Deborah Moggach tells the story of her mother, the murdress

Deborah Moggach tells the story of her mother Charlotte Hough, who was convicted of attempted murder and sent to prison in the 1980s. Moggach describes being daughter to a woman who, after being divorced in 1984, began to devote great energy to visiting older people in the community. When this devotion led to one particular elderly lady asking Charlotte to assist her in taking her own life, she duly obliged.

Charlotte was tried and sentenced at the Old Bailey before being sent to prison, an experience Moggach vividly relates with the help of a set of letters written whilst her mother was serving her sentence. A privileged upbringing and her attempts to write a novel made Charlotte the victim of merciless bullying. But Moggach relates the tale with at least one happier twist: her younger sister Briony began corresponding with a man who wrote to her mother to praise her actions, a correspondent who Briony would eventually go on to marry and have a son with. It is a truly remarkable event, Moggach tells us, that life and fortune could be born from such suffering and unhappiness in such an unpredictable way.