The Kindest Thing

by Cath Staincliffe

  ‘That sounds great. You thinking of going?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘When is it?’

  ‘Middle of August.’

  ‘Good.’ I’ll still be in here, I thought. Ms Gleason had told me it would be between six months and a year till my trial started. ‘You could take the little tent.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, I’d better go. I love you. I’ll ring you about the visit.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Bye-bye.’ My hand ached from gripping the phone.

  That night as I lay in my bed, Sophie’s words tore through me, again and again. You shouldn’t have done it, Mum.

  The prison isn’t one big building, as I’d imagined. Instead two rows of large red-brick villas slope down avenues lined with oak and lime and beech trees towards the wing at the bottom. Most women live in the houses, which were built as Victorian orphanages. Nowadays the villas all take their names from venerable women, good role models for us: Brontë, Gaskell, Pankhurst. Though when I think about it Pankhurst spent quite a bit of time behind bars, being force-fed for her trouble.

  The more dangerous prisoners, those with chronic addiction problems and those in for the most serious offences, live on the wing. Although my charge was up there with the worst, once I had been assessed and deemed to pose no threat to the other women, I was allocated a room in one of the houses near the bottom of the hill close to the wing.

  The majority of the women ‘pad up’, two or four to a cell, in the houses. When they sent me to Shapley House – this villa is named after a pioneering radio broadcaster who lived in Manchester – I was put in one of the small single rooms, a privilege, and I was hugely relieved that I didn’t have to put up with someone else’s taste in television night after night, that I didn’t have to lie awake listening to another woman breathe and dream.

  We share a bathroom, one to each floor, and I can’t get used to sharing with strangers, never time to indulge in a long shower or a hot soak, someone always knocking on the door. I dart in and out when I have to and never linger. The single cell gives me the option to retreat. That’s all I want to do. To withdraw into my shell like a hermit crab. To creep back along the crevices of memory.

  My ‘pad’, as I learned to call it, measures ten foot by eight. Beneath the protector, the mattress is plastered with graffiti, crude and poignant: Cilla4Shawn, I suck cock, help me, Kimberley Smith died age 3 my angel in heaven. There is a moulded block covered with a speckled rubber coating for the mattress to rest on. I once used some of the same material for a maternity unit. It copes well with heavy human traffic, is fireproof, will easily repel blood or urine or vomit and withstands accidental or malicious damage. An important aspect in prison. My pad also has a set of built-in shelves and a cupboard made of the same tough material, a chair, a telly and a sink. Its redeeming feature is the big lime tree outside the window. Its limbs sashay in the wind. I lie on my bed and gaze at it. Listen to the rooks cawing, the ‘teacher teacher’ song of great tits and the roar of jets. We are close to the airport, below the flight path, and the planes overhead are a reminder of freedom, of escape, of holidays. And beyond all those sounds are the haunting calls of women yelling from the wing. Like a chorus of sergeant majors, their plaintive conversations bellow across the spaces between the cells, between the wing and the houses. That sound more than anything is Styal. I can never make out the words. No one ever calls for me. But through the mangled yells and shouts, news travels: of private affairs and public tragedies. Of the woman who set her hair on fire and the one who’s got a release date and the one whose child has been taken away in the mother and baby unit.

  And at night, at the bottom of the hill, I am close enough to hear the clamour that erupts at intervals from the wing. The sudden alarms and bursts of activity, shouts and feet kicking at doors – ‘Come on, Keely, come on, girl, come on’ – as Keely or Jen or Emma or Kim is discovered hanging or bleeding or comatose. Night after night, the same deadly dance.

  Ms Gleason came to see me the day after I had been remanded without bail. She told me we would be back for a preliminary hearing in a week – and that a timetable would be set for the trial. Then we had six weeks until the plea and case management hearing. This sounded like so much jargon to me. I asked her to explain. ‘That’s when you enter your plea to the charge, guilty or not guilty. It’s also when we adjust the timetable and agree on dates for the exchange of papers, the preparation of reports and so on.’

  She placed her palms against the edge of the table, fingers splayed, edged forward towards me. ‘We need to run a defence. It’ll be my job to prepare a brief for your barrister. That will include our instructions, what we want them to do for you and all the information they need to fight your case. The barrister will be there when you plead and again for the trial. Between now and then I expect them to come and see you to go over statements. And I’ll chivvy them if they don’t.’

  ‘Don’t they always?’

  She gave a little snort of amusement. ‘You’d be surprised. I’ve had plenty of clients meet their brief on the day the trial starts. But a serious case like this, they’ll want to put the time in. There’s a QC I know who’d be excellent. Meanwhile we need to consider your defence. The prosecution have substantial medical evidence, which they will produce to back up the murder charge. But we can use our own medical experts to raise doubts about each element of that evidence. Considering the drugs, for example, we might argue that Neil took the medication himself, without your knowledge.’

  This was our fall-back position but now I wonder if it’s going to fly. The police asked me about smothering. If they can prove I did that, they will see he had help. Should I tell Ms Gleason the truth now? It’s hard to think clearly. I almost miss what she is saying.

  ‘Or that his condition led to a build-up of toxins in his system. If his metabolism was impaired then the drugs might not have been processed as quickly as in a healthy person.’ She held up her hands in warning. ‘These are just examples off the top of my head. Medical advice would help us formulate the best defence.’

  The prison meeting room where we sat was pleasantly warm and brightly lit but I felt feverish, as though I could no longer maintain my temperature. My skin was clammy and my back ached. From somewhere else in the prison I could hear the banging of doors and the occasional voices raised in greeting or farewell. Guards coming and going, I thought, or inmates going for their recreation. Are we inmates? Or prisoners? What’s the correct term for us? There was a glimmer of hope in what she was telling me: if we could use science and doctors to explain away those post-mortem results then I might have a chance.

  ‘We would also need to produce expert testimony to give alternative explanations for the lung damage, perhaps as a consequence of the drugs, or his condition. He had trouble breathing?’

  ‘Yes. We knew it would get worse.’

  We had a kit from the Motor Neurone Disease Association for just such an eventuality. When I first read about them in the literature that, more than anything else, brought home the inexorable horror of Neil’s future.

  ‘And it may well have,’ she said. ‘Then there’s the haemorrhaging in the eyes. I’ve had a quick look into this and I think we can easily dismiss that – in some people a heavy sneezing fit can cause the same outcome.’ She smiled and sat back. ‘We have a number of options. At one end we have a clear not-guilty defence that relies on us countering the medical evidence – and it’s crucial for you to remember that we do not have to persuade the jury of how Neil died. We simply have to cast doubt on the prosecution’s version of events.’

  I tried to grasp this: she was saying they could argue away the symptoms of suffocation. So, if I told her Neil had taken the overdose, that I’d found him and hidden everything . . .

  ‘To convict you, the jury must have no doubts about the prosecution case.’

  ‘What are the other options?’ I asked.

  ‘Reckless or negligent manslaughter.
We would argue that you administered the drugs to Neil but without any malice aforethought. You increased the doses or gave extra tablets for the best of intentions, not realizing the risk.’

  I shook my head. This muddied the waters. And it’s not me – I’m not some ditzy wife who gets the pills mixed up. ‘I didn’t do that.’

  Ms Gleason nodded. ‘Good. I’m confident we can cast doubt on the forensic evidence, which would leave us with witness testimony.’

  My stomach spasmed as I imagined Veronica on the witness stand, talking about Neil, rewriting the story of our marriage from her perspective. Veronica, who believes unflinchingly in the sanctity of life. There had already been features in the papers, laden with assumptions, portraying me as some euthanasia campaigner and Neil as some martyr to the cause of assisted suicide. A knee-jerk reaction to news of my arrest and Neil’s condition. It was not a mantle I wanted.

  I didn’t help Neil die. I found him dead. I’d no idea. It wasn’t a mercy killing. That was what I’d been telling everyone. Even my lawyer. What happened was personal, and particular to the two of us, to our situation. I could hear Neil teasing me: ‘You used to think the personal was political.’ But I didn’t know any more. I didn’t know whether what I had done was right, you see. And it was certainly not something I was prepared to wave banners and go to gaol for.

  ‘I don’t know yet who they are calling as witnesses,’ Ms Gleason went on, ‘but I’ll set the wheels in motion for our medical experts and I’ll have a think about who we call for the defence. As soon as I have any news, I’ll be back. Have you any questions?’

  I was wordless, out of my depth on the high seas. Was silence the safest option? She sounded so confident. Would she find a medical expert who could explain away Neil’s death? Perhaps we could win this and I could keep my secret. I hesitated and missed my chance.

  She let the guard know we were finished and said goodbye. She hoped to get back to me in a few days’ time.

  She was back within twenty-four hours. I was in the common room – feeling awkward and horribly lonely, trying not to make eye contact with any of the women around who all seemed more at home than me, a situation reminiscent of waiting for Adam and Sophie in the school playground – when one of the warders called my name. My cheeks burned as I got to my feet and I saw one young woman nudge her neighbour and whisper something. It only occurred to me then that they knew who I was, why I was there.

  The warder took me through to the meeting rooms where I found Ms Gleason. She looked solemn and tired. My stomach knotted.

  ‘Deborah, I have some news, some difficult news. Regarding witnesses.’ I stared at her. How could this be any worse?

  ‘Your daughter Sophie is appearing for the prosecution.’

  There was a massive thump in my chest. The shock made me cry out. My girl, my Sophie. ‘No,’ I moaned. ‘I don’t want her to.’ I looked across at Ms Gleason. ‘She shouldn’t have to. She’s sixteen.’ I imagined her, brave and scared, in front of all those people. Hurting from her father’s death, hurting because she thought I helped him leave her. Angry and mixed up. What would that do to her, to us? ‘I don’t want her to,’ I repeated. ‘She’s a minor, I’m her only parent.’

  ‘We can’t do anything about it, Deborah. Sophie’s already made a statement. She contacted the police with her grandmother, on the twenty-fourth of June.’

  I froze. Stared at her. Nine days after Neil’s death. Before I was arrested. Sophie went to the police. And then they arrested me. Oh, God. The phrase ‘turned me in’ came to mind. I imagined Veronica fuelling that grief, not from malice, for all we have clashed, but out of her genuine sorrow and outrage at my sin. At my going against God’s will and robbing her of Neil. I will lose Sophie, Adam will lose her. How do we ever come back from this? I imagined Sophie’s fierce determination, her moral certainty. The way she raises her jaw and stares you down, all conviction and courage. All that ranged against me when I’d had unspoken hopes that she would come round, see sense and deploy that passionate belief on my behalf. Tears slid down my face. I wiped them from my chin. Took a deep breath.

  ‘If I plead guilty, say I did it, that Neil begged me to help him – would she still have to testify?’

  Ms Gleason stilled, her face became a mask. ‘Probably.’

  Oh, no.

  ‘Deborah, you need to be very careful. I can only run a defence based on the account you give me. If you’re changing that account then the whole of our defence needs re-examining.’

  ‘But if I say Neil wanted to die, that I did what he wanted—’

  ‘No defence. That’s an admission of guilt and a mandatory life sentence.’

  ‘He was terminally ill.’

  ‘They’d lock you up, a life sentence. No alternative.’ She said this crisply, surprised I think at my naïvety or maybe at my volte-face.

  All those myths of lovers torn apart by death: Dido so bereft she stabbed herself and leaped into a pyre, Hero throwing herself from her tower when Leander drowned, Orpheus, torn to pieces, his head severed from his body yet still calling for his beloved Eurydice as he floated down the river. But I’m not going anywhere. My side of the deal is to stay, to hold my resolve, to protect the children from the fallout. And I never imagined this.

  ‘I don’t want to stay in prison,’ I begged her. ‘I don’t want Sophie to be a witness.’

  ‘We can’t do anything about Sophie. I’m sorry. If you’re changing your story, if you’re admitting that you deliberately gave Neil the medication, then there’s only one defence possible and that is guilty to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility.’

  ‘What would that mean?’

  ‘We wouldn’t need to challenge the medical evidence, the post-mortem report and so on. Our argument would rest exclusively on your state of mind at the time. We would argue that you didn’t know what you were doing.’

  I wanted to laugh. I’d known exactly what I was doing. ‘So, I pretend I was disturbed?’

  ‘No pretence. You were disturbed. The strain of caring for him, other stresses in the family . . .’

  She means Adam.

  ‘. . . the situation drove you to behave irrationally, to break the taboos, to break the law.’

  ‘He asked me.’

  ‘And the fact that you did what he asked is proof that you were out of your mind at the time.’

  I was Alice in Wonderland. ‘And if I stick to denying it all?’

  She frowned and ran her hands through her hair, then looked at me directly: her eyes, a caramel brown, a freckle of gold in each iris. Her gaze stark. ‘You’ve given me two versions of events. I cannot lie to the court. I cannot represent you if I believe you intend to lie to the court. If you revert to your original statement and deny involvement I would have to advise you to get a new solicitor.’

  She can’t leave me! I was as panicked as a small child. I couldn’t bear to start again with someone else. ‘I want to tell the truth. Neil asked me to be there with him, to help. We talked about it many times. I finally said yes.’

  She nodded gravely. Sighed. ‘One thing you need to be aware of is that the prosecution will make a meal of your change of story. They will use the fact that you lied as a stick to beat you with, to undermine your credibility. But if we know that from the outset, we can do our best to counter it.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Maybe I should have told the truth straight away but I was hoping they’d let me go, that if I repeated the version of events that Neil and I had settled on often enough, the children would never know he had chosen to leave them and I would not risk prosecution. But it had all fallen apart.

  Chapter Eight

  Briony Webber calls her first witness. It is our GP, Andy Frame. I like him a lot: he was great with Neil, sensitive but not too sombre. A good bedside manner. He looks a little uncomfortable as he catches my eye on the way to the witness stand. After he has sworn to tell the truth, and confirmed his identity and his role as our GP, she asks him about
Neil.

  ‘When did you last see Neil Draper?’

  ‘At the beginning of June last year.’

  ‘And you were sharing his care with the hospital?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How did he seem?’

  ‘He complained of breathlessness.’

  ‘Were you able to help him?’

  ‘I prescribed some morphine. It helps to relax the patient and is often used in the treatment of this disease in its later stages. It is also used in pain management, and in May Neil had reported a worsening of pain in his shoulders.’

  ‘So you had prescribed it before to Mr Draper?’

  ‘Yes, in May.’

  I see where she is going now. Laying out how we hoarded the drugs.

  ‘Did you administer the medicine?’

  ‘No, it comes in a liquid form. Neil found that easier to take and he could use it when he felt particularly anxious.’

  Or when he was planning to top himself.

  ‘And I’d also supplied an emergency dose in the breathing space kit.’

  ‘Can you explain to us what the breathing space kit is?’

  ‘It’s a pack supplied by the Motor Neurone Disease Association. It has instructions for use and drugs to help in an emergency – if a patient is choking, for example. The carers learn how to administer it, so they can use it while waiting for a doctor or nurse to come.’

  I examine the jury. Twelve people are an awful lot to get to know. I decide to assign them nicknames or jobs to help me. I christen four of them, all on the front row. Dolly is the woman with too much makeup and a brassy hair-do. The Prof wears tweed and specs and has trouble fitting his long legs into the space. Besides him sits Callow Youth: he can’t be much older than Adam but he dresses very conventionally. I imagine he does a job where he has to conform and not frighten the customers; perhaps he goes door to door trying to get people to switch fuel suppliers. Next to him is Mousy, she’s middle-aged and has given up: shapeless clothes and lank hair. Trinny and Susannah would have a field day giving her a TV makeover. She looks tired – I wonder if she has a hard life.