Rain lashes against the windscreen as we head up the M40 to Oxford. Alex is driving and Ben is strapped into his seat in the back. He loves the rain, and as I glance back over my shoulder I can see that he is being lulled into a meditative state by the rhythm of the windscreen wipers and the swishing of the tyres against the wet surface of the road. Alex, on the other hand, is locked in concentration, as the stretch of motorway ahead becomes less visible, the traffic slows and brake lights start to appear.
The satnav tells Alex to keep right.
‘I am not keeping right, lady,’ he says. ‘I’m staying right where I am.’
‘Junction seven,’ I tell him, as we pass. ‘The A329 to Thame. Next junction. Not far now.’
Half a mile later, Alex indicates left. Junction eight looms up ahead and we turn off onto the A40.
‘I really appreciate this,’ I say. ‘It’s not much of a way to spend a Saturday, is it?’
‘It will be.’ Alex glances at me. ‘This rain won’t last. And once we’ve been to the hospital, we can do something nice. It’s ages since I’ve been to Oxford.’
‘Thank you.’ I put my hand on his thigh. He takes his left hand off the wheel and covers mine. ‘I didn’t want to leave this to Matt,’ I add. ‘He might not even bother. I really want to talk to this nurse today.’ I give him a wry smile. ‘Before she gets away again.’
Alex gives my hand a squeeze. ‘That’s OK. I understand.’
The rain does, in fact, ease and it’s now only pattering gently against the roof as we pass the sign that welcomes us to Oxford. We sail through the traffic lights next to the Park & Ride and slow down as we enter a residential area that fringes the outskirts of the city. The satnav tells us that, at the roundabout, we should go straight on.
‘I believe this is Headington,’ says Alex, as we pause at the next set of traffic lights. ‘This is where the hospital is.’
We drive through a busy built-up area full of shops and traffic and then turn right into a residential street. The hospital grounds are behind a wall at the bottom of the road on the left. Alex swings the car through an opening into a car park.
‘I don’t think you can drive any further,’ I tell him. I point across a grassed area in the direction of the hospital building. ‘It looks as though the main car park is over there.’
‘That’s OK. You jump out here if you like and walk across. You’re going to be a while and it might work best for my buddy here if I drive round the block a few times and meet you round the other side.’
I look at him gratefully, before glancing round at Ben in the back. He seems happy enough. I’m leaving Alex a case full of nursery rhyme CDs and two portable DVD players, the second for when the first one runs out of charge. But Ben looks really dreamy and settled right now and Alex is right that driving him around for a while before he stops is likely to prove a good initial distraction. A bit of driving, a bit of Teletubbies, a CD. He should be OK for the hour, or more, that this might take. I don’t know what I’d have done without Alex today.
We say goodbye and I zip up my waterproof coat and step out of the warm car into the cold wetness of the light rain. I pull my hood up and cross the grassed area towards the hospital and cut through the women’s centre and maternity unit. I’m able to find a way through to the main hospital and then on through corridor after corridor to the children’s centre, where the PICU is to be found.
I look at the clock on my phone. It’s ten past one. I desperately hope Mary’s there. I’ve checked her shifts with the ward matron, as per Mark Greenhalgh’s suggestion, and I’ve been told that she’s on an ‘early long’ – from eight this morning until eight o’clock this evening – and that she usually takes a break around now. I hope that I’ve timed it right. I’ve actually no idea whether I’m going to have to wait around to see her, but I figure that if she’s too busy I can try and pin her down on a time when I could come back. I think of Alex and Ben, waiting for me in the car, and silently pledge that I won’t do this to them again.
As I approach the PICU ward, the door opens and a senior-looking staff nurse comes out. I seize my opportunity.
‘Excuse me,’ I ask her. ‘I’m here to see Mary Ngombe. Is she on the ward?’
‘Mary?’ The nurse shakes her head. ‘Mary’s at lunch. Can I help?’
‘Maybe. Would you happen to know where she’s gone?’
‘To the canteen, I imagine. It’s through there.’ She points in the direction I’ve just come. ‘It’s on the third floor in the main building. Just follow the signs.’
‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’
I hurry back through the corridors to the main building and run up the stairs, rather than taking the lift. As I open the door to the third floor, I can smell food and I find the canteen immediately on my right.
It’s full of people: nurses, doctors, patients and visitors. I scan the room for an African face, but there are several. One by one, I approach them, asking, ‘Are you Mary, by any chance?’ but none of them are.
I stand near to the tills and scan the room once more, before going up to the tea and coffee aisle and ordering a drink. I figure I might as well wait here for a minute, just in case she’s stopped off somewhere on the way.
As I’m paying for my coffee, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I spin round to see a plump, black nurse, who appears to be in her late twenties. Her hair is pulled back against her scalp into tight, coiled braids which frame her wide, dimpled face.
‘I hear you are looking for me,’ says Mary Ngombe.
‘Yes. Yes, I am,’ I stutter, in relief.
‘You are the solicitor?’
‘That’s right. Can I get you a drink?’
She shakes her head and holds up a bottle of something lime green. ‘I have my Mountain Dew.’
‘OK. Great. Do you mind if we have a chat, then?’
Mary waves at a table nearby, then turns on her heel. I pick up my coffee and follow her. She pulls out a chair and sits down. I take a seat opposite her and watch as she unwraps a cheese sandwich from its triangle-shaped plastic carton and takes a bite.
‘So what is it that you want to talk about?’ she asks.
‘I want to ask you about the incident that happened back on the twenty-fifth of July this year, when you were at Southwark St Martin’s. The little boy who you were looking after – Finn Stephens – the one who had his dialysis line removed...’
‘It was a very bad thing,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Very bad indeed.’
‘Yes,’ I agree.
‘I was very sad to leave him.’ She lowers her head for a moment and then looks up again. ‘Do you know how he is?’
‘He’s on the mend.’ I smile. ‘He’s turned a corner. I don’t expect he’ll be leaving hospital any time soon, but... he’s much better than he was.’
Mary beams. ‘I am very pleased to hear that.’
‘Me too,’ I say. ‘But his mother is on trial for trying to harm him. You gave a statement to the police...’
Mary frowns. ‘I can’t tell those policemen anything more, you know? I have already said what happened, and that’ – she gives a decisive nod of the head – ‘is what happened.’
I nod. Her voice is deep and throaty, her intonation heavily Ghanaian. I’m finding that I have to listen intently as she speaks.
‘All the same, if I could just clarify one or two things... would that be OK?’ I ask her.
She shrugs. ‘I don’t mind if you want to do that.’
‘Thank you, Mary.’ I pull my iPad out of my bag. ‘Do you mind if I take notes while we talk?’
Mary takes another bite of her sandwich and shakes her head.
I scroll up on my iPad to her statement. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘So you said you were doing late shifts that week. So that would have been two o’clock until ten. Is that right?’
‘It’s nine thirty really. But we would never leave until ten. Sometimes long after that.’
‘OK. You say you looked after the baby, Finn, quite closely that week?’
‘I was his nurse. That is right.’
‘And it was you who took him over to Peregrine Ward for the treatment to his kidneys.’
‘Yes. I was the one who did the handover. I checked his fluids, his cannula, to make sure that everything was still in place, and I talked to the ward nurse about his medications.’
‘And which nurse was that?’
‘You know, I am not very good with names. I think this nurse was called Tracey.’
‘Could it have been Stacey? Stacey Bennett?’
‘It might have been.’
‘OK. So that was around six fifteen?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And then?’
‘I went back to take his medications.’
‘What time was that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, in your statement, you said that it was around nine o’clock.’
‘OK, so I would say that it must have been around nine o’clock.’ Mary looks hard at me across the table, as though she thinks I might be a little bit dim.
‘And which nurses did you see, at that time?’
‘I am afraid I cannot remember that now.’
‘OK. So did anyone else come to visit Finn while you were there?’
‘Such as who?’
‘Doctors?’
‘I do not think so. Just Tracey.’
‘Stacey?’
‘Stacey. And then the baby’s mother.’
‘Ellie?’ I say. ‘You saw Ellie?’
‘Yes. I came onto the ward and saw her. She had picked the baby up from the cot. She was holding him.’
‘And what time was this exactly?’
‘I can’t recall, exactly. It would have been around nine or ten o’clock.’
I look up, sharply. ‘Nine or ten? So was that... the last time you went to check on Finn, before you went off shift? Or the time before?’
‘I think it was the last time.’
‘But you’re not sure?’
Mary is non-committal. ‘It was whatever time I told the police.’
I swallow down my instinct to grasp at her previous concession to uncertainty and pin her down on it. I’m not here to cross-examine her; I don’t want to alienate her. I decide to move on.
‘So, you went off shift at ten?’
Mary unscrews the cap of her bottle of pop and takes a sip. ‘I believe it was then.’
‘So, at some point between nine and... let’s say ten fifteen, when you returned to Peregrine Ward, you saw Ellie – the baby’s mother – standing at Finn’s bedside. And she was holding the baby.’
‘Yes.’
‘How close to her were you?’
‘I was just a few feet away, just outside the door. I saw her clearly.’
‘Did she see you?’
‘No. I decided not to go onto the ward.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because she was there, with the baby. She was not someone I wanted to talk to.’
‘Why not?’
Mary shrugs but doesn’t reply.
‘And are you one hundred per cent sure that it was the baby’s mother?’ I ask her.
‘Of course I am. I knew who she was. I saw her every day.’
I look up. ‘Every day? You saw her every day?’
‘Every day. She was there all day, every day. She was always getting under my feet.’
‘You mean on the PICU ward?’
‘Ye-e-e-s.’
‘You saw here there on the PICU ward. Every day? When you were on the late shift?’
‘Ye-e-e-s.’ Mary’s eyes tell me that she thinks I really might be a little bit slow.
I think carefully for a moment. How can this be, when Liberty worked the same shift as Mary all week and had no idea who Ellie was?
‘Are you sure we’ve got the same person here?’ I ask. ‘Are you sure you’re talking about Ellie, the baby’s mother?’
‘You think I don’t know who the baby’s mother is?’ Mary looks exasperated. ‘She’s the only mother I know who is too posh to change her own baby’s nappy.’
I stare at her for a moment. ‘Mary! That’s not Ellie,’ I exclaim. ‘That’s not the baby’s mother. That’s his grandmother, Lady Barrington-Brown.’
‘She told me her name was Ellie,’ Mary insists, sulkily.
I glance back down at her statement. ‘But you describe her as a teenager, aged fifteen or sixteen?’
Mary throws her head back and explodes with laughter. I wait patiently for her to stop laughing. ‘I said that she was fif-tee or six-tee,’ she enunciates. ‘She was a lady, not a girl.’ She explodes into laughter again.
‘But, Mary, you said she was the baby’s mother!’
‘No, she told me she was the baby’s mother,’ Mary insists.
‘But, Mary!’ I exclaim again. ‘How can a woman in her fifties or sixties be the mother of a one-year-old child?’
Mary shrugs. ‘It happens.’
‘Not very often!’ I protest.
‘In Ghana – no,’ Mary says, sagely. ‘The women in Ghana have their babies when they are young and healthy. Women here – they wait until they are old. It is not good for the baby.’ She shakes her head sorrowfully.
‘But you signed a statement to say that the woman was “fifteen or sixteen”,’ I challenge her.
Mary looks at me for a moment. ‘The policeman, he read it back to me,’ she says, simply. ‘Then he asked me to sign it. I just did as I was asked.’
I stare at her with my mouth open for a long moment, unable to comprehend that such a monumental mistake could have happened, but knowing at the same time that it so easily could. Some of my clients don’t read and write so well, and it’s embarrassing for them to admit it; and besides, my handwriting’s not the best. I almost always just read their statements back to them, before asking them to sign on the dotted line.
‘But the CCTV operators and the night-shift staff on Peregrine ward all say that no members of the public other than Ellie went in or out.’ I’m thinking out loud. I know that this is not a question for Mary to answer.
‘I don’t know about that,’ says Mary. ‘But I know what I saw.’
I suddenly remember something. I scroll down through my emails until I find what I’m looking for: a photograph attached to Ellie’s résumé, sent to me by the escort agency along with a letter covering some of the dates she’d worked towards the end of last year.
I open up the résumé and scroll up so that the name of the agency is hidden and only Ellie’s head and shoulders appear. I turn my iPad around so that Mary can see it. ‘Do you know her? Have you ever seen her?’ I ask.
Mary shakes her head. ‘No. I have never seen this lady before. I would have remembered. She is a very pretty girl.’
‘She is,’ I agree, trying to contain my desire to jump up and fling my arms around Mary’s neck. Instead I look at her intently. ‘Mary, this is Finn’s mother. Not the other lady. This is the young woman who is accused of trying to kill her baby. Her name is Ellie.’
Mary looks surprised. ‘Her name is Ellie, too?’
I nod, slowly, suddenly conscious that I have no idea what Lady Barrington-Brown’s Christian name is. I close Ellie’s résumé and quickly tap on the electronic file that contains the statements in Ellie’s case and scroll through them. I find the family tree prepared by the social worker, and as soon as I see it on the page, I remember having read it previously. I want to kick myself. ‘Eleanor,’ I say out loud. ‘Her name is Eleanor.’
‘She said it was Ellie.’ Mary sticks to her guns.
‘Sure. Sure she did.’ I want to laugh out loud. Why on earth didn’t I notice this before? ‘So, Mary.’ I lean forward. ‘If I were to let you get on with your work right now and go away and put what you’ve told me into a handwritten statement, would you sign it?’
‘I would have to read it first,’ says Mary, wisely.
‘Of course. And then, would you come to court to give evidence?’
Mary looks doubtful. ‘I don’t know. When would that be?’
‘February,’ I tell her. ‘The beginning of February.’
Mary shakes her head. ‘I am sorry. I am going back to Ghana for Christmas.’
My heart sinks. ‘You’re not coming back?’
‘Not this time. I have a fiancé back home. We are getting married on Christmas Day.’
I try my best to hide my disappointment as I observe Mary’s evident joy. She smiles broadly, pretty dimples appearing in her cheeks.
‘Congratulations,’ I tell her. ‘Well, you know what, Mary? I hope your wedding day is wonderful. At least, if you’re willing to sign a statement about all of this, it will really help Ellie’s defence.’
‘OK,’ Mary agrees. ‘So, is that it? Can I go now? I need to get back to work.’
‘One more thing. When you went onto Peregrine Ward, did you notice a camp bed on the floor? With anyone sleeping in it?’
Mary looks thoughtful for a moment. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I do not recall seeing that at all.’
I start to pack up my things. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much for your help, Mary. I really appreciate your time.’
Mary pushes her chair back and gets up. I follow her out of the canteen. My mind is racing. What does this mean for Ellie’s defence? Lady Barrington-Brown... Eleanor Barrington-Brown – not Ellie – was, in fact, the last person to be seen holding the baby.
In itself, it doesn’t mean a whole lot, I know. It doesn’t mean that they’ll drop the case against Ellie. They’ve still got the injuries and the sodium poisoning. And Ellie, not Eleanor, was there when Finn was found bleeding to death. The prosecution will no doubt argue that it’s immaterial. The police have never spoken to Eleanor; I don’t suppose anyone has directly asked her the question: did she go onto Peregrine Ward after Finn was moved from the PICU, and did she pick him up? Eleanor might, in fact, openly accept that she’d been onto the renal unit to see Finn before she left the hospital that evening, possibly before Ellie even arrived. If Mary didn’t see the camp bed, then it probably wasn’t there and neither was Ellie. Mary was, after all, somewhat unsure of her times.
But what this does mean is that the case against Ellie is weakened significantly. This is going to be a new piece of evidence that will be impossible for the judge to ignore: nobody can testify to the fact that Ellie herself picked up the baby shortly before his tube was pulled out. Also, if the CCTV operators and ward staff missed Eleanor going onto the ward, then who else did they miss? Reasonable doubt, that’s all we need. In the meantime, we’ll make our own application to the judge to have Mary’s latest statement read in court. He can hardly refuse it, can he? With this new evidence before them, I seriously wonder if a jury would convict.
I say goodbye to Mary outside the canteen as she stops to wait for the lift. There are a number of other people waiting: doctors, patients, porters, and I decide to take the stairs. I plan to run down, check on Alex and Ben, write up Mary’s statement and get right back up to see her again as quickly as I can.
The lift pings and the doors to the lift open at the same time as my phone whistles repeatedly and a flurry of text messages arrives. Inside the canteen, I must have been out of range for a phone signal. I curse myself; I never realise when I’m out of range until it’s too late.
Mary steps away from me towards the lift.
‘Thank you so much,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll come back and find you on the ward before eight. Is that OK?’
She replies, obligingly, ‘That will be OK.’
I hurry down the stairs, checking my messages and trying not to trip as I go.
The messages are all from Alex. Oh no, I tell myself. This is going to be a disaster, I know it. Ben’s bored, or unhappy and he’s having a meltdown. Ben’s thrown up again. Alex can’t cope. Immediately, I visualise the scene: Alex crouching down and leaning through the back door of the car, coaxing Ben as he wails and bites himself, and kicks his feet against the seat. Or worse: Alex, sitting in the front seat of the car with his hands over his ears, stressed to the hilt and at a loss as to what to do, while Ben screams alone in the back.
This is all my fault. I’ve been too long. I have got some serious apologising to do.
But then I read the texts from Alex, and I realise that it’s far, far worse than that.