She was the raw materials of beauty; long, dark cavewoman hair, huge eyes dirty with makeup. Even her cheap, badly cut clothes could not disguise the perfect proportions beneath. She could easily have gotten work at an escort agency, although it was hard to determine her age: she could have been anything between fifteen and thirty-five. She gave her name as Kerry Stone, confirmed her address at a bail hostel, then shrank into silence while barristers played legal Ping-Pong above her head. She was before the bench on charges of harassment and as the prosecution laid out their case I found myself for the first time being absorbed not by Lydia MacBride but by the legal drama played out on the walnut stage. Kerry Stone had allegedly been stalking a ten-month-old boy called Conor Watson, whose mother had frequented the children’s playground where Kerry spent her empty days. At first the child’s mother had been touched by the extra attention Kerry lavished on her child but the odd gingerbread man had turned into surprise gifts which had turned into offers to babysit and those, when rejected, had mutated into unwanted after-hours visits and hourly telephone calls through the night.
