The Disappearance of Emily Marr (31 page)

‘She used that term?’ the coroner interjected. ‘She thought her life was in crisis?’

‘She thought her marriage was, yes. Not her life.’

‘Did she at any time give you the idea that she was feeling defeated by the crisis?’

‘No, the opposite. What Josa just said is right: Sylvie wanted to fight. She would have been returning to London to do exactly that. She probably planned to force the situation to a head.’ Nina’s adamant tone, her steadfast body language, made an indisputable truth of every opinion she uttered. ‘She’d said in the past she found it torture to not know what lay ahead for her and the boys. For years she hadn’t felt as secure as she should have done. It was almost a form of abuse, in my opinion.’

It was grotesque, worse than anything I had imagined, to hear a dead woman’s fears about me announced in this way, and to what could only be a disgusted and sickened audience. I wondered if Nina knew about the phone call. She’d made no reference to it so far and yet it was laughable to imagine Gwen or her colleagues refusing a forceful character like this any requests for witness statements, blood relative or not.

‘You say you did not speak to her that night, the night of Friday the twenty-second? So you did not hear directly from her what her intention was in returning to London the following morning?’

‘No. As I said in my statement, she left a message for me but I was out of the country and at a location out of mobile range. I didn’t pick up my messages until I got back to my hotel in the early hours of Saturday, by which time I assumed she’d be asleep. I phoned her at eight-thirty in the morning British time, but it was too late, her phone was switched off. I know now she had already set off.’

‘The message you refer to is the spoken one recorded at seven-fifteen p.m. UK time on Friday the twenty-second, in which Mrs Woodhall says she has discovered her husband is with Emily Marr in the marital house in London?’

‘That’s right. She said one of our neighbours, another friend who was aware of the situation, had texted her to say she’d seen Emily arrive at the house at six-thirty. She begged me to call her back as soon as I could and discuss what she should do.’ Nina paused then and looked down, blinking several times, the first obvious trace of emotion in her demeanour. ‘When I didn’t phone back, she must have decided to contact Emily. She had the number from Sarah, who lives next door to Emily.’

She did know, then, I thought. They all must. The realisation was a source of both relief and terror.

‘She’d considered this course of action before and I’d advised against it, but we’d talked about what she could say if she did confront Emily directly.’ The middle finger of Nina’s right hand dabbed at the corner of her eye. ‘Obviously, with hindsight, I wish I had stayed up all night and kept calling until she picked up. I would have told her not to go anywhere. I would have told her I’d come down myself the next day straight from the airport and we’d work out a plan.’

‘The issue of the sedative would suggest she may have slept through your calls in any case,’ the coroner suggested with sympathy.

‘Yes,’ Nina agreed.

‘So, given what you’ve told us, and the fact that a conversation was had with Miss Marr, what is your opinion of what Mrs Woodhall would be likely to do next, faced with an evening without immediate support or guidance?’

Nina gave an audible exhalation. ‘If she was really distraught, she would have had a drink.’

‘You mean an alcoholic drink?’

‘Yes.’

‘This would be corroborated by the toxicologist’s findings of high levels of alcohol in her blood and also by the CCTV evidence we have from Tesco Express near Pulborough, where Mrs Woodhall purchased two bottles of red wine.’

I felt the hairs on my arms stand on end. I’d missed the toxicologist’s evidence, but clearly it was as I’d feared: my conversation with Sylvie had triggered a terrible relapse.

‘One bottle would be an enormous amount for Sylvie,’ Nina said. ‘Half a bottle, even. She hardly drank at all any more. She never let herself get drunk. It’s years since any of that. She must have felt absolutely desperate that night. And to take the sleeping pill as well: she must not have been able to bear her own thoughts.’

Nina was thanked and excused. I felt her eyes seek me out as she walked the short distance between the witness box and her desk, challenging me to answer to her monumental anger and grief. But I could not; she knew I could not.

A spry, red-headed man in his late thirties stood now and made his way to the witness box. I couldn’t remember the exact order of the witness list but the first question established him as the Woodhall family GP, Dr Hanrahan of Grove Walk Surgery.

‘You have said in your statement that you do not consider Mrs Woodhall to have been having any thoughts of taking her own life?’

‘That’s right. The last time I saw her, she was in reasonable spirits, good health generally. She had suffered from depression and had battled alcohol in recent years. I knew she still had trouble sleeping and we had discussed ways to alleviate that difficulty. In the past she had used alcohol to help her sleep but she had not done this for eighteen months or two years.’

‘You had prescribed the medicine Zopiclone? This is used to treat sleeping problems?’

‘Yes. I had directed Mrs Woodhall to use the lowest dose. But that had been several months earlier and she had not come to me for a renewal of the prescription. She must have had some left.’

‘We have heard from the toxicologist yesterday that alcohol would have increased and perhaps prolonged the sedative effects of Zopiclone?’

‘That’s correct. When I prescribed the medicine, I made Mrs Woodhall aware that it should not be mixed with alcohol under any circumstances.’

‘She did not, then, in your opinion, have an issue with alcohol abuse?’

‘No. She had begun to rely on alcohol in the past, but I would not have classed it as chronic abuse. She did not want it to become a problem that affected her sons and she sought help early.’

‘Which is consistent with Mrs Meeks’ evidence that she was now living in sobriety?’

‘Yes.’

‘You last examined her in May of last year. In your opinion there were no signs of any deterioration in her psychological health?’

‘No. She complained of stress and said she could not count on her husband for support domestically; he was extremely busy and worked long hours almost every day of their marriage, she said. She was not as close to him as she’d once been, but she had a very good relationship with her family and friends. She had a network she could rely on. She was not desperate.’

To my alarm, this was as much as the coroner wanted to know from the GP and sooner than I’d expected he was dismissing him and calling the next name – mine. Getting to my feet and putting one in front of the other was a trauma in itself: I felt as if I’d been dropped into a well and left to tread water, gasping for breath until the air ran out. It was panic, pure and simple.

I swore my oath in a tiny, childlike voice. I was aware of the row of pale profiles and dark shoulders to my right but forced myself to look only at the coroner. It was not just the prospect of Arthur’s face, or Nina’s, but any face, for there was no one among them who had not loved the Woodhalls – or experienced the ghastly sight of their ruptured bodies. The coroner, however, was smiling down at me, sensing my fright, and I had never been more grateful for the benefit of anyone’s doubt. He was not going to accuse me, he was not going to judge me, he was not going to blame me.

‘I have read your account of your conversation with Mrs Woodhall on the night of the twenty-second of July, which the police believe to be her last conversation with anyone other than her sons, save for the few words with the cashier at the supermarket. Did you make the call or did she?’

I gulped. ‘I phoned her. I’d missed several calls from a number I didn’t recognise and that seemed unusual. I thought it might be someone from the hospital where my father is a patient, so I called back straight away.’

‘She’d made several attempts to reach you, then? How many exactly?’

‘Five, I think. I saw afterwards that they were just a few minutes apart.’

‘You say she did not sound drunk or under the influence of drugs during this conversation?’

‘No, she sounded sober.’

‘And had you had any alcoholic drinks yourself that evening?’

‘No, not at that point.’ Arthur had come back with champagne soon after and I’d drunk it, only minutes after hearing the despair in her voice, knowing I had consigned her to a night of abject misery.

‘Did you have a sense as the conversation proceeded that Mrs Woodhall intended returning to London soon after? In order to continue the discussion between the two of you in person, perhaps?’

‘No. There was no sense of that. I thought… Well, I thought she had accepted what I said as my final word and we would not speak again.’ The last of these words –
would not speak again
– resonated appallingly and I wished I could retract them.

‘You’re referring to your having declined her proposal that you should bow out of your relationship with Mr Woodhall for a period of one year, the length of time her younger son was to remain in the family home?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ A year was an eternity, I wanted to explain to him. We’d only been together six months, we wanted to be together every waking moment. Arthur was almost fifty and life didn’t last for ever! Still I had not dared glance at him since I’d been in the witness box; kept my eyes fixed on the coroner, the only source of good will, of mercy. ‘But I said she needed to discuss it with him, not me. I didn’t think it was my place to make any kind of negotiation.’

The coroner was peering at his documents. When he removed his gaze from me I felt unprotected, unsupported, as if I might slide to the floor. ‘You say you thought she accepted your decision as final: did you get the sense that this was a disappointment to her?’

‘It must have been. She was… she was begging me. To have me say no, it must have been disappointing, yes. She hung up on me.’

‘I’m interested in your remark to Mrs Woodhall, “it’s every woman for herself”…’

I felt myself go pale: how horrible it sounded, how callous, even when recreated in those pleasant, fair-minded tones of his.

‘Was it your intention that she should take this as a challenge to be acted on directly?’

‘No,’ I protested, my voice rising, ‘not at all. I was only repeating a phrase she had used herself earlier in the conversation. It wasn’t a challenge for her to come and find me that night, or the next morning or any time soon. As I said, I assumed she would want to talk to Arthur next. It was
their
marriage.’

He nodded as if in total accord, as if he couldn’t have put it better himself, and at last I began to relax. ‘Did she say
when
she would talk to him?’

‘No, but Arthur had decided to go down to see her the next afternoon, so I knew it would be then.’

‘She did not make reference to this?’

‘She wouldn’t have known yet, because Arthur left the message while she was on the phone to me. But since it was the same phone line, she would have had the voicemail waiting for her when she’d finished speaking to me.’

‘You did not mention it to her yourself?’

‘No.’

‘And you also say you took the decision not to tell Mr Woodhall about your phone call with his wife?’

‘Yes.’ It was starting to sound like a farce, put like that, a comedy of disastrous errors, of missed calls and information withheld. ‘As I say, I thought they’d be having their own discussion the next day.’

‘Thank you,’ the coroner said. ‘If there’s nothing else, Miss Marr?’

‘No, nothing.’

And that was it, that was all he wanted of me, to hear from my own lips that Sylvie had not voiced any intention to return to London either then or the following morning. That no one knew for sure whether she understood that Arthur planned to arrive in the afternoon. That it was reasonable to deduce that I was the direct cause of her drinking, if not of her drinking and driving.

But the coroner was not dismissing me, after all; instead communication was taking place with someone in the front row: Josa, Sylvie’s sister. She had a question for me, which was perfectly permissible, though the coroner wanted to remind her that it must be an enquiry with a direct bearing on the matter at hand.

To my discomfort, Josa rose to her feet and there was a tense moment when nobody said a word.

‘Perhaps the witness might show me the courtesy of looking at me,’ she said finally, with an attitude that could only be described as vicious dislike.

Shocked, I turned to face her. Her revulsion was palpable; indeed, she was trembling with it. In my peripheral vision, I was aware of Arthur’s head bowed, eyes cast down. Josa spoke: ‘I would like to ask you to explain further why you did not tell Mr Woodhall about such an important phone call.’ The words finished there but the remainder of the message, and the accusation it contained, was as clear as if she’d stated it aloud: ‘Had you told him, they would all still be alive now.’ Of course Arthur would have acted on the news that his wife had phoned his mistress – or vice versa: it would have constituted a crisis point even to the world’s coolest-headed adulterer. He would have got in his car and driven straight down to her and the boys. He would have reached them by ten or eleven, several crucial hours before they began their own doomed journey. He would have found Sylvie either drinking or passed out and he would have made sure she got nowhere near her car until he was satisfied she was sober. The next day, Nina would have arrived, ready to offer all the strength she needed.

Even if the worst had happened and she had tried to harm herself afterwards, the boys would not have been involved, the boys would have survived.

I took a deep breath and tried to keep my eye contact with her steady, if not confident. ‘I suppose I must have been in shock. To have had this conversation with her completely out of the blue… She and I didn’t know each other at all, I didn’t recognise the true significance of it. And, as I say, the two of them were going to see each other the following day and so I honestly didn’t think it would make any difference to tell him.’