had rung her just as Lissa was trying to pluck up the courage to ring her, and she, Roisin, talked her through what would happen. Lissa would be given the opportunity to read the statement she’d given at the police station the first time around to refresh her memory for the small details, then Roisin would walk her through it on the stand. Then the defense lawyer would ask her a few questions.
“But honestly,” said Roisin, “you’re a noble, trustworthy health care worker who happened to be walking past and did her absolute best to save the life of a child. They’d have a devil of a job making you look bad in front of a jury, and I would be very, very surprised if they bothered to try. They’ll probably get you off the stand as soon as possible. All you’re doing is confirming the perpetrator. The person you’ve already picked out of the lineup.”
“What if I can’t remember his face?”
“I’ll ask you if you recognize the person driving the car. If you do, say yes.”
“But what if I don’t . . .”
“Alyssa,” said Roisin, “don’t panic. It’s okay to be nervous. He’ll be in a suit, but it’s the same person. The police had to pull him out of his car, remember? When it was surrounded by the lads from the estate?”
“Okay . . .” said Lissa, swallowing hard.
“Who is also on the CCTV that is going to be played to the jury.”
“Can I watch that?”
“Nope. I’m just saying. Don’t worry about it.”
Lissa sighed.
“It’s all right,” said the lawyer. “You’re going to be fine. Honest. And you’ll be back in London. Enjoy that, surely!”
Lissa bit her lip. She couldn’t help it; something about a tiny thing to look forward to. A tiny green shoot. And she’d teased Cormac about it: he’d suggested going to Borough Market, which made him such a Londoner—it was an incredibly expensive, very chichi food market just on the south bank by London Bridge station that sold all manner of exotic and organic foods at incredible prices.
But it was still a lovely place to roam around, smelling the cheeses and the coffee beans and seeing the beautiful cakes that were practically works of art and the unidentifiable (certainly to Cormac) spiky fruits. It was an oasis of beauty in the big granite city, and Cormac had liked it straightaway; it was so different from the very solid, decent farmers’ market in Kirrinfief, where you could buy the freshest local brown hen’s eggs with great big melting yolks, half a dozen for a pound. Here you could buy a single ostrich egg for £7. At the Kirrinfief farmers’ market you could buy basket after basket of fresh strawberries, huge, some a little battered, falling over, from the fields all around them for miles and miles. Here you could buy six perfectly curated strawberries in an artisanal basket and they would cost almost a pound each.
But Cormac liked it anyway. It reminded him a little of home and people who took their food seriously, even if he had been slightly taken aback when asked to pay £8 for a toasted cheese sandwich.
And it was a ten-minute walk away from the courthouse. Her stomach fizzed.
SHE HAD TOLD herself not to get carried away, not to build it up too much. She had failed miserably.
“You look very distracted,” said old Joe Cahill the previous Thursday.
Seeing as she was checking his foot operation post-wound care, and seeing as, distractingly, he had a set of the most gnarled and twisted hobbit-feet toenails she’d ever encountered, it wasn’t, Lissa thought, as she came back to herself, the worst place to lose her concentration. She straightened up.
“Your wound is fine, Mr. Cahill,” she said. “But did they not tell you to cut those nails?”
“Aye, they did, aye,” he said mournfully. Then he looked down at his expansive stomach. “Och, it’s not that easy, no,” he added with a sigh.
“Could they not get someone to do it there?”
“Aye, they tried, but they couldnae work it with the scissors, eh.”
It was true, they looked like sheep’s horns.
“Let me have a shot,” said Lissa. “You’ll never get walking with those on.”
But Joe had been quite right; there was absolutely no shifting them. Outside, a brief shower had made everything sparkle and bounce in the light. She could see the sheep nudging their way around the luminous green field. Suddenly she had an idea.
“I’m just going to see if Joan’s about,” she said.