The Kindest Thing

Chapter Sixteen

When Adam first became ill, he was in the third year of secondary school. He was fourteen. The change to a bigger school had seemed to go fine at first. Neither of us expected him to be top of the class – he was too lazy, too disorganized, to be a high achiever. The school had a programme in place to support his dyslexia and although he muttered darkly about being bunched in with the other special needs ‘saddos’, his reading and writing were clearly improving. He had friends too: Jonty and a bunch of others, who steered a careful line doing just enough work to avoid trouble and spending every waking minute they could hanging out with each other. They moved from household to household, grazing through the freezers, a lanky, clumsy, well-meaning, deodorant-drenched herd. Now and again, I smelled smoke on Adam, but I hoped he was only trying it out and would outgrow it. Then in the third year, year nine, as Neil would remind me it was now called, the glow went out of Adam. We heard from school that he was missing days. When we challenged him about it, he was surly and close-mouthed.

‘Adam,’ I insisted, ‘we need to know what’s going on.’

‘Nothing,’ he repeated.

‘You should be in school,’ Neil said. ‘And if there’s some reason why you’re deliberately missing it then tell us about it.’

‘It might be something we can sort out,’ I added.

Adam raised his eyes long enough to shoot me a look of utter disdain, then let his head fall back down between his shoulders. We got nothing out of him but things seemed to settle for a week or so. Then I came home at midday, after a meeting with a client, to find him in bed.

‘I feel sick,’ was his excuse.

I didn’t believe him. ‘Have you been sick?’

‘No.’

‘Well, don’t eat anything and we’ll see how you are in the morning.’

He languished in his room till we were all in bed and then I heard him roaming round the house. Was he becoming an insomniac like me? The next morning he was still ‘ill’. I decided to test him. ‘I’ll make a doctor’s appointment, shall I?’

‘’Kay,’ he replied dully.

Halfway through the morning, I went into the house to empty the washing-machine and called up to see if he wanted anything. My own behaviour was lurching from maternal to authoritarian and back. Did he need nurturing or a kick up the bum? I’d no reference points. My own adolescence had been trouble-free, as far as my mother was concerned. She’d had no idea what I got up to outside the house and I was canny enough to keep it concealed from her. As for my brother, Martin, he didn’t have a disruptive bone in his body. He was shy, very reserved, anxious only to blend in. The childhood memories I have of my big brother are of helping him with one of his methodical games, lining up toy soldiers in serried ranks, the way his face clenched if I knocked any over by mistake, though he never said anything by way of reproach. Martin didn’t like dirt or clutter or playing with other kids much, while I was never happier than when I was breathless, my windpipe burning and cheeks hot from running, mud-smeared, twigs in my hair, the glory of a day-long game of cowboys and Indians. Building dens from giant stalks, beating them hard to dislodge the earwigs. Martin was happier with his books and his Airfix kits and he cherished the daily routines that I carped against. We were like lodgers sharing a home but each independent of the other.

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.

‘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.