Flying Under Bridges by Sandi Toksvig Read Free Book Online

was the nature of these offences?’
    ‘Oh, I
didn’t say they were offences. Just a bit wicked. That’s what you said — something
wicked.’ She clears her throat again. It makes me almost maternal.
    ‘Would
you like a fruit gum?’ She shakes her head so I pick up my tapestry and begin
sewing. I think I seem calm but I’m not really. I have terrible flashes of
feeling quite sick. I don’t know how things got to here. It’s not where I
belong. It’s not how things should have turned out and I have been wicked
before. Not big things. Just stupid things because everything was always the
same. Because nothing ever changed.
    I was
born in 1955. I was a teenager in the sixties, I was heading for grown
up in the seventies. Everything was supposed to have changed since my mother
had me. Since she regretted everything about her life and me. I went to school
with a lot of girls with plans. We all had plans and then when I had my children
I met my friends again. I met them in the same playground where my mother had
waited. I met them waiting for their children. Regretting. You see, nothing
had changed. It was all talk. But I didn’t regret. Not till the very end.
    The
lawyer starts tapping again. Maybe she thought we were getting somewhere. ‘What
sort of wicked things?’
    ‘Oh
nothing, just daft really. I started sending off for ads. You know, from the
newspapers, Sunday magazines, that sort of thing. There’s quite a lot in the Sunday
Telegraph. Well, I had started reading all the papers and then I noticed
all these ads —shoes for the wider fitting, stair-lifts for the terraced home,
trousers with elasticised waists in non-crease man-made fibres, holidays for
the elderly-but-active sun-seeker, nylon sofa covers and snuggle bags for wet
dogs in the back of saloon cars. The first one happened because I was cross
about the charity shop. I filled in Betty Hoddle’s name and address on a coupon
for incontinence pants in a range of autumn colours and sent it off. After
that I started sending all sorts of things to people in the town. Plastic drain
cover brochures, sonic pest repellents, anything really, although I did try to
match the item to the person I was sending it to.’
    ‘And
what was their reaction?’
    ‘Well,
I’ve no idea. I mean, no one knew it was me. It seemed rather harmless in the
great scheme of things. I suppose it was irresponsible but it’s not like I took
to drink or anything.’
    ‘Had
you been drinking at the time of the… incident?’
    ‘No. Not
at all.’
    ‘That’s
good.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Everyone
is very pleased that I hadn’t been drinking. That would have made the killing
very unladylike, which would have been even worse. A man killing someone while
he was drunk might have used it as a defence, but for a woman it painted her as
even more satanic. That’s what the girls on my wing tell me. They’re really
very nice for criminals. I had not been drinking, but the fact is I have been
wicked. It is a bad thing. It fuzzes the lines between whether the jury will
vote for me or not. I have been naughty. Miss March has been clear with me.
    ‘But
you had been violent before.
    ‘I don’t
think so.’
    Miss
March looks at her notes. ‘I have here that one evening in your parents’ house
you knocked your sister out with a blow to the head.’
    ‘I can
explain. She wanted me to. You see—’
    ‘The
fact remains, Mrs Marshall, that the world is divided into two types of female
defendant — those who merit compassion and those who don’t. It is very important
that we get the jury on your side. These incidents will not help. Now would you
say that you were good at your job?’
    ‘I didn’t
have a job. I was a housewife.’
    ‘Yes,
but were you good at it? You understand the probation officers will go and see
what sort of house you maintained.’
    ‘I maintained?’
    ‘Yes.
How your family will or will not cope without you has an important bearing on
the final judgment or the sentence