Cath Staincliffe: The Kindest Thing

I have absolutely no idea how we are faring. When the court is almost empty Mr Latimer comes over. ‘That was a gem,’ he tells me. ‘She doubled the weight of that witness’s evidence.’

‘Can you tell,’ I ask him, ‘what the jury are thinking?’

He shook his head. ‘Never can. Not worth a moment’s speculation. Only time I ever did, I was wrong.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘for shouting.’

He dipped his head. ‘Hard to resist. Could have been worse.’

‘I could have gone for her with a hammer,’ I murmur.

His eyes glint. He purses his lips. The smile is in his voice. ‘That would never do. I will see you after lunch.’

Don Petty, the shrink for my defence, is a tall gangly fellow, close to my age, I guess, with a bald head, beaky nose and an insignificant chin, giving him the cast of a tortoise. He speaks in a precise Edinburgh accent and never smiles (now, I have to appear suitably glum and contrite but surely he could afford to crack a grin now and then).

Mr Latimer establishes his manifold qualifications and his extensive experience. He has been selected as our expert witness because he measures up to Dolores Cabril and then some. Though not, I fear, in the personality stakes.

Now Mr Latimer winds him up and sets him off, asking him about his assessment of me.

‘Our mental health operates in similar ways to our physical health,’ Don Petty begins. ‘And the two are closely intertwined. The balance of health can be compromised by sudden attacks to the system such as bereavement, redundancy, the end of a relationship. These are the equivalent of the broken leg or the heart-attack. But mental health is also undermined where there are ongoing long-term factors – say, an unhappy marriage, a stressful job, a lack of self-esteem. In addition, there are the factors we inherit. Just as some cancers or allergic complaints run in families, so do mental health diseases.’

‘And h-how does this relate to Deborah’s situation?’ Mr Latimer asks, with a flourish of his arm in my direction.

‘Inheritance first. Deborah’s parents both suffered from depression.’

I am surprised to consider my mother in this light. But it makes perfect sense. Her cold reserve, her distraction, her continuing failure to engage with me, with the world, her disaffection: these could all be symptoms of depression. Had she ever sought help herself? Gone to the doctor about her nerves, exhausted by the heavy cloak of misery she carted about? Should I have seen this? Understood it, done something about it? Always too lost in my own disappointment with her, I’d not had the objectivity to do so. How different things might have been. Perhaps I could have forgiven her, absolved myself. But the past is done. The tide went out, leaving us marooned on opposite sides of the same island. Cast away.

‘Her father was also an alcoholic,’ Don Petty carries on. ‘This alone predisposes Deborah to depression. On top of that, the death of her father at a formative age would have been a huge shock to the system. The loss of a parent in childhood remains the single most influential factor in the development of mental illness.’

Adam and Sophie are teenagers: when does childhood end? Will Neil’s death add to the risk for them? Does the cruel snare of depression lie in wait for Sophie? And Adam, who has been amazing in these past months, functioning better than I could ever have hoped: as time passes, will Neil’s death magnify his problems?

‘The loss of her mother and Neil’s diagnosis were two other significant attacks on Deborah’s mental health,’ says Don Petty.

‘But her mother died many years ago,’ Mr Latimer points out – best to get that cleared up before Miss Webber gets her claws out.

‘True,’ says Mr Petty. ‘However, Deborah’s relationship with her mother was a troubled one. Difficulties within it were neither addressed nor resolved and this can arrest the grieving process and store up problems that later emerge at stressful times.’

‘It was then, after her mother died, that Deborah sought medical help for her illness?’ Mr Latimer asks.

‘That’s correct. And her GP was concerned enough to treat her for clinical depression by prescribing anti-depressants. So we have a prior incident of serious mental illness. Now, more recently, the constant strain of caring for her terminally ill partner while also coping with her son’s mental illness, and dealing with her own insomnia and panic attacks, caused Deborah to become seriously ill.’

‘Ill enough to lose the ability to distinguish between right and wrong?’

‘Yes,’ confirms Don Petty. It’s a bald reply and I expect him to elaborate but he just stares impassively at Mr Latimer.

‘The insomnia,’ Mr Latimer asks, ‘how would that affect Deborah’s state of mind?’

‘Insomnia has a direct adverse impact on the amount of stress we experience, and how we cope with that stress. It also makes it hard for people to concentrate, to think rationally. In more severe cases insomnia can lead to delusions and other severe mental states. We now know insomnia can increase the risk of depression and contribute to recurrent depression.’

‘And the panic attacks?’

‘These episodes are extremely frightening for anybody: palpitations of the heart, inability to breathe, feelings of terror, of losing control. They are disturbing, debilitating and would have increased her sense of being out of control.’

Mr Latimer nods thoughtfully, ‘So, given her history of depression and insomnia and the other stresses in the family, when Neil repeatedly asked Deborah to help him die, her mental state meant that she was not able to make a sound judgement?’

‘Not in the end. Though she did refuse him twice, which indicates that it was the mounting pressure and the deterioration of her own mental health that destroyed her ability to make a reasoned decision.’

‘And her actions afterwards,’ asks Mr Latimer, ‘her attempts to conceal the facts of the situation?’

‘Deborah would be the first to admit that she was horrified, sickened by the reality of Neil’s death. The nightmare had come true for her. Grief-stricken and depressed, she did all she could to minimize the damage to her family. She knew that she had done wrong and was desperate to protect her children.’

‘Was Deborah Shelley mad when she helped Neil die?’

‘Mad isn’t a word I would use but the balance of her mind was disturbed to such an extent that she could not be held responsible for her actions.’

Cross-examining, Miss Webber picks away at him like some starving crow. She starts by trying to get Don Petty to admit that my actions before, during and after Neil’s death would equally well fit the profile of a sane woman who simply believed in her husband’s right to die, and who, however reluctantly, went along with it.

He’s having none of it. ‘In such cases,’ he expounds, ‘the person responsible makes no attempt to hide the matter but freely discloses their involvement to the family and to the authorities. They are morally secure and prepared to risk prison for their convictions.’

She comes at him from another angle. ‘Deborah Shelley agreed to her husband’s request on Friday, the third of April, is that your understanding?’

‘Yes.’

‘And on the fifteenth of June she went though with it: administering a massive dose of morphine and then smothering Neil Draper with a plastic bag?’

Again and again the plastic bag is raised, flagged up and waved in the jury’s faces. An obscene image. Each time, I see Neil’s face darkening, feel that sickening panic, the terror in my bowels, in my heart.

‘Ten weeks separate those dates,’ she presses on, ‘during which time Ms Shelley continued to care for her children, run a household, attend meetings with her clients. Are you seriously suggesting that Deborah Shelley was mentally incompetent for ten weeks and yet no one noticed?’ Miss Webber’s voice rises with incredulity.