When I got no reply from Adam and found his bed was empty, I was puzzled. What was he playing at? He waltzed in at half past five that afternoon, his eyes bloodshot. When I tried to remonstrate with him, he began to giggle. He was stoned. Without even waiting to consult Neil, I told Adam that he’d get no pocket money until his behaviour improved and he was in school for all his classes.
He shrugged and went upstairs.
That night he prowled the house again. I got up to investigate. He was by the back door when I went into the kitchen and whirled round, startled.
‘It’s only me,’ I said. ‘What are you doing?’
He looked pale, bleary with tiredness. In an old ‘And on the sixth day God created Manchester’ T-shirt and baggy pyjama trousers, his hair tousled, he was my little boy again. ‘The police,’ he hissed at me.
‘What?’
‘They’re outside the house, out there.’
I went towards the hall but he called after me, ‘No, the garden, they’ll be waiting in the garden.’
Ice froze my spine and chilled my guts. ‘Adam, it’s all right, there’s nobody there.’
‘There is!’ His teeth chattered and he gave a little jig of fright.
‘I’ll check.’
‘No! You can’t open the door – you can’t! Please, Mum, please.’ The terror in his cry tore at me.
‘All right.’ I held my hands up to placate him. ‘Come and sit down.’
My mind was whirring. He was being paranoid. It reminded me of student days: a girl at an all-night party had dropped some acid and spent hours insisting the SAS were on the roof, and the more wound up she got about it, the more inane giggling she received from the others. I tried to calm her down, tried to get her outside to fresh air, but she wasn’t having it.
Was Adam tripping?
‘Have you taken anything, Adam?’ I held my voice even.
‘What?’
‘LSD – acid?’
‘No.’
‘Dope? Cannabis?’
He didn’t reply.
‘What was it? Grass, sputnik, what?’
‘Just weed.’
‘It’s making you anxious, that’s all.’
I stood up.
‘What are you doing?’ Panic in his voice.
‘I’m making you some hot chocolate, and toast and honey. Eating might help.’
He ate and drank. I asked him whether he had felt like this before. He swung his head away from me. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. It just makes it worse.’
‘Okay. But I want you to see the doctor.’
Later that morning he was at it again: checking doors, peering out of curtains, under siege from his nightmares. It took another week to get him to the GP. Andy Frame referred him to a specialist, who told us that Adam had cannabis-induced psychosis.
We’d not heard of it. There were various theories about the phenomenon. Some people were thought to have a predisposition to mental illness and the use of cannabis triggered biochemical changes in the brain that prompted the illness to develop. Then there was talk of the modern-day strains of the drug being much stronger than in the past.
It was hard to believe that the drug Neil and I had enjoyed with impunity, that had a reputation for being benign, soft, non-addictive, that was linked to peace and love, John and Yoko, festivals and Rastafarianism, to fits of giggles and the munchies, was the same drug that had so damaged our son.
The judge comes in and everybody stands. Once he is settled he invites Miss Webber to continue with her evidence. ‘Will the court please call Veronica Draper,’ she says.
The usher walks to the door, ‘Call Veronica Draper.’
The witnesses wait in a room set aside for them. Veronica comes in and all eyes are on her as she makes her way to the stand. She is straight-backed but the pace she moves at and the way she lists to one side betray her age. Her hair is iron-grey, styled to give it some volume and rolled under in a short bob. She wears a pleated navy skirt and a cream blouse with a cream cravat. She looks tiny on the stand. When she swears on the Bible her voice is tremulous. I see she is terribly nervous and I feel a rush of sympathy, even though I’m angry that she is speaking against me. That brisk efficiency has vanished. Here, in an alien domain, in an agonizing situation, she is passive, a victim.
‘Mrs Draper,’ Briony Webber begins, ‘can you tell us how you first heard the news of your son Neil’s death?’
‘Sophie rang me.’ Her voice is soft; her Irish accent blurs the consonants and we strain to hear.
‘Sophie rang you, not Deborah Shelley?’
‘No. It was Sophie.’
‘And you went immediately to the house?’
‘That’s right. We were in Tesco’s at the time and we just walked out.’
The judge leans forward. ‘Mrs Draper, can you speak up a little? It is difficult to hear you and it is extremely important that the jury hear everything you have to say. And if you can direct your answers to the jury instead of to Counsel.’
Expressions of sympathy ripple across the faces of Hilda and Flo, the Cook and Mousy. I’m sure they imagine themselves in her shoes – having to speak about terrible things in front of strangers.
‘And when you called at the house on the fifteenth of June, what did Ms Shelley say had happened?’
‘She said she’d gone upstairs and found Neil, that he was dead.’
‘Was this a shock to you?’
‘A dreadful shock.’ Veronica loses volume on the last word and her mouth spasms.
My guts clench as I will her not to break down.
‘At that stage did you have any doubts about what Ms Shelley told you?’
‘Not then, no. It was just the shock of it, you know, that’s all there was then.’
‘Some days later, on the twenty-fourth of June, your granddaughter Sophie came to visit you.’
‘Yes.’
‘What did Sophie tell you?’
‘She said she didn’t know what to do. She thought her father hadn’t died of natural causes, that unless he had had a heart-attack he couldn’t have gone so quickly.’
‘And what did you tell Sophie?’
‘That perhaps that’s what did happen – a heart-attack.’
‘Was she satisfied with your answer?’
‘No. She said she thought her mother had helped him take his own life.’
‘And what did you say?’
Veronica pauses, struggling to speak. ‘I slapped her,’ she says quietly.
My hackles rise, a rush of heat at the thought of her striking my girl. Hurting her.
‘You slapped her?’ Miss Webber echoes, in case any of us missed it.
‘Yes. It was an automatic reaction, from the shock. I couldn’t believe what she was saying, that he would be part of something like that. It’s against everything we believe.’
‘You are a Catholic?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Neil was raised in that faith?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was he still a practising Catholic?’
‘No.’ She hates to say it.
And if he had been we wouldn’t be here today, in this God-awful mess. Nine of the jurors swore on the Bible. I wonder if any of them are Catholics too, and if that will influence the way they view the evidence.