Free A Poisoned Mind by Natasha Cooper Page B

advocacy.
    ‘Good morning,’ she said in a voice that made sense of Ben Givens’s comment about the wrong side of the tracks. There was none of his pomposity and it wouldn’t have sounded out of place anywhere. ‘You must be Mrs Fortwell. I’m Trish Maguire. How do you do?’
    Angie’s knees felt insecure, as though they might give way and dump her on the floor. The other woman’s gentle dark eyes held all the compassion she’d longed for since John’s death and not found anywhere. Angie tried to think of something to say as they shook hands.
    A moment later the kindness might never have existed. Maguire’s expression retreated into cool formality and she
turned her back to talk to the men who’d come in with her. One was about her own age, even taller, broad-shouldered, and very good looking in a smooth kind of way. The other, much younger, was a bustly little fellow with freckles and an engaging grin.
    He busied himself opening his document cases and laying papers and folders out in what was obviously a preordained pattern, while the elder stared at Angie with all the arrogance she’d expected from the lot of them.
    She couldn’t bear it, so she introduced Greg as a way of shifting his disdain from herself. He gave his name as Robert Anstey and didn’t bother to shake hands.
    The next few minutes were like being blindfolded and whirled round and round in a cement-mixer. People came and went and said things Angie couldn’t hear or understand. There was a roaring in her ears. Only Greg’s hand on her wrist kept her together. He explained the significance of each new arrival until a door behind the judge’s throne opened and an usher brought in the judge, a tall man with a calm and empty face, wearing robes not all that different from the barristers’.
    Everybody stood until Mr Justice Flambard had lowered himself to the bench, then they all sat.
    ‘No, no,’ Greg whispered. ‘You stand now, Ange. And you begin. Remember?’
    She remembered all right; she just wasn’t sure she could do it. The words should be easy enough to say. She fumbled about in her mind for the sense of outrage, for the idea of justice denied, for John. This was her one chance to establish the truth about his murder.
    He’d been the best of men, she reminded herself: honest, hard-working, faithful, kind. So kind. And he’d been
rubbed out of life by the very people who were paying Trish Maguire a fortune to fight her now.
    A faint sensation of something that might be courage made Angie raise her chin. She looked at the judge, who peered at her over his half-moon glasses, and smiled encouragingly, nodding to get her started.
     
    Trish listened to the laboured formalities and wished she could lean over and advise Angie to soften her neck muscles, which would help her vocal cords relax. Her voice sounded as though she was being strangled, and it was clear she was more or less holding her breath as she gabbled her way to the end of each sentence. She’d lose concentration if she went on like this, and the wear and tear on both her mind and body would be tremendous.
    ‘And so my husband was killed, My Lord,’ she said at the end of her opening speech, ‘and the farm to which we gave over twenty years of our lives was contaminated, all because of the dangerously polluting chemicals the defendants allowed to escape from their land on to ours.’
    Trish waited until the judge had finished writing his notes, then rose and in an easy persuasive voice outlined the ways in which she proposed to defend her clients. She chose much less formal language than Angie and felt herself entirely at home. Reaching the end of her speech, she smiled first at the judge, then at her opponent and sat down again, ignoring Robert’s whispered congratulations.
    She watched Angie lick her narrow lips and heard her breathe heavily. The judge completed his notes, then nodded to her. Her unsuitably dressed friend had dropped the papers he’d been holding