Reply Erm, so I went to check on G***e and I stood up and Russell stood up and said he was going to go and check as well and Kate stood up and I said, you know, do you want us to go and check on, erm, do you want me to go and check on your kids, erm, and she said yes. And I think I offered at that point just because we had been together all week and we had similar routines and it just kind of seemed like a nice thing to do that would save her a journey back up and, you know, it may or it may not have been different. But, erm, I said that and she said yeah fine and she said that the patio door was open and go in through there. And there was me and Russell as well, so, erm, you know, it seemed, at the time, a very reasonable thing to do, even though it was the first time that wed certainly done it. Also, having somebody else there with me, it sort of felt sort of more, more sort of natural and normal. So we went out and we debated about whether wed go in first or go in later, but Russell wanted to get back because E**e had been a little bit unsettled and so we went back first and he went in and I went in to check on G***e and actually went in through the door, unlocked the door, looked in, into her room, all fine, came back out, shut the door, erm, went over to his apartment and he said that E**e had been sick so he was staying back with her. So I went back and did the check on five A, on Madeleine and the kids, erm, and went back through the patio entrance, so through the gate, through the patio doors, erm, there was, it was light enough to see through the apartment and there sort of a little table light on the right at the end of the sofa and when you walk into the room, you could see straight into it, because the door was open. Erm, Ive spent a lot of time debating how far the door was open, from previous questioning, and, you know, it wasnt flat back against the wall, because that would have looked odd, it was just sort of halfway open, so it seemed slightly unusual that it should be so wide open, because you could see straight into the middle of the room from the angle that you approach it, because the, youve got sofas here and youve got a bookcase here and you have to come out, youve got sort of the wall of the bedroom and then it goes back where the bathroom is and then comes out again, so youve got to come out round this wall to sort of, not out round this wall, but you come in and the doorway is sort of recessed, so you can see pretty much straight into the room from the doorway back or certainly as soon as you get past that final wall. So it seemed odd to have that door open, its certainly not something that, you know, G***e has it completely pitch black, because it seems to me that she sleeps a bit longer, erm, but some people do leave the door open and I know Russell and Jane, for E**a, and L*** subsequent, also has the door slightly open, you know, they have light and they prefer that, but weve never done that with G***e, so it seemed a little bit odd, but not without the realm of possibility. So I approached the room but I didnt actually go in because you could see the twins in the cots and one of the, you could see the twins in the cots because theyre in with, sort of the cots were in the middle of the room with sort of a gap of about sort of maybe a foot between the two, the cots had sort of got that fabric end and sort of a mesh side, so you could see the sides and you could see them, erm, see them breathing and there were two there and it was all completely quiet. And the other things you could see in the room, there was a, there was another bed at the back underneath the window at the far side and you could see the end of the bed, another bed here. And because I was looking for, you know, well people say, well why didnt you go in the room, why didnt you check on Madeleine, you were, you said youd go and check, but it was just that, we were just satisfying ourselves that nobody was upset and awake and crying, we didnt expect that if I checked each three beds somebody, it just wasnt sort of something that you thought about, you just thought, you know, is somebody, you know, upset, do they want their mum or something, you can say, you know, somebody might have vomited and you wouldnt know about it, but there was, you know, nobody was awake, you thought, if something, just one, itd be, itd sort of feel a bit odd, you know, from the draughts, you know, when Kate went in something about the door shutting, there was, I presume, a through draught. So I just sort of went towards the doorway, I didnt step over the threshold, I didnt see Madeleine and I didnt check, I turned round and came back out, said all was quiet when I got back to the table and then we went on with food. Now the room was, we talked also in the interviews about how light the room was and whether I could see the shutters, and I cant see the shutters because thee curtains were shut and, theyre similar curtains to the ones youve got in there, and you just get an impression of just like green and yellow, but they were closed, they werent sort of blowing about, because Im sure Id have noticed if there was sort of movement like that. But the room seemed light, and we spent a lot of time talking about this, whether it could be light coming in from the street outside, but there was a light behind us in the room and for some reason I thought, I got the impression of light coming through the doorway from behind me, which his why I said that I thought perhaps the moon was out, erm, but there as no sort of, you know, its a questions of whether, there was no sort of slats of light coming through the back that particularly caught my eye. So I didnt specifically see the shutters and I couldnt say that they were definitely open, but certainly the curtains were shut and everything was quiet.
00.29.11 4078 So you werent, just to clarify what you have said, you werent conscious of any draught?
Reply Yeah.
4078 The curtains were drawn and werent blowing around?
Reply Yeah.
4078 You werent conscious of light coming through that window but the room was light enough for you to see into it?
Reply Yeah. I mean, the difficult thing about that is, when we talked about it afterwards, I agonised for whether it seemed as though there was light coming through the room. And I have to say my answer then was probably more accurate, in that, the room was lighter than I expected but I definitely didnt see the shutters up, the curtains were definitely not disturbed and the shutters would have had to have been completely up, I presume, not to get that sort of, because they were shutters that went solid but when you lifted them they had gaps of light, and I wasnt aware of that and it may well be that the light was just the source from behind.
00.29.03 4078 Obviously you have had cause to sort of reflect on that, that moment?
Reply Yeah.
4078 A lot?
Reply Yeah.
4078 At the time when you were there, before you had reason to reflect on it, at the time you just said to me that the room was lighter than you expected, did that go through your mind at the time?
Reply Yeah, erm, it just seemed, it just seemed odd, because, you know, its really difficult, I cant explain why it was odd and I didnt do anything about it, and its something Ive thought about over and over again, you know, surely that just seemed odd and so it was worth you looking round and going a bit further, and I cant explain why I didnt do it.
4078 Why did it seem odd?
Reply Because I sort of see them dealing, they seemed to have dealt with Sean and Amelie and Madeleine pretty much the way we deal with G***e, so they were sort of very consistent with bedtime and rooms, I would imagine, would be kept sort of fairly dark, they seemed to have come from the same sort of parenting school that we did, and so, erm, it seemed a little bit more unusual that it should be, the door should be open so much and the light, because they were always, the kids were always sort of really confident and they were the least misbehaved, well not misbehaved, they were the least upset when they dropped them off at Nursery, at crèche, you know, it was all really good and it was all sort of, they were sort of very good at, erm, you know, if they did something wrong, they said no and sort of explaining it properly and why, you know, why it was naughty to do that sort of thing, it was all sort of very appropriate and almost by the book, and it seemed a bit sort of casual to sort of like leave the door open, but then they had sort of an older daughter, so you know, and older children might get, you know, nightmares, so it seemed as though there might be a reasonable explanation, but although I thought it was odd at the time, I didnt say, you know, do you normally leave your door or anything like that.
00.30.42 4078 You just put it down to the fact that, well you were a bit surprised that is how they had left it, but that must be how they are used to doing it?
Reply Yeah, and I just dont know why it didnt trigger enough of a thought in my mind to say, you know, but I think its just because you are going expecting that the worst that was going to happen was that somebody would be upset or out of bed or, you know, or sort of crying.
4078 And, like you have said, you know, we all do things differently, dont we, in something like that?
Reply You know (inaudible) stuff and you think, you know, oh its silly that they didnt notice that or, you know, it was obvious that, but I think its your sort of frame of mind that youre set in.
4078 Yeah, and with hindsight it is easy to question things that you had no cause to question?
Reply Yeah, because normally wed think were fairly observant because, I mean, we do medicine, so we sort of pick up a lot clues from people that we talk to and, you know, and how they might feeling or what they might not be saying and so youd expect to trust that sort of, that sort of instinct, but that, for whatever reason, just didnt.
4078 And how do you feel about that?
Reply Erm, I mean, I think its harder for Jane in a lot of ways than it is for me, but I think were in slightly similar positions, in that, she thinks, well, you know.
4078 What if?
Reply What if Id done that and the only sort of comfort I get is that, you know, what if Id seen him or well maybe if we just sort of found out half an hour earlier, but maybe that would have been enough lead time for things to happen faster and for somebody to call to be here, but I think its easier for me to try and rationalise it and not think about it quite so forcibly as it is for Jane.
OLDFIELD 09.04.08
