Justice for Helen

by Marie McCourt

  * * *

  We were all chuffed when Helen got a job as a computer operator with Liverpool Royal Insurance in 1986, aged twenty. It was a bit of a trek for her to get there – a bus to St Helens, a train to Liverpool Lime Street and then another local train to Moorfields Station, opposite the offices (she became an avid reader on her commute!), but it was a great position.

  Helen was responsible for buying parts and replacements for staff computers – and there wasn’t a single worker there she didn’t know.

  Life was looking up – for all of us. Eighteen months after my divorce I’d met John Sandwell through friends. I wasn’t interested in a relationship and was quite standoffish whenever he spoke to me, but, thank heavens, he persevered.

  Gradually, he became my rock, my best friend, my harbour for life – and there isn’t a day goes by when I don’t thank God for sending him into my life. It was a while before I introduced him to the children but they were thrilled to see me happy.

  Before then, we had another big celebration – Helen’s twenty-first in July 1986. She’d been on holiday with a group of friends, including her boyfriend, David, and was lovely and brown.

  ‘Here you are, love,’ I said, handing over her present – a beautiful gold necklace. ‘And I couldn’t resist this as well – for your party,’ I added. She tried to smile at the yellow dress I’d bought from the Freemans catalogue. It was a strapless, ballerina-style design and absolutely stunning. At her Aunty Pat’s insistence, she slipped the dress on and we all oo-ed and aah-ed. ‘Helen, you look like a film star,’ Pat insisted. But Helen shook her head. ‘It’s not me,’ she said. ‘I don’t like bare shoulders.’

  Our Pat was nearly tearing her hair out. ‘If I was your age and had your figure, and our mum bought me a dress like that, I’d wear it for twelve months!’ she ranted.

  But Helen was adamant. Reluctantly, the dress was packaged up and returned. Instead, she bought a demure coat dress with a high neck and three-quarter length sleeves. ‘Oh Helen, we can barely see your necklace,’ I sighed. But Helen was thrilled with it. And with her hair pinned up, elegantly, she looked a million dollars.

  Another year flew by. She and David were love’s young dream. He’d recently returned from a trip to Canada and she was thrilled to have him home. ‘Do you like the mitts he brought me, Mum?’ she asked, waving her hands in the air.

  ‘Good God, Helen,’ I laughed, ‘you won’t get knocked down wearing those! They’ll see you coming a mile off!’

  They were the brightest, most vivid shade of green I’d ever seen. ‘Well, I love them,’ she declared, stretching her hands out to admire them. ‘They’re proper Canadian – I’ll never feel the cold in these.’

  Helen had recently passed her driving test. Michael had left school too and was now working and it felt like John had always been with us. When he proposed, in the summer of 1987, I remember asking Helen what she thought.

  ‘If you don’t want me to, I won’t,’ I assured her.

  She hugged me. ‘Mum, why wouldn’t you marry him? He adores you and makes you happy. Go for it! And,’ she added mischievously, ‘I can be your bridesmaid . . . again!’

  The story of how she had embarrassed me on a bus when she was a little girl had gone down in family history. She’d insisted on us sitting upstairs so that she could see everything going on at ground level. Across the aisle from us were two, head-scarved women, smoking. As we passed a church, a wedding was clearly going on. A beaming new bride, a vision in white, was smiling up at her husband, while the wedding party threw confetti. ‘Oh Mum, look!’ Helen breathed, steaming up the window. ‘Isn’t she beautiful? And look at the bridesmaids!’

  She gazed at the scene for a moment, smiling dreamily, then turned to me and loudly said: ‘Remember when I was your bridesmaid, Mum?’

  Immediately, I reddened. Back in the sixties there was a real stigma about having children before you were married. ‘Shush, Helen,’ I said. ‘Don’t be silly, you weren’t born when I got married.’

  But my daughter was adamant I’d got it wrong. ‘Yes, I was,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘I was your bridesmaid. I wore a lovely dress and a hat. I’m on the photos.’

  ‘No, no,’ I argued. ‘You were a bridesmaid for your Auntie Geraldine, not for me.’ But she was having none of it.

  Glancing across, I caught the eye of one of the two women, who was trying not to laugh.

  ‘Eee, don’t they make a show of yer, girl?’ she said in a thick smoker’s voice.

  Helen loved hearing that story when she was older. ‘Go on, Mum,’ she’d grin. ‘Tell the bridesmaid story!’

  We set the date for April 1988 and decided on a small register office service. Michael and John’s sons, Stephen and James, would also be involved. We were an ordinary, happy family, looking forward to the rest of our lives. We had all the time in the world to sort outfits.

  That summer passed with only the odd hitch. In June, I was signed off work after a car ran into the back of John’s car on the motorway, leaving me with painful whiplash. And, late one night, I heard sobs coming from Helen’s room: David had broken up with her. ‘Oh love,’ I soothed, climbing into bed to console her, ‘he’s not worth your tears. No man is. You’ll come through this, I promise.’ I held her close as she cried herself to sleep.

  To ease her broken heart, I encouraged her to start socialising with her single friends again. Her friend Lynn – who was working away as a nurse – came to stay for the weekend, in October, and they went to Blackpool to see the lights. Others encouraged her to join them at the George and Dragon, which had been turned into a ‘fun pub’ by a new landlord called Ian Simms. They were there every weekend night. As Helen started arriving home later and later, I realised she was staying for lock-ins long after the discos and themed entertainment had finished. She was a grown woman, but she was still my little girl and I couldn’t help but worry. ‘Helen, I don’t like these stay-behinds,’ I said. I’d heard rumours in the village that drugs were being dealt at the premises and the police were planning a raid. ‘If you’re caught at a stay-behind, you could end up in prison.’

  But that wasn’t my biggest fear. I was terrified about her walking home, alone, in the early hours. The street lighting wasn’t great and I worried about the thick row of conifers in next door’s front garden.

  ‘You don’t know who could be lurking ready to jump out,’ I continued. My next words were strangely prophetic: ‘I could get up one morning and find you dead on the doorstep!’ It was as if, deep down, I had a sixth sense that something awful, connected to that pub, would happen to Helen. Over the years, I’d actually yearn to have been confronted with that horror. As awful as it would have been, at least we’d have been able to have a funeral and grieve properly.

  Occasionally, and much to Helen’s mortification, I’d ring the pub, asking her to come home. ‘Oh Mum, I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ she’d say.

  ‘And I wish I didn’t have to,’ I’d retort.

  One night, it was well after midnight when I rang and asked her to come home. I started reading a book but must have drifted off. Next thing I heard her key in the lock. Glancing at the clock, I gasped. As I marched downstairs, wrapping my dressing gown around me, Helen at least had the grace to look sheepish as she tiptoed up the stairs.

  ‘What time do you call this?’ I cried.

  I knew exactly what time it was – 6am.

  ‘Mum, Mum,’ she said, ‘there was a bit of a party. It wasn’t just me. And I was waiting for it to get light so I could walk home.’

  In desperation, I asked my youngest brother, David, to have a word while she was babysitting his three young boys one weekend. There were only eight years between her and David. ‘She’ll listen to you more than me,’ I said.

  Thankfully, it worked. By November, she was no longer staying for lock-ins. We had a lovely, happy family Christmas and New Year. And despite Helen’s vows to stay boyfriend-free until she was thirty, she began courting a lo
vely boy called Frank, who lived in a nearby village. Apparently, he’d liked her for ages. Each time he went to the pub, he’d think, ‘When she stops talking for long enough, I’m going to ask her out.’

  By February, they’d gone on a few dates and things were going well. I was so happy for her.

  On Sunday, 7 February 1988, a friend who was home for the weekend called around and persuaded Helen to go to the pub for a quick drink.

  ‘Oh Helen, please don’t be late,’ I urged. ‘You’ve got work in the morning.’

  She was back earlier than usual and popped her head round the living room door before saying she was going straight to bed as she was tired. When I checked on her, she was fast asleep. The following afternoon, however, her friend called to make sure she was OK ‘after last night’.

  ‘Did Helen not tell you?’ she asked. ‘There was a bit of a to-do in the pub. A girl threw her drink over Helen and there was a row in the toilets. The landlord barred Helen . . . she’s really upset. She was crying.’

  I gasped. ‘Barred her?’

  When Helen arrived home that evening, I asked what had happened in the pub the night before. She immediately looked stricken but assured me it was a misunderstanding. ‘Oh Mum, the girl was drunk,’ she insisted. ‘She was unsteady on her feet and spilt her drink accidentally. It was nothing.’

  I could tell she was upset, though. ‘Oh Helen, I think it’s best if you keep out of that pub,’ I sighed.

  This time, she nodded determinedly. ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ she said. ‘I have no intention of putting my foot through the door ever again.’

  Her mouth was set; I knew she meant it.

  That night, I looked in on her as usual, before going to bed. I parted the curtains to check her window was locked. The weather men were warning of gale force winds sweeping across the UK from tomorrow lunchtime – I didn’t want her windowsill getting drenched if they came early with downpours.

  A full moon streamed in through the pane, illuminating her face on the pillow. She looked so young and peaceful. I felt a protective pang and stirring of anger at the thought of someone upsetting her last night, even accidentally. Every mum knows that yearning to wrap their child up in cotton wool – no matter how old they are – and keep them safe from hurt and harm.

  After pulling her blue curtains together, I stooped and gently kissed her cheek as I’d done every night, since she was born. She might have been twenty-two – the age I was when I had her – but she was still my baby and always would be.

  More than thirty-two years on, if I close my eyes time melts away and I can still feel the warmth of her breath, the yield of her soft, full cheek under my lips, the pure love that passed from me to her in that moment, our final kiss. ‘Night, night, Helen,’ I whispered before tiptoeing to the door and closing it softly behind me.

  Had I had the slightest inkling of the evil about to be unleashed upon us all, I’d have climbed into bed beside her once more, held her in my arms and never, ever, let her go.

  Chapter 3

  Where is she?

  A

  s the pips for the 6pm news sounded, I retraced my steps to the living room window, pulled apart two slats on the Venetian blinds and peered out anxiously into our wild, wind-swept, road.

  Helen should have been home forty minutes ago. She’d rang me often enough today from work to remind me that she was leaving early and could I have her tea ready. But, now, an uneasy prickle of anxiety crept up my spine. You could set your clock by our Helen. When she said she’d be home at a certain time, hell or high water wouldn’t stand in her way. Back in 1988, mobile phones were still light years away, but if she missed a train or bus, she would always, without fail, fish in her purse for a 10p and phone me from a public phone box.

  ‘Hiya Mum,’ she’d say brightly over the connective pips. ‘I’ve missed me train, I’ll be fifteen minutes late.’ And if anything happened to that train, she’d ring me again. It might sound strange – a twenty-two-year-old woman ringing home to warn her mum she’d be a few minutes late – but that’s just the way we were. Maybe it’s because of what happened to her grandad: setting off for work on a bus and never coming home. Maybe it’s because she loved my dinners and knew how cross I’d be to see prepared food left to shrivel in the oven. Helen still loved her food as much as she did when she was a baby. But she also knew how much I worried about her and her younger brother, Michael, who was nineteen at the time. Ask any parent. You don’t stop fretting about your children just because they’re in long trousers. If anything, you worry about them even more – especially on wild nights like this.

  The predicted storm had hit with a vengeance at lunchtime with gale force winds of more than 85mph sweeping in from the Irish Sea, battering Merseyside and the whole Northwest. Trees and telegraph poles had been uprooted, roofs torn from buildings and power supplies disrupted. As I stood, anxiously, at the window, I could hear howling winds whipping around the house – toppling over plant pots and the bird table in the garden.

  The weather had already scuppered the nice girls’ day out we’d planned for today – Tuesday, 9 February. When Helen had learned I was taking Mum for a late morning appointment at St Paul’s Eye Unit, next door to the Royal Insurance offices in Old Hall Street, where she worked, she’d immediately started making plans.

  ‘Let me take you and me nan for lunch – my treat,’ she’d said excitedly. ‘Afterwards, you can spend the afternoon shopping, then I’ll meet you from work and drive us home.’ We both loved it when Helen drove; I was still nervous eight months after my accident.

  All morning, we’d hoped the weathermen had got it wrong. But by midday, fierce gusts were coming thick and fast.

  Even now, I often think back to that ‘sliding doors’ lunchtime moment when I rang Helen from a phone box and called off our lunch.

  ‘Your nan was almost blown over crossing the road,’ I told her. ‘It’s too dangerous for her to be out.’

  I could hear the disappointment in her voice but she understood. ‘You get Nan home,’ she said. ‘We’ll do lunch another time.’

  It’s funny to think how protective we were of my mum back then. She was only sixty-eight – nine years younger than I am now – but we thought of her as elderly, especially as we worried about her failing eyesight.

  Had the weather not been so atrocious, that Tuesday would have been another lovely memory (that I’d hopefully be able to recall!) chalked up with my daughter and mum – three generations of one family enjoying time together. Instead, that date will forever be remembered for another reason: the anniversary of her murder.

  It would be etched on her gravestone.

  If we had one.

  Following the main road out of Liverpool to St Helens, then turning off for the twisty, climbing road to Billinge, I’d gripped the steering wheel as the wind buffeted the car.

  Billinge village has the honour of being situated on the highest point of Merseyside. From the upstairs back of the house you can see the Welsh hills in the distance and from the top of Billinge beacon on a clear day you can see all the surrounding counties.

  It’s always ‘fresh’ – even on a calm day – and great for getting a line of washing dry. But, today, it was wild. I heaved a sigh of relief pulling onto the drive. ‘Tell you what, Mum,’ I said. ‘I’ll rustle us up some soup, then we can catch a film I recorded for you – see what you think. The wind might have eased off by the time I drop you home?’

  I can still picture us now, side by side on the sofa, glued to the screen as we watched, ironically, a film about a young couple who went missing in the Australian outback. One scene – where the woman’s father coldly watches from a hilltop as the entire town searches for the pair – has stayed with me even after all these years.

  Of course, he turned out to be the killer – murdering them in an inheritance row. It was weeks before the bodies were discovered hidden in a river.

  ‘Wicked, wicked man,’ I found myself murmuring.

&
nbsp; I had to pause the film when the phone rang. I smiled. ‘That’ll be our Helen,’ I said to Mum. ‘Again.’ She’d already rung once to let me know she was leaving work early that day as she was going out on a date with Frank.

  The hotline from her desk to the McCourt home lit up at least ten times a day with vitally important questions like ‘What’s for tea?’ and ‘How’s me cardigan coming on, Mum?’ I was in the middle of knitting a lovely cardigan for Helen and she couldn’t wait to wear it, but it was quite intricate – featuring rows of black cats with blue collars – and taking longer than usual. Occasionally, she’d ring and suggest a quick cheesy beans on toast for her and Michael’s tea so that I could spend more time knitting and purling.

  ‘Hiya Mum,’ she said now. ‘Just to remind you, can I have tea a bit earlier tonight, please? I want to give myself plenty of time to shower and do my hair. I’ll be home at twenty past five. No later.’

  I can remember holding the remote and staring at the frozen TV screen, listening to her voice. ‘Yes, love, you’ve already told me,’ I reminded her. ‘I’ll have tea ready for then.’

  ‘Oh, and Mum,’ she added quickly, before launching into the real reason for her call. ‘Please can I borrow your car on Friday? We’re having a girls’ night out in Liverpool. I can drive myself and leave it at Gaynor’s mum’s overnight.

  ‘Where they live, it’s really nice,’ she continued, rattling off words at ten to the dozen. ‘And they have a gate in front of their house so it’ll be locked up safe behind it. And I can just drive home the following day. Please, Mum?’

  I hesitated. ‘Let’s discuss it when you’ve tidied your bedroom. And you’re not going out tonight until it’s done,’ I added.