Authors: Cath Staincliffe
‘Can you remember what year this was?’
‘2005.’
It was when Adam had become ill.
‘Any other examples?’
‘Just after Neil got his diagnosis, that first Christmas, when we’d all got together.’
All? All of us? It sounds like a great clan gathering – there were six of us.
‘That was in 2007?’
Veronica agrees. ‘Deborah told me she was thinking of seeing a therapist. She said she felt very low – they’d had all the business with Adam being taken into A&E, then
Neil’s illness, but she didn’t want Neil to worry.’
‘Did she speak to you about this again?’
‘I asked her the next time we met and she said she was feeling much better.’
‘Mrs Draper, did Deborah tell you she was mentally or emotionally unwell after that, at any time before Neil’s death?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing in the next eighteen months?’
‘No.’
‘Did she appear to you to be mentally unwell?’
Veronica’s chin goes up a fraction and she says, ‘Not at all.’
‘Did you ever ask Neil about her well-being?’
‘Oh, yes. He said she was doing really well, amazing, he said.’
‘On the day of his death, how did your daughter-in-law seem to you?’
Veronica hesitates. Surely they will have rehearsed such a crucial point. Has she simply forgotten her lines? ‘She seemed reserved, withdrawn.’
‘Depressed?’
‘No. Just quiet.’
‘And in the following days?’
‘The same . . .’
I want to yell across at her, ‘How should I have seemed? Incapable with grief? Blubbing in your arms as though we loved each other instead of loving the same damn man?’
Veronica carries on. ‘Usually Deborah is quite chatty—’
Chatty? I have been many things but chatty is not one of them.
‘—forthright. But she only spoke if she had to.’
She is painting me as sly and secretive, retreating into my shell after the hideous deed. My grief questionable.
‘Can you tell the jury whether you saw a change in Ms Shelley’s behaviour in the time before Neil’s death and afterwards?’
‘Just that she was quieter afterwards.’
‘No sign of agitation?’
‘No. She was fine,’ she says. She swivels her head from the jurors to make eye contact with me, for the first time during her testimony. Her gaze is an open wound. It hurts me to
see.
As Miss Webber regains her seat, the jury shuffle about and prepare for Mr Latimer’s cross-examination. What do they make of us? Mother and daughter-in-law at odds. Does Alice know about
that? Or PA? Has she got a mother-in-law? The Artist coughs, a dry, rackety sound. He takes a sip of water and clears his throat. Does he go home and paint after a day here? Has our story inspired
him to get out the oils and stretch a new canvas? I resist a smile, catching myself out – he may be a postman or a vet or a physicist.
Mr Latimer has only a few questions for Veronica. ‘Would you describe your relationship with Deborah as close?’
‘Not really.’ At least she is being honest.
‘Did you and Deborah ever spend time together separately from any family visits when your husbands or your grandchildren were present?’
‘No.’
I try to imagine it. We would have been awkward, out of place, each itching for the time to pass and to get into more comfortable company.
‘Did you chat on the phone?’
‘No.’
‘Deborah knew your views on the sanctity of life?’
‘Yes.’
‘If she was being pressured by her sick husband to help him die, if she was cracking under that pressure, do you think she would have confided in you, knowing your views, knowing this was
your son asking her for help?’
‘She could have.’
It is a weak answer, with a touch of petulance in her tone. I feel perhaps Mr Latimer has taken the sting out of some of Veronica’s account.
‘But she didn’t?’ he presses.
‘No.’
He seems satisfied and there are no further questions.
As Veronica leaves, I see Michael touch Sophie’s arm and rise. And I feel the tug of jealousy. He must be meeting Veronica. Will they go home now? Or will they come back in to hear Dolores
Cabril give me a sparkling bill of health?
At the end of the day, Ms Gleason had warned me, it’ll be a battle of the shrinks. Here we were poised for the bell, the big match, the first round seconds away.
M
y mother’s death seemed brutal. There were times when it was hard to tell what was actually killing her: the cancer or the treatment.
Perhaps if she’d had my father to support her, or a close friend to weather the journey with her, it would have felt less bleak.
Martin was there to ferry her to the clinic and run errands. He lived about ten miles away from her, in a flat above his business: an insurance brokerage. He lived alone. There were girlfriends
from time to time but nothing ever developed. At weekends, when I would drive over and visit, our paths would cross but our exchanges were exclusively practical and we were rarely out of earshot of
our mother.
Invariably I would return home from those visits feverish with resentment, feeling cheated and miserable. Cheated because I was waiting for death’s drum to make my mother dance to a
different beat. I longed for the illness to bring us closer, for her distance and reserve to melt away and for her finally to open up, to share her feelings with me, to acknowledge the difficulties
we had had and at last, with the end in sight, to be able to love me. I wanted to be able to tell her I loved her, without feeling it was a love born of obligation not pleasure, that I was sorry we
hadn’t shared much enjoyment in life, that we both deserved some reconciliation before the end.
Now and again, I’d make crass efforts to pave the way for this transformation. I would talk about my feelings for Adam or my anxieties about the coming baby and then refer to her own
experience. Or I’d ask leading questions about her upbringing. She would always deflect me, never giving an answer but finding some little task for me to perform: switch the TV on, check the
thermostat, top up her tea, take a note for the paper shop. Distraction techniques. The sort of thing you try on a toddler in a tantrum.
One day my patience snapped. Wretched with lack of sleep and frightened by how sick she looked (the whey colour of her skin, the peculiar smell, like sour fruit, that came from her), I
challenged her outright. When she blocked my opening gambit with some flummery about the fuel bill, I rounded on her. ‘Mum, can’t we just talk like normal people for once? About
something other than the bloody gas meter? Can’t we talk about us, about what’s happening?’
She blinked; dots of colour stung her cheeks. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘We never talk about ourselves, about the past or our problems or how we feel. It’s like we’re strangers.’ Tears unshed pressed behind my eyeballs. There was an image in
my head. Motherhood idealized. She who would laugh with delight when I appeared, who would drink me in with warm eyes, listening to news of my triumphs and disasters. She who would celebrate my
pregnancy and touch my belly, enthralled at the quickening ripple of her grandchild-to-be. She’d sit up late regaling me with tales of life with my father, of my own childhood, confiding in
me her own disappointments and regrets. She would send me to bring out the photograph album and demand the latest photos of Adam for her bedside.
She frowned. ‘I don’t—’ She broke off, an expression of defeat on her face. ‘You’re here, Martin comes. That’s not strangers.’
A quiver of frustration vibrated through me. She didn’t get it. Or maybe she pretended not to get it. Could she really think this was enough? Either way I never found the intimacy I craved
with her.
The night she died, I was driving to the hospital and my thoughts were circling like vultures, picking over the remains of our relationship. I’d been trying to tell myself that she’d
had no choice in how she acted, that her own upbringing, about which I knew little, had made her like this. But in my heart I blamed her. Oh, yes – I had her strung up and crucified with my
childish rage.
She died before I reached her. No last words of redemption for me. She lay there, frail and pale, like the husk of something, and I was sad. Not for what I had lost but for what we’d never
had. For the absence in our lives.
When it came to my trial they would argue that the spectre of my mother’s painful illness and death, the stress of watching her wither and die, had contributed to tipping me over the edge
into killing Neil. That I couldn’t bear to see another person close to me go through that.
They didn’t understand that it wasn’t her death that haunted me. It was the cold embrace of her life.
Dolores Cabril is a small plump woman with protruding teeth, fine brown hair the colour of walnuts and a husky smoker’s voice of a darker shade. She wears a black trouser
suit with a tan Paisley blouse, an ensemble that serves to emphasize her short stature. We have already met. She visited me in prison to assess me and to come up with her expert opinion as to
whether I was firing on all cylinders when I helped Neil die.
I notice that the jurors are a little more uncertain about her than they have been about the previous witnesses – it’s in the postures they adopt. Mousy’s chin drops lower so
that she has to cast her eyes upwards slyly to see the stand. Freckly Alice on the back row has lost her smile and three of the men, smart Media Man, the Cook and Callow Youth, have folded their
arms. I assume a mistrust of shrinks is behind it. Perhaps a fear that Dolores Cabril is going to march into uncomfortable territory, spouting about penis envy and incestuous desires, or a notion
that she has delved into the nastiest recesses of my mind and is going to drag out the ghastly entrails and drape them round the court.
This defensive reaction is not necessarily good for me because later the weight of my own defence will rest in the arms of my own expert psychiatrist. It is fine if the jury mistrust or dislike
her, even better if they dispute her opinion, but if they simply despise the profession then I am way up the creek.
Dolores Cabril is dwarfed by the stand. We can just see her head and shoulders. She raises her hand to the good book and swears to tell the truth. Her voice is alluring. If you close your eyes
and listen you might imagine it emanating from a six-foot siren who has wandered out of the steamy Havana of a Graham Greene novel. There’s a tinge of her Spanish mother tongue in the smoke,
audible in the way she pronounces ‘truth’; a hard
t
at the end.
Briony Webber makes a meal of establishing her credentials: the degree from Cambridge, the MA and PhD, the years spent working as a psychiatric consultant, the books, the papers, the time as a
forensic psychiatrist at Broadmoor high security hospital, her role as chair of the working party into human rights and mentally ill patients, her position on this and that select committee and the
number of court appearances she has made. The MBE.
Hilda and Flo flicker into life at this last revelation and the Cook relaxes his arms and appears to revise his opinion. Beside him the Artist rolls his eyes – a republican I guess, given
that the honours system and royalty are still so closely bound together.
Miss Webber continues: ‘Professor Cabril, you first met Deborah Shelley on November the eighth last year. Can you tell the court the purpose of this visit?’
‘This was an opportunity for me to assess Ms Shelley’s state of mind.’
‘Would that be her state of mind on November the eighth?’
‘Yes. And also to hear about the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death and to draw conclusions about her state of mind then,’ she explains.
‘And after meeting Ms Shelley you drew up a report for the prosecution?’
‘That’s right.’ She gives a sharp dip of her chin.
‘Was that report based solely on your meeting with Ms Shelley?’
‘No. I also had access to police interviews and witness statements.’
Miss Webber nods and smiles, giving us the impression that she is pleased with the amount of care that Professor Cabril has put into the case.
‘How did you find Ms Shelley to be at your meeting last November?’
‘Functioning well, displaying normal reactions to her bereavement and incarceration.’
She imbues the last word with the tang of Spanish and I imagine Styal transformed, sweltering in a sun-baked landscape, dried mud walls and a corrugated-tin roof, the whine of mosquitoes,
pitiless thirst, cockroaches and screams from the ‘interview’ room down the end of the corridor.
‘Can you please take the jury through the summary of your findings on page three?’ Miss Webber gives Professor Cabril the report and clears it with the judge. ‘Your Honour, I
am now passing Professor Cabril a copy of the report that is included in the case papers.’
The judge grunts, shuffles through the pile on his bench, and unearths his copy.
Professor Cabril reads her summary: ‘Having reviewed the evidence provided and the account given to me in person by the defendant, and taking into account her prior medical history and her
behaviour before and after the incident, it is my considered opinion that Ms Deborah Shelley was of sound mind and that she was not suffering from any abnormality of mind that might have resulted
in diminished responsibility. Overall Deborah Shelley enjoys a well-balanced mental disposition.’
A pit opens in the bottom of my stomach. They have warned me to expect this description but her certainty, her brio, as she pronounces the phrases ‘sound mind’ and
‘well-balanced’, are overwhelming.
‘In fifty years she has only once sought psychiatric support and that was in the classic situation of losing a close family member, namely her mother. In her behaviour preceding the event
I have found no evidence of abnormality of mind. To all intents and purposes Deborah Shelley was coping admirably with a demanding situation.’
Coping. That bloody word again. I want to yell, ‘What else could I do?’
‘In the planning and execution of Neil Draper’s death, Deborah Shelley exhibited a considered and rational approach. In the aftermath she was able to maintain a version of events
constructed to evade prosecution. These are not the actions of someone suffering from an abnormality of mind. Setting aside any consideration of motive, which is beyond my remit, but focusing
solely on her state of mind, it is my considered opinion that Deborah Shelley was mentally responsible for her actions and that her behaviour was consistent in this regard.’