‘Please tell the court what happened then.’
‘I said I was sorry to Sophie, but she must have got it wrong. Then she told me about the things she’d seen.’
‘Like what?’
‘Her mother had been on these websites on the computer about mercy killings and so on. And there had been morphine in the house, which was missing.’ Veronica goes on to repeat more of what Sophie said yesterday: my insistence that it was too late to revive him, Neil’s health that morning.
‘And after this what did you think about Sophie’s view of the situation?’
‘I thought she was right. It made sense.’
‘And you were there when she first contacted the police?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you accompanied her when she went to the police?’
‘I did.’
‘Mrs Draper, you have known your daughter-in-law how long?’
‘Thirty years.’
‘Did she confide in you about her health?’
‘Too vague, Your Honour,’ Mr Latimer interrupts.
‘Sorry, I’ll rephrase that,’ Miss Webber says swiftly. ‘In 1993 when Deborah was suffering from depression after her mother’s death, did she confide in you?’
‘Yes. She told me about it, and said she was under the doctor.’
‘Can you think of other examples?’
‘Yes, she told me she thought she was getting an ulcer, one time. When she was stressed.’
‘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 ‘She seemed reserved, withdrawn.’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.
Chapter Seventeen
My 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?’