I dressed in my best black suit, and touched up my face with a bit more pancake to mask the dark rings beneath my eyes. Then I walked to the tube. On the District line to Temple, I fit right in with the morning rush-hour crowd—I was just another suit, avoiding eye contact with my fellow passengers in true London fashion, stoically dealing with the overcrowded train, the cloying humidity, the deep indifferent silence of the citizenry en route to work. Only, unlike them, I was en route to discover whether or not I’d get to see my baby son again.
I left the tube at Temple and walked up to the Strand. I was an hour early (I certainly couldn’t afford to be late for this event), so I sat in a coffee bar, trying to quell my nerves. I didn’t succeed. I had been warned by Ginny Ricks that my husband might not show up at the hearing (“he’s not bound by law to be there—and can let his legal team handle everything for him”) but even the outside chance that he might make an appearance terrified me. Because I didn’t know how I’d react if brought face to face with him.
At ten-fifteen, I approached the high court and walked up the steps. A young woman—plain, bespectacled, in a black raincoat over a simple gray suit—was waiting by the entrance doors. She looked at me questioningly. I nodded.
“Deirdre Pepinster,” she said with a nod. “We’re this way.”
She led us through security to a large vaulted marble hall. It was like being in a church—with high vaulted ceilings, shadowy lighting, the echo of voices, and a constant parade of human traffic. We said nothing as we walked through the hall and then down assorted corridors. This was fine by me as I was becoming increasingly nervous. After several turns, we came to a door, outside which were several benches. Ginny Ricks was already seated on one of them, in conversation with an anemic looking man in his forties, dressed in a very gray suit.
“This is Paul Halliwell, your barrister,” Ginny Ricks said.
He proffered his hand.
“I’ve just received the witness statements this morning,” he said, “but everything seems to be in order.”
Alarm bells went off in my head.
“What do you mean, you just received the statements?” I said.
“I meant to call you about this late last night,” Ginny Ricks said. “The barrister I’d instructed fell ill . . . so I had to find a substitute. But really, not to worry. Paul is very experienced—”
“But he’s just looking at the statements now—”
We were interrupted by the arrival of the other side. At first sight, they were like an identikit version of my team: a thin, gray man; a big-boned blond woman, exuding high maintenance—a few years older than Ginny Ricks, but very much graduates from the same noblesse oblige school. They all seemed to know each other—though, as I quickly realized, the gray man was Tony’s solicitor, whereas the “to the manor born” blonde was his barrister. I watched her watching me as she spoke with the others—the occasional cool sideways glance, during which she was sizing me up, taking the measure of me, putting a face to all that she had been told about me.
Paul Halliwell came out and pulled me aside.
“You know that this is merely an interim hearing, which you are not obliged to sit through, as it can be a bit stressful.”
“I have to be there,” I said, wanting to add, Unlike my husband, who’s sent others to do his dirty work for him.
“Fine, fine, it’s obviously better, because the judge knows you really care about the outcome. Now, I’m just going to have a quick read of all this,” he said, brandishing the witness statements, “but it does seem very straightforward. The report from the doctor at hospital is the key here. Very encouraged by your progress, and so forth. About the fact that you threatened your baby . . . I presume you were tired, yes?”
“I hadn’t slept in days.”
“And you never in any way physically harmed your son?”
“Absolutely not.”
“That’s fine then. The key here is that there was nothing violently aberrant in your behavior toward your baby that would convince the court you pose a risk to the child . . .”
“As I told Ginny Ricks . . .”
On cue, she poked her head into our conversation and said, “I’ve just been told we’re starting in five minutes.”
“Fear not,” Paul Halliwell said. “It will all be fine.”
The courtroom was a paneled Victorian room with leaded windows. The judge had a large chair at the front. Facing him were six rows of benches. Tony’s team sat on one side of the courtroom, his barrister in the first bench, the solicitors behind him. My barrister sat in the same bench as Tony’s, but on the opposing side of the court. I sat in the second row with Ginny Ricks and Deirdre. They informed me that, at this sort of hearing, the barristers didn’t have to wear wigs and the judge wouldn’t be in robes.
“Nice suit, by the way,” Ginny Ricks whispered to me as we waited for the judge to arrive. “He’ll immediately see that you’re here—which speaks volumes about the fact that you so want your son back. And he’ll also see that you’re not some harridan, but eminently respectable and—”
The court clerk asked us to stand as the judge was due to arrive. A side door opened. He walked in. We all stood up. His name was Merton and he was noted for taking care of business in a brisk, no-nonsense manner.
“In the great scheme of things, he’s not the worst,” Ginny Ricks told me before he came in. “I mean, considering the number of genuine misogynists who could be hearing the case, we’re rather lucky. He’s old school but fair.”
He certainly looked old school. A seriously tailored black suit, silver hair, a patrician bearing. He asked Tony’s barrister to “open” the case, which she did in about two minutes, telling the judge who the parties were and explaining the background to the first ex parte hearing. The judge then said that he’d read the statements and that he just wanted to hear submissions.
Paul Halliwell stood up first, his diminutive height and off-the-peg grayness suddenly making him look a little shabby in front of the thoroughbred on the bench. But he spoke in a clear, moderately thoughtful voice, and from the moment he kicked off his submission with the words “My Lord” he narrated my side of the story with straightforward clarity and no lapses of concentration. The terrifying thing was, he was essentially winging it (how could he do otherwise?)—like one of those rent-a-chaplains at the local crematorium who insert the name of the deceased into the preordained service. At least here, he managed to sound reasonably convincing, but the argument he presented wasn’t really an argument, merely a repetition of the facts.
“As Ms. Goodchild’s attending psychiatrist, Dr. Rodale, states in her deposition, Ms. Goodchild responded well to treatment and rebonded well with her child. As to the claim that she informed her husband’s secretary that she would kill her son . . . uh . . .”
He had to glance at one of the statements.
“. . . her son Jack . . . the fact is that at no time did Ms. Goodchild ever actually physically harm her son. And though her comment may have been somewhat extreme—and one which Ms. Goodchild deeply regretted from the moment she uttered it—it is important to take into account the fact that, like any new mother coping with an infant, Ms. Goodchild had been suffering from extreme sleep deprivation which, in turn, can cause anyone to say excessive, unfortunate things in exhausted anger . . . which have no bearing whatsoever on the loving relationship that she has with her son. I would hope as well, My Lord, that the court will take into account the fact that this comment was made when my client was suffering from postpartum depression, which is a most common and fiendish medical condition, and which can make an individual temporarily behave in a manner completely out of character. Once again, I refer My Lord to the statement of Dr. Rodale . . .”
A few sentences later, he wrapped it up with the comment that it struck him as cruel and unusual punishment that my son be taken away from such an eminently respectable woman as myself—“a former distinguished journalist”—because of one angry comment
spoken while “trapped within the horrendous mental labyrinth that is depression,” a labyrinth from which I had now emerged back to “completely functional normality.” And surely, how could the court keep a child from its mother, given the lack of any violent behavior on my part?
I judged it a rather good performance, considering the fact that he had been handed the role only minutes before curtain up. And I was pleased that he underlined the cruel extremity of the order against me—surely a sensible, no-nonsense judge like Merton would have to see the truth in such an observation.
But then Tony’s barrister stood up. Ginny Ricks had told me that her name was Lucinda Fforde, and little more. Perhaps because she already knew something that I didn’t . . . but was certainly about to find out. Fforde had the predatory instincts of a pit bull.
And yet, her voice—like her demeanor—was the apogee of cultivated reasonableness. She sounded so calm, so concerned, so certain. And devastatingly precise when it came to undermining everything about me.
“My Lord, my client, Mr. Anthony Hobbs, would be the last to dispute the fact that his wife was once a distinguished journalist with the Boston Post newspaper. Nor would he dispute the fact that she has been through a serious psychological illness, through which he supported her with great sympathy and understanding . . .”
Oh, please.
“But the issue here is not about Ms. Goodchild’s one-time professional standing or the fact—clearly documented by her psychiatrist—that she is gradually responding to pharmacological treatment for her postpartum depression. No, the issue here is about the welfare of her son Jack—and the fact that, through her actions of the last few weeks, Ms. Goodchild has raised severe doubts about both her ongoing mental stability and her ability to cope with a young infant without endangering its safety.”
And then she brought out the heavy artillery.
“Now, My Lord, you will note from the witness statement by Ms. Judith Crandall—who was Mr. Hobbs’s secretary at the Chronicle—that Ms. Goodchild rang her husband at the newspaper several weeks ago and said—and this is a direct quote—‘Tell him if he’s not home in the next sixty minutes, I’m going to kill our son.’ Thankfully, Ms. Goodchild did not make good on this threat, and though her counsel can certainly argue that this heinous comment was made under duress, the fact, My Lord, is that all women dealing with newborn children suffer from sleep deprivation and its attendant lassitudes, but the vast majority of women do not threaten to kill their children, no matter how fatigued they might be. More tellingly, though one might be able to forgive one such outburst made in exhausted anger, the fact that Ms. Goodchild made such a comment twice . . .”
I heard myself saying, “What?” Immediately, every eye in the court was upon me, most tellingly that of the judge, who looked at me with care.
Ginny Ricks jumped in before he could say anything.
“Apologies, My Lord. That will not happen again.”
“I should certainly hope not,” he said. Then turning back to Lucinda Fforde, he said, “You may continue.”
“Thank you, My Lord,” she said, calmness personified, especially as she now knew that she had me. “As I was saying, Ms. Goodchild’s threat to kill her child was not simply a one-off event. Following the delivery of her son, Ms. Goodchild was hospitalized in the Mattingly, during which time her postpartum behavior became increasingly erratic, to the point where, when her son was in the pediatric intensive care unit of that hospital, she was overheard by one of the nurses telling her husband—and this is another direct quote from one of the witness statements that My Lord has before him: ‘He is dying—and I don’t care. You get that? I don’t care.’ ”
Ginny Ricks looked at me, appalled. I hung my head.
“However, not only did she publicly proclaim her lack of interest in whether her son lived or died, she also was seen by one of the nurses in the hospital to physically yank her infant son off her breast while feeding him so that the nurse was genuinely concerned about whether or not she might hurl the child onto the floor. Once again, My Lord, this is documented in the witness statements, taken by the nurse in question—a Miss Sheila McGuire, who was worked in the Mattingly for the past five years.
“You will also note a witness statement from the eminent obstetrics consultant, Mr. Thomas Hughes, who states, very clearly, that he became increasingly concerned by Ms. Goodchild’s repeated emotional outbursts in hospital. As Mr. Hughes clearly notes in his witness statement: ‘From the outset, it was clear to me that Miss Goodchild’s mental condition was quickly deteriorating, to the point where myself and my colleagues at the hospital voiced private concerns about her ability to cope with the ebb and flow of postpartum care for her son.’ ”
The ebb and flow of postpartum care . . . I was being eviscerated with lethal ease.
“Sadly, the concerns of Mr. Hughes and his colleagues proved justified, as shortly after her release from hospital with her son, she was prescribed sedatives by her general practitioner to help combat the insomnia she had been recently suffering. Her GP had specifically warned her not to breast-feed her child while taking these sedatives. Shortly thereafter, however, her son was rushed to hospital in an unconscious state, having ingested tranquilizers from his mother’s breast milk. And upon arrival at St. Martin’s Hospital, the staff were so concerned about Ms. Goodchild’s mental state that they admitted her to the psychiatric unit, where she remained for nearly six weeks—as she spoke not a word and refused all food for the first few days of her stay.”
I found myself putting my hands over the top of my already lowered head, like someone protecting themselves from a series of repeated incoming blows.
She now moved in for the coup de grâce—talking about how Mr. Hobbs was the distinguished foreign correspondent for the Chronicle, who had just resigned his position as foreign editor to look after his son full-time . . .
Once again, I wanted to scream, “What?” but restrained myself. I was in enough trouble right now.
She then explained that Ms. Dexter was the founder and chairman of one of the most influential marketing companies in Britain, soon to be floated on the London Stock Exchange. She listed her real estate holdings, her chairmanships of assorted well-known companies, and the fact that she was planning to marry Mr. Hobbs as soon as his divorce was finalized.
“Most tellingly, from the outset of this familial crisis, Ms. Dexter has taken it upon herself to ensure Jack’s safety and his well-being. To this effect, she has hired a full-time nanny to look after him—in adjunct to his father who, as I mentioned before, has demonstrated his deep commitment to fatherhood by giving up his position at the Chronicle to be with his son at the start of his life.
“There is no doubt that Mr. Hobbs and Ms. Dexter will provide the sort of loving, secure environment in which Jack will flourish. There is also no doubt that, though Ms. Goodchild may be responding well to pharmacological treatment, there are still large question marks over her ongoing stability, as proven by the fact that just two days ago, she arrived unannounced and uninvited at the gates of Ms. Dexter’s weekend home in East Sussex—a most disturbing visitation, and one which contravened the ex parte order issued against her a fortnight ago.
“In conclusion, may I emphasize that neither Mr. Hobbs nor Ms. Dexter wish Ms. Goodchild ill. On the contrary, her estranged husband is deeply distressed by her current debilitated state. Nor was there any malicious or vengeful agenda behind his decision to seek an ex parte order against his wife . . . which was done solely to protect their child from further harm. His relationship with Ms. Dexter had already been well established before this decision was made. He simply felt that, unless he moved their son out of direct physical contact with Ms. Goodchild, he could be subject to further jeopardy. Ms. Dexter not only provided shelter for Jack, but also round-the-clock nursing care. Considering that she is not the child’s mother, her behavior at this critical time can only be regarded as exemplary.”
And then, suddenly, it was al
l over. Or, at least, Lucinda Fforde had thanked His Lordship and sat down. The judge then said he would retire to consider his decision and asked us all to return within twenty minutes when he would give judgment. Deirdre Pepinster nudged me to stand up as he himself rose and left. But I could barely make it to my feet.
Lucinda Fforde and the solicitor came down the right-hand side of the court, avoiding me as they walked by. Paul Halliwell followed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I can only play the hand I’m dealt.”
Then he too left.
I sank down in the seat again. There was a very long pause. Then Ginny Ricks said, “You actually went to that woman’s country house this weekend?”
I said nothing.
“And why didn’t you tell us about the sleeping pills incident? Or the threats you made against your child? I mean,” I heard Ginny Ricks say, “if you had been direct with us, we could have—”
I stood up.
“I need to go to the ladies’ room.”
I headed out, but my knees started buckling. Deirdre Pepinster was there to catch me.
“Steady on,” she said.
“Stay with her,” Ginny Ricks said in a voice so dismissive it was clear that they now considered me to be completely damaged goods—to be jettisoned from their lives twenty minutes from now, when this entire embarrassing episode was behind them.
I wanted to tell her what an incompetent Sloaney little bitch she was. Remind her how she failed to garner all the necessary facts from me, how she treated my case like an addendum to her ultra-busy life, how she failed to instruct my barrister until ten minutes before the hearing (and I don’t care if he was a last-minute substitute—she could have found a replacement last night), and how she was now trying to blame me for her complete slipshodness.
But I said nothing and allowed Deirdre Pepinster to help me into the restroom, whereupon I locked myself in a cubicle, fell to my knees, and spent five long minutes divesting my stomach of its entire contents.
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