Hope to Die

Camilla scores, her team and coaches gather round her, hugging her and celebrating. Freeze frame and gradual close-up.

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE

They called her a chameleon girl, little knowing how horribly apt that nickname would prove to be. Camilla Rowan turned out to be more of a chameleon than anyone around her could have possibly suspected. Because the girl at the centre of this picture is nine months pregnant. She has had no scans, seen no midwife, not even visited her own GP. But in less than 48 hours she will go into labour and present herself at the maternity suite of Birmingham and Solihull General Hospital, where she will have a healthy baby boy in the early hours of the following morning.

Later that same day, at around three o’clock in the afternoon, and without the knowledge of medical staff, she will leave the hospital, driving the car her parents bought her for her 17th birthday, and return home to Shiphampton, where she will arrive, alone, at just gone six o’clock, in plenty of time to attend a Christmas party at the local Rotary Club that evening. Indeed, it seems likely that her early departure from the hospital was dictated by the need to make sure she was at that party, so as to avoid raising suspicions with her parents.

MONTAGE: shots of Camilla at the party, dancing with her friends, smiling, drinking champagne, standing next to her father and his friends. She’s wearing a close-fitting sleeveless pale-blue dress draped with tinsel and a paper hat out of a cracker. There is nothing about her appearance that suggests she has just given birth.

She looks completely carefree, doesn’t she? And yet at some point that afternoon, Camilla Rowan did something to her newborn baby. If you believe the police, she killed that child and disposed of its body; if you believe Camilla, she handed it over to its biological father, a man no one has ever been able to identify with any degree of certainty.

What we do know, is that whatever happened to that baby happened very quickly. The drive from Birmingham to Shiphampton would have taken at least an hour and a half, leaving barely half an hour for the handover – or murder – to take place.

So did Camilla Rowan really give the baby to its father? Most young men would run a mile at the prospect of raising a baby single-handed. So it’s hard to believe, but not – of course – impossible. But if that’s really what happened, why has he not come forward? Why has he not produced the child and saved Camilla from a life sentence?

Or did Camilla kill her baby that day, as the police and Crown Prosecution Service still contend? It might be worth noting in this context that a week after these pictures were taken Camilla Rowan had a tattoo done on her left shoulder. It said ‘Dolce liberta’, which is Italian for ‘Sweet freedom’. Is that a clue? Did she decide that, at 17, she just wasn’t ready to be a mother? Anyone could understand that, and most people would sympathise. Or was she terrified of having to tell her parents? Again, no one would blame her for that, especially given what we know of the family dynamic. But if that’s what happened, why didn’t she just give the child up for adoption? After all, she must have realised that was an option. Indeed, we know for a fact that she knew all about it.

Because she’d already done it once before.

- freeze frame -

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I’ve just been watching Infamous – can’t believe I never saw it when it first came out. Is it true they still haven’t found the body?

submitted 8 days ago by HickoryDickory77

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Yeah great series isn’t it? And no – the baby’s never been found. At least it hadn’t the last time I looked at any of the boards and in any case something like that would deffo have made the papers

submitted 6 days ago by Danny929292

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The Rowans were lucky there was no Twitter back then. I mean, the bloody shit they’d have got

submitted 5 days ago by santaclaws77

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They get enough now – try searching #MillyLiar and see what spews out. Just disgusting. Not that I imagine the family look at that garbage. I certainly wouldn’t. It’s all just trolls churning out abuse when they know sod all about any of it. Let’s face it, *all* families have secrets, and *everybody* lies.

submitted 4 days ago by Ifyouvenothingnicetosayzipit

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You think the parents were in on it? They helped her cover it up?

submitted 3 days ago by cabaretrenee008

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