Cut to: shot of West Bromwich Women’s Hospital, entrance to the maternity suite.
VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE
All we do know for sure is that Camilla Rowan did none of those things. Instead she carried that first baby to term and, as we’ve heard, gave birth here in early November 1996. But contrary to what she told Dr Morrison, she did not return to Cambridge with her son. She didn’t even live in Cambridge, and there is no such address as 13 Warnock Road in that town. No, what she actually did was go straight to an adoption agency only a few hundred yards from the hospital.
Cut to: reception area, water cooler, sofas, posters of children, etc.
TITLE OVER: Yasmin Njoku, CEO, Central Midlands Adoption and Fostering, 1995-2002
YASMIN NJOKU
It’s fair to say that’s not the usual way we received children.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
She just turned up with the baby?
YASMIN NJOKU
We had to arrange emergency fostering that day. It was clear she was in no position to look after the child.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
Do you mean practically, or some other way?
YASMIN NJOKU
Primarily emotionally. When my member of staff tried to say that it would be very difficult to receive the baby there and then she became almost hysterical.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
So if you hadn’t taken the baby – or if there hadn’t been an agency like you so close to hand – do you think the child might have been at risk of harm?
YASMIN NJOKU
(pause)
Let’s just say it wasn’t a chance we were prepared to take.
VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE
Perhaps Camilla herself feared what she might do to the child. Perhaps that’s why she decided that adoption was the only way. Because, whatever her motives, on this occasion Camilla Rowan ‘did the right thing’. Even if the way she went about it was bizarre in the extreme.
MONTAGE: sequence of images of Camilla Rowan’s adoption paperwork; as John mentions specific elements these are underlined on screen and annotated one at a time with ‘False’, ‘Lie’, ‘Does not exist’.
Because as the prosecution case later made abundantly clear, the paperwork Rowan filled out for the adoption agency – both that day and later – was a litany of lies. She gave her real name, but pretty much everything else was a fabrication. She said again that she lived at the Warnock Road address, which we already know was a lie: in fact ‘Warnock’ – as a sharp-eyed police officer later spotted – is just an anagram of ‘C. K. Rowan’. She gave the same GP details she’d given the hospital – another lie. The email address she supplied didn’t exist. There were almost a dozen lies in all. And a mobile number that always went straight to voicemail. Hardly surprising, then, that the adoption service struggled to contact her in the weeks that followed.
Cut to: reception area interior
YASMIN NJOKU
We tried again and again by phone and in writing, but only ever managed to contact her once. That was when the baby was six weeks old and she had to come in to sign the final papers.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
Did you see her that day?
YASMIN NJOKU
No, I wasn’t in the office, but the colleague who did said she was in and out in five minutes. Apparently she said she ‘just wanted to get it over with’.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
Did he ask her about the false information she’d given?
YASMIN NJOKU
I think he tried but she kept saying she had somewhere else she needed to be. And it was during lunch-hour and quite busy, and there weren’t many staff available. It’s possible she came in then deliberately – to reduce the likelihood of being asked too many questions.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
And what happened to the baby?
YASMIN NJOKU
He was successfully placed in a loving family.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
His identity was protected during the court case, but are you aware whether he knows who his biological mother is?
YASMIN NJOKU
Like all adopted children he would have had the right to see his records when he reached the age of eighteen. I don’t know if he has done so, and I wouldn’t be able to disclose that information even if I did.
Cut to: montage of shots of Camilla – playing hockey, with Leonora and Melissa, at a fireworks party.
VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE
When these pictures were taken, Camilla Rowan was pregnant with that baby boy. Four months, seven months, eight and a half months. And yet no one apparently noticed a thing.
TITLE OVER: Leonora Staniforth
LEONORA STANIFORTH
(looking at the pictures)
Well that last one is in the winter, right? So we’d all have been in jumpers and coats and it wouldn’t have been so obvious. But yes, I know what you’re getting at. I think we were all a bit naïve at that age, but I can’t believe her mother or the teachers didn’t notice anything.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
Did you know she had a boyfriend?
LEONORA STANIFORTH
No. And I think she’d have told us. Mel, anyway, even if not me. Those two were always really really tight, especially around then.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
So you have no idea who the father was?
LEONORA STANIFORTH
(shakes her head)
None at all. I don’t think there was a single black family in Shiphampton back then. I guess she could have met him in Birmingham or something, but I’ve been racking my brains and I just can’t remember her ever going there without either me or Mel. It’s just a complete mystery.
Cut to: montage of shots of Camilla Rowan during the trial – leaving the court, head down, with her mother, with her legal team.
VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE
And it’s just one of the many mysteries that still haunt this case. One thing we do know is that – for whatever reason – the father of that baby has never come forward. His identity remains shrouded in secrecy, just like that of the man who fathered Rowan’s second child, scarcely a year later. But that second baby was not taken in by a loving family. He was last seen alive at only a few hours old, in his mother’s arms, in a hospital car park.
Another mystery, more deceit, more chameleon camouflage. Because as we all now know, when it came to telling lies, Camilla Rowan had barely even got started …
- freeze frame -
* * *
Adam Fawley
23 October
17.27
‘Holy fuck.’
Classic Quinn. But he has a point.
Gis is still looking at me blankly. ‘Camilla’s kid? What the –’
Quinn turns to me. ‘How old does Challow reckon the vic was?’
Good question.
‘Probably no more than twenty-one. And certainly no younger than fifteen. Something to do with the pubic bone.’
Quinn’s obviously doing the calculations. ‘So whoever the fuck he is, he had to have been born between 1997 and 2003?’
Gis glances across at him. ‘Well, Rowan was either under investigation, on trial or in the slammer from the summer of 2002 onwards, so that narrows it down a bit.’
Quinn looks at me. ‘Wasn’t there another kid – aside from the mixed-race one? Isn’t that how the police got involved in the first place?’