A Room Swept White (15 page)

AH:

Well? I assume you have questions you want to ask me and aren’t here for the sole purpose of recording silence.

LN:

I’m surprised you agreed to be interviewed, frankly.

AH:

You mean that if you were me, you’d hide away in shame?

LN:

I’m surprised you agreed to talk to me. You know where I stand. You know I’m making a film about—

AH:

You mean I know whose side you’re on?

LN:

Yes.

(Pause)

AH:

You think it’s appropriate to take sides?

LN:

Not appropriate. Essential.

AH:

So, for the sake of clarity, whose side are you on?

LN:

Ray’s. And Helen Yardley’s, and all the other innocent women who’ve been locked up for killing children they didn’t kill.

AH:

How many altogether? Ever totted up the grand total?

LN:

Too many. JIPAC’s pressing for five cases to be reviewed at the moment, and there’s at least another three that I know of – innocent women in the British prison system thanks to the lies of your friend Dr Judith Duffy.

AH:

My friend? Oh, I see. So on one side we have you, my ex-wife and the scores of unjustly maligned mothers or
baby-minders, victims of what I believe you’ve called a modern-day witch-hunt . . .

LN:

Because it is one.

AH:

. . . and on the other side there’s me, Judith Duffy – anybody else?

LN:

Plenty. Anyone who played a part in ruining the lives of Ray, Helen, Sarah Jaggard and other women like them.

AH:

And in your righteous war, with its clearly defined armies, who’s on the side of my children? Who’s on the side of Marcella and Nathaniel?

LN:

If you think—

AH:

I am. I’m on their side. It’s the only side I’m on. It’s the only side I’ve ever been on. That’s why I’m willing to be interviewed – by you, by anybody who asks me. You can try as hard as you like to cast me as a villain in your BBC documentary, but provided you represent me accurately, I believe the viewing public will see the truth behind your lies.

LN:

Me? What have I lied about?

AH:

Deliberately? Probably nothing. But going through life with blinkers on and spouting your prejudices at every opportunity is a form of lying.

LN:

So I’m blinkered?

AH:

You can’t see the trees for the wood.

LN:

The wood for the trees. The expression is ‘You can’t see the wood for the trees’.

AH:

(Laughs)
‘Oh! Let us never, never doubt/What nobody is sure about!’

LN:

I see. So I’m blinkered because I’ve always believed in your wife’s innocence? Unlike you, who betrayed her?

AH:

I don’t think I did betray her. And, for the record, I too now believe she’s innocent. And I believe it all the more
strongly for having once believed otherwise – something I wouldn’t expect someone with your simplistic outlook to understand.

LN:

Is that your way of saying sorry? Have you apologised to Ray for doubting her? Have you even tried?

AH:

I’ve nothing to be sorry for. All I’ve done is refuse, throughout, to insult anybody, my wife . . .

LN:

Ex-wife

AH:

. . . or my children, by lying. When the police first let it be known that they suspected Ray of murder, I doubted her innocence, yes. I also doubted her guilt. I was in no position to say for sure how Marcella and Nathaniel died, since I wasn’t at home when it happened, on either occasion. The police were suspicious – I didn’t see why they would be if there were no grounds for suspicion. They’d have had better things to do, surely? Two deaths for no apparent reason in the same family is unusual. Marcella and Nathaniel were perfectly well in the days before they died. There was nothing wrong with them.

LN:

Are you a paediatrician? I’ll have to amend my notes. It says ‘photographer’ here.

AH:

Then you’d better make an amendment, as you say. I was promoted some time ago. I’m Pictures Desk Editor at
London on Sunday
. Someone else does the donkey work now. I get to sit at a desk eating chocolate biscuits and looking at Big Ben out of my window. See how easily you can mistake an incorrect assumption for a fact? I don’t make assumptions, unlike you. I made none about Ray. She loved the children – her love for them was genuine, I had no doubts on that front. At the same time, I was realistic enough to wonder whether certain
psychological . . . conditions might exist in which love for one’s child is compatible with doing it harm. Because of Ray’s history.

LN:

Oh, come on! She sits on a window ledge to smoke a cigarette – next thing she knows, the filth are out in full force, cordoning off the area around the house, standing in her bedroom where she can hear every word they’re saying, on their mobiles to her GP asking about the percentage likelihood of her jumping.

AH:

That’s one version of the story, one of the many she’s served up over the years: the ‘all I wanted was some peace and quiet and a fag’ remix. In court she tried to pass the whole thing off as an episode of post-natal madness, claiming she had no clear memory of either the window ledge or the cigarette.

LN:

There’s nothing wrong with Ray, psychologically or in any other way. She’s a normal, healthy woman.

AH:

Does it strike you as normal behaviour to climb out of a dangerously high window and sit on a small ledge, smoking? Not to mention that this happened on Ray’s first day back after she’d inexplicably walked out on me and Marcella when Marcella was only two weeks old. Then, nine days later, she just as inexplicably walks back in, refusing to say a word about where she’s been or why she left, and when pressed on the subject, she rushes upstairs and climbs out of the window. If that was your wife behaving like that and then she was accused of murdering your two children, you’re telling me you’d have no doubts?

LN:

If Ray was suffering from post-natal depression, whose fault was that? You snored your way through the first
fourteen nights of Marcella’s life while Ray was up every hour and a half breastfeeding. She’d endured two weeks of looking after a demanding baby with zero help from you, and she decided . . .

AH:

. . . that if I didn’t experience first-hand how hard it was, I’d never understand, so she took off and left me to my own devices. The ‘my husband’s a sexist bastard’ feminist remix.

LN:

You can call it that if you want. I call it the truth.

AH:

Nine days after her departure, Ray returned to find I hadn’t coped on my own at all, as I’d been supposed to – I’d summoned my mother instantly, being an unreconstructed man. Since Ray’s only desire had been to turn our home into a utopia of gender equality and me into Mary Poppins, she was furious with both me and Mum. She climbed out of the window to get away from us. You see? I’m as familiar with the lie as you are.

(Pause)

The fact is that from the moment I brought Ray and Marcella home from the hospital, I did my fair share of the childcare, if not more. If Marcella cried in the night, I was the one who got out of bed first. While Ray fed her, I made us both cups of tea, then sometimes we’d talk, or sometimes we’d listen to the radio. When we were bored of both, we’d open our bedroom curtains and try to look into neighbours’ windows, see what was going on. Nothing much. Lucky bastards were sleeping.

(Long pause)

I was always the one who changed Marcella’s nappy and settled her back to sleep. Not once or twice – every
time. By the time I got back into bed, Ray would already be asleep. I did all the supermarket shopping, all the washing and ironing, cooked the evening meals . . .

LN:

Then why did Ray walk out on you?

AH:

Not only me. Me and Marcella. You don’t ever wonder whether a woman who’s capable of deserting her newborn baby might also be capable of killing that same baby a few weeks later?

LN:

Never.

AH:

A woman who has no qualms about lying under oath, implying in court that she was suffering from post-natal depression, then telling you later that it was all part of some feminist stand she’d decided to take?

LN:

Not everyone who lies is a murderer.

AH:

True. Ray certainly lied, but, as I said before, I no longer believe she harmed Marcella and Nathaniel.

LN:

We all lie from time to time, but hardly any of us kill our own children. Most men might give their wives the benefit of the doubt. Paul Yardley did. Glen Jaggard did.

AH:

You need first to have a doubt in order to give someone the benefit of it. Everything I’ve heard about Yardley and Jaggard suggests they never doubted. You were talking about normality before. Do you think that’s normal? Natural?

(Pause)

I didn’t think Ray was a murderer. All I knew was that our two babies were dead, four years apart, and some people thought Ray might have been responsible. I didn’t think she was a murderer and I didn’t think she wasn’t a murderer. I didn’t know.

LN:

The result of your not knowing was that Ray had to spend the run-up to her trial living with a man who wasn’t her loving husband any more but a sinister data-gathering stranger, watching her for signs of guilt or innocence. How do you think that must have been for her? And then when the verdict went against her, you gave an interview outside court saying you were glad your children’s killer had been brought to justice and that you’d be starting divorce proceedings as soon as possible. Unless you were misquoted?

AH:

No. That’s what I said.

LN:

You didn’t even have the decency to speak to Ray in private first, before announcing your abandonment of her to a scrum of reporters and photographers. In fact, you didn’t talk to Ray again until after her release, did you?

AH:

I don’t see this as being a loyalty issue. Is it disloyal to wonder if your wife might have murdered your children when that’s the question everyone else in the country is asking themselves? When you hear her lie in court? She didn’t only lie about why she left home . . .

LN:

Even without any creative editing on my part, people are going to think you’re a cold-hearted monster. What if Ray had been acquitted? How would you have felt about her then?

AH:

This isn’t about feelings. I love Ray. I always have and I always will, but I wanted justice for Marcella and Nathaniel. I was in a difficult situation. Since I knew I’d never know for sure – and no one can live with uncertainty for ever, especially not me – I made a decision: whatever the court’s verdict, I would abide
by it. If the verdict had been not guilty, I would have believed Ray was innocent.

LN:

Let’s have this absolutely clear: you’re saying that if it had gone the other way, your doubts would have vanished just like that?

AH:

I would have seen to it that they did. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have taken some self-discipline, but that was my decision. That’s why we have a justice system, isn’t it? To make decisions that no man alone can be expected to make.

LN:

I suppose you’ve never heard of the Birmingham Six?

AH:

I’ve heard of them. And of the Guildford Four, and the Broadwater Farm Three, Winston Silcott and his cronies. And of the Chippenham Seven, the Penzance Nine, the Basingstoke Five, the Bath Spa Two . . .

LN:

You’re talking rubbish.

AH:

How many fake examples will I have to invent before you take my point?

(Pause)

AH:

You know, in a way it’s quite comforting talking to you. You haven’t got a hope in hell of understanding someone like me. Or Ray.

LN:

How did you feel when Ray won her appeal and had her convictions overturned?

AH:

I wondered whether it might mean she was innocent.

LN:

Did you feel any guilt at that point?

AH:

Me? I didn’t kill my children, or lie in court, or arrive at an incorrect verdict. What did I have to feel guilty about?

LN:

Do you regret divorcing your wife?

AH:

No.

LN:

But you no longer believe she’s a murderer?