Chapter 22

We were caught two weeks later, in Exmouth, South Devon. We'd run out of money, and Sarah was trying to shoplift some food. Our brief odyssey was over, and it ended with a bit of a whimper. Nothing had surpassed our first night on the run, when hope was still with us. While we were in Devon Sarah revealed that she'd seen Margaret not just that once, but often, all during my affair with her, that Margaret had fucked and used her ruthlessly, keeping her on a string with promises of support for the Group that never came. Sarah said she'd been seduced at fifteen years old, not sixteen as she'd previously told me, and that Margaret had made her swear not to tell anyone the real truth. I was not just anyone, so she could tell me now. Margaret had done things to her that Sarah still would not specify.

Sarah described a different, far more ruthless woman to the one with whom I had so nearly become committed. She told me I'd had a very lucky escape indeed, and I agreed with her, but something in what she said, or how she said it felt just a little wrong. I wasn't sure what, and when I tried to push Sarah for more she clammed up completely, and said the last thing she wanted when the present was so was dwell on the past.

By the end we'd begun to bicker, and the ever-growing fear of capture spoiled our nights as well as out days. Sarah was so steeped in the dogma of the Group it was hard to have a proper conversation with her. Too often, when I tried to ask her about important emotional issues she talked me round in circles, leaving my curiosity unsatisfied, while twisting my brain into knots. The dream was over.

I still adored her, but the world caught up with us, demanding we face the music and pay the price. Strangely, when the fuzz took us away, I seemed to accept arrest much better than Sarah, who fought all the way into the van, shouting, kicking, screaming at the police, while I just sat in the corner and kept as quiet as a mouse.

Felicity bravely agreed to represent me and did everything she could, but the best barrister my fortune could buy fell ill, suspiciously, at the last moment, and his inferior replacement just couldn't seem to help, especially when the prosecution, during the course of the trial for my original charge of assisting a fugitive terrorist, suddenly added the entirely trumped of charge being a member the Group. There could be no genuine evidence for this, because it was a blatant lie, but shifts and changes in the Crown's case undermined my scanty defence.

They asked me to account precisely for my movements in the months preceding the bomb, and I was stumped for an answer. It would have meant implicating Margaret, and even though I despised her for her betrayal, something deep inside me sensed it would be very wrong to use her as an alibi. I thought of Lady H. Did she deserve the scandal? Did Margaret deserve the destruction of everything she held dear, just to help me out? Would she even admit it, or deny everything and accuse me of vile perjury? The only thing I was fairly sure of was that she hadn't set the Police on us after all.

One day when the trial was very much going against me, I lost my nerve and told Felicity enough to wreck the Margaret's reputation forever. She listened, said she would have to consult others, and I wept all night thinking that I had added a wrong to that which Margaret had done to me, but they would never make a right. The next time I saw Felicity, she advised me strongly not to speak of Margaret in court, that they only would fix upon the assault, and betrayal of love was of no consequence to them. I understood, but something in Felicity's behaviour gave me the impression that the establishment had closed ranks. I couldn't believe that they would find me guilty of crimes I hadn't committed. Stupidly, I trusted justice. I paid for Sarah's defence too, but despite pleading not guilty, she stood no chance, and knew it. She made quite scene in the witness box when they wouldn't let her speak. Defiant to the last, she was taken down to the cells shouting the Group's Manifesto at the top of her voice. I don't think that helped much, and might have gone some way to explaining why they felt they had to make an example of us when we were sentenced. After all, we were supposed to be nice well-educated middle-class girls, and we were letting the country down. And we were man-hating lesbians. Oh yes, to the media we were they sexy lesbians they could portray lasciviously as dangerous perverts gone off the rails on drugs and politics, fighting the system with our mad anarchist beliefs (Sarah's beliefs, but I stuck with her).