Hope to Die

LK: Thank you for coming in today, Mrs Rowan. As I explained to you outside, this interview is being taped, to assist us with our enquiries, but you are not under arrest and can leave at any time. You have also elected to bring a legal representative with you, which is, of course, your right. So, can we start by talking about your daughter’s first pregnancy, in 1996.

PR: I’ve already told you, I didn’t know anything about any of it.

LK: She was sixteen, and living under your roof – you didn’t see her getting out of the bath, in her nightclothes?

PR: We’re not that sort of family.

LK: Did you know she had a boyfriend?

PR: As far as we were concerned she didn’t. She was always home by eleven. And she never brought anyone home, I can tell you that.

LK: So you don’t know who the father might have been?

PR: I have absolutely no idea. I didn’t even know she knew any boys like that.

LK: Black boys?

PR: Exactly.

LK: How would you and your husband have reacted if she’d brought home a black boyfriend?

PR: [pause]

I think we’d have been surprised.

HL: You wouldn’t have had a problem with it?

PR: [shrugs]

LK: [passes across a photo of Camilla Rowan and two friends]

She’s pregnant with that baby in this picture. Eight months pregnant.

PR: [pushing the picture away]

Well, exactly. That’s my point. She doesn’t look pregnant. Any more than those other girls.

LK: Why do you think she didn’t tell you?

PR: How am I supposed to know?

LK: She didn’t usually confide in you? As her mother?

PR: Like I said, we’re not that sort of family. Those women who try to be their daughters’ ‘best friends’, it’s never a good idea. In my opinion.

LK: What about the second pregnancy, the baby that was born in December 1997?

PR: I didn’t know about that either. Not a thing.

LK: How does that make you feel now – all this going on under your nose and you didn’t notice?

PR: She was obviously very good at hiding it, wasn’t she?

LK: Did she do that a lot – keep secrets from you?

PR: Not as far as I knew. Seems I was wrong, doesn’t it.

LK: Have you spoken to her about it since we arrested her?

PR: Briefly.

LK: What did she say?

PR: [shrugs]

That she didn’t say anything at the time because she wanted to protect us.

HL: Protect you from what?

PR: [silence]

HL: Embarrassment? Shame? Loss of face? What?

PR: [shrugs]

LK: Do you know who the father of the second baby was?

PR: Not a clue.

LK: Did she ever mention a Tim or a Tom?

PR: Not that I recall. It’s five years ago.

LK: Does the surname Baker mean anything to you?

PR: No.

LK: I believe you were quite active with Camilla’s school – helping out with events and so on?

PR: I wasn’t the only one.

LK: No, I understand that. But we’ve been told you were particularly active with the hockey team? That in fact you travelled with the Burghley Abbey team to the 1997 UK national under-18s hockey championships?

PR: Yes, so?

LK: It was the night of the final that Camilla went into labour. She drove herself, alone, to Birmingham and checked into hospital.

PR: Well, I didn’t know that.

LK: You were with her for three days, watching her play hockey – a vigorous and occasionally aggressive game, might I add – and you didn’t suspect she might be pregnant?

PR: I told you –

HL: My officers have also spoken to someone else who was at that tournament. A teacher from Lady Elspeth Haskell’s School in Shropshire.

PR: So?

LK: She said it was perfectly obvious to everyone that Camilla was pregnant. That both her colleagues and the girls on the Lady Elspeth team had mentioned it. Girls who had shared changing rooms with her.

PR: [silence]

LK: She also said she spoke to someone from Burghley Abbey – she was worried about Camilla’s well-being, and extremely concerned that a young girl in such an advanced stage of pregnancy should be playing at all.

PR: [silence]

LK: She said she approached someone she saw watching on the touchline. She thought it was a teacher. But it wasn’t. It was you.

PR: I don’t remember that.

LK: She said she pointed Camilla out – not knowing she was your daughter – and asked if there was any possibility she could be pregnant.

PR: [silence]

LK: You don’t remember what you said?

PR: [silence]

LK: You said it was ’none of her business’.

PR: [silence]

LK: So you did know.

PR: No, I told you.

LK: Someone points out your daughter and says she looks pregnant and it doesn’t give you pause?

PR: [silence]

LK: Did you speak to Camilla?

PR: No.

LK: Why not?

PR: [to Mr Gilmour]

Do I really have to answer all these questions?

WG: No, you don’t. And I think that’s enough for today, officers. My client has made it perfectly clear that she knows nothing about the baby, or what happened to it –

LK: Her own grandchild –