Sweet as Honey (The Seven Sisters) - By Caitlyn Robertson Page 0,30

question, anyway. He rang Sarah to tell her he’d like to collect some of his things, especially his precious CD collection, as he hadn’t yet transferred them all onto his iPod. Sarah refused, saying she wouldn’t let him in the house—the house he was still paying the rent for. He checked with the landlord, who assured him he hadn’t yet changed the locks, and then he told Sarah he’d be coming over to pick up his stuff after he got back from a course in Auckland. It might be late, he told her, probably after ten.

He got to the house at eleven—later than he’d anticipated, but she’d always stayed up late watching TV, and he thought she’d be up. He let himself in, realised from the darkness and silence that she was in bed and, rather than confront her, decided to grab his stuff and run. In the middle of packing up his CDs, he didn’t notice her until she was on top of him, at which point she screamed his name, the blade in her hand. He didn’t have time to react and the blade sliced his face. He wrested it from her, grabbed his stuff and left for the hospital. They’d done their best, but his face was permanently scarred.

The defence lawyer had cross-examined him and succeeded a little in drawing out James’s feelings toward Sarah—that he despised her for being weak, and that he hadn’t loved her for a long time. But James had been convincing in painting her as a crazed, over-possessive madwoman, and he looked cool and convincing in his navy suit, showing none of the cruelness and manipulation Honey was certain he’d used on the defendant.

Sent the poor bastard to the gallows yet? Jasmine had asked.

“I’m working on it,” Honey said.

Jasmine broke her muffins into pieces and ate one. “Do you think he’s guilty?”

Honey sighed. She’d told her sisters a little about the case the night before. “Unfortunately he’s not on trial, or the answer would definitely be yes. But it’s the woman who’s on trial. And the shame of it is that yes, I think she probably did know it was him that night, and she did mean to wound him. But a conviction would be such an unfair result, because it doesn’t take into account the years of torture I’m sure that man’s put her through. It’s like a bully in the playground repeatedly shoving a smaller child, and when the child finally reacts by standing up for itself, the school expels the child rather than the bully.”

“Yeah, I see.” Jasmine picked up half of her chicken roll and frowned at the contents. “Look at this. There’s about a quarter of a chicken breast in here. It’s nearly all salad, and most of that’s lettuce.”

“We do a much better job,” Honey agreed, sipping her latte, which wasn’t hot enough or strong enough.

Jasmine ate the roll anyway, in spite of her grimace. She studied her sister as she chewed. “Do you ever regret not pressing charges? You know, with Ian?”

Honey shrugged, unused to discussing it. Although her father had told all her siblings what had happened with Ian when she returned home, she’d told him she didn’t want to talk about it, tongue-tied out of a mixture of shame and misery, and he’d passed the message on. She’d only talked it over with a therapist, not with her family. “It would be very difficult to prove he did anything wrong. He never actually hit me—it was emotional and mental abuse, not physical. And he had friends in high places who would no doubt have helped him escape a sentence, even if we did make anything stick. No, I’m just glad to have left him behind.”

Jasmine laid a hand on hers. “I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice, and to Honey’s surprise, tears shone in her eyes. The loud and confident Jasmine wasn’t prone to showing emotion, which made it all the more startling.

“It’s okay,” Honey said awkwardly.

“It’s not okay. We should have realised what was going on. I knew he was a bastard, but I didn’t think, you know? I was too tied up in my own life, and with Mum. But we let you down, and we all feel really bad about that.”

“You didn’t let me down. I let myself down. I should have been stronger and stood up for myself more.” She cleared her throat—she’d berated herself enough for that over the past few years and she wasn’t going to