Helen of Orpington

by PN Moore

Extradition

  ‘TOP DOC’S WIFE IN BOOZE SMASH’

  ‘BLOND YANK SLAYS STUDENT’

  Large bold headlines, if only inside on page 6 of the papers ran;

  ‘DRINK-DRIVE CRASH FRENZY’

  ‘SURGEONS WIFE HELD OVER DRINK DRIVE CRASH’

  ‘BLOND NURSE

  TOO SMASHED TO REMEMBER CRASH

  I must confess I became obsessed with the trial. The local newspaper was sympathetic, leaving us alone to care for Emma and deal with reliving the horror of the accident at the trial. I really don’t think the tabloids would have been interested in any of this if it hadn’t been for two things; first, Lesley Howard was a very striking pretty blond American, and of all things a nurse. Secondly, Julian her husband, was very photogenic with Hollywood looks. He was a surgeon, married to a nurse who got smashed one night and knocked down a young student. As Margaret was now Julian’s PR and not allowing him to say anything in public, he became all the more interesting, fuelling the tabloids already growing interest in this real-life hospital soap-opera.

  Lesley Howard had followed Reeves Clinton, her English boyfriend back to the UK having met him at the hospital where she worked as a nurse. Reeves had worked as a representative for a feeding pump company that’s used for patients who are unable to consume solid food following an accident or due to ill health. How ironic that would turn out to be, but it’s the truth. Her father had worked in Washington, then moved Kansas, where he met and married Anna who had two children, Michael and later Lesley.

  When Lesley had completed her nursing training and taken her finals, it was time for a change. Now that Reeves had returned home to the UK, Lesley secured a post at a Hospital in North London. This was an attempt to patch things up with Reeves.

  Things did not go well, according to the paper the couple broke up (no reason given) and Lesley left her job in London and took a job in a hospital Oxford. The hospital had a renowned eye unit of which Lesley had specialized back in America. By all accounts she was happy there and enjoyed Oxford. Most importantly Lesley met her husband Julian, an Orthopaedic surgeon working at the hospital. The pictures of Julian at the trial show a central-casting young doctor. Tall slim, dark brown hair cut short around the ears, yet long on top giving that medical /academic look. A well-made suit, white shirt and subtle tie completed the polished groomed image.

  During and after the trial each photograph taken by the national and later only the locals, showed Julian looking distressed. He was always flanked by his mother Margaret. She was a strong forceful woman, always speaking for Julian, never letting the press get to him in his grief. When asked by the papers if he would stand by Lesley, Margaret answered;

  ‘She has done an awful and dreadful thing, justice must be done-no further comment’.

  On another day she said;

  ‘Julian is distraught, Lesley Howard must take the justice given out to her…yes Julian is back at home with me’.

  It was like some perverse low-cost daytime TV show. It went that way for some time before gradually fading, but Emma, the central character in all this was forgotten.

  She was deep in coma, unaware of the show going on as she lay in a Hospital near London Bridge. I came to know the staff there and they me. They came to know the sharp, angry fussing woman who complained about everything and everybody. At night I would look out at the lights of London a million pound view that made me feel so enraged, ill tempered and incensed. Emma would not see any of this, being far away in a sea of drugs keeping her oblivious to pain. She had so much promise, and just when she had found herself, this happened. She was so quiet and meek, worried about the world and all it offered, then finding a way through the fear this accident, accident? -How can this be fair?

  While staying at the hospital everything became related to the catastrophe; seeing the lights of London, I saw young girls of her age out shopping, having fun and getting on with life. Adverts on TV for BA flights to America, knowing that I would have to cancel her trip there. I longed to overdose; it would be so easy and nice to drift away, but what about Emma? It was the only thing that stopped me doing it. Regarding the sentence, I was with Margaret on her daughter-in-law Lesley; I wanted her to go down, for a very very long time. The images of Lesley in the papers seemed incongruous to the horrific episode that had taken place. Tall, naturally blond and beautiful, the innocent face like Mary in Botticelli’s painting the Madonna of the Magnificat. That was what I was up against; the Virgin Mary. How could I…I was going to say win, but it was not about winning, it was about justice for my little girl.

  But us plain people, we knew the truth. Just because you are pretty and innocent looking does not mean you are innocent. I remember my school days; beautiful girls, verbally and physically bullying the young girls. Luckily my sister and I escaped this thanks to dad working at the school, though they did call him names to upset us, it was all they had. Yet when they went before the headmaster they would turn on the little girl smile and be let off.

  I wanted Lesley to suffer, at least to go down for a large number of years. I became engrossed by what the papers were saying. This I suppose, was the beginning of the end for Kenneth and me. My mother came to stay as I was away so much, even when I was home Kenneth and I slept in separate rooms, I couldn’t bear to be near anyone, it seemed such a sham. This separation was a natural extension really, I had spent so much time at the hospital and when I did meet Kenneth all I could talk about was Emma, and the lack of all hope for her, it couldn’t have helped.

  It was Kenneth not accepting the reality of it all that finalised it for me. Looking back, I suppose it was how he coped, but at the time he seemed to me a callous pig, intent on forgetting his daughter. How could he go to work? He would say things to me like ‘everything will be all right we will see this through’. How the hell can you see this through? We fought over everything which was most unlike us undemonstrative people. Usually during disagreements I either gave in to Kenneth, or I would sulk and fume. We did not raise our voices, but I did then. When he told me to take some time off from seeing Emma I would say he was trying to stop me from seeing her, He went to work as normal, as if nothing had happened. At the time I could not understand this. However, although I had never taken a day off work since I had maternity leave with Emma. I was given six months sick leave from the charity where I worked; I guess work felt the strain too.

  At home I could hear the noise next door, I had reduced it to a petty irritant, although the noise and offensive behaviour began to escalate it wasn’t in my field of focus. That sort of negative mind-set from next door would just wash over me. I was in a white foam fuzzy tunnel, thanks to sleeping pills and anti-depressants. I lost so much weight that my mother would call the doctor. I would cry in the middle of the day or night, sometimes unaware I was doing so. My mother cleaned the house and tried to comfort me, but her mantra was the same as Kenneth.

  ‘Move on, move on, your not helping Emma being like this you know.’

  The two of them would play bridge together for Gods sake, while I sat out in the garden staring into space, oblivious of the rave music blaring out from the idiots next door.

  I was so far out of it, that I had difficulty making sense of the photograph in the tabloid. The day before sentencing, the rag published pictures of a young girl reading in the garden in her bikini. These is pictures were used continually in the paper, and could have only come from one source. It broke me to think, that the image of Emma, relaxed and happy in the garden was being used as titillation for the rag’s readers.

  Emma was being used in this sad dreadful way, while she was just inches from death in intensive care. I was so numb at this stage that I could not take it in. What else could happen, what else could go wrong? Two months for Lesley, two little months for the person who killed my child. That is what could wrong, where was the justice in all this? All I could see was Lesley with that ‘little-girl’ face turning on the crocodile tears for the judge. I was told she di
d not move, as sentence was past. Staring blankly, only saying ‘thank you’ to the judge before being led down to the cells. I broke down, my mother and sister helping me out of the court as I screamed ‘my baby’.

  Lesley was taken to a woman’s prison and that was all I heard of her until I was informed by the police ‘link-worker’, that she was going to be extradited back to America, I was ambivalent about this. I wanted her to stay in prison here for some reason, yet, I also wanted her to go far far away, as the thought of her in London was frightening. In fact, she had been moved not long after sentencing to the north of England, but I was not told this. One day, not long after returning to work, not wishing to go home, I took the tube to Tuffnel Park, and walked to the prison. Apart from the big gates, it looked very new, not the Victorian prison one would imagine. Red brick walls holding a strange silence I could only imagine what it contained. After, I walked back to the tube, listening to the young people of Emma’s age, chatting and laughing on their way to an evening out. I knew then that I would have to confront this woman, and that she would have to pay for the suffering she had caused.