Amy and Antony - Part Ten

A week later

Amy cried for a week after the fiasco at the shopping mall that had resulted in the arrest of herself, her sisters in the Female Dawn movement, and her mentor, Dr Craig.

Amy had been grounded and forbidden to attend any more meetings of the movement. Most of the other girls were much in the same boat, Amy had learnt by means of texts between mobiles. Dr Craig, who had insisted on taking full responsibility for her charges, had later been released without charge. Probably because even the pro-Alpha police were not daft enough to attempt to get a conviction based on the trumped up charges that had been brought against Dr Craig.

The gang of Alphas who had started the fracas in the first place, had got off scott free. Lack of evidence was the reason given in the local paper, even though there was one stall holder and a dozen women and girls who could have testified to the outrageous behaviour of the thuggish Alphas and the all too accommodating treatment given them by the police force.

Amy's rage at the blatant injustice and inequitable treatment that the Alphas had received compared to the Female Dawn members had barely subsided. She remembered well the humiliation of being bundled into a police van, finger-printed and put in a cell. Treatment that had been undeserved.

Dr Craig had had to attend an emergency meeting of the board of school governors, who had read all about the incident in the local rags (they had, of course, gleefully seized upon the spectacle of a school headmistress being arrested). The headmistress passionately defended her right to political activity outside her profession and pointed out that under her leadership, the school had been transformed from a failing school to one considered by the ministry of education as a school of excellence in the brief period that Dr Craig had been in charge.

Dr Craig survived in her post only by the casting vote of the chairwoman, who was an ally and (unbeknownst to her colleagues, a secret member of Female Dawn). But she was left in little doubt by the vice-chairman, a pompous little man called Sir Horace Philby-Smythe, that any further incidents that threatened to bring the school into disrepute would not be tolerated.

Dr Craig marched out of the meeting, her head held high. Dr Craig, being the formidable and indomitable woman that she was, immediately started legal proceedings against the local constabulary for wrongful arrest and detention. A high class barrister, one of the best in the country, Tabitha Willoughby-Clarke, offered to take the case and even more amazingly, refused to accept a fee.

In the weeks that followed, the press had a field day in the High Court. Willoughby-Clarke had a reputation for thoroughness, tenacity and detail that made her a feared opponent by all other members of her profession. She had never lost a case. And she didn't lose this one either. She wiped the floor with the defence brief, ripped his arguments to shreds and even reduced the overconfident Sergeant Walker to a quivering wreck.

The opposition threw in the towel after only a fortnight and admitted they had been wrong. Dr Craig was duly compensated for her ordeal at the hands of "apish thugs masquerading as police officers" as Willoughby-Clarke aptly put it.

Sergeant Walker and the other officers involved in the arrest faced disciplinary action.

Dr Craig, and Female Dawn, were completely vindicated. Amy's parents, on reading the local paper that had a picture of a triumphant Tabitha Willoughby-Clarke hoisting aloft one of Dr Craig's hand in a victory pose, realised that they had been wrong about their daughter and wrong about Female Dawn.

The day after the verdict, Amy proudly wore her uniform again as she attended the weekly meeting.