The Runaway Schoolgirl (13 page)

A
fter a terrible night’s sleep, I got up extra-early. It was Lilly’s first birthday and we made a big fuss of her with lots of presents. I had hoped to throw a party for her, but I cancelled it once the trial was confirmed. I know she didn’t have a clue what was going on and we could have actually celebrated her birthday any day of the year, but it was a big deal for Paul and me. We had planned to have a bouncy castle in the garden and had been looking forward to everyone having a fun day.

Instead, there she was, feeling so poorly and looking sorrowfully at her presents. I wished I could have split myself in two that day. I left the house feeling full of guilt and sad that there was another moment in my children’s life that I would never get back again.

Driving to Lewes, I was a trembling wreck. As I approached
the town, a news report came on the radio –‘Today, the schoolgirl, who we cannot name for legal reasons, is due to give evidence in court in the trial which …’ – which only made me feel worse. I immediately switched it off. It felt almost too real to hear it being talked about so publicly. I kept saying to myself over and over again: ‘Gemma, sweetheart, please come to court, please come to court …’

I felt sick with worry about how she must be thinking. How on earth was she meant to get through her exam, knowing she would have to go straight to court once she had finished? She had been adamant that she wasn’t going to go, but she must have known in her heart that there was no getting away from it. I was scared that she would walk out of the exam, see Max and Hannah waiting for her and try to run away.

I arrived at the car park in Lewes and met up with Chloe, Darcee and Sarah, and they each gave me a reassuring hug. We didn’t need to say anything, we all knew that day was going to be a totally different ball game to the previous one.

After a coffee, the walk up the hill and the barrage of the press, we were taken upstairs to the witness services area. This time, though, instead of being taken into the main room, we were led to a side room.

Mark Ling came to see me to check if I was OK and informed me that Gemma had been brought to court and was now sitting in a room two doors up from us. He explained that she would be appearing via a videolink from the witness room, rather than being in the courtroom in person. A court usher would be sitting with her throughout.

It was heartbreaking knowing that she was so close by and not being allowed to go in and see her. If I could have run in
and whisked her away, I wouldn’t have hesitated; I was so scared for her. All I could think about was what Forrest was putting her through.

I asked the woman who was looking after us in witness services to let Gemma know that I was only two doors away and was there for her if she needed me at all. Everyone knew that she wasn’t speaking to me. Max was waiting with her until the session started, but Mark Ling and Neil Ralph reassured me that she was fine.

No matter what anyone said to me, I was feeling like a nervous wreck, and even worse when I heard the dreaded PA announcement. ‘All parties in the case of Jeremy Ayre Forrest, please go to court number two’. I could virtually see my heart beating.

With Chloe back downstairs, sitting in the public gallery, Darcee and I got ready for more clock-watching and thumb twiddling. I’d been told that the day would begin with the defence opening statement, after which Gemma would appear via videolink.

After about an hour, Chloe came back to see us. The session had been delayed, as Judge Michael Lawson, QC wanted to speak to Gemma before the cameras were switched on for her to appear via videolink. It gave me great comfort to know how well she was being looked after.

What Chloe told me next came as a surprise. Gemma had asked for the courtroom to be cleared, as she didn’t want Mum, Charlotte or Chloe to be there. She seemed to be fine about other people being in the public gallery – including Forrest’s parents – and I wondered if it might have been because she didn’t want her nan to hear intimate details of her relationship with Forrest.

I didn’t have a clue how Gemma would have known that she could request to have the courtroom cleared. Mum was really upset about it. To her, it underlined how badly their relationship had fallen apart. It was so sad; the two of them used to be so close. Chloe tried to reassure Mum that it was probably just because she was embarrassed about the whole thing, but she was heartbroken.

Gemma didn’t know Darcee well, and so we decided that she would sit in the public gallery for the afternoon session and keep taking notes for me to read after I had given my evidence. Chloe would wait with me outside the courtroom, while Mum and Charlotte went home.

Whether she liked it or not, Gemma couldn’t ask for Sarah, our family social worker, to leave the courtroom. She had initially cooperated with Sarah, but their relationship had deteriorated when she refused to condone her relationship with Forrest or accept it as the great love story that Gemma believed it to be.

Sarah had spent so much time with our family and had seen firsthand how much it had emotionally devastated us. She constantly reassured me that I was doing the right thing and told me that she understood how I felt. Gemma had been molested by a sex offender, and I was struggling to accept it. Even writing those words now makes me feel like the worst mother in the world.

While Sarah had become a lifeline for me, Gemma believed that she was on ‘the other side’ and wasn’t looking out for her at all. Despite everything, though, Sarah and her team never once stopped providing support to Gemma.

Back at court in the afternoon, I saw Forrest’s mum and sister waiting to go in the courtroom. His mother and I looked
at each other and we shared a kind of half-smile – it was a look that said, ‘I know what you are going through’.

I knew that she was suffering as much anxiety and stress as I was. Whatever he had done, Jeremy Forrest was still the son she had given birth to. Obviously, it wasn’t like we were about to introduce ourselves and bond over the situation we were in, it was just an unspoken look that said we shared so much.

Darcee went into the courtroom in the afternoon while Chloe and I waited outside.

Later than usual, as there had been a number of breaks while the judge spoke to Gemma, the court session ended for the day. Again, I understood that I couldn’t know the exact details of what was going on, but Darcee told us the format of the afternoon. The court had been shown video footage of the long interview Gemma had given at the police house in Hailsham on Wednesday, 3 October, a week after her return from France. Meanwhile, in a corner of the screen, Gemma’s live reaction from the nearby witness room was shown.

I was confident that I knew exactly what had been discussed during that interview, so that was one less thing for me to worry about. Gemma had confided in me about what she had talked about with the police, so for once I didn’t have that desperate need to know what was going on.

Later I learned that the court was told how the relationship between Gemma and Forrest had started – how she had started following Forrest on Twitter before she went on the half-term school trip to Los Angeles in February 2012, how he had covered for her so that she wouldn’t get punished for swimming in the hotel pool without permission, and how she had held hands with him on the flight home.

The court also heard how she had asked a friend to get his
mobile number and they had begun texting one another, how they had kissed each other for the first time in a classroom, and how things got more serious after that. Forrest had apparently sent her a text message which read: ‘We can wait until you are 16, but I really want to have intimacy in our relationship’.

Darcee was visibly upset about what she had heard. She has children and grandchildren of her own, so I knew that she would have put herself in my shoes as she listened to the evidence.

Of course, at the time she couldn’t tell me what had happened, or how Gemma had been reacting as she was watching the video footage of the interviews, but I was later to find out that Gemma had been really upset.

Totally drained, I went back home and joined Paul and the family. Even though I hadn’t actually even been in the courtroom, I felt emotionally exhausted. I took a coffee out to the garden and sat on the swing seat. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a daze and it was 8pm. I had only gone out to clear my mind for five minutes, but I had obviously needed longer to process everything that was happening.

C
ome the next morning, Lilly was still feeling poorly and Paul’s mum wasn’t yet 100 per cent, so once again we agreed that Paul would stay at home.

I had begun to dread that long, slow walk up the hill from the car park – it was like the green mile. I knew the reporters and photographers would be waiting for me when I reached the top. Having spent five minutes composing myself, I walked towards the court with a grim determination and followed Forrest’s family, who had arrived just before me.

Gemma was going to be in court again that morning while further video footage from her police interview was shown. Even though she wasn’t going to have to speak while she was there, she still had to attend and be sworn in as any other official witness would be. Meanwhile, Darcee was again in
the public gallery, taking notes so that she could tell me what had happened once I had given my evidence.

Chloe and I went back upstairs to the witness services area, but we were starting to feel claustrophobic waiting for the hours to tick by and decided to go for a coffee outside halfway through the morning. We went for a little walk and went window-shopping, and chatted about work, holidays, anything to try and take our minds off the time. Mostly, though, we were just clockwatching, waiting for the morning session to end. Every two minutes, one of us would turn to the other and say, ‘What time is it now?’

Lunchtime came round and Mark Ling told me that Gemma would be cross-examined that afternoon and had asked to sit in the courtroom for the session. Upstairs in the witness room, she would have only been able to see Judge Michael Lawson, QC and the prosecution and defence teams on the videolink, and I knew she would have been desperate to see Forrest. She hadn’t seen him since September, so I was sure that this was the reason she wanted to be in court.

Normally, if a minor is appearing in court, they give evidence from behind a screen, so it was highly unlikely Gemma would see Forrest while she was giving evidence, but I suppose she would have felt that just being in the same room as him was better than nothing.

We went to the tearoom to take stock of the situation. I don’t know if the manager had put two and two together and realised that we had been in court that morning, but he said something along the lines of ‘Tough morning?’ and showed us to ‘our’ table in the back of the café. It was quite comforting to go back there every day. He even seemed to have the table ready for us as the days went on.

Instead of spending the afternoon in the witness services area, Chloe and I decided to sit in the corridor – I wanted to be closer to where everything was happening rather than being tucked away upstairs, out of the way. When the doors of the courtroom were open and everyone filed in, I could only really see where the judge would be sitting, but Chloe had described the layout of the court to me the day before. She had also told me that Forrest had been wearing a grey suit and a lilac shirt, and that he was clean-shaven with a closely cropped haircut. He seemed to be taking the whole thing more seriously now.

A little while later, after the doors to the courtroom had been closed, I glimpsed through the glass panels. Instead of being behind a screen, I could see that Gemma had been positioned next to Judge Michael Lawson, QC. She looked so small in comparison, so childlike, but I could tell from her body language that she was trying to look assertive and confident. I think she was hoping to come over as maturely as possible in order to show that she could handle an adult relationship with Forrest.

I suppose I could have lingered at my vantage point to watch how things played out with Gemma in court, but I was mindful about not knowing anything before my turn in the witness box. Besides, it was too upsetting to see Gemma having to give evidence in court. With the videolink, at least I knew she was protected in a secure room, but here everyone’s eyes would be burning into her: she was so vulnerable.

Chloe and I tried to fill the hours. When we saw a couple of men outside another courtroom we tried to work out why they were there. We were desperate to find ways to make the time go faster.

While we were sitting there in the corridor, a court reporter came out and made a phone call to his office, describing in graphic detail the evidence that was coming out. ‘And their first kiss was in the classroom …’

Chloe was furious. She marched straight over to him and asked him to show a bit of respect, as Gemma’s mum was sitting right there. He apologised and scurried off outside to continue his call.

I obviously looked very different from when I did the press conference, back when Gemma first went missing. I have always taken pride in the way that I look, whereas I looked like an absolute wreck when I appeared at the press conference.

To be fair, I knew that the reporter was only doing his job but it was still a shock to hear someone talking about my daughter like that, rattling off details about Gemma’s life like it was some sort of shopping list. It was sickening to hear her being treated like a bit of tabloid fodder and it was going to be hard to stomach reading lurid details of what Forrest did to her.

At 4pm, the court doors opened and everyone spilled out. Once again, Gemma left without saying a word to me.

The moment I saw Darcee, I could tell something significant had happened during the afternoon session. It wasn’t just Darcee. I could see the looks of hurt and concern on the faces of other people who had been in the courtroom.

Suddenly, I felt very cold.

Mark Ling and Neil Ralph came up to speak to me as Darcee took Chloe to one side. I could see them whispering to each other and looking concerned. Sarah came over and said: ‘You should be very proud of your daughter. She was very articulate and she did really well in there.’ Sarah has always
said that Gemma was a really lovely, well-grounded child, but the last thing she said to me sounded a bit strange: ‘You need to remember the situation she was in.’

I didn’t know it at the time, but the evidence that Gemma had been giving that afternoon wasn’t tallying with what she had said at her interview in the police house.

Darcee and Chloe came over to give me a hug and reassured me that I shouldn’t worry and that it would soon be my turn to give evidence. I stood there looking at them for answers, but I knew I couldn’t ask for any more information. What the hell had Gemma been saying in there?

I could sense that something wasn’t quite right, but I understood why there was no way that I could be allowed to know what had been said in the courtroom that afternoon. There were restrictions on what the press could report while the trial was taking place, and I was determined to play everything absolutely by the book so that we could get the best outcome possible. I had to stay strong and have faith in everyone to do their jobs. Of course, I would never be able to stop worrying about it, but at least I knew we had a brilliant team on our side.

Just before we all left to go home, Richard Barton told me that I wouldn’t be giving evidence after Gemma after all. He had decided to call the teachers at Kennedy High School first as he thought it would be better for the jury to hear what they had to say before getting me on the stand.

I was gutted – I had so wanted to hear them explain how this horrific thing had happened to my daughter. As far as I was concerned, the teachers held the key to this whole horrendous ordeal and the fact that I was going to have to wait even longer to hear their evidence was yet another endurance test.
Richard Barton knew that I really wanted to hear what the teachers had to say, but he felt it was important for the jury to listen to their testimony before mine. I was so disappointed. It goes without saying that I wanted what was best, but I had so wanted to be there to hear them when they started spouting their excuses.

To make matters worse, I was told there would be no court session the next day as Judge Michael Lawson, QC had to attend a retirement lunch, so there was going to be even more of a delay.

Richard Barton also knew that I was keen to give my evidence before Forrest’s wife Emily and he confirmed that she would be taking to the stand after me, something I was really relieved about. Firstly, I really wanted to see her in the flesh. I had heard that there was a close resemblance to Gemma and, while I had seen pictures of her in the paper, you can never really tell until you have seen someone for real. More than that, though, I knew that she would be truly honest about what Forrest was like. She knew him better than anyone and I hoped that the expression on her face would tell the true story.