I Looked Away, page 29
Amy’s beautiful dark hair curls softly on her shoulders. She’s wearing a cream jacket. The sight triggers a memory of a shopping trip. Hadn’t we bought it together? Before Carole had come into our lives and ruined everything?
‘How could you, Mum?’ she starts.
‘I’m sorry,’ I choke. ‘Forgive me.’
My daughter bursts into tears. Her grief is like a knife in my chest. I move forward to hug her but she pushes me away. Every mother wants to comfort her child, no matter how old. But I have lost the right to do so.
I glance around. This isn’t a private place. We’re not the only ones who are having an emotional meeting.
‘I miss Dad so much,’ weeps my daughter.
‘So do I –’
‘Don’t you dare say that!’ Amy hammers on the table between us with her fist. ‘You killed him. Josh could have died too, from your neglect. And it was all your fault.’
Don’t I know that already? Haven’t I been telling myself that every second of every minute of every hour since Luke told me the truth. Ever since my old music box triggered all those buried memories.
‘You’ve no idea what it’s been like for us!’ yells Amy. ‘How could you just have taken off and left us for four and a half months?’
The tears have stopped now. In their place is naked anger on my daughter’s face. ‘We didn’t know if you were alive or dead – and to be honest, there were times when I wished you had vanished for good. Don’t you feel at all guilty?’
‘Yes. Of course I do.’ I put my head in my hands.
‘We had to tell Josh that his grandfather was dead.’
A bolt of fear shoots through me. ‘Did you say that …’
I can’t bring myself to finish my sentence but she knows what I mean.
Amy looks at me with distaste in her eyes. ‘No. I didn’t reveal that his grandmother was a murderer.’
‘Thank you,’ I weep.
‘Don’t. I did it for him. Not you.’
She stands up. ‘I made a mistake coming here. Just seeing your face makes me sick. You don’t deserve to be a mother. I’m going.’
Frankly, I don’t blame her. I wish I could leave me too. Just as they say I did before.
2.15 p.m., 17 August 1984
Michael’s voice rings out not far from us. ‘Ellie? Where are you? I give up.’
Peter draws away from me. ‘Perhaps you had better go and find him.’
‘No,’ I say, frantically, pulling him towards me. ‘He’ll be all right.’
‘Ellie!’ I vaguely hear my brother’s voice again. ‘I’m scared now.’
But I can’t stop.
I don’t know how long we carry on for. When we eventually draw apart, my mouth is deliciously sore and bruised. My head is spinning with happiness.
‘I love you, Ellie,’ Peter says.
My heart leaps. I hadn’t been expecting this! But it seems only polite to say the same thing back. ‘I love you too,’ I gasp.
He bends down and picks a forget-me-not that’s growing in the copse. Then he gives it to me. I clutch it to my chest, remembering how it had been another of my mother’s favourite wildflowers.
‘I’ll keep this for ever,’ I murmur. ‘Thank you.’
And then I remember. Michael.
‘Coming to find you!’ I call out.
Silence.
‘He was looking for us earlier on,’ I say, beginning to panic. ‘He’d given up hiding because we were so long.’
‘Maybe he’s gone back to it,’ Peter says. ‘How about the woodshed? I suggested that as a good spot early on.’
But he isn’t there.
He’s not in the vegetable garden either. Or the rose garden. Or behind any of the trees.
A cold feeling clutches my chest. ‘Michael!’ I scream out. ‘This isn’t funny. Where are you?’
58
It’s amazing what our brains can do, when pushed to the limit. My psychologist says she thinks I have ‘Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with Dissociative Fugue and Anxiety’. Triggered, she thinks, by the sight of my grandson’s red T-shirt in the pond. But the way I think about it is that my brain was so scared that it had to hide from itself.
All I can say is that I can’t pinpoint any particular time when I stopped being Ellie and became Jo. Now I don’t even remember my Jo days at all. But CCTV clearly shows me getting on a coach in Oxford and getting off at Bristol. Other cameras in different places show me walking through an area of the city known as Stokes Croft. I have a shaved head and wear scruffy clothes. I am well and truly in another woman’s skin.
They say I failed to recognize my own children after my arrest. How awful is that?
It was seeing Luke that helped to bring it back. Luke, with his strong resemblance to Michael. Luke, who had given me back the music box with all its meanings over the years. Sound, they explain, is a strong memory trigger. I suppose my brain was finally ready to face what I’d done.
‘Are you one of those schizos?’ my cellmate keeps asking.
I try to tell her it’s not as simple as that but she doesn’t get it. Once the women in prison found out who I was, they began calling me the ‘posh killer’. I don’t want to think about the ‘killer’ bit. I still can’t believe it. But the DNA evidence leaves no room for doubt, according to Barbara, the barrister Luke has hired to handle my case. Equally damning is the evidence from the security cameras Roger had had installed in the house after a spate of burglaries. At my insistence, ironically. The tape clearly shows me strangling my husband with a phone cable. I refused to believe it until they allowed me to watch. I sat, my hands over my mouth, shocked beyond words. Was that really me? How could I have done something so wicked?
But the camera doesn’t lie. The date for the trial keeps moving. Apparently there’s a backlog to get through. I am told to prepare for what might be a ‘long wait’.
‘The important thing, Ellie,’ Barbara tells me, ‘is that you tell the truth. The jury can usually tell when someone’s genuine.’ But what is the truth, if I can’t remember it?
The structure of my days in prison provides a certain comfort through all this. In a way, it reminds me of Highbridge. We have ‘Education’ in the morning, but this is mainly aimed at ‘residents’ (as we’re known) who haven’t had much in the way of schooling for one reason or another. I find myself becoming more popular when one of the women in my wing discovers I have a degree. ‘Can you help me with my English homework?’ she asks during free time after tea.
Another woman requests advice on her Open University essay. I am happy to lend a hand. It makes me feel useful and it also means some of the women are nicer to me. Others give me a wide berth, scuttling past as if I might hurt them too. Some are openly aggressive. ‘I don’t talk to murderers,’ spits one when she passes me in the corridor. Then there are my silent enemies. The other day, after our weekly gym session, I went to change and found faeces in my shoe. The officer in charge told me to ‘clean it out and put it back on’.
At night, I toss and turn in my narrow bed, trying to get comfortable on my brick-hard pillow. I often hear women shouting and banging their doors, with officers warning them to ‘pipe down’. Sometimes I hear sobbing through the walls. Once, an alarm went off when a woman cut her wrists with a knife she’d stolen from the kitchen. I’m not sure what happened to her. No one tells you much in prison. Outside it’s summer. Then autumn.
I have been in prison, all told, for nine months now. Finally, the day of my hearing arrives. I am taken to the court in a van. The handcuffs rub against my wrists and weigh them down along with my fluttering heart. Two guards take me through the back entrance and into a court cell, where Barbara is waiting.
‘Just remember everything we’ve talked about,’ she tells me. She seems different. It’s not just her gown and wig. It’s that nervous edge to her voice.
To be honest, I’m not sure if I care one way or another. Winning the trial won’t bring my family back. The stark reality is that I am no longer Jo. I am Ellie Halls, the woman who murdered her husband.
The guards take me up a steep flight of steps into the court. I emerge into the middle like a matador in a bull ring except that I am the bull. I am in the dock. Only then do I allow myself to look around.
The court is packed. I can’t see my children. Then I remember what Barbara told me. Witnesses aren’t allowed to hear what goes on in court until they are called. But I can spot familiar faces in the public gallery above. There are friends from the tennis club, the book club and the homeless committee I once belonged to in Oxfordshire.
My fingers bite into my palm as I search for Carole with her long, glossy brunette hair and designer shades. I’d like to pin all the blame on her but, in truth, she was merely the final straw. Either way, she’s not here. I fancy I see Jo for a minute but perhaps that’s just my imagination. She’ll be long gone.
Now the judge has come in. The case is starting. The courtroom is rippling.
Barbara has explained that the prosecution will start by outlining its case against me.
I close my eyes, trying to shut out the details as accusing words ring through the court in an educated, pompous accent. ‘Elinor Halls – also known as Ellie – killed her husband in cold blood, as shown by her DNA on the cable wiring and tape from security cameras in her own home. Her family was devastated. Instead of staying to face justice, she went on the run for over four months, disguising herself as a homeless woman, until she was finally apprehended by Devon and Cornwall police …’
I close my eyes and try to blank out the rest. I’m vaguely aware of witnesses being called to testify against me and then Barbara cross-examining them. There is a policeman who declares that, despite a nationwide hunt for a homeless woman known as Jo, whom I’d claimed would corroborate my evidence, no one has been found. He says it in a way as if I have made it up. As though Jo doesn’t exist.
Then a voice announces something that chills me to the bone: ‘Call Carole Kent.’
I stiffen. So that’s why my husband’s mistress wasn’t in the public gallery. I want to be sick as she strides boldly to the witness box. Her long, slim legs in that beautifully cut lemon suit are not lost on the court. All eyes are on her.
After a few preliminary questions, the prosecution barrister gets down to it. ‘Did you have an affair with Roger Halls?’
You can almost feel the tension emanating from the jury and the gallery. My husband’s lover is looking right at me. My heart thuds so hard in my chest that I feel I am going to pass out.
‘I wouldn’t call it just an affair,’ Carole’s irritating little-girl voice sings out. ‘We were in love.’
I wince.
‘What did Mr Halls tell you about his wife?’
She gives a cold laugh. ‘Where do you want me to start? He said she was a liar and that she could twist words to make it look as if she was always in the right.’
‘It’s you who’s lying!’ I want to yell out. ‘It’s what he had done – not me.’
‘He also said that she was mentally unstable.’
‘In what way?’
Carole’s eyes now fill with tears. ‘He told me that when she was younger, a child had died in her care.’
The court gasped.
‘It gave her a nervous breakdown. Roger said that her behaviour could be totally unpredictable.’ She’s weeping loudly now. ‘And he was right. She killed him, didn’t she? If you ask me, that woman should be locked up for good. Otherwise she will kill someone else.’
The judge instructs Carole to be silent. Only facts are allowed. Not suppositions or emotional outbursts. Barbara told me this beforehand. But I can see from the jury’s faces that the damage has already been done. There are more witnesses but Carole’s evidence is surely enough to send me down.
At last it is time for Barbara to put my story forward. My barrister’s voice carries an air of quiet authority. Very different from the angry indignation of the prosecution. ‘Roger Halls is dead,’ she says. ‘No one can argue with that. But I intend to show that my client suffered from diminished responsibility at the time. I will now call the defendant, Ellie Halls, to give evidence.’
Blood thunders in my head as I am led to the witness stand. For a few moments I can’t hear or see what is around me. My palms sweat. My mouth is dry. I don’t know if I can do this.
Barbara and I have got to know each other pretty well during her visits to the remand centre. But how can anyone else understand me when I barely understand myself?
‘Ellie,’ she says in that soft voice of hers which can, as I know all too well, get tough when she chooses, ‘I’d like you to take the court back to the day of your husband’s death on 17 August 2019. Can you describe what happened in the events leading up to it?’
‘I was looking after my four-year-old grandson, Josh.’ My voice begins to shake again. ‘We were playing in the garden. It looked like my husband was talking to someone on the phone in his study. He seemed upset. I … I thought it might be Carole, because I’d bumped into her that morning in town and she’d claimed they were still seeing each other. She even knew about a playhouse which my husband had bought our grandson. Roger and I had an argument. Then I realized that I’d taken my eye off Josh.’
My knees begin to judder. ‘I ran round the garden looking for him. That’s when I saw that part of the fence between us and our neighbour had been broken. I squeezed through the gap and saw …’
I clutch the rail in front of me.
‘… I saw a pond. They’d just put it in. My grandson’s red T-shirt was floating on the water.’ I feel my voice rising in hysteria. ‘I thought he’d died … It took me back to …’
‘To what, Mrs Halls?’
My voice cries out. ‘Please, I can’t.’
‘Very well. I respect the fact that you are still in a fragile state. We will return to this later. Can you tell the court what you did next?’
I’ve been through this already with both Barbara and the therapist in prison. But now I baulk, aware that all eyes are on me. I don’t want to speak. If I do, it will become real.
‘Mrs Halls. Please answer the question. The court needs to know the truth.’ Barbara is sounding tough on purpose. She warned me of this in advance. She has to pre-empt the scepticism of the prosecution.
I try to compose myself. ‘I … I raced to the house to tell Roger. Then I saw he was still on the phone. He was walking up and down, arguing with someone. Pleading.’
I can barely breathe.
‘My gut instinct told me he was still talking to Carole, though I couldn’t hear the actual words. He hadn’t even come out to look for Josh. He …’
I take a deep breath. Barbara gives me a gentle nod as though to give me strength.
‘I pulled open the doors and screamed at him – that he’d killed our grandson by making me take my eyes off him.’
I stop. My throat is sore. I can’t breathe.
‘And then what happened?’
‘He pushed me away as if the person he was speaking to was far more important. I fell against a table and broke a tooth. It caused me problems later on and had to be taken out.’
I stop for a minute, running my tongue round the gap, which is still there.
‘I can only remember some bits after that. I remember his – Roger’s – face all red and angry-looking.’
I don’t tell them that the face I really saw was my father’s after the accident.
‘I don’t remember running away. Or talking to Jo, like the witnesses said I did, or her giving me her clothes.’
‘How did you pay for your bus ticket?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t remember any of it.’ My voice rises into the air with anguish. ‘I wish I did.’
Then I crumple onto the ground. Am I going mad? It wouldn’t be the first time …
A recess is called so I can ‘compose’ myself. I sip some water. Barbara tells me I am ‘doing well’. Then it is time for me to be cross-examined. The barrister on the other side clearly doesn’t believe a word of what I’ve been saying. ‘Forgive me, but this complex medical diagnosis does seem rather convenient.’
She declares this in a way that makes it sound like she is pointing out an obvious fact. ‘Wouldn’t we all like to be someone else if we have done something we shouldn’t have?’
Someone in the jury snorts, as if in amusement.
‘Especially,’ she continues, ‘if that “mistake” is a crime.’ She pauses. Her face grim. ‘The crime of murder.’
Another jury member, a man with long sideburns, nods.
‘What evidence do you have to prove that you genuinely believed you were Jo, a homeless Big Issue seller, instead of trying to convince us that you suffer from various psychological conditions?’
Why is she asking me this when I’ve already explained? ‘As I said earlier, I don’t even remember being Jo.’ My hands twist themselves in nervousness. ‘But it’s true. You have my word.’
‘Your word,’ repeats the prosecutor. She faces the jury. ‘Mrs Halls – who has already admitted to killing her husband – wants us to take her word.’
There’s a nervous titter.
‘You also want us to take your word that you didn’t know Josh was still alive.’
‘Of course I didn’t!’ I cry out. ‘I genuinely thought he had drowned.’
The barrister glances at her notes. ‘Is it right that you were on the streets from August until the end of December last year?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘I see. You were arrested in Plymouth. How well do you know the city?’
‘I don’t. Not really. I mean, I do recall going on a family holiday to the south-west as a child, before my mother died.’
My eyes close briefly. CCTV cameras had apparently shown me arriving there on a coach. Was it possible that, deep down, I had held some kind of positive association with the place?
‘Despite what you’ve just said, the jury might find it hard to understand how you “became” Jo. Why her, in particular? Why not, say, a celebrity such as the Duchess of Sussex or Marilyn Monroe?’
