Cath Staincliffe - The Kindest Thing

That night I woke in the early hours, shaky and hung-over and feeling dirty.

Back then, I thought he’d taken my silence as refusal. That the question wouldn’t arise again. Whenever I allowed myself to envisage the outcome of his illness, the inevitable, unstoppable end, dread reared inside me. Not just the dread of losing him, of bereavement, but the dread that he would ask me again. If I refused, what would that say about my love for him, my compassion? That I wasn’t prepared to stand by him and let him control the event? And if I agreed, what would it mean? How would I weather the reality of killing him? How would I bear breaking that taboo?

It was another six months before we spoke again about the manner of his dying.

‘Call PC Stenner.’

My neck prickles and I sense a frisson of interest from the jurors: a policeman – maybe now we’ll get to something juicy. He comes in, wearing his uniform, and is sworn in. His blocky head and wide jaw are as I recall. He has an angry rash on his neck.

‘PC Stenner, please take us through your notes from the fifteenth of June, when you attended 14, Elmfield Drive.’

‘Yes. I had a report of a sudden death. An ambulance was attending and I was in the vicinity. On reaching the premises, I found the ambulance service already in attendance. I spoke with Mrs Deborah Shelley, who reported that her husband had been terminally ill and she had been unable to rouse him that afternoon. She also stated that it had been only a matter of time.’

‘What did you think she meant by this?’

‘That he could die at any time, that it was expected.’

‘At that point did you make any further enquiries?’

‘No.’

‘Can you recall for the jury Ms Shelley’s demeanour at that time?’

‘She was quite calm.’

‘Thank you, PC Stenner.’

Mr Latimer gets to his feet. Some of the members in the jury box rearrange their positions. Are you sitting comfortably?

‘PC Stenner. Did you meet anyone else at the house that afternoon?’

PC Stenner looks blank. I wonder if his mind is working furiously or whether you get what’s on the tin. ‘The daughter.’ He’s got there at last.

‘Yes. And can you describe her demeanour for the court?’

The constable hesitates. He knew they’d want the low-down on me but he hasn’t done his homework on Sophie. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘R-really.’ There’s a hint of Mr Latimer’s stammer but then he gets going. ‘You recall clearly the demeanour of Deborah Shelley but have no recollection whatsoever of the demeanour of her daughter, Sophie?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘I suggest to you that the reason you cannot recall Sophie’s demeanour is that there was nothing remarkable about it.’

‘I don’t recall.’

‘I suggest, like her mother, Sophie appeared calm. Do you remember she offered you a cup of tea?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hardly the actions of an hysteric. Let us return for a moment to your description of Deborah Shelley. She seemed calm. Would it be fair to say she conducted herself with dignity, as did her daughter?’

There is a squawk of protest from Miss Webber. Mr Latimer cuts her off: ‘Let me rephrase that. Did Deborah Shelley behave in an undignified manner while you were at the house?’

‘No.’

‘Thank you.’

Mr Latimer has planted the notion of dignity, altogether a different image from the woman who had just calmly seen off her husband. Not cool and calculating but brave and dignified. Mousy gives a little nod and that spark of hope tickles in my chest.

The judge suggests we break for lunch and the jury file out. Mr Latimer comes over. ‘Everything all right?’

I nod, a little dazed. The tension in my body is suddenly evident to me, running the length of my limbs, coiled round my spine.

‘Good.’ He smiles.

I wonder why he doesn’t invest in a new wig – or is the tatty relic some sort of statement? The legal equivalent of a Hell’s Angel’s dirty denims.

The guard escorts me downstairs and, after using the facilities, I sit in my cell. This is a windowless box with whitewashed walls and a bench seat across the narrow rear wall. Hundreds of people have sat here, waiting to be called, to be tried, to be sentenced.

The guard brings lunch, a cheese-salad sandwich, bag of crisps, a pack of round shortbread biscuits and tea in a plastic cup. I eat half of the sandwich and one of the biscuits. The tea is tasteless, an odd grey colour with little discs of oil visible on the surface. I sip it and close my eyes. My bones feel weak, my muscles feeble. I’m like a puppet that has had its strings cut.

My case had already made the national press and television, so when I got up the courage to go into the prison kitchen and meet some of the women I’d be sharing the place with, they all knew what I stood accused of.

There are eighteen of us in Shapley House; perhaps eight were in the kitchen that day. ‘I couldn’t do that,’ announced one of the women, flatly, arms crossed and staring at me as I fumbled about trying to find the things to make a cup of tea. ‘Drug someone up, then hold a bag over their head and watch them die.’

The room was quiet and I stilled, not knowing how to reply. I set aside my cup and turned to leave.

‘You got any burn?’ the same woman asked. She had a crude tattoo on her neck, small, hard eyes. ‘You, Mrs Mercy Killer, you got any burn?’

Some of the other women laughed but I sensed unease riddled through it. The nickname was to stick. I became known as Mercy.

‘Any baccy?’

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘What bleedin’ use are you, then?’

I fled to my room. ‘Burn’ was short for Old Holborn, the rolling tobacco of choice that the women wound into needle-thin cigarettes. It was the top currency in Styal, prized even higher than the methadone given out to the addicts three times a day. Some of the addicts sold their methadone to buy tobacco.

Fleetingly I considered taking up smoking in order to have something to trade.

I don’t know why Gaynor, the loudmouth in my house, took such an instant dislike to me. I guess I was an easy target, different from nearly everyone else, different class, different background, different accent, room of my own. It was like being in a foreign country: I didn’t understand the culture or the language. ‘The sweatbox’ was the name for the van that transported us to and from court. People would say, ‘I’m in on a section twenty,’ and I’d need it explaining – assault inflicting grievous bodily harm. There was no neat little number for me. Murder is murder.

In prison there are sheets to fill in for everything: phone credit, CDs, shampoo, tampons, lip salve. For some reason all the toiletries have to be from Avon. We fill in our menu choices ahead of time and these are sent to the kitchen. At the top end of the prison, along from the main gate, there are old vegetable gardens. Long abandoned, the poly-tunnels are ragged with holes; weeds grow waist high among them. It’s a shame we don’t grow our own fruit and veg – they’d be a welcome addition to the meals. I don’t eat much. The food reeks of institution, tray-baked for too long. The women constantly complain about the portion sizes.

I was allowed to have things from home, and I made a list to give to Jane. Clothes and sketch pad, pencils, some of my earrings (nothing larger than a ten-pence piece allowed) and a decent pillow. Neil’s denim jacket. When Jane sent stuff in it was examined, then added to my property card.

‘You could have told me,’ Jane said, when she first visited. It wasn’t a reproach, there was no glint of that in her eyes: she was stating fact – you could have told me and I’d have stood by you.