A Room Swept White (9 page)

21 July 1995

On the twenty-first of July, when the police came, I knew straight away that this time was different from all the other times. It was three weeks to the day since Rowan had died, and I’d become an expert at reading the detectives’ moods. I was usually able to tell from their faces whether the questioning on that particular day would be relentless or sympathetic. One detective who had always been kind to me was DS Giles Proust. He always looked uncomfortable when I was being interviewed and left most of the questions to his junior colleagues. On and on they would go: did I have a happy childhood? What was it like being the middle sibling? Did I ever feel jealous of my sisters? Am I close to my parents? Did I ever have babysitting jobs as a teenager? Did I love Morgan? Did I love Rowan? Did I welcome both pregnancies? I wanted to scream at them, ‘Of course I bloody well did, and if you can’t see that with your own eyes and ears then you don’t deserve the title of detective!’

I always had the impression that Giles Proust alone among the police didn’t merely believe that I was innocent of the murder of my babies, but
knew
it, in the way that I knew it and Paul knew it. He could see I was no baby-killer, and understood how much I’d loved my two precious boys. Now
here he was at my door again, with a woman I didn’t recognise, and I could see at once from his facial expression that this was going to be very bad. ‘Just tell me,’ I said, wanting to get it over with.

‘This is DC Ursula Shearer from Child Protection,’ said DS Proust. ‘I’m sorry, Helen. I’m here to arrest you for the murders of Morgan and Rowan Yardley. I don’t have any choice. I’m so sorry.’

His regret was absolutely genuine. I could see from his face that it was breaking him up to have to do this to me. At that moment, I think I hated his superior officers more for his sake than for my own. Hadn’t they listened to him, all those times he must have told them they were hounding a grief-stricken mother who’d done nothing wrong? I was as much a victim of my boys’ deaths as they were.

However terrible the moment of my arrest was for me, I can never think of it without also thinking of Giles Proust and how terrible it must have been for him. He must have felt as helpless as I did, powerless to make the people in charge see and hear the truth. Paul had urged me many times not to assume anybody official was on my side. He was scared I might be naïvely deluding myself, storing up more pain for the future. ‘However decent Proust seems, he’s a policeman, don’t forget,’ he would tell me. ‘The sympathy could be a tactic. We’ve got to assume they’re all against us.’

Although I didn’t agree with Paul, I could understand his attitude. For him it was a way of staying strong. At first he didn’t even trust our close families, our parents, brothers and sisters, to be fully on our side. ‘They say they’re sure you didn’t do it,’ he would say, ‘but how do we know they’re not just saying that because it’s what’s expected of them? What if
some of them have doubts?’ To this day I am convinced that none of my relatives or Paul’s ever thought I could be guilty. They had all seen me with Morgan and Rowan and seen my passionate love for them.

Paul would face no criminal charges, we were told, but he was allowed to come with me in the police car, which was a great comfort to me. He sat on one side of me, DS Proust sat on the other, and DC Shearer drove us to Spilling police station. I sobbed as I was forcibly taken away from my beloved house where I’d been so happy – first with Paul, then with Paul and Morgan, then again when Rowan came along. So many beautiful memories! How could they do this to me after what I’d suffered already? For a moment, I was consumed with hatred for everything and everyone. I had no use for a world that could inflict such terrible suffering. Then I felt an arm round my shoulder and DS Proust said, ‘Helen, listen to me. I know you didn’t kill Morgan or Rowan. Things are looking bleak for you now, but the truth will come out. If I can see the truth, others will too. Any fool can see you were a good, loving mother.’

DC Shearer muttered something sarcastic under her breath, from which I gathered that she disapproved of what DS Proust had said. Maybe she thought I was guilty, or that DS Proust had breached some sort of protocol by saying what he said to me, but I didn’t care. Paul was smiling. He finally recognised Giles Proust for the ally that he was. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It means everything to us to have your support. Doesn’t it, Helen?’

I nodded. DC Shearer made another snide remark under her breath. DS Proust could have left it at that, having made his point, but instead he said, ‘If this goes as far as a trial, which I
very much doubt it will, then I’ll be called as a witness. By the time I step down from the box, the jury will be as convinced as I am that you’re innocent.’

‘What the hell are you doing?’ DC Shearer snapped. Paul and I shrank down in our seats, taken aback by her harsh tone, but Giles Proust remained unfazed.

‘I’m doing the right thing,’ he said. ‘Somebody has to.’

I became aware that I had stopped crying. A wave of what can only be described as utmost peace washed over me, and I stopped worrying obsessively about what would happen to me. It was like magic: I was no longer afraid. Whether Giles Proust was right or wrong about my chances of standing trial or what a hypothetical jury would think, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that as I looked out of the window of the police car and watched the post-boxes and trees and shops whizzing by, I loved the world I had hated only a few moments earlier. I felt part of something good and whole and light, something that Paul and Giles Proust and Morgan and Rowan were also part of. It’s very hard to explain the feeling in words because it was so much stronger than words.

I didn’t know, as we drove to the police station that day, how bad things were going to get for me and Paul, how much more agonising suffering lay in store for us. But as fate went on to rain down blow after blow upon us, even when my spirits were at their very lowest and there seemed no hope of any respite, that peaceful sensation that came over me in the police car on the day of my arrest never left me, even though there were times when I had to struggle to find it inside myself. It’s the same positive energy that has spurred me on in the work I have done on behalf of other women in similar situations to mine, and that has been the driving force behind my
contribution to JIPAC. DS Proust taught me a valuable lesson that day: that you can always, and easily, give somebody the gift of hope and faith, even in the midst of despair.

12 September 1996

The contact centre was a horrible, soulless place, an ugly grey one-storey prefab that looked lost and forlorn in a vast, mostly empty car park. I hated it on sight. There weren’t enough windows, and those there were seemed too small. I said to Paul, ‘It looks like a building that’s keeping lots of unpleasant secrets.’ He knew exactly what I meant. I shuddered and said, ‘I can’t do it. I just can’t. I can’t go in there.’ He told me I had to, because Paige was inside.

I wanted to see her more than anything but I was scared of the joy I would feel as soon as we were together, because I knew it was something that the social workers could and would take away from me. If I came here for two hours every weekday, which was the deal Ned and Gillian had negotiated for me, that meant I would have to endure some Social Services flunky taking Paige away from me five times each week until my trial, and who knew what would happen after that? Even if I was acquitted, as Giles Proust kept reassuring me I would be, Paul and I still might not be allowed to keep Paige. Ned had explained to me about the difference between the burden of proof in a criminal case, where guilt must be proven beyond reasonable doubt, and the courts that steal children from their parents behind closed doors and under a veil of secrecy. In the family courts, all that needs to happen is for the judge to decide that the child is better off without his or her parents
on the balance of probabilities
, which
means nobody needs to prove anything. All it will take is for someone who doesn’t know me from Adam or Eve to decide I’m
probably
a murderer, and I’ll lose my daughter. ‘I’ve never heard of anything so cruel and unfair in my life,’ I told Ned. ‘To lose Paige would be unbearable, and what if I go to prison, and Paul loses both me
and
her?’ Ned looked me in the eye and said, ‘I can’t lie to you, Helen. That might happen.’

‘Take me home,’ I told Paul as we sat in the car park outside the contact centre. ‘I’ve already suffered three terrible losses and I can’t cope with any more.’ That was how I truly felt. Paige was alive and well, but I lost her when she was wrenched from my arms an hour after her birth to be taken into care. ‘I can’t lose my daughter all over again every day this week, and next week, and for God knows how long. I won’t let them do that to me, or to her.’ Up until this point I had been timid and cooperative, and it had got me nowhere. Let them see exactly what they’re doing, I thought: depriving a baby of her mother. Why should I turn up and make Social Services feel good about themselves for ‘letting’ me have contact with my own daughter? They were tearing apart what was left of my family and I wanted them to realise it.

The drive back to Bengeo Street was the most miserable journey of my life. Paul and I didn’t speak a single word to one another. At home we made a pot of hot, strong tea. ‘You should go back there,’ I told him. ‘You need to make sure that you get to keep Paige, no matter what happens to me. You’ll have to lie, but it’s a price worth paying.’ Paul asked me what I meant and I spelled it out for him. ‘You must pretend to doubt me. Act like you’re as worried as the social workers are about me being alone with Paige. Convince them that if they let you keep her, you’ll make sure she’s never alone with me.’

No words can express how much I hated saying this to Paul. He was my absolute rock and had stood by me unswervingly throughout my ordeal. His loyalty was the main thing sustaining me, yet here I was asking him to pretend to be a worse man than he truly was – a disloyal husband instead of a wonderful brave one. But I knew it was the right thing to do. The only thing that mattered now was stopping those child-snatcher social workers from giving our beloved Paige to another family.

When I lost first Morgan and then Rowan, I didn’t think anything worse could ever happen to me, but to lose Paige in this way would be worse, because it would be somebody’s fault. The injustice would destroy me, and I feared it might actually kill Paul, however melodramatic that sounds.

‘Please,’ I begged him. ‘Drive back there and see Paige. Ring them now and tell them you’re coming.’

‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I’m not lying to anyone and nor are you. That would make us as bad as them. We’ll fight evil with good and lies with truth and we’ll win. DS Proust says we’ll win and I believe him.’

‘Ned and Gillian say we might not,’ I reminded him, my eyes full of tears. ‘And even if I’m found not guilty in the criminal court, the family court’s a different matter.’

‘Shut up!’ Paul yelled. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ It was the first time since tragedy had struck our lives that he’d raised his voice to me, and I’m ashamed to say that I took the opportunity to give back as good as I got and vent some of the misery and despair that had built up inside me. The two of us were still screaming at each other ten minutes later when the doorbell rang.

I threw myself into Giles Proust’s arms, and must have absolutely terrified the poor man as I shrieked at him that
he had to help me make Paul see sense. ‘You’re the one who needs to see sense, Helen, and quickly,’ he said sternly. ‘Why aren’t you at the contact centre? You’re supposed to be there now, but I’ve just had a call saying you didn’t turn up.’ I did my best to explain my reasons to him. ‘Listen carefully, Helen,’ he said. ‘However hard it is, you’ve got to spend as much time as you can with Paige. Don’t miss a single visit, or they’ll use it against you. I understand what you’re scared of, but do you really want to turn your worst fears into reality by giving them ammunition? How do you think it looks if you don’t even bother to turn up for the few hours a week you’re allowed to spend with Paige?’

‘Please listen to him, Hel,’ said Paul quietly. ‘We’ve no way of knowing what’s going to happen, but at least this way we’ll know we did everything we could – we didn’t lie or give up the fight. In ten or twenty years’ time, whatever our circumstances at that point, we’ll be able to look back and be proud of ourselves.’

How could I resist the two of them once they’d joined forces? They were so wise and loyal and strong, and I felt unworthy, like a total coward and a failure.

Giles Proust drove Paul and me back to the contact centre. We’d missed most of our allotted time with Paige, but there was still half an hour left. The contact supervisor looked about twelve. I’ll never forget her name: Leah Gould. ‘Leah Ghoul, more like,’ I said to Paul later. She refused to wait in the corridor and watch us through the window, despite DS Proust almost going down on his knees and begging her to allow us that small degree of privacy. She insisted on staying with us in the horrid, small, too brightly painted room that reeked of the misery of countless families forcibly separated
by smiling, officially sanctioned torturers – at least that’s how it seemed to me at that moment.

When Leah Gould placed Paige gently in my arms, my misery was sent packing, if only temporarily. A tiny baby is such a joyful, hopeful bundle that it’s hard not to respond, and I was suffused with a rush of love for my beautiful daughter. Paul and I showered Paige with cuddles and kisses. The poor child’s face was sopping wet within a few minutes, we’d slobbered over her so much! ‘No one will take her away from us,’ I thought. ‘That would be too crazy, given how much we love her and how obvious that must be, even to someone as unemotional and blank-eyed as Leah Gould.’ At that moment, I firmly believed the powers-that-be would see sense and Paul, Paige and I would be allowed to have a future together.

I don’t really know what happened next but I know that it was one of the oddest moments of my life. Suddenly Leah Gould was standing in front of me, saying, ‘Helen, hand the baby to me. Please hand Paige to me. Now, please.’ I did as I was told, confused. Time couldn’t be up yet; we’d only been in the room a few minutes. I could see from the expressions on Paul and DS Proust’s faces that they were also mystified.