‘It is my opinion that the weeks leading up to that day saw an increasing deterioration in Deborah’s mental health. The evening before June the fifteenth was the tipping point, when Neil named the day. The balance of her mind was so disturbed that she could no longer be held responsible for her behaviour.’
‘Really?’ she says drily. ‘And after the murder of her husband did not Ms Shelley perform perfectly well, fooling family, friends, medical staff, even the police until her lies were exposed?’ Now she makes me an actor, all mask and makeup, mouthing my lines by rote. ‘I put to you an alternative view – that Ms Shelley is a clever and calculating woman who knows her only chance of evading a prison sentence is to spin this tissue of lies and fancies. Asking this jury to believe that on April the third she lost all reason and said yes to Neil Draper, that ten weeks later on June the fifteenth, again all sense deserted her as she helped him die. Yet she was able to recover amazingly quickly, hiding the evidence, trotting out a story, covering up the murder of her husband.’
‘Is there a question for the witness?’ Mr Latimer complains, the tail on his scrappy wig shivering furiously.
‘Do you have children, Mr Petty?’ asks Miss Webber.
‘Sorry?’
‘Is this relevant?’ Mr Latimer demands.
The judge nods for Miss Webber to continue.
‘You have any children?’
‘Yes, two.’
‘Keep you awake at night?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Broken sleep affects most parents, would you say?’
‘It’s not my area of-’ He’s beginning to fudge.
She cuts him off. ‘Oh, come on, we all know what it’s like. New parents barely get any sleep but they don’t become unbalanced, they don’t lose the capacity to distinguish right from wrong. Yet you claim that Ms Shelley’s insomnia left her so sleep deprived it made her sick?’
‘It’s a contributing factor.’
‘So you say.’ Her retort drips sarcasm. ‘Another factor was the strain of the problems with Adam Shelley: his mental problems, his drug abuse.’
‘That’s right.’ His words are clipped, defensive now, mealy-mouthed.
‘And Adam had been a voluntary hospital patient on occasion in 2008? And had received counselling?’
‘Yes.’
‘But since then he had been settled at home?’
I see Mr Latimer close his eyes slowly: he knows this is heading nowhere good.
‘That’s right.’
‘There had not been any serious incident with Adam in the year leading up to his father’s death? Is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, it would appear that the situation with Adam had improved significantly, that Ms Shelley might have taken consolation from the fact that things were so much better, that there was much less pressure in that quarter. In effect a respite? Would you agree?’
I close my own eyes for a moment, shake my head a little. She is demolishing my defence, peck by peck. I hear Don Petty clear his throat. ‘It may appear like that but the reality of living with a child with these sort of issues creates long-term stress.’
She ignores him. She has made her point and moves on. ‘We have already heard that Ms Shelley did not see her own doctor in 2009 or ask for any help. That is your understanding?’
‘She used the MNDA helpline.’
‘Though she did not call them to discuss Neil’s request or ask for help in those final ten weeks? Is that right?’
He pauses but there’s no way out. ‘It is.’
I can see Jane, her face set, wary. She too must feel that any sympathy in the room has melted away. I do not dare survey the jury. Briony Webber walks to the benches.
‘And we have heard that only once in her life did Deborah Shelley ever seek professional help for depression, in…’ she makes a show of checking her notes ‘… 1993. Sixteen years previously. No sign of depression for sixteen years.’ She weighs each word, heavy with import. ‘Do you agree?’
‘It’s possible to have the illness but not seek help.’
‘And you believe that’s true of Deborah Shelley?’ The subtext is ‘poor misguided fool’.
‘I do.’
‘So we have a woman who you claim lost all reason on June the fifteenth and acted while the balance of her mind was disturbed. What about when she researched those very methods, scouring the Internet for websites about suicide? When she went over with her husband how she would conduct herself after his death?’ Her voice gains volume, filling the court, the catalogue of my misdeeds bouncing back from the high ceilings, the far corners. ‘When she planned with him what she would say if any suspicions were aroused? Was the balance of her mind disturbed on each of those occasions?’
I chance a glance towards the jury. Alice, resplendent with a black hairband and strange blue pinafore dress, bows her head, studying her hands. Discomfited or disillusioned.
‘In my opinion the preparatory acts made by Deborah Shelley were on a par with the act itself – they were carried out under enormous emotional pressure and in the desperate hope that they would be superfluous at the end of the day.’
‘And after the deed was done?’
‘I have already said-’ Don Petty complains.
‘I would like you to repeat your assertion, for the sake of the jury, because quite frankly it beggars belief.’
‘Badgering the witness!’ Mr Latimer shouts. He has gone very pale and his lips are taut with displeasure.
‘Your Honour,’ says Miss Webber, ‘this speaks to the very core of the defence. I must be able to test the witness rigorously.’
‘Proceed with caution,’ the judge tells her.
She swivels back to Don Petty. ‘And afterwards a remarkable recovery, wouldn’t you say? As soon as she despatches her husband, Ms Shelley sets to work. How was her state of mind when she cleared away the drug containers and the plastic bag, when she told the ambulance man that her husband’s death was expected, when she told her daughter that she had found him dead in his bed, when she accepted condolences and placed the death notice in the paper, when she played the innocent as the police asked for the truth? All very logical acts if you are trying to get away with murder, would you agree?’
‘She was trying to save her family,’ Don Petty says. ‘To salvage something. She was in denial.’
‘I don’t think she’s the only one.’ There’s a gasp at Miss Webber’s insolence. ‘No further questions.’ She swoops back to her seat.
I am gutted. She has laid me out and torn me open. Carrion. The trembling is worse. I am trembling inside, an ague, cold and bone deep.
Once Don Petty has gone there is a pause in the proceedings. The judge consults with the lawyers. He decides that it would be better to hear the closing speeches in the morning. Court is adjourned for the day.
Sophie stands up, making to leave and bends down for her coat. Our eyes lock. She doesn’t look away. She doesn’t glare or narrow her eyes. She just looks raw and shattered. Then the moment is gone.
Chapter Twenty-three
The wind is fierce tonight. You could mistake it for a jet engine. It sweeps the clouds across the dark sky. It shakes the limbs of the lime tree and snatches at doors and windows. Anything unanchored is hurled up and down the avenues.
They say the prison houses are haunted, ghosts of women who’ve died there, and the orphans before them. I am not afraid of ghosts. I am afraid of just about everything else. All day long my stomach is cramped with dread. I am afraid of the jury, of the power they hold, of remembering Neil’s dying seizure. I am afraid of losing Sophie for good. I am afraid of being summoned to the office to hear that Adam has joined his father and grandfather. I am afraid of staying here: of going mad, of locking myself in and copying the other lost souls, with a lighter to my bedding or a knife to the long blue vein that pulses through my forearm. Of diving down into the cold, dark embrace of the river Styx, feeling the silt and the water fill my lungs.