The Turn of the Key
Ruth Ware
For Ian, with more love than I know how to put into words
3rd September 2017
Dear Mr. Wrexham,
I know you don’t know me but please, please, please you have to help me
3rd September 2017
HMP Charnworth
Dear Mr. Wrexham,
You don’t know me, but you may have seen coverage of my case in the newspapers. The reason I am writing to you is to ask you please
4th September 2017
HMP Charnworth
Dear Mr. Wrexham,
I hope that’s the right way to address you. I have never written to a barrister before.
The first thing I have to say is that I know this is unconventional. I know I should have gone via my solicitor, but he’s
5th September 2017
Dear Mr. Wrexham,
Are you a father? An uncle? If so, let me appeal
Dear Mr. Wrexham,
Please help me. I didn’t kill anyone.
7th September 2017
HMP Charnworth
Dear Mr. Wrexham,
You have no idea how many times I’ve started this letter and screwed up the resulting mess, but I’ve realized there is no magic formula here. There is no way I can make you listen to my case. So I’m just going to have to do my best to set things out. However long it takes, however much I mess this up, I’m just going to keep going and tell the truth.
My name is . . . And here I stop, wanting to tear up the page again.
Because if I tell you my name, you will know why I am writing to you. My case has been all over the papers, my name in every headline, my agonized face staring out of every front page—and every single article insinuating my guilt in a way that falls only just short of contempt of court. If I tell you my name, I have a horrible feeling you might write me off as a lost cause and throw my letter away. I wouldn’t entirely blame you, but please—before you do that, hear me out.
I am a young woman, twenty-seven years old, and as you’ll have seen from the return address above, I am currently at the Scottish women’s prison HMP Charnworth. I’ve never received a letter from anyone in prison, so I don’t know what they look like when they come through the door, but I imagine my current living arrangements were pretty obvious even before you opened the envelope.
What you probably don’t know is that I’m on remand.
And what you cannot know is that I’m innocent.
I know, I know. They all say that. Every single person I’ve met here is innocent—according to them, anyway. But in my case it’s true.
You may have guessed what’s coming next. I’m writing to ask you to represent me as my solicitor advocate at my trial.
I realize that this is unconventional and not how defendants are supposed to approach advocates. (I accidentally called you a barrister in an earlier draft of this letter—I know nothing about the law, and even less about the Scottish system. Everything I do know I have picked up from the women I’m in prison with, including your name.)
I have a solicitor already—Mr. Gates—and from what I understand, he is the person who should be appointing an advocate for the actual trial. But he is also the person who landed me here in the first place. I didn’t choose him—the police picked him for me when I began to get scared and finally had the sense to shut up and refuse to answer questions until they found me a lawyer.
I thought that he would straighten everything out—help me to make my case. But when he arrived—I don’t know, I can’t explain it. He just made everything worse. He didn’t let me speak. Everything I tried to say he was cutting in with “My client has no comment at this time,” and it just made me look so much more guilty. I feel like if only I could have explained properly, it would never have got this far. But somehow the facts kept twisting in my mouth, and the police, they made everything sound so bad, so incriminating.
It’s not that Mr. Gates hasn’t heard my side of the story exactly. He has, of course—but somehow— Oh God, this is so hard to explain in writing. He’s sat down and talked to me, but he doesn’t listen. Or if he does, he doesn’t believe me. Every time I try to tell him what happened, starting from the beginning, he cuts in with these questions that muddle me up and my story gets all tangled and I want to scream at him to just shut the fuck up.
And he keeps talking to me about what I said in the transcripts from that awful first night at the police station, when they grilled me and grilled me and I said— God, I don’t know what I said. I’m sorry, I’m crying now. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry for the stains on the paper. I hope you can read my writing through the blotches.
What I said, what I said then, there’s no undoing that. I know that. They have all that on tape. And it’s bad—it’s really bad. But it came out wrong; I feel like if only I could be given a chance to get my case across, to someone who would really listen . . . do you see what I’m saying?
Oh God, maybe you don’t. You’ve never been here, after all. You’ve never sat across a desk feeling so exhausted you want to drop and so scared you want to vomit, with the police asking and asking and asking until you don’t know what you’re saying anymore.