Tybalt and Juliet Ch. 13

We were quiet for a few seconds.

"So how will I find out how Ritchie has pleaded?" I asked.

"I'm going to sit in the public gallery and listen," Jenny said. "I owe that to the two of you - to you and Amy. Richard's parents will probably be up there too, but I can deal with that - we don't have to say anything to each other."

I nodded. It was strangely reassuring to hear that my girlfriend's mother would be there.

"When it's over, I'd like to come and talk to you face-to-face, like this, to explain what's happened. The prosecution will contact you, but not until the following week at the very earliest."

"If it's the Friday, I'll probably be at home," I said, "packing my stuff for Cambridge, but I can come in and meet you here."

"I think it's better if I come to you at the farm," Jenny said, "if that's OK? I'll be in the car anyway and there's no point making both of us battle through the traffic."

I nodded.

"And if you want your mum or dad to be there, that's absolutely fine," she added.

I nodded. "Thank you," I said.

Jenny shifted her position in her chair, as if to indicate that she'd said everything she needed to.

"Is there anything you want to ask me?" she offered.

I took a deep breath.

"There is something," I said tentatively. "It's not to do with the attack - it's about Amy. But maybe I shouldn't."

Jenny gave me a slightly wary look. "Go on," she said cautiously.

"I'm sorry," I said. "But I didn't want to mention it to her, in case it upset her. But her dad? What happened to him?"

Jenny took a deep breath, breaking eye contact and sinking a little into her chair. There was a long pause.

"I'm sorry," I said apologetically. "I shouldn't have asked."

Jenny shook her head. "It's not an unreasonable question Jake. And maybe you're right, it's better that I tell you rather than Amy." She paused. "You've been with her for a long time now and I think it's fair you should know."

Jenny crossed to her desk again and poured another glass of water, this time for herself. She sat down again in the chair and cleared her throat.

"Amy's father and I worked at the same law firm in London - one of the top firms in Lincoln's Inn Fields. This is twenty years ago now. I was a Pupil, a graduate with a full scholarship, a kind of apprentice if you like. He was older, one of my mentors.

"It was just before Christmas and we'd been on a night out to celebrate, maybe a dozen of us in total. Yes, I'd drunk a bit, but he'd had more. We ended up being the last two people in the bar and then he took me home and, and, well, he attacked me.

"Then a few weeks later I found out I was pregnant."

My stomach lurched. I'd had no idea. I'd certainly never have asked if I'd had any inkling.

"Amy's father committed suicide about a month before she was born," Jenny continued without emotion. "I knew that Amy would start asking questions as she got older. I told her he'd died of cancer, but I was going to her the full truth before she went to university."

Another pause; another deep breath.

"I could have cut off all contact with his family," she continued, "but his parents offered to help as much as I wanted and I did want them to be involved; it seemed the right thing to do for Amy. She's very close to them now."

I nodded. I knew that one set of Amy's grandparents were still alive, but I'd always assumed when she talked about them, they were her mum's parents.

"The summer we moved here, she was sixteen, she found his death certificate. I'd tried to keep it hidden, but everything got disorganised in the move. It said the cause of death was suicide. She confronted me; I had to tell her everything."

Jenny paused again, breaking eye contact with me.

"Amy really struggled to deal with it; the truth crushed her. She barely spoke to me for a week afterwards; it was hell. She'd never been the most outgoing of teenagers, but she'd had a group of close friends at her old school. Her personality changed overnight; she was sullen at home and when she was with other people, she was quiet and shy. She had trouble fitting in and finding new friends. Her academic work dipped and she got rejected by Cambridge. The only time she was really happy was when she was looking after the twins."

Jenny looked away into the corner of the room. There was a long silence, but I sensed that she didn't want me to interrupt.

"And then suddenly you appeared on the scene." Jenny gave a thin smile. "I mean really suddenly; not a hint that she was interested in any boy at school. To be honest, I panicked a bit, especially when I found out what happened at James Masters' party. I could see history trying to repeat itself. It frightened me. I was suspicious of your motives, I'm afraid Jake. And I thought that Amy getting her first boyfriend immediately before her A levels was a recipe for disaster.

"But she was adamant, adamant - she wanted a chance to have a relationship with you. There were lots of holes in the story she told about that party - that was obvious." She gave another half-smile. "I'm a lawyer - I can tell when people are lying to me, especially my own daughter.

"But I told myself that Amy was an adult - she had to make her own choices, even if I disagreed. My big fear was losing her; she'd threatened to run away from home when she found the death certificate. I told myself that I'd give you the two weeks of the Easter holiday and if it wasn't working, I'd break the two of you up."

I swallowed.

"So I tried to find out as much as I could about you. But I think you knew that Jake," she added gently.

I nodded.

"I talked to James' mother about you, came home unexpectedly a couple of times to try to catch you out, but the two of you just had your heads down revising. Rob and I thought you were the most boring teenage couple we'd ever known!" she teased. Jenny was smiling now. "And when your exam results came out, we knew the two of you really had been working all the time."

I blushed.

Jenny paused again. "But most importantly Amy was happy," she said slowly, thoughtfully. "And to see her laugh and smile in a way she hadn't for, what, a year and a half - that was a joyous relief. I don't think I'll ever forget those photos we took before the prom."

There was a pause. Jenny's smile became a frown.

"And then you got attacked. She was so brave, so calm - she kept everything together the whole time you were in hospital. It was when you got home, that's when she cracked. I think she thought you'd be the same old Jake, except with a bandage on your arm. Seeing you with your concussion, that's what shocked her.

"And she blamed herself, only herself. For the first few weeks, she was convinced that you weren't getting better. And then she started to hear all those horrible rumours. She thought the Norton curse had struck again."

Jenny took a deep breath.

"Well, you know the rest Jake. The mental stuff was always going to take longer - you had your injuries to fight against, but Amy didn't. She felt powerless, she felt she couldn't talk to anyone, not even you."

"Oh no, really?" I despaired. "I'm so sorry."

"No Jake," she responded. "You have nothing to apologise for. You were strong when she needed you to be strong."

I shook my head. Jenny gave me a gentle smile.

"You've done everything right Jake, everything. You've behaved with such maturity all the way through and you've supported Amy so well. I'm your girlfriend's mother, I'm meant to be your biggest critic. No one could have asked anything more from you - not even me! I mean that."

-

I drove up to the top of the hill behind the farm, to give myself time to think and to process the afternoon's revelations.

The news about Ritchie had come as a bit of a shock, but as I walked along the ridge, I began to question whether things were as serious as they'd first seemed.

Amy's big fear had been that Ritchie would only receive a short sentence and that he'd track the two of us down to exact his revenge. He'd been released on bail after the first attack and my girlfriend, certainly, had worried about coming face-to-face with him unexpectedly.

Her worries had been largely relieved after the nightclub attack; Ritchie's breach of his bail conditions had resulted in him being placed on remand in a young offenders' institution until his trial. I'd fallen into the trap of thinking that his conviction, for both offences, was a foregone conclusion - that he'd do the sensible thing and plead 'guilty' to both.

Now it was clear that the nightclub attack had been misreported by the media; the alleged attempted rape was in fact merely assault. That appeared to put the pressure back on me, as the stabbing after the prom was now the more serious charge. Hearing the talk of negotiation over the severity of the offences and the issue of plea bargains being discussed, had made the one thing I feared most - appearing as a witness - considerably more likely.

My thoughts were running away from me now. If Ritchie was considering a 'not guilty' plea, that had to mean the case against him was weaker than everyone had said. I could picture the scene in court - him in the dock, me in the witness box, the cross-examination twisting the facts to paint me as the aggressor. That confrontation would play to Ritchie's strengths, he loved an audience and the smarmy git could charm anyone - as soon as he opened his mouth, his acquittal would be a racing certainty...

But the professors at Oxford hadn't fallen for his bullshit - I had to believe the jury wouldn't either.

I took some deep breaths, trying to calm myself. If the news about Ritchie's trial had been unwelcome, then the revelations about Amy's father had been truly earth shattering. I'd always suspected that her dad had died a long time ago, but the circumstances had come as a shock. How Jenny had coped, at such a young age, was simply beyond me. Her fledgling career had been well and truly derailed by her pregnancy and she'd sacrificed so much to bring up her daughter single-handedly. Clearly, she was capable of being so much more than a small-town lawyer.

I felt I understood Amy far better. She'd reacted pretty badly to the attack after the prom and I'd felt at the time that her reactions had been fairly extreme - particularly when she'd run off to spend a week with her grandparents. Now I understood her fear that history was repeating itself and the blame that she felt (whether justified or not) that she might have lead Ritchie on while dating me. So much of her character now made sense.

But most importantly, the circumstances of Amy's conception and birth had put Ritchie's attack on me into full perspective. I'd recovered from the worst of my injuries in three weeks and had been fully healed after six. But Jenny Norton had been bringing Amy up for almost nineteen years - the rape had changed her life in ways that I could only begin to comprehend. Everyone had praised my bravery for fending off Ritchie's attack, but I couldn't hold a candle to Jenny's courage. No one could.

-

I crunched up the driveway, clutching Amy's presents. Grey clouds blanketed the September sky and there was a definite chill in the air. I rang the bell a little nervously. I could hear my girlfriend's footsteps inside the house, running down the stairs.

"Hello lovely!" she called as she swung the door open and dragged me inside. She flung her arms around me and gave me a big kiss.

"Happy Birthday!" I said, pulling her against me and nuzzling her hair.

"I'm just finishing packing," she apologised. "But Mum's in the kitchen - she wants to give you a lecture on safe driving!" She rolled her eyes, then leapt away, back up to her bedroom.

I made my way down the hallway to the kitchen and opened the door.

"Ah hello Jake," said Jenny with a smile. "The kettle's just boiled. Cup of tea?"

"Yes please," I responded and sat as directed at the kitchen table, placing Amy's presents in front of me and awaiting the barrage of rules, instructions and conditions.

Jenny brought over two steaming mugs of tea and three cupcakes, one with a candle on top. She sat down opposite me.

"I promised the twins we'd have her main birthday cake on Sunday afternoon," she said, referring to Amy's eight-year-old stepbrothers, "but I think we can have these now."

"They'll miss Amy when she goes to university," I said - more of a statement than a question.

"I don't think they really understand what it'll mean," smiled Jenny. "But they'll be alright; I think they'll enjoy ruling the roost!"

"Was she OK when you told her about Ritchie?" I asked. I felt a bit uncomfortable asking about Amy behind her back, but I wanted to be sure that my girlfriend wasn't going to have a meltdown over the weekend.

"She was a bit unsettled - like you were," Jenny said, "but she's alright now. She knows she's got to focus on getting ready to go to university and there'll be plenty of distractions once she gets there."

I nodded. In eight days' time, Amy would be moving into her halls of residence. In fact, most of my school friends were heading off to uni the same weekend. The Cambridge term didn't start until the second week in October - I'd be the last to go. The town was going to feel very quiet.

"She doesn't know that I told you about her father," cautioned Jenny, as we heard Amy's footsteps on the stairs again. "I'm sure she'll tell you when she's ready, but it won't be this weekend."

Amy entered the kitchen, smiling broadly. She sat down next to me and kissed me lightly on the cheek. We sang to her and she blew out the candle.

"Happy birthday!" I said again and slid the envelope and the brightly wrapped parcel across the table to her.

"Hmm, what should I open first?" she asked in mock indecision, resting a finger on her bottom lip.

"Open the parcel," I suggested. I wanted to save her main present until last.

Amy felt across the surface, trying to guess what was beneath. "Interesting..." she said slowly.

She neatly undid the paper and pulled out the photo frame. That had also been my Mum's suggestion. I'd originally planned a single photo of Amy and me in London (a copy the one I kept in my own bedroom at the farmhouse), but she'd persuaded me to give my girlfriend a multi-aperture frame with about half a dozen pictures taken over the course of the summer.

"Oh look, there's us in Trafalgar Square," she squealed delighted, "and you with the twins playing football!"

There were a couple of photos of her with horses, plus a few pastoral scenes of the countryside surrounding the farm. On Mum's advice I'd tried to pick images which weren't too 'Jake-heavy', but would still remind her of the happy times she'd spent with me.

She was showing her mum the photo frame excitedly.

"Yes, that's a lovely present," agreed Jenny, indulging her daughter's child-like delight.

Amy turned her attention to the envelope. She could feel the memory stick in front of the card, but couldn't work out what is was. She smiled at me, intrigued. Then she tucked her finger under the flap and tore the envelope open. The USB drive clattered onto the kitchen table.

My girlfriend looked up at me expectantly. "What's this?" she asked.

"You'll have to plug it into your laptop," I replied with a secretive smile.

"Can I do that now?" she asked, as if unsure whether the contents were safe for her mother.

"Yeah, you can if you like," I answered, "or we can wait until we get back."

Amy had leapt out of her seat and was running out of the door and up the stairs before I'd finished speaking. She returned seconds later with a brand-new computer. She unlocked the screen with her password, then plugged the drive into one of the USB ports. A prompt flashed up, asking if she wanted to import the files into the media library.

My girlfriend looked up at me for reassurance.

I nodded. "Click OK," I said.

There was a delay of a few seconds as the media player program opened and the opening chords of 'Wild Mountain Thyme' began to sound through the speakers.

Amy looked up at me as the verse started.

"This is you?!" she gasped in amazement.

I nodded. She scrolled through the track list.

"And you recorded all of these?"

"Yup, I did it on Wednesday, just for you."

Amy flung her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek. Her mum was still sitting opposite us at the kitchen table; I felt my face reddening with embarrassment.

"Oh Jake," my girlfriend cried, "that's so sweet of you. I can listen to you singing whenever I want now!"

I kissed her on the side of her head.

"You two ought to think about setting off," said Jenny smiling. "You don't want to get caught in the traffic."

-

Amy's POV

It was two weeks since I had lost my virginity with Jake. In total we'd only had sex twice, both times in my bed over the bank holiday weekend when my family were away. Since then, it had been impossible for the two of us to find any private time together and the unwelcome arrival of my period in the first week of September, had dampened my enthusiasm for any sort of intimacy.

The irony was that Jake and I were spending more time together than ever before. My boyfriend had left his job at the Campsite to cover for Jackie's absence at the Stables and so I'd had to deal with the sight of him, wearing his tight jodhpurs, mostly stripped to the waist, pretty much all day, every day. I'd have given anything for a roll in the hay, but there was a constant flow of customers to the riding school, even as the season drew to a close.

I found it difficult to talk to Jake about sex. I don't really know why - I was still a little shy about that sort of thing. I'd had a few hang ups about being naked in front of him - perhaps that came from growing up in a house with an unrelated adult male. I'd never felt confident enough to tell Jake when I was on my period, but I suspected that after six months of being together, he'd worked out the pattern.

Jake could be prudish too at times. I'd noticed when he was with his male school friends, he'd never join in if the banter turned to toilet humour and dick jokes - perhaps that was just when I was around, but Frankie had noticed the same thing.

It had taken a little over two hours to drive down to my uncle's holiday cottage in Dorset. Although Mum had let Jake take us in his car, she'd insisted that we stop for a mid-way break and that I text her when we finally arrived.

There was something troubling Jake, I could tell. On the journey down his conversation was slightly forced, his enthusiasm a little over-egged to cover his anxieties, but there were also long periods when he was silent. I let him concentrate on the road - this wasn't the time or the place for a deep-and-meaningful - but I suspected that the conformation of Ritchie's first Crown Court date, and the news about likely plea bargains, had unsettled him.

Jake cooked dinner for the two of us; he wanted to be on his feet for a bit after being cooped up in the car. I'd been given some pre-semester reading by my university and settled on the sofa in front of the fire, pretending to work, glancing up at regular intervals to watch him in the kitchen.

My boyfriend was becoming a very good cook. His mum had made it her task that summer to 'domesticate' him in preparation for life at Cambridge. Early shifts at the Campsite allowed him to be home by three in the afternoon and the deal was that he'd then cook the evening meal. (If he was working the late or overnight shifts then he'd miss supper anyway.) There was an open invitation for me to join his family, which I did about once a week.

Of course, he'd mastered the staples of British home cooking in a matter of weeks - pies, crumbles, pasta dishes - the usual fare. But that wasn't good enough for Jake and he'd delved further into more exotic and elaborate creations, almost to the point of obsession. Whenever I took a sneaky look at the browsing history on his phone, there'd be pages of recipes that he'd been looking at. I was coming to realise that, secretly, Jake liked the chance to show off a little; he was always modest in conversation, but deep down, he enjoyed performing, whether in a play, with his guitar or in the kitchen.