And now I am near the appeal decision, and writing this all down to take my mind off it. I am confident that I will be freed, and have already written my speech to read out on the court steps. I think I’ve struck the right tone – injured but magnanimous – and I will wear just enough makeup to look attractive but not so much that I look like I’ve spent fourteen months having a nice time. I want you to be able to see the dark rings under my eyes, and immediately know that I have been nearly broken （but not quite!） by my ordeal. I will talk about how we must remember that despite the trauma of being incarcerated, there is another victim in all of this. Caro, I will say, looking straight at the cameras. I lost nearly two years of my life to this injustice, but Caro lost her whole life that night and we must never forget that. Perhaps I’ll end neatly by announcing that I will be establishing a mentoring scheme for female prisoners with eating disorders in her name, in the hope that I can help even one vulnerable woman. She’d fucking hate being called vulnerable.
I don’t think my confidence in being released is misplaced, by the way. The police, with help from the devious Angelica, really did just decide that it had been a murder and did little to test their supposition. I cannot claim to be the perfect innocent in all areas of my life, but in this I truly am the victim of a huge miscarriage of justice. What a tightrope to walk. George Thorpe saw immediately how badly the case had been handled, and has exposed flaws in practically every part of the process. This might all be enough, and it was certainly enough to ensure an appeal was granted, but it was no silver bullet. That came only a couple of weeks ago, but it’s enough to almost guarantee my conviction is quashed. Thorpe had come to see me for a long-arranged update, and I wasn’t expecting any major news. But I could tell the moment he walked in that something big had happened. His neck was red, and it was rising up towards his face as he strode purposefully towards me in the visiting room, brushing impatiently past other people, his long wool coat flying behind him. It was, he said, the result of two months relentless digging by his team.
‘The night Ms Morton had her unfortunate tumble, the police made enquiries at every other flat in the mansion block.’ He pulled out a list of the other properties in the building. ‘There are five flats on each floor, arranged almost like a pentagon, but only three face the gardens while the other two face the road. Ms Morton’s apartment was the middle of the three garden-facing properties. Her neighbours to the right are a couple in their mid-sixties who have been in the block for thirty years – long before the high-income professionals started buying in Clapham – and they were at home the night of the incident.’ Thorpe never used the word death when a more polite description could be found.
‘They were very used to Ms Morton’s parties and showed a remarkable lack of sympathy about her tragic accident, perhaps as a result. They were very clear about not seeing or hearing a thing because they retired to bed at 10 p.m. armed with ear-plugs.’ Thorpe raised his eyebrows here, but I could well understand how annoying it must have been living next door to that entitled girl. ‘The police attempted to make enquiries at the flat on the left of Ms Morton’s flat – number 22 – but there was no answer that morning or later that day. They did further investigate the flat and its owners, but were told by the building’s management company that the owners lived abroad and were never in the country so the police left it there.’ He used his gold fountain pen to stab at the paper in front of him. ‘That was a HUGE oversight, but sadly typical of our police force. The reason we didn’t look into this earlier is because the write-up suggested that contact had been made with the owners of number 22 and assurances had been given that they were out of the country. We had no reason to doubt that your previous brief had investigated this thoroughly, but a clever chap in my office went through the reports from the evening in question and found that she hadn’t looked any further into the next-door flat.’ I thought again about Victoria Herbert’s vertiginous high heels and fervently hoped she would fall down an escalator in them. Perhaps I would help make that happen when I got out of this place. Thorpe looked at me quizzically and I snapped back to attention. ‘This is where it got interesting. This fellow, one of my team as I say, did a bit of digging and found out that the flat is registered to a company based in the Cayman Islands. Do you know what an offshore company is, Grace?’ I rolled my eyes and followed the action up quickly with a sweet smile as I assured him that I did in fact know what that was. Patronising fool. ‘Well, under current UK law, foreign entities can buy property here without revealing who they are. It’s scandalous of course and a system which allows for all sorts of dodgy dealings – mainly money laundering, of course. The government is planning to force these anonymous owners to reveal themselves but it’s tricky and likely to take a while.’