somewhere between the two.
* * *
It was her coat that had caught my attention first. Chocolate-colored, suede, and long, there was no mistaking the expensive drape of it. Then it was the way Anna stood. Her shoulders were hunched up close to her ears, and her hands were buried in her pockets. As my bus stalled, I noticed she was staring into the window of a toy shop. That was probably the first moment that disrupted my original image of Anna Finbow as a steely, untouchable edifice. Standing there in front of those brightly lit toys, she looked cowed, like a woman—or even a little girl—who had lost something. Human posture tells us so much more about a person than we ever realize. It has its own alphabet.
Was it grief that brought her here? I had wondered, as I studied her. Or embarrassment? I’d read everything I could find about the public spat with her daughter, Mary, and the massive legal case—now a defamation claim—that was mounting between her and Mary’s therapist. The news was so full of gossipy updates, it made sense that Anna might want to escape her home in London for Stoke-on-Trent. To get her head down and work, just for a while. Until things quieted down.
My bus pulled away, and I gained another sight of that famous profile. My heart pattered with the thrill of coincidence.
Here it comes, I thought. A chance.
A year ago, I’d done the same thing as her, and escaped London, too. The Potteries, once the fiery heartland of British ceramics, hold a certain appeal to broken people. For one, there’s no town center: We’re instead made up of six small towns, which compete for primacy and wrestle for council funds like a nest of underfed chicks. To live somewhere so geographically fragmented makes you feel a bit more whole, and I wondered if Anna knew that, too. On her website, she called Bellinter, her factory, the “cradle” of her brand, but the city itself could also be curative. I had moved here after a series of break-ups. Gradually, as the months passed, the Potteries fused me back together.
Later that night, on the mezzanine of my studio, where I slept, I’d opened an application on my phone. Anna’s profile was never far from the top of my recent searches. I clicked on the envelope sign and introduced myself, telling her that I’d literally just gone past her in the street and that her brown coat was amazing. Then I gave a little background. I made a great deal of the art foundation course that I’d actually never finished, as well as the caliber of my references, which, I assured, could be provided on request. I pasted across the sales pitch from a previous application I had submitted.
26 years old. Ceramicist. Born and bred in Stoke. Worships your brand—songbook of English interiors.
Trained in Rome. Team player, self-starter. Loves to be challenged. Ambitious. Determined.
Needing experience so happy to muck in and do (just about) anything.
If your team is already full, no problem at all!! I wrote. I’d still love to take you for a coffee and hear about your career? I pressed send. A minute later, I opened the app and typed another message.
Not sure if you remember, but we actually met once before! At a party.
Then I hesitated, remembering that brutal occasion when she had ignored me. In the end, I thought the better of it. It was a night I wanted to forget, anyway. I highlighted that bit of text and pressed delete.
* * *
Those messages were the first of many untruths I told Anna.
I’m not a native Stokie, by any stretch. I moved up here the February before last. Before that, it had been the cheapest fringes of London; before that, school in the southwest. Kingsfold had been one of the last remaining Evangelical Christian schools in the country. By the time I arrived, it had changed to a secular status, but many of the fanatical teachers remained. My parents worked there, too, and though they weren’t organized enough to be truly religious, our house was still imbued with their employers’ stiff morality. I got out as soon as I could.
After a few wrong turns along the way, I ended up in London. But, really, in its suburbs. In Wanstead, I rented a room within a large house owned by an older American lady who lived on cruise ships for six months of the year, and who raised the rent slightly before each passage. Her saving gesture was the job in the café she found for me. Any money I had left over, I spent booking time in the pottery studio nearby. Back then, I suppose I was only playing about, shaping things, copying the skills and techniques of the more talented ceramicists I observed around me. But, as I sat at that wheel on those alternate Saturday afternoons, I felt grounded for the first time in my life. There is a primeval, essential quality to working with clay. Humans have always done it. And in my studio, as I cut and weighed those cool blocks of material, I reconnected to an imagined lineage of past potters, a kinship I’d never found in romantic or even platonic relationships. Looking back, you could say I rediscovered a spirituality that had been stamped on in school. It never once occurred to me that I could make money from it.
