by Anna Maxted
‘It’s George’s special day,’ she’d told Emily. ‘Don’t attend court. Once I’m acquitted, Charlie will drive me over.’
She couldn’t wait.
It made her smile every time she thought of Baby George. Unfortunately, she thought of her grandson, one year old today, wondering what he would make of his first taste of birthday cake, so often that she had smiled happily throughout the prosecution’s gruesome description of Jack’s many injuries and the grim photographs of a burnt, half-headless Maria. There had been murmurs and gasps of disgust from the idiot jurors and the dumb public bench and Slater had jolted her sharply with his elbow. She had quickly assumed a sombre expression, but it was hard to maintain. Baby George, one, already! It was the most peculiar thing that had ever happened to her. She loathed kids, and here she was, smitten.
‘La-La,’ he called her, the little precious. So adorable. He had found the perfect word to replace ‘grandma’.
She bit back a grin and tried to pay attention. The chief counsel for the prosecution was wittering on about the Forensic Science Center in San Francisco. Blah blah, evidence and analysis on the Unabomber case, most highly respected in the world, able to maximize the information that could be obtained from extremely small samples of explosive residue, dust particles, hair, radioactive isotopes … yawn … and we call on expert witness Professor Blah de Blah. Jesus, she had to keep pinching herself. The Professor was forty-five, but apparently still cut his own hair with kitchen scissors. He started droning on, something about the most minuscule amounts of oils remaining on a fingerprint enabling them to tell the general age of the suspect, his diet, and whether he smoked. ‘Everyone leaves a chemical or biological signature that we can investigate.’
Yeah, yeah, big clap, so what?
A new suspect.
Oh my God, she was off the hook!
Everyone craned their necks as a man, surly and unshaven, was led to the dock in handcuffs. Innocence nearly fell off her chair in shock.
Gerry. Her brother! That common criminal! That fucking loser! She stared at him – she must be hallucinating. She hadn’t seen or heard of him in fifteen years. Well, no. He’d managed to contact her once, to blackmail her – threatening to reveal her thieving past – and she’d laughed at him. Her exact words: ‘It’s too late, sweetie. I’m untouchable. Back to your hole! Ciao!’ Whatever he was doing here, it was bad news. Her eyes burned into his back, and slowly he turned and looked at her. His ratlike face oozed loathing but there was triumph in those sly eyes and she knew immediately: she was going down.
He ‘admitted’ everything. And the forensic evidence confirmed it. He had planted the bomb – a crude device made at home – on his sister’s orders. She had paid him three million in cash.
‘He’s lying,’ she stammered to Slater. ‘It’s all lies. Someone paid him – but not me. I’m being set up.’
She wanted to scream and shout, but she was numb with shock. Who was setting her up? Who?
Slater regarded her with regret.
And now … hours … minutes … seconds later, the head juror was standing, clearing his throat. She glanced at her bank of lawyers. Each one sat stiff and stern, apprehension on their self-important faces. Surely they could do something? She noticed a trickle of sweat run from Slater’s ear to his neck.
‘And in the case of Tomkinson v Ashford …’ Yes, yes, come on, ‘ … we find the defendant guilty on all charges.’
The word ‘guilty’ rang in her ears, and she smiled stupidly because she couldn’t believe it.
There were screams of delight, and sobs, from the public gallery, where Mollie’s mother sat fat and ridiculous in a tacky black veil. She caught a glimpse of Claudia, still and silent amid the chaos, shaking her head, and that evening the Standard would carry the screamer: ‘NOT INNOCENT!’
Twenty-four hours later, heading towards Greygates prison, without having seen her grandson eat cake on his first birthday, she still couldn’t believe it. But it was true. Sharon Marshall, aka Miss Innocence Ashford, had been convicted of the murders of Mollie Tomkinson and Maria Radcliffe, and the attempted murder of Jack Kent, and was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison without parole.
FIVE YEARS LATER, 2004
SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE: EXCLUSIVE THE HON. INNOCENCE ASHFORD, CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES, SPEAKS: ‘MY TIME BEHIND BARS’
The bubblegum-pink hair is back, and so is the attitude. ‘Thank God I’m free!’ says Miss Innocence Ashford, sparking up a Marlboro and watching the smoke curl to the vaulted ceiling of her opulent Hampstead mansion. She shudders, although her smooth forehead seems incapable of a frown. ‘You have no idea what it was like to walk out of that place. I would compare the happiness of it to my wedding day – although that itself would be a lie!’
‘That place’ is HMP Greygates, a sprawling Victorian Category B prison housing five hundred inmates, where Innocence spent a traumatic five years in a cell six feet wide – ‘any narrower, sweetie, and you go mad’ – wrongly convicted of planting the bomb that seriously injured disgraced tycoon Jack Kent and tragically killed the eighteen-year-old film star Mollie Tomkinson. And the ‘wedding day’ that Innocence can now refer to with a wry smile, is the day, twenty-four years ago, that Kent went through the motions of marrying her.
‘Sweetie, I had no idea!’ she cries. ‘I was in love with the man.’ She only discovered that her alleged husband had tricked her, later marrying his lover, Maria Radcliffe – also killed in the explosion – and cutting her out of his will, when she was accused of plotting their murder in the Old Bailey, five years ago. Bitterness, apparently, was the motive.
Sprawled the length of a Pascal Mourgue amethyst wool sofa and snacking on edamame beans, she laughs aloud, although her blue eyes are stem. ‘I don’t need his money, I have my own! Elite Retreats is the most successful association of hotels on the planet. I am so lucky with my people. The business was run so perfectly while I was … residing.’ There is a delicate pause, while the butler serves PG Tips in Wedgwood Jade. Miss Ashford dunks a Rich Tea biscuit, and rolls her eyes in bliss. ‘The case was patently ludicrous from the start,’ she declares, her voice sharp, ‘and I thank my legal team from the bottom of my heart, and also the talented forensic team at the FSC in San Francisco for uncovering the new evidence that released me from that hellhole.
‘I do feel so sad that Gerry’ – her voice trembles – ‘felt he had no choice but to end his life.’ She jumps up, and sadly strokes a large Swarovski crystal stallion, rearing up on a solid walnut side table. ‘But I suppose he had done a terrible thing, accepting a bribe in order to implicate me … his suicide note made such heart-rending reading. Did he kill himself because he’d been set up? Oh, darling, you mean because he never received the money he was promised?’
Miss Ashford is quiet, in sober contemplation. She walks back to the sofa, takes a sip of tea with shaking hands, then puts her tea to one side, and rests her hands in her lap. It is apparent, although she struggles to hide it, that she is devastated by her brother’s death. ‘Oh, no,’ she says, eventually, ‘I am quite sure not. He was, despite it all, such a decent man. It must have broken his heart to have betrayed me. And I only wish he had named the evil person who tricked him – it’s frightening to have no idea, but I suppose he was too terrified. Darling, would you like a satsuma? Pascal! The satsumas. What it is to be deprived of fruit. Other prisoners incurred tobacco debt, I incurred tomato debt! My God.’
She is surprisingly small in the flesh, with delicate cheekbones, tiny feet and a raucous laugh. She says she never ate lunch inside as she felt she didn’t require the energy. It is 11 a.m., on a Thursday, and she is resplendent in purple vintage Armani and silver Miu Miu heels. A diamond-encrusted emerald the size of a sparrow’s egg sparkles at her throat.
‘I’ve always appreciated fashion,’ she purrs, nibbling at a satsuma segment which Pascal has peeled and relieved of its pith. ‘And now I appreciate it a hell of a lot more – pardon my French!’
She gazes around her lounge – it is the size of a gymnasium (she has one of those also, and staff quarters, and a ‘giftwrapping room’) and the decor is faux flashy, in a tongue-in-cheek way. Great crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling, the white carpets are thick and lush, and a life-size pair of porcelain jaguars guard the door. There is a Louis XVI-style three-panel floor screen with gilding and garden scenes, perhaps to cut down on draughts.
Knick-knacks cover every surface: a gorgeous Italian painted bombé chest with green floral and foliate painting and parcel gilding supports a diamond-encrusted model of the Eiffel Tower, a china bowl of china fruit and china vegetables, a bunch of lidded crystal urns and various hand-painted enamel keepsake boxes adorned with gems and tiny statues of bluebirds kissing.
In the centre of the room, there is a large Renaissance-style throne, of purple and gold velvet – only one, mind.
The coffee tables are carved of Madagascan ebony, and at the far end of the room, below an ornate Georgian-style carved gilt-wood mirror, is the hugest Italian marble fireplace I have ever seen. A fire burns in its grate, despite it being late August.
The outer wall is entirely glass. We are afforded a view of her extensive lawns, X-rated topiary – ‘Darling, I simply tell my grandson that the hedge lady is giving her friend a piggy back’ – rose gardens, pagoda and heated Olympic-size pool.
How did she manage the contrast of daily life? ‘It was tough. The régime at Greygates is harsh, and some of the screws were worse than the prisoners. I didn’t appreciate my cell mate, Sarina, being called a “Paki”. Apart from the obvious, she is Chinese! It was disgusting. But if you answer back, which I did – no one speaks to my friends that way – you get put in the seg. A lot of the time we were treated like animals. The exercise area – the size of my lavatory – was surrounded by granite walls and barbed wire and the screws called it “the pen”.’ Her expression is serious. ‘As if we were pigs. The discipline problems are not to do with the inmates. Apart from the breakfast porridge, which was actually superb, the food was horrible – stodgy, and lots of cheap meat. Association – when you’re allowed out of your cell on some evenings to go to the TV room – was often cancelled with no explanation. Can you imagine: two days of twenty-three-hour lock-up! And for some inmates, it was impossible to make a phone call.
‘Me? Oh, I had no problem. The girls were supportive. I had a little trouble, early on, but I dealt with it. I do abhor violence but one has to self-defend. Also, I worked hard – I was a wing cleaner. I’ve never been afraid of hard work – and I loathe dirt. When I first got to C-Wing, they still slopped out. Vile. Thank goodness, there was some kind of inspection and they put a stop to it. Now it has proper sanitation. And there was rubbish strewn in the communal area. I enjoyed organizing the clean-up. It gives you a sense of control.’
Miss Ashford stubs out her cigarette, and sighs. ‘It makes you grateful,’ she declares, rubbing her newly manicured hand along the peach-skin soft sofa. ‘I am grateful for a comfortable bed, a pillow at night, I am grateful to be able to walk in my garden and breathe in the scent of a rose. When you have been stripped of your privacy and your freedom, you see the world in a different light.’
On average, the prisoners in Greygates earn £5 a week. Miss Ashford’s business is said to earn her £45 million a year. Has the stay at Her Majesty’s pleasure changed her perception of money?
‘The shop was so expensive! I look at Harrods’ prices with kinder eyes! Of course, you could order the bare necessities from the canteen – not the best products, I have to say. How did I cope? I read the Bible. I prayed. I imagined I was lying on the beach in Malibu. One has to strengthen oneself spiritually if one is to have resilience. It was pointless to hope for an improvement in the actual facilities; only if you were strong in your heart could you find peace in that place. Some inmates filled in Request and Complaint forms, but I didn’t bother, not after I’d seen one ripped up in front of my eyes.’
Is she resentful? ‘Prison takes so much away from you: your trusting nature, for one. I’m as jumpy as a cat. I’ve had to forbid my staff from standing behind me. You may have noticed, they are all wearing little bells: a temporary measure until I regain my calm. But one mustn’t brood. I concentrate on the future, and I hope to use the wisdom I have gained to help others. I have to accentuate the positive, or I would go mad. The truth is, I have missed the formative years of my grandson’s life. I have missed the birth of his little sister – my darling granddaughter, Molly. They don’t know me, and that is very painful. I would have liked to have helped my daughter begin her journey as a mother.
‘I have been unable to support my stepdaughter, Claudia, who has bi-polar … Oh, what is it, when you swing madly from lunatic depression to a weird high? Well, some mental disorder, poor angel. Entre nous, not the greatest luck with – whisper it! – men. A childhood friend of hers recently married; there was a secret crush. I do know she was dreadfully jealous – I mean, upset about it. But she’s ever so brave. She plods on, chipping away, writing her little articles about cabbage soup diets and so forth – so noble. But family is important, it’s what grounds you, and without me as her anchor, I fear she was quite lost.’
There is a tiny growl at my feet, and a bright pink shih-tzu relieves itself on my ankle. ‘Baby! Bad girl! But how fortunate your ankle boots are plastic not leather! Oh dear, she missed me. I hired a private zookeeper to look after her while I was gone but plainly, it wasn’t the same. She’s like a daughter and now she’s playing up dreadfully. I think she was traumatized by my absence.’
Was Miss Innocence traumatized? She smiles. ‘As you know, I visited church on Sunday. It was important to me, to pray. Giving to God gives me a lot back. And I am more sensitive than people give me credit for. Early on, I had panic attacks. The space is so confined. The metal bunk is so basic, and the blanket is so … cheap. And the toilet had no privacy – entirely degrading. I was freezing cold at night. And I don’t like mice and fleas. And it was hard to sleep at first, because of all the noise. Banging on walls, and shouting. The guards are always opening and shutting these great metal doors – I’m convinced they do it on purpose – and often, I heard fellow inmates screaming.’
She seems to hesitate, and her mouth trembles. ‘Initially – they assumed I was guilty of murder – they put me in a cell with a killer. That shook me up. She actually confessed in a way. I don’t know if she was trying to scare me, but it certainly worked. She’d stabbed a love rival. She said to me, “I’d do it again, just to hear her scream.” I don’t think I was ever so frightened in my life.’
Miss Innocence dabs at her huge blue eyes with the back of her hand, and sips at an ice-cold crystal glass of Badoit. ‘Fortunately, for me at least, this person was moved to another jail.’ She pauses, shaking her head. ‘I drew a great deal of strength from my family and the letters they sent. My son-in-law, Viscount Chateston, in particular, was in constant touch. And of course’ – she claps her hands – ‘it was such a lift to keep track of Jack’s amazing recovery.
‘When I was convicted, he had recovered consciousness but they didn’t know if he would ever walk again. And now, well, to see him you would never know that anything was ever amiss. Of course he’ll never be quite right in the head in the emotional sense – that’s the part of his brain that was affected, the doctors say – but then, I say, they didn’t know him before!
‘What? Oh! It’s all nonsense, fabricated by the press! It’s forgiven, forgotten! We’re huge friends, enormously fond! This is why it’s all been so ridiculous! After my stylist, he was the first person I saw – well, I was practically blinded by all the flashbulbs. I don’t seek the attention – I am a very private person – but I do have respect for the public. If you are in the public eye, and they’ve supported you, and they have – they adore my hotels and (I’m not talking about the business side now) that means so much to me on a personal level. You owe it to them, to share a little of the wonder of y
our life, the bad as well as the good.
‘But yes, I visited Jack. Sorry? Oh, no. I forbade him to visit me in jail. I forbade all members of my family from going to that place. Claudia did visit once. It was too painful to have her there, smelling of the outdoors. Also, I certainly didn’t want my grandson to hold that experience in his memory. A prison is not a place for children. I feel so strongly about that.’
Miss Innocence Ashford smiles in the direction of the gold side table which – alongside a cobalt frosted glass bottle with an etched portrait of Innocence on its side – is covered with silver framed photographs of her grandson George, and little Molly, and their beaming parents – for Tim and Emily Fortelyne are the happiest family. ‘I know, isn’t it wonderful? Everyone was critical because they were so young, but Emily always knew her own mind. She is such an intelligent girl. Even the Earl has come round.
‘Now.’ She leans forward. ‘I have an appointment with a prison charity. They do such good work and of course if I can be of any use in an advisory or fundraising role … Is there anything else I can help you with? Would you like something hot to eat before you go?’
I assure Miss Innocence that I am fine, and she kisses me warmly on each cheek. ‘It was such a pleasure to meet you,’ she says, gripping me remarkably hard by both shoulders. ‘I so enjoyed it. I’m afraid I talked for hours! Do call my assistant Jamie – he’ll put you straight through – if you have any further questions.’