Hope to Die

It was in every respect a normal, straightforward delivery. The mother was obviously very young, but clearly fit and well and the baby was likewise completely healthy. We weren’t able to access other Trusts’ computer records at that time, and it being a weekend I wouldn’t have been able to contact her GP very easily either. But in any case there was no immediate need. The baby was doing well, and she said she was returning to her partner in Cambridge and would pick up with her GP and midwife as soon as she got home. I had no reason to doubt the truth of what she said, so I was quite happy to discharge them both on the Monday morning.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

Did you hear from her again?

ADRIAN MORRISON

No.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

What about the GP she listed on her admissions form?

ADRIAN MORRISON

I only discovered some months later that that practice did not exist.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

Was there anything else about the baby that, in the light of subsequent events, you now consider could be significant?

ADRIAN MORRISON

(hesitates)

Possibly. The child was clearly mixed race.

Cut to: RECONSTRUCTIONof young woman in hospital bed. Baby’s face now visible and clearly of mixed-race parentage.

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE

So much has changed since the turn of the century that it’s hard to remember that having a baby outside wedlock was social suicide in some circles, or that a mixed-race child could be something to be ashamed of. Times have changed, and decidedly for the better. But back in the nineties, attitudes weren’t always so enlightened, and especially not in wealthy middle-class rural communities like Shiphampton, which were almost exclusively white.

Cut to: sitting room

TITLE OVER: Marion Teesdale, Housemistress, Burghley Abbey School, 1986–2014

MARION TEESDALE

I don’t remember any girls leaving the school because they were pregnant. Some left at sixteen, of course, so I can’t vouch for what happened to them thereafter, but we ensured every pupil received comprehensive sex education lessons in the fourth form, so all our girls were fully informed about both pregnancy and birth control.

Cut to: kitchen

TITLE OVER: Leonora Staniforth, Camilla’s school friend

LEONORA STANIFORTH

I don’t know about ‘comprehensive’ – it was all a bit sketchy from what I remember. It didn’t help that the teacher doing the class was Miss Thorpe, who was about a hundred and five and didn’t look like she’d ever actually done the deed. We were all just excruciatingly embarrassed throughout the entire thing – more for her, probably, than for ourselves. I definitely remember her showing us how to use a condom by sticking it on a test tube. Someone at the back fainted. Actually fainted. I mean, imagine that happening now.

Cut to: City office

TITLE OVER: Melissa Rutherford, Camilla’s school friend

MELISSA RUTHERFORD

I learned more from other girls than I did from school – I imagine most kids do. But if you’re asking about attitudes to teenage pregnancy in a place like Shiphampton back then, then yes, there was a definite social stigma attached to anything like that. Girls who ‘slept around’ were looked down on as ‘cheap’ and ‘common’. As for getting pregnant, that was the ultimate no-no – I think my parents would have literally thrown me out of the house. I can only imagine what Camilla’s mother would have done if she’d known.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

And if the baby turned out to be mixed race?

MELISSA RUTHERFORD

Oh my God, it doesn’t bear thinking about. The sky would have fallen in.

Cut to: panoramic drone shot over Shiphampton.

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE

With this in mind, it’s not hard to see why Camilla chose to conceal her first pregnancy, even – or perhaps especially – from her own mother. But she was intelligent and well-informed, she had means and more independence than most young people her age. So why didn’t she take steps to prevent the pregnancy in the first place? Or arrange for a termination as soon as she realised what had happened, if not with her own GP, then at one of the many clinics offering confidential abortion services? Camilla Rowan has been asked those questions many times, both before and after her conviction, but no one – as far as I know – has got an answer. None that make sense, anyway.

Cut to: shot of West Bromwich Women’s Hospital, entrance to the maternity suite.

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE