In the Blood

by Ruth Mancini

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘I’m on my way.’

  *

  Ellie slides her phone across the desk towards me. It’s an iPhone 7: top of the range. I note that her hands are perfectly manicured, her nails painted a pretty baby pink.

  ‘That’s Finn,’ she says.

  Both Finn and Ellie are in the picture. Finn is beautiful, like his mother; I wouldn’t have expected anything else. His eyes are a startling blue and his face is creased up into a gigantic smile as he looks adoringly up into Ellie’s eyes.

  ‘He’s gorgeous. He looks like you,’ I say. I hand her back the phone. ‘So, how did you meet him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jay Barrington-Brown.’

  Ellie looks down at her hands and picks at the cuticle surrounding her pink thumbnail. ‘At a party.’

  ‘A party... where?’

  ‘The Royal Cadogan. Knightsbridge.’

  ‘So what were you doing there?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  Ellie sighs. ‘Didn’t Anna tell you all of this? Do I really need to go over it again?’

  ‘All right. We’ll come back to that later. Let’s go through the statements. The initial case papers came in last week.’ I open the file of papers in front of me and hand a set to Ellie.

  I look up. Ellie looks back at me in silence.

  ‘So, first we have the witness statement from your social worker Heather Grainger. She was assigned to your case in April after Finn was admitted to hospital for the first time.’

  ‘He had a chest infection, that’s all. A virus.’

  ‘I know,’ I agree. ‘No one is suggesting that it was anything else on that occasion. But we also have statements from the two nurses that treated him, who say that when they removed his clothing, he had a number of injuries which varied in age and ranged from smaller ones on his arms, finger-sized bruises that looked as though he’d been grabbed or held too tightly, to larger ones on his legs and trunk, which had the appearance of knuckle marks.’

  Ellie shakes her head. ‘Anna said they couldn’t prove that. The expert in the other case – he said they were accidental.’

  ‘He didn’t say that. He said that he couldn’t say definitively that they weren’t accidental. There’s a difference. The prosecution in the criminal proceedings can still use their own findings as part of their case. This evidence is important, Ellie.’ I look up at her. ‘The number of injuries and the period of time over which they occurred help to build an overall picture of harm to Finn whilst he was in your care, which they’ll use as a backdrop to what happens next.’

  I pull out the colour copies of the medical exhibit photographs of Finn’s arms, trunk and legs and spread them across my desk, so that she can see them. ‘There are quite a few bruises, there’s no getting away from it.’ I peer at a close-up shot of what I imagine, after cross-referencing with the nurse’s statements, is Finn’s abdomen. ‘This one on his tummy is big. Then there are these,’ I continue, pointing to some healed scabs of varying ages which are scattered on his legs and on the backs of his hands. ‘The prosecution expert says these are cigarette burns. And, whatever the expert said in the family proceedings, a jury might well conclude that all of these injuries were deliberately inflicted.’

  Ellie says, stubbornly, ‘Well, they weren’t.’

  ‘Then, how did they get there?’

  Ellie colours a little. ‘Finn was accident-prone. He was always climbing onto things, falling off...’ She tails off.

  I put the exhibits down on the desk and look Ellie in the eye. She glances up and meets my gaze. ‘Did anyone else look after Finn for you?’ I ask her. ‘During that period, did anyone else babysit?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘What... never?’ I persist. ‘Not even once? A neighbour, perhaps? While you popped to the shop?’

  Ellie’s eyelashes flicker for a second. ‘No,’ she says, firmly. ‘No one.’

  ‘And when you went to work? Hairdressing,’ I add, looking her squarely in the eye.

  ‘I took him with me.’

  ‘Really? Every time?’

  She shrugs. ‘Yeah.’

  I let out a sigh and turn back to the papers in front of me. ‘OK. Well, Heather Grainger’s now made a second statement. She cites a number of instances, when Finn was first taken into care, when you had supervised contact, when your care of him was lacking. She says that she had a number of concerns about your parenting.’

  Ellie heaves a sigh and rolls her eyes.

  ‘Why would she say that?’

  ‘Because she hates me, that’s why.’ She folds her arms and sits back in her chair.

  ‘She does agree that her relationship with you was a difficult one,’ I agree. ‘She mentions several arguments you’d had, about you prop-feeding Finn, sleeping in the same bed with him, things like that. She was concerned that you thought you knew best, that you wouldn’t be told anything, that you were unwilling to acknowledge any problems.’

  ‘She was in my face all the time,’ Ellie says, sulkily. ‘I did what she said, but it was never good enough for her.’

  I nod. ‘OK. Well that’s open to interpretation, I suppose. But she also says that, on one occasion, she asked you about the bruises and you told her that you may have grabbed Finn, or held him too hard.’

  ‘I don’t remember saying that. But if I did, it’s not true.’

  I look up. ‘Then, why—’

  ‘Look,’ Ellie protests. ‘I was trying to get Finn back, OK? Anna told me that I had to cooperate. I was supposed to tell her what she wanted to hear.’

  ‘Not if it wasn’t true.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t true. I would never hurt Finn. I told you, I don’t know how he got those bruises,’ Ellie insists, then shakes her head, dismissively. She folds her arms and swings back on her chair leg. ‘But why does any of this matter? I told you, they were going to give Finn back to me. They gave me overnight contact, unsupervised!’

  I nod. ‘Which was when Finn fell seriously ill.’

  Ellie glares at me, her cheeks flushed. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?’

  ‘Ellie, I am on your side,’ I sigh. ‘But I’m putting the case to you – the case against you – and I need to know your answers before anyone else in that courtroom does. Trust me, when you’re standing in the witness box and the prosecutor is asking you the same questions I’m asking you, she’s not going to be on your side and you’re going to know about it. She’s going to rip you to shreds.’

  ‘She can try,’ Ellie mutters. She takes her phone back out of her bag and starts to scroll through her messages.

  I look at her in silence until she looks up to face me and meets my gaze. Her face is like stone, her eyes angry.

  ‘I know the prosecutor,’ I tell her. ‘Carmel Oliver. She’s the Crown’s instructed advocate in this case and she’s good. She does all their children cases. You want to know what she’s going to do?’

  Ellie doesn’t answer, but she’s looking at me.

  ‘Here’s what she’s going to do. First of all she’s going to do everything she can to show you up in the worst possible light as a mother. She’s going to get you to admit that you were inadequate, that you didn’t look after Finn properly, that you didn’t always respond when he cried, or dress him appropriately for the weather. That you didn’t get him the medical attention that he needed when he needed it.’

  ‘But Will said there’s no direct evidence—’

  ‘There’s evidence.’ I cut Ellie off, sharply, the exasperation I’m feeling now creeping into my voice. ‘And what Heather Grainger witnessed is supported by the circumstantial evidence that is your background, your upbringing. As Will has already told you, in the absence of any other credible explanation, the finger is going to point firmly and squarely at you.’

  I pause, as I watch Ellie take this in. I now have her full attention. I can see that taking the hard line with her is the right thing to do.r />
  ‘The prosecutor is going to do everything she can to show the jury that you did a lot more than neglect Finn,’ I continue, ‘but she’s not going to do it straight away. First, she’s going to show them why. First, she’s going to get you to talk about your parents.’ I look at Ellie with sympathy for a moment, as I imagine the prosecutor might, and then I say, ‘They were drug addicts, weren’t they, Ellie? Junkies. Their instinct, their motivation, was not to protect and nurture the child they’d made together; it was to secure their next fix – and that was all. They were so bound up in their own needs, their own desires, that they were unable to see you. They didn’t love you, Ellie. They didn’t want you. Your own parents didn’t want you. God, that must hurt. How does that make you feel?’

  Ellie’s face turns pink.

  ‘You were in the way,’ I persist. ‘You were a nuisance. You were abandoned, used, misused by them. You were left to crawl around the flat and pick up the sharps that they and their druggy friends had dropped. You were left in a stinking nappy for hours until your bottom was sore. When you were hungry and crying and found your parents slumped on the sofa, when you tried to crawl up beside them to get their attention, you were met with their spaced-out faces, their eyeballs rolling back in their heads. You must have been so scared, Ellie. These were your parents – the ones who were supposed to take care of you, protect you, feed you, love you... who was going to look after you? Who was in charge?’

  Ellie says. ‘So what? What does that prove? I don’t remember any of that, anyway.’

  ‘Just because you don’t remember it consciously, it doesn’t mean it isn’t all stored away in here.’ I tap my head. ‘You were twelve months old, the same age as Finn is now, when you went into care. But Finn knows you’re his mother, right? You carried him in your womb for nine months, it’s your voice he heard every day. You’re the person who he snuggled up to in the first few months of his life, who gave him his first experience of security. He was a helpless baby. He needed you, just like you needed your mother. But she wasn’t there for you. No one was.’

  Ellie bites her lip.

  ‘There is no granny in Kent, is there Ellie?’ I continue. ‘You had no mother, no father, no grandparents – no one; no one who had any emotional connection with you whatsoever. All you had was a series of staff members in a care home who had twenty other kids to look after. There was no one who was there just for you, to pick you up when you fell over, to stroke your hair and tell you funny stories when you were sad, to wipe away your tears and... and to love you, Ellie, to love you, in the way that you so desperately needed, in the way that you deserved.’

  Ellie looks away at the window. Her lips are pursed and angry tears are forming in the corners of her eyes. I wait a moment, but she refuses to look at me.

  ‘If there was no one to do that,’ I say, allowing the emotion to creep into my voice, ‘if there was no one to care for you and be there for you when you needed them most, if no one has ever touched you or held you, or brushed your tears away when you cried... then how could you have ever learned to love your own baby?’

  ‘But I do love him,’ Ellie protests. ‘I do! I can.’

  ‘No, you don’t! You can’t. You don’t know how! When Finn cries, it’s just noise to you. You try. You try to be patient, but he’s so demanding. He needs so much from you. You never get any time to yourself. You get so angry with him, so mad, when he needs you that way. After all, no one was ever there for you, so why should he be special, huh?’

  ‘He is special,’ Ellie says. ‘He’s beautiful.’

  ‘So were you, Ellie. But it wasn’t enough, was it? Babies are hard work. They don’t stop needing you just because you’re tired and at the end of your rope. Finn needed you too much, didn’t he? He just wanted everything. He sucked every little drop of energy out of you, he took over your life. You weren’t prepared for it. And after a few weeks of this, of trying to do the right thing, you couldn’t cope any more. You snapped.’

  Ellie shakes her head vigorously, her face contorting in rage and pain, her eyes glistening. ‘No!’

  ‘Oh, you didn’t mean to,’ I say. ‘The first time you picked him up a bit too roughly and saw the fingermarks on his arms, you were mortified. You thought to yourself, did I do that? Can I cause a bruise like that, just by holding his arms? But the next time he cried, the only way you could stop him was to slap him – which worked at first, but... but then it didn’t any more, and before you knew it you were smacking him regularly. Then one day you punched him in the stomach until you’d winded him. That shut him up, didn’t it?’

  ‘No, because I didn’t do it!’ Ellie sobs.

  ‘Then who did?!’ I yell.

  ‘I don’t know!’ Ellie yells back, tears now streaming down her face. She pulls the sleeves of her top down over her hands and wipes her eyes with them.

  I pick up my pen and start tapping it on the desk. ‘You don’t know?’ I repeat, my voice loaded with sarcasm. ‘You’re his mother! How could you not know? You say no one else looked after him for you, that you were with him all the time. And yet, you don’t know how he got these injuries. Your story doesn’t add up. It makes no sense. And that’s because there is no other explanation, is there, Ellie?’ I push the photo exhibits across the desk towards her. ‘It was you who did this to Finn!’

  ‘All right!’ Ellie cries angrily. She inhales deeply and licks her lips. ‘You can stop now,’ she says. ‘I get the picture.’

  I shake my head. ‘But I don’t think you do. That’s just for starters. After that, once she’s made you cry and got you to admit you had a crappy childhood and are unable to empathise with your baby, she’s going to go beyond that. She’s going to suggest that you’ve got a bit of a sadistic streak, that you’ve started to enjoy this power you had over Finn. After all, you had so little control over anything when you were growing up, and here it is at last, the power to finally make another human being shut up and listen to you, to behave the way you want him to. You’ve beaten Finn, you’ve burned him with cigarettes and you’ve fed him salt until he’s so sick that he’s practically unconscious. If Heather Grainger hadn’t arrived when she did, Finn would have died.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ Ellie protests. ‘I was just about to call someone!’

  ‘But you didn’t, Ellie. You didn’t call anyone and the jury will only have your word that you were going to do so. Heather Grainger says that Finn was barely conscious when she arrived. The jury will want to know why in God’s name you hadn’t dialled nine-nine-nine already.’

  Ellie puts her head in her hands. After a moment, she flicks her hair back and looks up again. ‘Because I was scared, OK? I... I knew how it would look, and I was scared.’

  ‘Of what? What is it that you’re hiding from me?’

  A tiny flicker of fear crosses her face. ‘I... I didn’t know what was wrong with him, OK? I knew they’d ask me loads of questions, about how he’d got like that, but I didn’t know the answers. I was worried they’d take him away from me again if they knew...’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That I’d left him with Marie and gone to work! OK?’ she splutters, her eyes wide and frightened.

  I look at her in silence for a moment. ‘He was with Marie?’

  She nods.

  ‘When he became ill?’

  She hesitates. I can see she’s thinking hard about what she’s about to say. ‘Well, I can’t remember exactly if he became ill then, or... maybe, was it after he got back? It’s hard to...’

  ‘Why are you protecting her, Ellie?’

  ‘I’m not. Marie hasn’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘Are they threatening you?’ I ask her. ‘Her and her boyfriend? Are they blackmailing you?’

  She looks up at me and sneers, unconvincingly. ‘No.’

  I put down my pen and look her in the eye. ‘Ellie, I know. OK? I know why Marie was babysitting for you. I want to help you, but if I’m to have any chance of properly preparing you
r case you need to start telling me the truth.’

  She looks at me silently for a moment. ‘What?’ she whispers. ‘How...’

  ‘Look at you.’ I wave my hand at her. ‘You’re beautiful. You’re immaculately dressed. Your handbag’s... what? Louis Vuitton? Or is it Miu Miu? Your perfume... I don’t know what that is, but I can tell it’s expensive. When you were collecting your property in the cells... then when I went to collect your passport with Marie and I saw what was inside your wardrobe...’

  I wait for her to speak. She scrutinises my face, but says nothing.

  ‘Ellie, I saw your underwear,’ I confess.

  She bites her lip and her neck flushes pink.

  ‘You do realise, don’t you, that if this comes out in court and you haven’t fully discussed it with Will and me, we’re going to be at a disadvantage. We won’t be able to defend you properly.’

  Ellie looks startled. ‘Do they know? The prosecution?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. It’s not mentioned in any of the statements we’ve received so far. But we haven’t yet seen what Jay has to say.’

  She shakes her head. ‘He won’t give a statement,’ she says. ‘He won’t give evidence against me. He doesn’t want anyone to know about... about that.’

  I nod, slowly. ‘So that’s how you met. And why you didn’t want me to talk to him.’

  Ellie looks down at her lap. She says nothing for a moment. ‘If I tell you... if I tell you everything, do you have to tell the court?’

  ‘No. But I think it might be helpful if you did.’

  ‘What!’ Her mouth drops open. ‘How’s that going to help? They already think I’m a bad mother. What are they going to say when they find out I’m a whore?’

  ‘I thought the job title was “escort”?’

  She gives me a wry smile. ‘I thought you wanted me to be straight with you?’

  ‘Look, Ellie, there might not be much difference between an escort and a whore,’ I say. ‘But there’s a big difference between making mistakes as a parent and deliberately hurting your child. Most of us do the former. The latter is what you’re being prosecuted for.’