I am in my court shoes, which I can stand in for about two hours. It is a quarter past twelve.
We were listed for ten. I was here at nine, because I was told in my first year to be here at nine, by somebody who had once been late. I have been through the arch that beeps. A man has looked in my bag and found a satsuma, and we have both looked at it.
The waiting area
There are chairs bolted together in rows, facing the same way, as though something were about to be shown.
Nothing is shown. There is a screen with the lists on it, and everybody looks at it whenever it changes. It changes for other people.
The vending machine takes coins. Nobody has coins. At some point in the morning a barrister with a wheeled case will stand in front of it, going through every pocket of a very good suit, and a woman who has come to court about the worst thing in her life will lean over and give him a pound. I have seen it more than once. He says thank you as if she had saved him.
Who is here
Everybody in the case is in the one room. That is the part they do not tell you.
The family are fifteen feet from me. We have said good morning. We will be on opposite sides of a courtroom this afternoon and we are sharing a radiator now. There is nowhere to look, so we all look at our phones, and I hold mine so that they can see I am only reading the news.
I will not describe them. They are nobody. I made them up, and I still do not want to.
What I do with the time
I read my statement again. I wrote it and I have read it nine times. I find a comma on page eleven that I would like back.
I eat the satsuma, outside, on the steps.
I go to the toilets and stand with my wrists under the cold tap, which somebody taught me. It works. I could not tell you why.
I do not make a phone call about another case, though I have four to make. The walls here are thin, and the corridor is full of people with nothing to do but listen.
Twenty to four
An usher comes out with a clipboard and says a number. It is ours.
Everybody stands. The family stand, and their solicitor, and ours. The barrister has had his chocolate. There is a moment at the door when nobody knows who should go first. Then the mother goes first. Nobody has said anything. We have all stood back at the same moment.
My feet hurt. I have been at court for six hours and forty minutes and I have not yet said a word that anybody will write down.
Five hours of it were on a chair bolted to another chair. It was the same for her.
This is a scene, and it is made up, like the book. Nobody in it is a real person.
Maisie x
Next in the notebook: The fridge