Read Without Consent for Free Online Page B

All that paper, representing nothing but loss for everyone concerned.
    â€˜Typical,’ said Rose, righting herself. ‘Bloody typical. I can just hear what’s in your head. Me? Never! I just prosecute; I can’t do anything else; I don’t want to understand. I don’t want to find out what it’s like, and I don’t have time to help anyone, ’cos I’m so busy doing my duty. Like some doctor; I just inject, I just prescribe, I can’t prevent. Look, it’s because all these counsellors are such bloody experts that she won’t go. She doesn’t want psychobabble. She wants a nice, dry, sympathetic lawyer. One with my personal seal of approval, which you are about to lose.’
    â€˜Why won’t she talk to you?’
    Rose turned her head away.
    â€˜Oh, don’t be so silly. I’m too young.’
    Rose, you have never been young. Youthful and energetic, yes, but never young, Helen thought, slightly amused and certainly perplexed. Odd that she could withstand the bullying of a judge, the intimidation of Redwood, the vicious dislike of defendants and still have absolutely no armoury to defend an unreasonable request from Rose. She had a sudden flash of what it must be like to be Bailey, locked in his friendship with Ryan, made as malleable by it as a piece of putty.
    â€˜When?’
    She meant, when was the woman attacked? but the single word was taken as acceptance of the demand. Rose was good at that. She had an angular face with a wide generous mouth made for smiling. Redwood was right to remark that Helen looked like an older, calmer version of Rose; she seemed unaware of how much the girl modelled herself on her. lf she had her hair transformed into soft curls, Helen was thinking fondly, this little devil might be able to fool even more of the people more of the time.
    â€˜Triffic. I’ll give you her address. I mean, I did tell her this evening would be fine, but I expect you could rearrange.’
    There was no such thing as totally free will, Helen decided. Nor any such thing as predictability when the will was so weak.
    Much of the time, she did not like being in charge, especially of human beings. Rose could have been right. It was a dangerous state to have reached if she really did prefer to meet them on paper.

C HAPTER T HREE
    â€˜The House of Lords have upheld the Court of Appeal in deciding that there is no implied consent to sexual intercourse within marriage, and that it is therefore possible for a man to rape his wife. The argument that “unlawful” meant outside the bond of marriage was mere surplusage … it was clearly unlawful to have sexual intercourse with any woman without her consent and the use of the word in the subsection added nothing.’
    B rigid Connor was taking tea among the friends of the parish, ostensibly to organize preparations for the visit of the Bishop, who would confirm several children in their as yet half-baked faith and inspect the church with a view to allocating funds. This seemed to necessitate a wholesale spring-clean of the church itself, although Brigid privately thought it would be better to leave it as it was, since there was little point painting over the cracks which they wanted the man to see. The episcopal visit was distant enough to take second place to gossip of various kinds; Brigid would be able to add little. She detested parish activity and had no great affection for the other ladies who approached itwith the enthusiasm she was capable of assuming, but never feeling, and she disliked the uneasy knowledge that they were all in the same boat.
    They formed a sanctimonious posse of the better-off kind of matrons, who did not work, either because they did not know how or because they had no need. They were an unglamorous version of the ladies who lunch, all of them considering it poor taste to be flashy, to show off the baubles or the boobies, while each, to a woman, pretended they were