Chapter 95: The Room Above the Bank
They took a serviced meeting room above a bank on the square, because a house would have been a statement and a solicitor's office would have been another one.
Fourteen feet by twenty. One long table.
Eight chairs, all the same.
A jug of water with the plastic seal still on it and a plate of biscuits nobody was ever going to touch.
Two windows onto the square. Carpet tiles.
A radiator under each window, and no other furniture in the room at all.
I counted the chairs before I sat in one. I have never been able to stop.
Margot came in at four minutes past two with her solicitor, a grey man called Havers who said eleven words in ninety minutes.
She is sixty-six.
She wore the coat she wears to funerals and to the theatre, and she did not take it off.
Damon was not there. Julian was not there.
That was not an oversight. Nothing that woman does is an oversight.
“Nadia,” she said.
“Margot.”
She sat down opposite me at a distance of about six feet, which I noticed, and which I have wondered about ever since.
She put a folder on the table and did not open it for forty minutes.
I will give her this.
She did not begin with an apology, and she did not begin with Christmas.
She began with the building.
“The consultancy started on the ninth,” she said. “They have completed the first pass at Willow Bank and at Sancroft. They will finish the other two by the end of the month.”
Havers said nothing.
“They have identified entries on medication administration records that were made by members of staff who were not rostered on duty at the time of the round,” she said. “At present the figure is thirty-one residents across two homes.”
I did not move.
Thirty-one.
I had brought twenty-seven into that room. I had spent two months frightened that twenty-seven was too many to be true.
“Say the rest,” my solicitor said, which was the first thing she had said.
Margot inclined her head about an inch, as though a waiter had got something right.
“The homes have been running below the rostered establishment for about two years,” she said.
“There were nights and afternoons when the round was done by one person instead of two. There were occasions when it was done late. There were occasions when it was not done at all.”
“And the signatures.”
“The deputy manager at Willow Bank completed the records afterwards, in the initials of the staff who should have been present, in order that the charts would be complete when the commissioners audited them.”
She said it exactly like that. In order that the charts would be complete.
“Why,” I said.
“Because the local authority contract requires staffing ratios,” she said, “and an incomplete chart triggers a review, and a review at one home triggers scrutiny at four. It was not done out of malice. It was done out of a preference for tidiness over honesty, which is a much commoner failing and does much more damage.”
That sentence has stayed with me. I have never decided whether she was describing her deputy manager or herself.
“Did anybody come to harm?” my solicitor asked.
“I don't know,” Margot said. “I hope not. The consultancy has not found evidence of harm and I am told that finding it, either way, is very difficult after the event.”
For a second she looked exactly as old as she is.
“What did Damon know,” I said.
“Damon was told in the autumn of last year by the registered manager, and he did not act.”
“He knew.”
“He knew.”
Then she opened the folder, and everything that had felt for four minutes like truth turned back into a negotiation.
The proposal had five parts.
Havers read them out in a voice like a train announcement.
Damon would step back from the operational management of all four homes with immediate effect, on health grounds.
The consultancy's report would be provided in full to the regulator and to the local authority.
A new manager would be appointed at Willow Bank and the family would fund an additional staff post on the ground floor for two years.
The family would meet my legal costs to date.
And Mr. Damon Ashford would inform the Crown Prosecution Service that he no longer supported the prosecution and would not attend to give evidence.
There it was.
On a table, in a room with carpet tiles, in the fifth position on a numbered list.
“And in return,” my solicitor said.
Margot put her hand flat on the folder.
“In return, Nadia signs the agreement as amended,” she said, “and provides a short statement confirming that her recollection of the medication records is not one she can vouch for as to dates or persons.”
Nobody said anything.
“That last part is not negotiable,” she said. “The rest of it is.”