Hope to Die

Intercut: RECONSTRUCTION: Girl sitting at a table talking to two men, one in barrister costume, referring to papers, etc.

I can only imagine the hours of preparation the lawyers must have put her through. But the prosecuting barrister, Ian Burns QC, was ruthless. He began his cross-examination by taking her through every lie she had told in relation to her pregnancies, forcing her to admit that she had not been telling the truth. It took over three hours. By the time he got to her version of events on the day of her child’s disappearance, her credibility was in tatters. No one believed her bizarre story about handing over a newborn baby in a lay-by on the A417. Most people still don’t. But are they wrong?

I’ve taken a long hard look at the Camilla Rowan case in this series, and much of the evidence has been damning. But is it the whole story? Or could there be something – or someone – out there who could throw new light on this baffling and unsettling case?

TITLE APPEARS OVER, TYPEWRITER STYLE:

Part four

“Every day is like survival”

JOHN’S VOICE

Six months ago, I got a call from a woman. I’m going to call her Mandy, though that’s not her real name. She said she’d heard I was looking again at the Camilla Rowan case, and had some information for me. And so we arranged to meet.

Woman shown walking into shot and taking a seat with her back to camera, facing John. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, revealing tattoos on her arms and the back of her neck. Her face is out of shot.

‘MANDY’

My name is Mandy, and I shared a cell with Camilla Rowan in Holloway prison, from 2007 to 2010.

RECONSTRUCTION of two women in cell. Bunk beds, etc.

I was in for soliciting. It was my first stretch and I was shit-scared but Cam really looked after me. I guess you could say we became mates. Twenty-three hours a day cooped up with someone – you get to know them pretty well.

JOHN PENROSE

What did she tell you about the baby?

‘MANDY’

She said she never hurt it – that people had it all wrong. She wasn’t that sort of person.

JOHN PENROSE

So she still maintained that she handed the child to its father?

‘MANDY’

Yeah, she did. But I reckon it wasn’t as simple as she made out. There were things she told me – things she let drop – that made me wonder.

JOHN PENROSE

What sort of things?

‘MANDY’

She was abused. When she was a kid, by a family friend. She said she called him Uncle but he wasn’t a real one. He raped her for the first time when she was eleven, and it carried on the whole of the rest of the time she was living at home.

JOHN PENROSE

So he could have been the father of the missing baby boy? Is that what you’re saying?

‘MANDY’

She never said that – not in so many words. But if you ask me, that’s exactly what happened. It’d explain why she never said anything. Especially to her parents.

JOHN PENROSE

But we presumably know this man wasn’t the father of the first baby, given that that child was mixed race.

‘MANDY’

No, obviously she must’ve had other boyfriends as well. But the way she behaved – like the pregnancies didn’t exist – being in denial like that, it’s what happens if you’ve been abused for years. I should know. You get a weird relationship with your own body. Like it’s happening to someone else. It’s a survival mechanism – a way of getting through it. That’s what my therapist said.

JOHN PENROSE

She never mentioned anything about this alleged abuse during the trial, or – as far as I know – at any other time. In fact, the police specifically asked her if there’d been any kind of abuse and she was absolutely categorical that there hadn’t. How do you explain that?

‘MANDY’

I think she was ashamed. He made her swear not to tell anyone. And it can take years for abuse survivors to speak out – you know that as well as I do.

JOHN PENROSE

So she gave the baby to this man? You think that’s what really happened?

‘MANDY’

It’s the only thing that makes sense. And even that lay-by thing makes sense if this bloke lived local.

JOHN PENROSE

It would be difficult for him to hide a baby, though, wouldn’t it? A middle-aged man, presumably with a wife and family already, suddenly has a baby in the house? Someone was bound to have noticed.

‘MANDY’

I reckon he got rid of it.

JOHN PENROSE

You think he killed the child?

‘MANDY’

Why not? He had a lot to lose – he wouldn’t want it all coming out about him being a child molester, now would he?

JOHN PENROSE