A Room Swept White

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘You didn’t touch it with a bargepole when Ray was on trial,’ I say. ‘If Laurie’s a coward, then so are you.’

  For a second or two, as he stares down into his coffee, I think Lance is going to get up and walk out. He doesn’t. ‘It’s slightly different,’ he says coolly. ‘If I took a risk and failed, that meant Ray getting two life sentences for murder.’

  ‘That happened anyway,’ I point out.

  ‘True, but . . .’

  ‘Women like Ray, Helen Yardley and Sarah Jaggard are only a fashionable cause, as you put it, because Laurie brought their predicament to people’s attention. Judith Duffy wasn’t the doctor everyone loved to hate until Laurie exposed her.’

  Lance runs his tongue along the inside of his lower lip. ‘I can’t argue with that,’ he says eventually.

  ‘I read an article Laurie wrote about Ray’s case. He says you told Ray to pretend she was post-natally depressed and nearly threw herself off a window ledge, making her seem unstable to the jury.’

  ‘That’s wholly untrue.’

  I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t.

  ‘Did Laurie say he was scared of the vaccine issue?’ I ask. I can’t believe he would be, however many governments and drug companies were involved. Laurie would take on anyone. ‘Or did he say he could only make one documentary at a time? You’d need about four hours to do justice to the whole jabs thing as well as tell three women’s stories, and the story of how Judith Duffy shafted them. A documentary needs a focal point.’

  ‘Your loyalty is touching, Fliss,’ says Lance, ‘but I remain convinced that Nattrass is a man who sees only what he wants to see. He had a troupe of doctors lined up to dish the dirt on Duffy. How do you think they’d have reacted if he’d introduced the vaccine issue? They’d have run a mile. Russell Meredew, the GMC’s blue-eyed boy . . .’ Lance laughs. ‘He’d wet his pants at the mere suggestion, and Nattrass knows it.’

  ‘Is Meredew on your radar?’ Wendy Whitehead asks me.

  ‘I’m going to be talking to him, yes.’

  ‘Don’t believe a word he says. He’s probably the most unpopular paediatrician in the country. There’s nothing he likes more than testifying against his colleagues at GMC hearings. He’s the expert they’ve asked for an assessment of Duffy.’

  ‘What?’ That can’t be right. Am I confusing Meredew with another doctor? No, I’m not. ‘They both gave evidence at Ray’s trial, didn’t they? Her for the prosecution, him for the defence?’

  ‘Yup.’ Lance sounds resigned.

  ‘But . . . the misconduct allegations against Duffy directly involve Ray’s trial. Isn’t that a conflict of interests?’

  ‘Just a tad,’ says Wendy. ‘Funny, isn’t it, that that hasn’t occurred to the GMC, or to Meredew, who’s happy to take their money.’

  Russell Meredew – a man I’d trust to carry me across an enemy minefield. That’s how he’s described in Laurie’s article.

  ‘There’s something I should probably tell you, if Ray hasn’t already,’ Lance says. ‘She and Judith Duffy have become friends. Unlikely though it sounds, the two of them are a great source of support to one another.’

  Friends. Ray Hines and Judith Duffy. I bury my face in my teacup to buy myself some time. ‘Just like Ray and Angus are now good friends, if not a bit more than that,’ I say eventually.

  ‘Ray’s clever enough to know that forgiveness, of oneself and others, is the only happy way forward,’ says Lance.

  I can’t prove it, but I have a sense he knows about the baby. Ray corrected me when I called it that. ‘I’m only eight weeks pregnant,’ she said. ‘It’s not a baby yet. A lot of pregnancies miscarry before twelve weeks and if this one does, I don’t want to think I’ve lost another child.’

  ‘Don’t judge Ray, Fliss,’ says Wendy. ‘I’m sure you think that in her shoes, you’d want nothing to do with the husband who’d betrayed you, but you never know – you might surprise yourself.’

  I’d have wax effigies of Angus Hines, Judith Duffy and everyone who’d ever said vaccines were a good thing lined up on my mantelpiece, with pins sticking out of them that I’d have made the effort to marinade in cyanide. I decide not to share this with Lance and Wendy.

  ’Ray doesn’t blame Duffy for her guilty verdicts,’ says Lance. ‘She blames herself, which is fair.’

  Did he really say that?

  Whose side is anybody on here?

  ‘The window ledge incident you referred to earlier, the one Laurie Nattrass used as an opportunity to lie about me in some article . . .’

  ‘Laurie might have his faults, but he doesn’t lie.’

  Julian Lance inclines his head and stares at me from beneath his white eyebrows as if I’m the biggest fool who’s ever sat across a table from him. ‘I didn’t tell Ray to change her story. Until we got to court, I’d only ever heard one version: that she’d stayed away from home for nine days because Angus was taking her for granted, expecting her to do everything for Marcella, and all the housework. Then she came back, found his mum in her house, and climbed out onto the window ledge to escape her overbearing mother-in-law. Also, she wanted to smoke, and didn’t want Marcella to inhale the fumes.’ Lance signals to the waiter to bring him the bill. ‘I was worried about how that story would be received by a jury, but there was no way round it – we knew the prosecution were going to bring it up. I nearly had a heart attack when Ray stood in the witness box and started telling an entirely different story about post-natal trances and losses of memory. Not only was it a lie, it was a lie that made her sound exactly like the sort of woman who might murder two babies.’

  ‘How do you know it was a lie?’ I ask. ‘What if the first version was the lie? It sounds like one.’ Why didn’t this occur to me when I first read Laurie’s article? Would a loving mother really abandon her baby daughter for nine days in order to make a point about equal distribution of housework and childcare?

  Julian Lance and Wendy Whitehead exchange a look. ‘I know Angus Hines,’ says Lance. ‘So does Wendy. He would have done his fair share. He says he did his fair share, that Ray had nothing to complain about.’

  ‘Then . . .?’

  ‘That wasn’t all she lied about,’ says Wendy. ‘She’d told the police and Julian that she’d phoned an ambulance straight away when she found Marcella not breathing, but in court she said she’d phoned Angus first, then phoned emergency services. Trouble is, there was no record of her call to Angus.’

  ‘She never made it,’ Lance underlines the point. I get it. How stupid does he think I am? I’m going to have to read the trial transcript properly. So far I’ve only skimmed it.

  ‘She lied about Nathaniel, too,’ says Wendy. ‘The health visitor arrived just after Ray found him and called an ambulance – we’re talking seconds after, not minutes – and Ray wouldn’t let her in, just stared at her blankly through the window. Apart from the health visitor having no reason to lie, there were witnesses: neighbours who heard the poor woman pleading to be let in and asking Ray if she was all right.’

  ‘In court, Ray said she let the health visitor in immediately,’ Lance takes over. ‘We know that’s not true. It was between ten and fifteen minutes before she opened the door.’

  I can feel their eyes on me. ‘I don’t understand,’ I say, looking up from my tea.

  ‘Neither do we.’ Wendy smiles.

  ‘There’s a story here, a story Ray won’t tell either of us,’ says Lance. ‘Part of that story is the reason why she lied so obviously and often in court. She’s come close to admitting it once or twice.’

  ‘She’s told nobody why,’ says Wendy. ‘Not Judith Duffy, not me or Julian, not her family. I don’t think she’s even told Angus, even now. I’d resigned myself to never knowing. We all had.’

  ‘I think she wants to tell you, Fliss,’ says Lance. There’s no mistaking the seriousness of his tone. ‘You’re the one she’s chosen to hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I hope you’re pre
pared for it. I’m not sure I am.’

  It’s only when he sees me coming and waves that I realise the man standing outside my flat is waiting for me. My first thought is that he must be police. Two detectives from Culver Valley CID left messages for me while I was speaking to Lance and Wendy: a DS Sam Kombothekra and a DC Colin Sellers. Both demanded I contact them immediately, and DS Kombothekra told me to speak to nobody and do nothing in connection with the documentary: two orders for the price of one. Tamsin also left a message, instructing me to ring her as soon as I could and before I did anything else. I ignored all three of them. I don’t want to speak to anyone who’s going to try to stop me doing what I need to do.

  I slow down as the man walks towards me, combing my mind for a few basic facts about my rights. Can he force me to stop working if I want to work? Can he make me go to the police station with him? Detain me against my will? Laurie would know. So might you, if you ever read anything that wasn’t heat magazine – that’s what Tamsin would say. Come to think of it, it’s easy to predict what most people are going to say most of the time. That’s why I love Laurie. There’s plenty wrong with him, but at least he’s unpredictable. Not like Maya, who is always going to say, ‘What smell? Smoke? Someone must be burning something outside.’ Or Raffi: ‘I know, I know – a dehumidifier. I’ll look into it, Fliss, I promise.’

  That’s why I mustn’t be stopped before I get a chance to speak to Ray Hines again: I don’t know what she’s going to say and I want to find out. Yes, I’m in danger, but not in the way the police think, from some cards and a photograph. I’m in danger of never being part of anything important, of having my whole bland life go by without anyone noticing or caring. Now I’ve got a chance to make sure that doesn’t happen.

  As I get closer, the man’s face starts to look familiar. I work out who he is a few seconds before he introduces himself: Angus Hines. I recognise him from pictures in Laurie’s files. ‘I was wondering how long I was going to have to camp on your doorstep,’ he says. He’s almost good-looking, but his head could do with being a bit more three-dimensional. He’s got a flat, square face that makes me think of a ventriloquist’s dummy. When he opens his mouth again, I half expect it to make a clacking sound. ‘Ray said you were meeting Julian Lance. How did it go? Was he helpful?’ It doesn’t occur to him to introduce himself. He clearly thinks I ought to know who he is, how much his opinions matter.

  I want to turn and walk away, and not only because of what I know about him already, nothing to do with any ideas I might have entertained about making a wax effigy of him and sticking pins in it. He’s talking as if he’s in charge of me, brisk and presumptuous.

  Seeing that I have no intention of answering him, he says, ‘Fliss, I’ll be honest. I’m not entirely happy with your . . . involvement in Ray’s life, so I’m going to tell you what I told her: this documentary isn’t only about her. It’s about me, my family. It really matters to me, and to Ray – the first public account of our lives, to be watched by millions of people all over the country – all over the world, maybe. Laurie Nattrass might be the wrong man to make it, but that doesn’t mean you’re the right one. It worries me that my wife trusts you when she’s spoken to you a grand total of once.’

  ‘I’m not a man, and she’s your ex -wife.’

  ‘It worries me even more to hear her describe you as “objective”. Because you’re anything but, aren’t you? Ray told me about your father.’

  A conciliatory approach might work. Or it might be undermined by virulent secret loathing.

  ‘Do you have someone else in mind to make the film?’ I ask.

  ‘No. That’s not the point. And none of this is your fault. Ray shouldn’t have—’

  ‘It’s precisely because of my father that I’ll be more objective than anyone else would be,’ I tell him.

  ‘How so?’

  I don’t want to talk about this on the street, but the alternative would be to invite Angus Hines into my flat, and I definitely don’t want to do that. ‘My father made a careless professional mistake that cost a child her life. It ended up costing him his life too, ruining my mum’s, and it didn’t exactly enhance mine. If I find myself working on a film that involves child deaths, don’t you think I’ll do everything I can to get the facts right?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ says Hines, apparently not at all worried about upsetting me. ‘The trouble with that sort of pop psychology is that you can twist it any way you want. Your father didn’t want Ray to appeal – he thought if she got out, baby-murderers everywhere would do their worst and get away with it. But Ray did appeal, and she won. She was vindicated, while he died in disgrace. You’re telling me that doesn’t make you want to find Ray guilty all over again in your documentary?’

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you, yes.’

  ‘Come on, Fliss.’ He smiles sadly, as if he cares about me and fears for my sanity. It freaks me out. ‘You might think you’re objective, but . . .’

  ‘You think you know me better than I know myself?’

  What else can I say in my defence? That’s what it is: a defence. I’m being attacked in broad daylight outside my home. Just because he’s only using words doesn’t mean he’s not attacking me. Mustering what confidence I have left, I say, ‘I don’t want to be like my father. When he said what he did about Ray, I hated him. He wanted her to stay in prison because of the effect her release would have on other people – nothing to do with Ray herself.’ I’m cold. I want to be inside. I feel as if all my neighbours are listening through their walls, nodding to themselves because they’ve always thought I looked as if I had something to be ashamed of, and now they know what it is. ‘He said nothing about whether he thought she was guilty or innocent – I don’t think he knew the first thing about either of her . . . either of your babies’ deaths. It was the same mistake he made with Jaycee Herridge – making assumptions and neglecting the details. If I make this documentary, the details are all I’m going to care about, whatever they might be, whatever picture they add up to, because I’m better than my father. I need to prove to myself that I’m nothing like him, and I don’t care if that sounds disloyal!’

  ‘A lot of people think loyalty means suspending your critical faculties and ceasing to think for yourself,’ says Angus Hines. He pulls a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and offers it to me.

  Am I crying? Yes, it seems I am. Great. ‘No, thanks,’ I say. I’d rather let my face drip-dry in the wind than take anything from you.

  ‘You said a few minutes ago that you found yourself working on a documentary involving child deaths. Wasn’t it your choice?’

  ‘No, not at first. I didn’t want anything to do with it. Laurie Nattrass called me into his office on Monday, told me he was resigning and dumped his cot-death film on me without asking me what I wanted.’

  Angus Hines stuffs his hanky back in his pocket, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know if you’re deluding yourself or deliberately lying to me, but that’s not how it happened. It can’t be.’

  How dare he speak to me like this? ‘What? I’m not . . .’

  ‘Your father killed himself in 2006. You started working for Binary Star in early 2007.’ He flashes a smug smile at me. ‘I work for a newspaper. I’m good at finding things out.’

  Anyone would think he was whatever-his-name-is who uncovered the Watergate scandal. I’m not entirely sure what the Watergate scandal was, apart from something shocking involving Richard Nixon, so I’d better not mention it. ‘I thought you were only a photographer,’ I say, stressing the ‘only’. I have nothing against photographers, and I know Hines is something more senior at London on Sunday, but at this point I’m willing to say anything that’ll make him feel bad.

  He pulls out his wallet and hands me a business card. ‘Since you’re so keen on details, get mine right.’ Pictures Desk Editor. Big deal. ‘You knew Laurie Nattrass was on the board at Binary Star – you must have known about his connection to Helen Yardley, JIPAC, my wife. You d
idn’t end up working with him by accident, did you?’

  I can’t deal with this. I push past him and head for my flat, fumbling in my bag for my keys. I let myself in and turn to close the door. Angus Hines is right behind me, so close we’re almost touching.

  ‘This conversation’s over,’ I tell him. How dare he walk into my home uninvited? I try to use the door to propel him out, but he’s too heavy. ‘Fine,’ I say, gesturing for him to go on ahead of me. He smiles again, rewarding me for finally seeing sense.

  He heads for the lounge, stopping on the way to look at what I’ve put up on the walls in the hall. As quietly as I can, I step outside, close the front door and mortice-lock it.

  I run towards the main road faster than I’ve ever run before. I flag down a cab and tell the driver my work address. I need access to a computer, and the one at the office will do just as well as the one at home. It’s Saturday, so hopefully no one will be in.

  Oh my God, oh my God, ohmyGod. I’ve just locked the pictures desk editor of a major newspaper in my flat.

  In the rear-view mirror, the taxi-driver eyes me hopefully. All I can see of him are his eyes, but that’s enough. As a non-driver, I spend a lot of time in cabs, and my instincts are razor-sharp. I’m getting a strong sense that this man has something pressing to tell me about an excellent biography of the Kray twins he’s reading. I’ve already heard all about the bloke who had his smile extended by a knife from several other London cabbies; I don’t need to hear it again. As a preventative measure, I pull out my phone and ring Tamsin.

  ‘Fliss?’ She sounds as if she’d given up all hope of ever hearing from me again. ‘Where are you?’

  I’m tempted to say ‘Somalia’. ‘On my way to the office.

  Relax. I’m fine.’

  ‘You might be fine now, but the longer you—’

  ‘I need you to do something for me,’ I cut her off. ‘You’re not busy, are you?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by busy. I’ve just downloaded a test thingie from MI6’s website.’

  ‘What?’