Authors: Cath Staincliffe
‘So I’m lucky? Please, Deborah, this isn’t a whim. I know it’s a lot to ask.’
‘You want to leave us . . . me, the kids.’
‘Just a bit sooner. I could have another year, maybe two, with my world shrinking, getting frightened, depressed, helpless. I don’t want to go on to the bitter end.’
‘It might not be bitter,’ I insisted. My throat ached, ringed with grief.
‘I’m happy now, still. I love you, I love Adam and Sophie.’
‘You don’t want to be a burden?’
‘It’s not that. I want to go while it’s still good.’
Like leaving a party before the end.
I shook my head, pressed my palm to my mouth, unable to answer. I looked across at him, my eyes blurring. Thought of the boy I’d seen at uni, making his friends laugh, his long legs and
mischievous eyes, of the man who had led me round the Acropolis spinning stories, who had wept at the birth of his children, who had never belittled me or neglected me, who had encouraged me in
every venture, who had never cheated on me but had had the generosity of heart to forgive my transgression. The man who could still set my pulse singing with a certain look, whose touch was balm
and spice. My man.
‘See a counsellor,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Talk to a counsellor, one of the people the consultant told us about, or someone at the MND Association. Talk to them.’
‘I won’t change my mind.’
‘But you will talk to someone?’
He dipped his head. ‘And?’
‘Then if you still feel the same . . .’ I couldn’t continue. Dread stole into my heart, the shriek of fear chittered in my ears, claws of panic scrabbled at my scalp. I felt my
nose swell and tears start. He slid his hand across the table. I held it. His grasp was weak but it was there. I wiped my face and moved around to hug him.
And then, after a while, I washed and dressed and went to discuss floor tiles with a ceramics company in Cheshire, having just agreed to kill my husband.
Depression swallowed me in the months after my mother’s death. Martin made most of the arrangements and I recall very little of the funeral, other than it was a suitably
bleak affair. The March wind nipped at our wrists and ankles and a squall of hail greeted us at the hillside grave. My great-aunt nodded with approval towards the valley. ‘She’s got a
grand view.’ My mother was joining my father in the same plot. Twenty-four years he had waited for her. Twenty-four years she had slept in their marriage bed alone. I stood dry-eyed
throughout, my back aching with pregnancy and the chill.
A few weeks later Martin and I met up at her house to sort out her things. He had already made a start, boxing up crockery and linen, emptying the fridge. There was a pile in the lounge of any
items we might want to keep: paintings, ornaments, clocks and mirrors. All I was interested in were the photographs, the two heavy albums and the box of loose prints. I gestured to them. ‘We
could share them out?’
‘You take them for now,’ Martin said. ‘I’ve a couple at home as it is. We don’t need to do that yet. But I thought – her clothes?’ He tilted his head in
the direction of the stairs. ‘Anything decent can go to the charity shop. I don’t know if there’s anything you’d wear.’
Not bloody likely. I smiled, nodded, immensely grateful that Martin was here to do this with me.
‘I’ll have a look.’ I wriggled out of the chair. Six months pregnant with Sophie, I felt enormous.
Reaching my mother’s bedroom door, I was assailed by a lurch of fear, sulphur in my nostrils, tendrils on my neck. A trick of grief. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door. No corpse, no
zombie, no chattering whispers. Just the still-life of her room: the rose-coloured duvet cover, the small chintz bedside lamp and old mahogany wardrobe. On her dressing-table was her brush, grey
hairs still tangled there, her makeup, jewellery box, the Yardley perfume she wore on special occasions, her hand cream. A school photograph of Martin and me. We must have been five and six. Daddy
would still have been alive. Was she happy then? Did she laugh and make jokes? Did she play with us? Games and make-believe? Tickling, hide and seek? Fishing for memories, all I came up with was
the well-worn one of her singing while my father played the piano. A number from a musical, ‘Baubles, Bangles and Beads’. She had been happy then, I thought, with him, but when he had
gone we weren’t enough.
‘It’s not fair.’ I spoke aloud, frustration tight in my throat. ‘It’s not bloody fair.’
I yanked open the drawers and began to sling her things into the bin-bags Martin had provided. Underwear for the tip, scarves and jumpers for charity, throwing them in any-old-how, trying to
convince myself that I was simply being efficient. I flung open the wardrobe doors and stared at the contents. Her woollen camel coat, a polyester jacket, dresses in navy and cream and burgundy,
blouses, the faint floral smell of her hand cream and perfume.
Once my father’s things would have hung at one side of the space. How long had she waited to do this with them, packing away all trace of him? She’d kept nothing. Why not?
Hadn’t she wanted reminders of the shape and smell of him? Was it anger, at losing him, at being cheated of a future together that had made her erase him as she had? The same anger that
chilled her heart and smothered her love of life?
I hauled the coat out of the wardrobe and put it on. It dwarfed me, the cuffs covering my hands, the waist hanging by my hips. I stuffed my hands into the pockets but they were empty. What had I
expected? A secret note? Clues to our past, to her innermost thoughts? Even while I ridiculed the notion, I rifled through the shoeboxes at the bottom of the wardrobe, then the bedside cabinet. And
came away empty-handed.
I was numb, chilled through. I slid the rest of the garments from their hangers in the wardrobe and laid them one on top of another on the bed then rolled them lengthwise into a bolster.
Climbing on the bed, I nestled into the bulk of the bundle. I spoke to her, muttering and carping at first, trying to voice the cold anger inside me. And then, halting, by way of apology. Because I
hadn’t loved her enough – I hadn’t loved her as a daughter should. I had failed her. I spoke to her through slow, hot tears and shuddering breath, my nose thick and my lips dry.
Swimming upstream after my mother. Never catching up.
In time, the sensation of being submerged, of weight and incapacity, and the waves of panic grew worse. At two and a half, Adam was lively and incessantly active, and the
demands of looking after him became harder. Neil did all he could, but he was at school every day. My emotions were so close to the surface that I could no longer bear to watch the news or read the
papers. I also became fearful that something would happen to the baby and I was dreading the labour. Reluctantly, I mentioned some of this to the midwife who was visiting me at home in preparation
for the birth. She strongly advised me to see my GP. Andy Frame prescribed anti-depressants. He told me that while there might be some side-effects there was little risk of harm to the baby. There
would be great benefits in treating the depression and he said he would be very concerned about the consequences if I didn’t take them.
The pills gave me a slightly giddy feeling, the world became gauzy and my capacity to cry at the slightest prompt diminished. Still my limbs felt leaden, my self soiled and raw and scared.
Believing it would help me to confront my sadness rather than try and escape it, I spent hours poring over the family photographs. I wasn’t considering them from a professional point of
view – I had no interest in the focus of the shadows, the composition or contrast or depth of field – but hunting for understanding, for memory and meaning.
My father rarely appeared. Too often behind the camera. There was solace in the thought that I had inherited that skill from him. That I, too, had adopted that role. Among the portraits there
were several black and white still-lifes and landscapes: a wrought-iron balcony in fierce light, the shadows inky against the smooth rendered wall, stormclouds above a winter field of stubble, a
basket of fir cones and, my favourite, a yacht cutting through a glimmering ocean. He had written on the back, in neat print,
White Sail – Whitby, ’61
.
Peering at the family groups I scouted for signs of love and affection. Felt relief when I found my mother’s smile, her hand on my shoulder. Near the bottom of the pile of loose snaps
there was a small, square picture, which must have been taken on the box camera they had then. A man in dark dungarees holds a wallpaper brush, his head flung back in laughter. Beside him on a
step-ladder stands a small child, her face creased in glee. My father and me. Did my mother take it? Or a friend calling by? What was so funny? I love the picture. I crave memories to match it.
Sophie was born four months after my mother’s death and I was still depressed. The contractions started before dawn and I sat by the lounge window, rocking when the pain came, and watched
the pale February sun climb the sky before rousing Neil. We called the midwife and Neil took Adam to his mother’s – luckily she had the day off – and returned to find me pacing
the bedroom, restless and out of sorts. The labour was so different from Adam’s, quicker and more violent. After only four hours in the first stage, I was ready to push, the overpowering urge
forcing me to the floor, clinging to one corner of the bedstead, the midwife hastily rearranging the plastic sheets, and the doctor arriving as the head crowned.
The midwife spoke tersely, telling us the cord was tight around Sophie’s neck. The atmosphere in the room changed, a vortex of panic sucking the air. There was a whirl of activity as they
readied instruments, told me not to push and prepared to cut the cord. I had read enough books to know that the cord was the baby’s lifeline and that if she didn’t get out quickly now
she could be in trouble.
As soon as the cut was made I was instructed to push. I strained and groaned, the pain tearing through my vagina and bowels. With the second push she slithered out. She was paper white, her lips
and eyelids blue like a fish. In the heartbeats it took to revive her, I was falling, falling through the back of my skull into the velvet dark, falling away from everything to my own deep retreat.
Her cries: a mewl, a creak, caught me. Held me, pulled me up. That, and the hot splash of Neil’s tears on my forearm.
If we had not got her out in time she would have suffocated. Her lungs filling with amniotic fluid. Drowning. Like my father. Choking on brine. Like Neil did, the alveoli filling with the salty
fluid from his body. Drowning in his tears.
T
hey call me to the stand. They are all in the public gallery: my children, my in-laws, my friend. For a stupid moment I wonder where you are,
Neil. It’s an error I want to share with you. I heard somewhere that it’s good to talk to the dead and sometimes I do. Murmur news of my day behind bars to you in the dim, dry, stifling
night.
Mr Latimer stands up and addresses the jury. It is his task to convince them that I am no feminist harridan with a smooth tongue who would perjure herself, but a loving wife and mother driven
demented by circumstances, pushed to the giddy limit and beyond, now drowning in regret and desperate for understanding.
‘Members of the jury, you have now heard the case against Deborah Shelley. A case which rests on one, and only one, question: was Deborah Shelley suffering from diminished responsibility
when she helped her husband Neil die? The answer to that is yes. And we will present evidence from Deborah Shelley to support that. We will hear from Deborah how living with Neil’s terminal
illness affected her own mental health, leading to insomnia, panic attacks, anxiety and depression. Her situation was made even worse by concerns over the well-being of her son Adam. Things reached
the stage where Deborah was no longer able to act responsibly.’
Adam colours but keeps looking at Mr Latimer. I had discussed with the barrister whether we had to drag Adam into it but he made it plain I needed all the help I could get. And a drug-addled
teenager who had had spells in a loony bin would score plenty of Brownie points. Though he had a more elegant way of putting it.
Mr Latimer goes on, ‘Deborah’s neighbour and the expert psychiatric witness for the defence will describe to you a woman who, weakened and isolated, was faced with a tremendous
pressure that she was incapable of resisting. Deborah Shelley broke the law because she could no longer differentiate between right and wrong.’
He turns to me and gives the tiniest of nods, a little jerk of his scrappy wig, to calm me. It will be all right, he is saying, you will be all right.
‘Deborah,’ he will make a point of always using my first name – humanizing me for the jury, ‘your husband was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in September
2007?’
‘Yes.’
‘What impact did that have on you?’
‘I was numb at first, it was such a huge shock, and when we learned that there was no cure, that Neil would get progressively worse and then die, well, it was shattering.’
I let my eyes scan the jury. Dolly, jaunty today in pillar-box red, draws her mouth tight in a shrug of regret. And I see the Cook’s face soften in sympathy – or I think I do.
‘But you were able to carry on working and looking after the family?’
‘Yes. I had to. In that sort of situation you cope, you carry on. That’s all you can do.’
‘Some years earlier your mother had died?’
‘Of cancer, yes.’
‘Would you say that she had a good death?’
A torrent of emotions unseats me. I feel my face heat up. ‘No, not at all. She was in a lot of pain. It was horrible. She was on her own at the end. No one ever seemed to talk to her, or
to us, about what was happening.’
‘Her death affected you deeply?’
‘Yes, I became depressed.’
Hilda and Flo exchange a look. They know something of this. What? Depression, losing a parent, cancer? Live long enough and I guess the odds are good for all three.
‘And around this time you and Neil had your second child, Sophie?’