A Room Swept White

by Sophie Hannah

  Can I pick up the phone? No, you numbskull, I can’t, not once it’s gone to voicemail. How can Laurie Nattrass, recipient of every honour and plaudit the world can bestow upon an investigative journalist, not understand this basic fact of twenty-first-century telecommunications? Does he imagine I’m staring at my mobile disdainfully while his voice blares out of it, wilfully ignoring him?

  Is this his way of saying sorry for treating me so shoddily? It has to be. There’s no point debating whether I ought to forgive him; I already have.

  I listen to the message eight times before calling him back. To his voicemail prompt, I say, ‘I’d love to meet or something so that you can give it to me.’ Which might be the perfect casual-but-encouraging teaser, except I ruin it by giggling like a hyena. I panic and end the call, realising too late that if I’d only waited a few seconds, I’d have been given the option of re-recording the message. ‘Shit,’ I mutter, looking at my watch. I should have been at the Covent Garden Hotel five minutes ago. I pick up my pace, weaving in and out of the convoy of shoppers, glaring at the ones that have enormous bags fanning out from their sides like batwings, ready to smack me in the arm as I hurry past. It’s doing me good to be out, busy, surrounded by people. It makes me feel ordinary – too ordinary for anything bad or newsworthy to happen to me.

  I expect Julian Lance to be wearing a suit, but the man I see walking towards me as I open the door of the Covent Garden Hotel is wearing jeans, tasselled loafers and a zip-collared sweater over an open-necked striped shirt. He’s got short white hair and a square, tanned face. He could be anything from fifty to a well-maintained sixty-five. ‘Fliss Benson? I recognised you,’ he says, smiling at my questioning look. ‘You had your I’m-about-to-speak-to-Ray-Hines’-lawyer face on. Everyone does, the first time.’

  ‘Thanks for seeing me on a Saturday.’ We shake hands.

  ‘Ray says you’re the one. I’d have met you in the middle of the night, missed Sunday lunch – whatever it took.’ Having made clear his commitment to his client, Lance proceeds to inspect me, his eyes taking a quick head-to-toe tour. For once, I’m not worried about looking a state. I dressed this morning as if for court, as if I was the one on trial.

  I allow Julian Lance to steer me towards a table with two free chairs at the back of the room. The third chair is occupied by a woman with dyed red hair with lots of clips in it, and red-framed glasses. She’s writing in a ring-bound notebook: big, loopy scrawl. I’m wondering whether I ought to suggest to Julian Lance that he and I sit elsewhere, somewhere more private, when the woman looks up and smiles at me. ‘Hello, Fliss,’ she says. ‘I’m Wendy, Wendy Whitehead.’

  ‘You know who she is?’ Lance asks.

  I nod, trying not to look flustered. She’s not a killer, I remind myself.

  ‘Ray said you wanted to talk vaccinations, and Wendy’s the expert, so I thought I’d invite her along, give you two meetings for the price of one.’

  ‘That’s very helpful, thank you.’

  I sit between the two of them, feeling totally out of my depth. Lance asks me what I’d like to drink. My mind is a complete blank; I can’t think of any drinks, let alone one I might like. Luckily, he starts listing types of coffee and tea, which jolts my brain into action. I ask for Earl Grey. He goes off to order it, leaving me alone with Wendy Whitehead. ‘So, Ray told you I gave Marcella and Nathaniel their first vaccinations?’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’ Their only vaccinations.

  She smiles. ‘I know what she told you. “Wendy Whitehead killed my children”. She wanted to make you listen, that’s all. When you’re in the public eye in the way Ray was, nobody listens to you. You’d think it’d be the other way round, wouldn’t you? Suddenly, you’re a household name, you’re all over the tabloids and the TV news – you’d think people would be hanging on your every word, eager to hear what you had to say. Instead, they leap to ill-informed conclusions, for and against, and start talking about you, telling more and more outlandish stories, whatever they need to say to liven up their boring suburban dinner parties: “I heard she did this, I heard she did that.” And your poor little story, your real story – that’s just a distraction, getting in the way of the fun they’re all having. There’s too much for it to compete with, so it gets lost.’

  I ought to be recording what she’s saying. Will she say it all again later, if I ask her nicely? Will she say it to camera? ‘Rachel told me—’

  ‘Call her Ray. She hates Rachel.’

  ‘She told me vaccines killed her babies.’

  ‘Vaccines administered by me.’ Wendy Whitehead nods.

  ‘Do you agree? Was that what killed Marcella and Nathaniel?’

  ‘In my opinion? Yes. Obviously I didn’t think so at the time – I’m not a baby-killer any more than Ray is. If I’d had the slightest idea . . .’

  Julian Lance sits down, indicates that she should carry on. I have the sense that the two of them know each other well. They seem comfortable around one another. I’m the one who’s uncomfortable.

  ‘Anyway, I’m no longer a practice nurse. Many years have passed since I last injected a baby with neurotoxins. For the past four years I’ve worked as a researcher for a legal practice. Not Julian’s,’ she adds, seeing me glance at him. ‘I work for a firm that specialises in vaccine damage compensation claims.’

  ‘Marcella Hines was born two weeks prem,’ says Julian Lance. ‘Babies are supposed to have their first jabs at eight weeks, their second at sixteen . . .’

  ‘It’s changed now,’ Wendy Whitehead tells him. ‘They’ve accelerated the schedule again, to two, three and four months.’ She turns to me and says, ‘It used to be three, six and nine months, then two, four and six. The younger a baby is when it’s vaccinated, the harder it is to prove it was destined to develop normally, if it has a bad reaction.’

  ‘Biologically, Marcella was only six weeks old when she had her first jabs,’ says Lance. ‘Ray rang up and asked for advice, and her GP told her to proceed as if Marcella were a normal eight-week-old baby, so Ray did. Immediately after the injections, Marcella took a turn for the worse.’

  ‘Well, not immediately. It was about twenty minutes after. I saw it happen,’ Wendy Whitehead takes over the story. ‘We always asked parents to wait half an hour after any injection before taking their babies home, so that we could check all was well. Five minutes after she’d left my room, Ray burst back in with Marcella in her arms, insisting something was wrong – Marcella wasn’t breathing normally. I wasn’t sure what she meant. The baby was breathing, I couldn’t see any problems, and I had someone else in with me, another mother and baby. I asked Ray to wait, and when I’d finished with my other patient, I asked her and Marcella to come back in. I was about to examine Marcella again when she had a seizure. Ray and I watched helplessly as her little body bent and twisted . . . I’m sorry.’ She presses her hand against her mouth.

  ‘Less than five hours later, Marcella was dead,’ says Lance. ‘Ray and Angus were told definitively that the DTP-Hib vaccine couldn’t have caused her death.’

  ‘All the doctors they spoke to said, “We’ve no idea why your daughter died, Mr and Mrs Hines, but we know it wasn’t the DTP-Hib jab that killed her.” “How do you know?” “We just do – because our vaccines are safe, because they don’t kill.” ’

  ‘The timing had to be a coincidence, they were told,’ says Lance.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Wendy Whitehead says vehemently. ‘Even if Marcella hadn’t been prem, even if there hadn’t been a history in Angus Hines’ family of auto-immune problems . . .’

  ‘His mother suffers from Lupus, doesn’t she?’ I ask. I’ve got a vague memory of having read that somewhere, perhaps in Laurie’s article.

  ‘That’s right. And there’s a history of cot death in several branches of his family, which strongly suggests a genetic auto-immune disorder. Yes, these vaccines are mostly safe if you take babies with vulnerabilities out of the equation, but some babies have vulnerabilities. I wanted to
yellow-card Marcella’s death . . .’

  ‘That means report it to the MHRA as a possible adverse reaction to a vaccine,’ Lance explains. I have no idea what the MHRA is; I make a mental note to look it up later.

  ‘. . . but my colleagues put pressure on me not to. The practice manager hinted I’d be out of a job if I did. I listened to them all, and I shouldn’t have. I suppose I wanted to believe them – if they were right, and Marcella dying five hours after having the jab was a coincidence, then it wasn’t my fault, was it? It wasn’t me that had done it to her. I did as I was told and tried to put it behind me. It sounds feeble and cowardly and it was, but . . . well, if everybody’s telling you with great assurance that something’s safe, you start to believe them. Over the next few weeks and months I vaccinated babies who reacted normally – screamed a bit but then were fine, and certainly didn’t die – and I convinced myself that it wouldn’t have done anyone any good if I’d yellow-carded Marcella’s death. Ray and Angus would only have blamed themselves, and the last thing anyone wants is negative publicity for inoculations, in case it puts parents off. Herd immunity has to be preserved at all costs – that was what I thought at the time.

  ‘When Ray rang me at work four years later, telling me she’d had another baby and asking my advice about whether to vaccinate him, I opened my mouth to tell her that DTP-Hib was perfectly safe, and I found I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t make the words come out. I told her it was her decision, that I didn’t want to sway her one way or the other. She asked me if a tendency to react badly to vaccines could run in families.’

  ‘Several studies have shown that it does,’ Julian Lance leans his head towards me in a slow nod. Is he wondering why I’m not taking notes? Does he disapprove? Something about him makes me feel as if I’m doing something wrong. Come to think of it, I feel that way most of the time – maybe it’s nothing to do with Lance.

  Several studies have shown. Isn’t that what people always say when, basically, they’ve got no evidence? Isn’t it a bit like writing, ‘It has been argued that . . .’ in an A-level essay, when you’re not sure who said what but you want to give the impression of substantial support for the point you’re about to make?

  ‘Ray was terrified of something happening to Nathaniel after what had happened to Marcella,’ says Wendy. ‘She wanted to do what was best for him, but she didn’t know what that was. Should she give him the very same jab that she was certain had killed her daughter, even though dozens of professionals had assured her it couldn’t have, or should she steer clear of it, and risk Nathaniel dying of diphtheria or tetanus? The chance of her son contracting either disease was extremely small, but she was understandably paranoid and semi-hysterical. I advised her to take plenty of time to make her decision, and speak to as many immunisation experts as she could. Privately, I hoped she’d decide not to give Nathaniel the jab – partly, selfishly, because I knew there was a good chance I’d be the one who’d have to give it to him. The ridiculous thing was, I’d still have said, if asked at that point, that the jabs were entirely safe, that all babies ought to have them at two, four and six months, just as the government advised – I’d have said that, but I didn’t believe it, not deep down.’

  A waiter arrives with a tray: my tea, and a coffee each for Lance and Wendy.

  ‘In the end, Ray and Angus decided to immunise Nathaniel, but later,’ Lance takes up the story. ‘A doctor friend they trusted had told them that even a week could make a huge difference in terms of the strength of a baby’s immune system. They’re so much tougher every day, their systems so much better able to cope. That made sense to Ray and Angus, and seemed like a good compromise, so they waited until Nathaniel was eleven weeks old. He wasn’t prem, and, although they were a little bit apprehensive, they trusted that he’d be fine. Their doctor friend had convinced them that to let a child go unvaccinated was dangerously irresponsible.’

  Wendy Whitehead presses her hand against her mouth again.

  ‘But Nathaniel wasn’t fine,’ I say.

  ‘Twenty, twenty-five minutes after having the jab, his body convulsed, just like Marcella’s,’ she says, blinking away tears. ‘Then he perked up a bit, and we thought, “Please, God”, but he died a week later. Ray and I knew what had killed him, but we couldn’t get anyone to back us up. I yellow-carded Nathaniel’s death and was made redundant soon afterwards.’ She lets out a bitter, throaty laugh. ‘Even Angus wouldn’t acknowledge that there was a clear cause of death for both his children – though he’s big enough now to admit it was guilt that made him side with the doctors – for allowing both babies to have the jab, for the auto-immune problem that was on his side of the family . . .’

  ‘You’ll have heard that Angus didn’t stand by Ray when she was convicted of murder,’ says Lance. It’s a question presented as a statement.

  I nod.

  ‘The trouble between them started long before she was convicted, or even accused. Angus was angry with her, and with Wendy, for insisting on a truth he wasn’t ready to face up to.’ Lance takes a sip of his coffee. ‘By the time the police turned up at the door, he and Ray were close to splitting up.’

  I wait. Politely at first, then, after a few seconds of silence, allowing my incredulity to show. Lance and Wendy are both looking as if that’s it, end of story. ‘I don’t get it,’ I say, in case it’s a test and they’re waiting for me to bring up the very obvious gaping hole in what they’ve told me. ‘If there was a suspected cause of death for both babies, even if it was controversial – why wasn’t it mentioned in court? I’ve looked through the trial transcript and there’s nothing.’

  ‘We tried,’ says Lance. ‘Wendy was ready to testify . . .’

  ‘Ready, willing, eager,’ she says, nodding.

  ‘. . . but we were told in no uncertain terms not to refer to a possible adverse reaction to the DTP-Hib vaccine.’

  ‘By whom?’ I ask.

  ‘By our four stellar defence witnesses.’ Lance smiles. ‘Four hugely respected medical experts, all ready to say that there was no evidence of foul play in the case of either baby’s death, no medical evidence that couldn’t just as easily be attributed to natural causes as to anything more sinister. Quite independently of one another, they each made it abundantly clear to me that if counsel for the defence so much as whispered the word “thiomersal”, we’d have a fight on our hands. I couldn’t risk it, couldn’t let the jury hear our own witnesses calling our story a lie. That wouldn’t have helped Ray at all.’

  I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. I don’t want to believe it; it’s too horrendous. ‘But . . .’ Ray Hines went to prison for murder. She was locked up for four years.

  ‘Yes,’ says Wendy. ‘That was how I felt too.’

  ‘Surely there were other medical experts who’d—’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Lance frowns. ‘I tried, believe me. Most doctors are terrified of speaking out about vaccine damage. Any who do tend to see their careers come crashing down around their ears.’

  ‘If you’ve got a spare hour or two for Googling, you should read about what happened to Dr Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues,’ says Wendy. Again, Lance leans forward and stares pointedly at the table in front of me, where I’m now certain he thinks my notebook ought to be. As if I’m going to forget any of this. I’ll probably be able to recite what they’re telling me word for word when I’m eighty.

  ‘When Dr Wakefield dared to suggest that a possible link between the MMR vaccine, regressive autism and a particular kind of bowel disorder was worth investigating, a lot of powerful people made it their mission to destroy his credibility and his career. They literally hounded him out of the country,’ says Wendy.

  This is all very well, but I’m not making a documentary about Dr Andrew Wakefield. ‘What’s “thiomersal”?’ I ask.

  ‘Mercury, essentially,’ says Lance. ‘One of the most poisonous substances in the world, if you’re thinking of injecting it into your bloodstream, and present in the D
TP-Hib vaccines given to babies until 2004, when they phased it out.’

  Present in the jab given to Marcella in 1998, and the one given to Nathaniel in 2002.

  ‘Of course, they didn’t phase it out because it was a highly reactogenic neurotoxin. No, it was completely safe – that was the official story most doctors stuck to. Then why were they phasing it out? They just were – nothing to do with it being dangerous.’ Wendy’s talking so fast, I’m struggling to keep up. ‘Same with whole-cell pertussis – that’s the “P” part of the DTP jab. They’ve phased that out too – the pertussis element is now strands, acellular – much less hazardous. And the polio vaccine, given orally at the same time as DTP-Hib – they now give the dead form instead of the live. But try getting anyone to admit any of these changes have been made because the old vaccines were too reactogenic and you come up against a brick wall.’

  ‘Your tea’s going cold,’ Lance says to me.

  Don’t pick up the cup. I beat down my natural impulse to do as I’m told, and say, ‘I like cold tea.’

  ‘Why the change of tack, if you don’t mind my asking? On the part of Binary Star?’

  I don’t know what he’s talking about. It must be apparent from my expression.

  ‘I spoke to your colleague Laurie Nattrass a few months ago and tried to tell him everything I’ve just told you, and he didn’t want to know.’

  ‘Laurie’s working for a different company now. If I’m going to be making a documentary about Ray, I need to know everything.’

  ‘It gladdens my heart to hear you say that,’ says Lance. ‘I’m sure you’ll do an excellent job. Ray’s a good judge of character. She was sensible to give Nattrass a wide berth. Man’s a coward, one who allies himself with fashionable causes. There’s no risk to him in making a documentary about Judith Duffy, the doctor everyone loves to hate. He wants to destroy Duffy more than he wants to help Ray, and he made it clear he wouldn’t touch with a bargepole an international health scandal involving governments, drug companies . . .’