‘A relentless, destructive energy’: inside the trial of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon
If we believe her parents, Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, a baby girl was born on Christmas Eve, 2022, in the upstairs bedroom of Woodcutters Cottage in Haltwhistle, Northumberland. Her mother knelt against the double bed and gave birth without assistance or complication. The baby spent the first days of her life in the small stone-terraced cottage and then began her travels, mostly carried by her mother in a sling, hidden under a burgundy puffer jacket. She travelled far for a newborn, passing through bus stations and port towns, hotels and cafes, cities and fields, from north to south, west to east. We know she lived for at least two weeks, but we don’t know, and can never know, precisely how she died. She was called Victoria.