The Cradle in the Grave (48 page)

‘When you say “record” . . . You mean he wrote it down?'

‘Eventually I got desperate, when he point blank refused to communicate with me. I searched the room he was sleeping in and found all this . . . terrible stuff in one of the drawers: a notebook describing my behaviour, reams and reams of articles he'd downloaded from the internet about the importance of vaccination and the corrupt self-publicists who claim the jabs are dangerous . . .'

‘What did he write about you in the notebook?' I ask.

‘Oh, nothing interesting. “Breakfast 8 a.m.: one weetabix. Sits on sofa crying, one hour.” That sort of thing. I didn't do anything much at that point in my life, apart from cry, answer the police's endless questions and try to talk to Angus. One day, when I couldn't take his staring silence any more, I said to him, “If a jury finds me innocent, will that convince you I'm telling the truth?” He laughed so horribly . . .' She shudders. ‘I'll never forget that laugh.'

‘He said, “You seriously expect me to base my opinion on the views of twelve strangers, most of whom probably aren't educated? Do you think Marcella and Nathaniel meant that little to me?” I completely lost it, then. I screamed at him that he'd never know, in that case, if he wouldn't believe me and wouldn't believe a jury. He very calmly told me I was wrong. One day, he said, he would know. “How?” I asked, but he wouldn't tell me. He walked away. Every time I asked him that question, he turned his back on me.' Ray pinches the top of her nose, then moves her hand as if she's suddenly remembered the camera. ‘That's why I lied in court,' she tells it. ‘That's why I started being as inconsistent as I could, contradicting myself whenever I could. I didn't know what Angus's plan was, but I knew he had one, and that I had to escape from him and . . . whatever he intended to do to me.'

I nod. I know all about needing to escape from Angus Hines.
Turning round, finding him right behind me in the doorway of my flat . . .

Where is he? What's he doing upstairs that's taking so long?

‘I couldn't bear another day with him,' says Ray. ‘He'd become this terrifying . . .
thing
, not my husband at all, not the man I loved. Prison would be nothing compared to the horror of living with
that
any longer – at least in prison no one would try to kill me, and that's what I became increasingly certain Angus would do. That was how insane he seemed.'

‘You lied so that the jury would think you were untrustworthy.'

‘So that they'd dismiss me as a liar, yes. I knew that once they thought that, a guilty verdict was a done deal. You have to understand, I didn't care where I lived. I'd already lost everything: my husband, my two children. And my home – it was worse than hell. I couldn't breathe there, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. Prison would be a welcome relief, I thought. And it was. It really was. I wasn't scared all the time, or under surveillance. I was able to spend my time doing the only thing I wanted to do: thinking about Marcella and Nathaniel in peace. Missing them in peace.'

‘But you made the world believe you'd murdered them. Didn't that bother you?'

Ray gives me an odd look, as if I've made a freakish suggestion. ‘Why would it? I knew the truth. And the only three people whose opinions would have mattered to me were gone. Marcella and Nathaniel were dead, and the Angus I loved . . . I felt as if he'd died with them.'

‘So after you found Nathaniel, when you said you let the health visitor in immediately . . .'

‘I knew perfectly well that I didn't. I made her wait on the doorstep for at least ten minutes, exactly as she said in court.'

‘Why?'

She doesn't answer straight away. When she speaks, it's a whisper, ‘Nathaniel was dead. I knew the health visitor would see that as soon as she came in. I knew she'd say it out loud. I didn't want him to be dead. The longer she waited outside, the longer I could pretend.'

‘Do you want to take a break?' I ask.

‘No. Thanks, but I'll carry on.' She leans into the camera. ‘Angus will be down in a minute. I'm hoping that talking about what happened will be the beginning of his recovery. I had therapy in prison, but Angus has never opened up to anyone. He's never been ready before, but he is now. That's why this documentary's so important – not only as a way of telling and explaining . . .' She covers her stomach with her hands.

The baby
. That's who Ray wants to talk to – not me, not the viewing public. Her child. The film is her gift to the baby: the family story.

‘Angus lied, too,' says Ray. ‘When I was found guilty, he told the press that he'd made a decision before the verdict came in: he would believe the jury whatever they said, guilty or innocent. I knew that was a lie, and Angus knew I knew it. He was mocking me from a distance, reminding me of his scorn for the inadequately educated jury and his promise that one day he would find out if I was guilty or not through his own efforts. He knew I'd understand the hidden message behind his official words. For as long as I stayed in prison, though, he couldn't get to me.'

‘Did he visit you?'

‘I refused to see him. I was so scared of him that when Laurie Nattrass and Helen Yardley first took an interest in me, I wished they'd leave me alone. It took a lot of therapy to persuade me that since I wasn't a murderer, I probably shouldn't be in jail.'

‘If you wanted to guarantee you'd go to prison and stay there, why didn't you plead guilty?'

‘Because I was innocent.' She sighs. ‘As long as I said clearly that I hadn't killed Marcella and Nathaniel, I wasn't letting them down. People had the option of believing me. If I'd said I'd done it, I would have been betraying their memories by pretending there had been a moment when I'd wanted each of them to die. I didn't mind lying about other things, but I couldn't have stood in court and said under oath that I'd wanted my beloved children dead. Besides, a guilty plea would have been counterproductive. It would have netted me a lighter sentence, maybe even a lesser charge – manslaughter instead of murder. I might have been out in five years – less, for all I know – and then I'd have had to face Angus.'

‘But when you did get out, after you'd left the urn picture hotel, you went back to him, to Notting Hill. Weren't you still scared of him?'

She nods. ‘But I was more frightened of living the rest of my life in terror. Whatever Angus had in store for me, I wanted it over with. When he opened the door to let me in, I honestly thought I might never leave that house alive again.'

‘You thought he'd kill you, and you still went to him?'

‘I loved him.' She shrugs. ‘Or rather, I
had
loved him, and I still loved the person he used to be. And he needed me. He'd gone mad, so mad that he didn't realise how much he needed me, but I knew. I'm the only person in the world who loved Marcella and Nathaniel as much as Angus did – how could he not need me? But, yes, I thought he might kill me. What he'd said to me kept going round in my head: that one day he would find out whether I was guilty or not. How could he find out, if he wouldn't believe me or a jury? The only thing I could think of was that he would let me know I was about to die, that there was no way out. Maybe then I'd finally confess, if there was anything to confess to. Maybe he planned to torture me, or . . .' She shakes her head. ‘You think all sorts of terrible things, but I had to find out. I had to know what he was planning to do.'

‘And? Did he try to kill you?'

The door opens. ‘No, I didn't,' says Angus.

‘He didn't,' Ray echoes. ‘Which was lucky for me, because if he'd tried, he'd have succeeded.'

No. That's the wrong answer. He did try to kill her. He must have, because . . .
Something clicks in my mind: the cards. The sixteen numbers. And the photographs, Helen Yardley's hand . . .

I turn to Angus. ‘Sit next to Ray and look at the camera when you're talking, not at me,' I tell him. ‘Why did you email me those lists – all the people Judith Duffy testified against in the criminal and family courts?'

He frowns, unhappy with the leap from one subject to another. ‘I thought we were talking about what happened when Ray came home?'

‘We will, but first I want you to explain why you sent me those lists. To the camera, please.'

He looks at Ray, who nods. I see that she's right: he does need her. ‘I thought you'd find it useful to see how many people Judith Duffy had accused of deliberately harming or killing children,' he says.

‘Why? Why would that be useful to me?'

Angus stares at the camera.

‘You don't want to tell me. You think I ought to be capable of working it out. Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not capable.'

‘Isn't it obvious?' he asks.

‘No.'

‘Tell her, Angus.'

‘I assume you know the catchphrase Judith Duffy was famous for: “so unlikely, it borders on impossible”?'

I tell him I do.

‘Do you know what she was talking about when she said it?'

‘The odds of there being two crib deaths in one family.'

‘No, that's a popular misconception.' He looks pleased to be able to contradict me. My heart's thudding so hard, I'm surprised the camera's not shaking. ‘That's what people think she meant, but she told Ray otherwise. She wasn't talking about general principles, but about two specific cases – Morgan and Rowan Yardley – and the likelihood that they died naturally, given the physical evidence in both cases.'

‘Are you going to tell me why you sent me those lists?' I ask.

‘I've got my own likelihood principle, which I'll happily explain to you,' says Angus. ‘If Judith Duffy testifies that Ray's a murderer, and Ray denies it, what are the odds of Duffy being right?'

I think about this. ‘I've no idea,' I say honestly. ‘Assuming Duffy's an unbiased expert, and that Ray might have a strong motivation to say she was innocent even if she wasn't . . .'

‘No, leave that out of it,' says Angus impatiently. ‘Don't think about motivation, impartiality, expertise – none of those things can be scientifically measured. I'm talking about pure probability. In fact, let's not use Ray and Duffy – let's make it more abstract. A doctor accuses a woman of smothering her baby. The woman says she didn't do it. There are no witnesses. What are the odds of the doctor being right?'

‘Fifty-fifty?' I guess.

‘Right. So the doctor, in that scenario, might be totally and completely correct in her judgement, or she might be totally, utterly wrong. She can't be a bit right and a bit wrong, can she?'

‘No,' I say. ‘The woman either did or didn't murder her child.'

‘Good.' Angus nods. ‘Now, let's up the numbers a bit. A doctor – the same doctor – accuses three women of murdering babies. All three women say they're innocent.'

‘What are the odds of all three of them being guilty? Still fifty-fifty?'

God, I hated Maths at school. I remember rolling my eyes when we did quadratic equations:
Yeah, like we're really going to need
this
skill in later life
. My teacher, Mrs Gilpin, said, ‘Numerical agility will help you in ways you can't possibly imagine, Felicity.' Looks like she was right. ‘If, in each case, the probability of the doctor being right is fifty-fifty, then the chance of her being right in all three cases would . . . still be fifty-fifty, wouldn't it?'

‘No,' says Angus, as if he can't believe my stupidity. ‘There's only a one in eight chance of the doctor being right, or wrong, in all three cases.' Ray and I watch as he pulls a crumpled receipt and a pen out of his jacket pocket and starts to write, leaning on his knee. ‘G stands for guilty, I for innocent,' he says, handing me the receipt once he's finished.

I look at what he's written.

‘You see?' he says. ‘There's a one in eight chance of the doctor being right in all three cases, and a one in eight chance of her being wrong in all three cases. Now, imagine there are a thousand such cases . . .'

‘I see what you're getting at,' I say. ‘The more cases there are of Judith Duffy saying women are guilty and them protesting their innocence, the more likely she is to be right sometimes and wrong sometimes.'
That's why, in your email, you also made sure to tell me that on twenty-three occasions, Judith Duffy testified in favour of a parent. Sometimes she's for, sometimes she's against – that was your point. Sometimes she's right, sometimes she's wrong
. In other words, Laurie's portrayal of her as a persecutor of innocent mothers is a flat-out lie.