A Special Relationship

by Douglas Kennedy

  Then she detailed my clinical case.

  When she had finished Maeve asked her, ‘In your opinion, is Ms Goodchild fully capable of resuming the role of full-time mother?’

  She looked straight at Tony and said, ‘In my opinion, she was fully capable of that role when she was discharged from hospital nearly ten months ago.’

  ‘No further questions, My Lord.’

  Lucinda Fforde stood up.

  ‘Dr Rodale, during the course of your twenty-five-year career, how many women have you treated for postnatal depression?’

  ‘Around five hundred, I’d guess.’

  ‘And, of these, how many documented cases can you remember of a mother threatening to kill her child?’

  Dr Rodale looked most uncomfortable with this question.

  ‘When you say “threatening to kill a child…?”’

  ‘I mean, just that: someone threatening to kill a child.’

  ‘Well … to be honest about it, I only remember three other reported instances…’

  ‘Only three other instances, out of five hundred cases. It’s obviously a pretty rare threat to make then. And let me ask you this: of those three cases … actually four, if you include Ms Goodchild, how many of those actually went on to murder their child?’

  Dr Rodale turned to the judge.

  ‘My Lord, I really find this line of questioning…’

  ‘Doctor, you must answer the question.’

  She looked straight at Lucinda Fforde.

  ‘Only one of those women went on to kill her child.’

  A triumphant smile crossed the lips of Lucinda Fforde.

  ‘So, given that, one of those four women actually killed her child, there was a twenty-five per cent chance that Ms Goodchild would have killed her child.’

  ‘My Lord—’

  But before Maeve could utter anything more, Lucinda Fforde said, ‘No further questions.’

  ‘Re-examination?’

  ‘Absolutely, My Lord,’ Maeve said, sounding furious. ‘Dr Rodale, please tell us about the patient who killed her child.’

  ‘She was suffering from extreme schizophrenia, and one of the worst cases of manic depression I’ve ever treated. She had been sectioned – and the murder happened on a supervised visit with her child, when the supervisor became physically ill and had to leave the room for no more than a minute to seek help. When she returned, the mother had snapped her child’s neck.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘How rare is this sort of case in postnatal depression?’ Maeve asked.

  ‘Rarer than rare. As I said, it’s the one instance in five hundred or so cases I’ve treated. And I must emphasize again that, unlike all the other cases, this was one where the patient was essentially psychotic.’

  ‘So there is absolutely no relation whatsoever with the condition suffered by the woman who killed her child, and that of Ms Goodchild?’

  ‘Absolutely none whatsoever. And anyone who attempts to make that sort of comparison is guilty of a monstrous manipulation of the truth.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor. No further questions.’

  Next up was Clarice Chambers. She did smile at me from the witness box and, under gentle, brief questioning from Maeve, told her how well I had ‘bonded’ with Jack, the grief I had displayed at our first supervised visit, and the way I had been able to establish a genuine rapport with him during our hourly visits each week. And then Maeve asked her virtually the same question she had posed to Dr Rodale.

  ‘As you have been the one-and-only person to have watched the interaction of Ms Goodchild and her son over the past months, is it your professional opinion that she is a caring mother?’

  ‘A completely caring mother, in whom I have the greatest confidence.’

  ‘Thank you. No further questions.’

  Once again, Lucinda Fforde played the ‘I have just one question for you’ game. And the question was, ‘In your experience, don’t all mothers who have been legally prevented from unsupervised contact with their child – due to worries about the child’s safety – don’t they always express terrible grief in front of you?’

  ‘Of course they do. Because—’

  ‘No further questions.’

  ‘Re-examination?’

  ‘Ms Chambers, is it true that, for the past six weeks, you have allowed Ms Goodchild to have unsupervised contact with her child?’

  ‘That is completely correct.’

  ‘And why have you permitted this?’

  ‘Because it’s clear to me that she is a normally functioning person, who presents no danger whatsoever to her child. In fact, I’ve actually felt that way about her since the beginning.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Ms Chambers.’

  Moving right along, Jane Sanjay took the stand. She explained that she had been my health visitor – and had seen me several times after I had come out of hospital with Jack. And she reported that she had no doubts about my competence as a mother. Maeve asked, ‘However, this was before the full-scale effects of the postnatal depression had afflicted her, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, that’s true – but she was, at the time, obviously suffering from exhaustion, post-operative stress, not to mention ferocious worry about her son’s condition. The exhaustion was also exacerbated by sleep deprivation, and the fact that she had no help at home. So, under the circumstances, I thought she was coping brilliantly.’

  ‘So, there was nothing in her behaviour to indicate a woman who could not deal with the day-to-day business of child care?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘You know, of course, that she did accidentally breastfeed her son while taking a sedative. Is that, in your professional experience, a rare occurrence?’

  ‘Hardly. We must have a dozen of those cases a year in Wandsworth. It’s a common mistake. The mother isn’t sleeping, so she’s on sleeping pills. She’s told, “Don’t breastfeed while taking the pills.” The child wakes up in the middle of the night. The mother is befuddled. She breastfeeds the child. And though the child goes floppy for a bit, he or she simply sleeps it off. And in the case of Sally … sorry, Ms Goodchild … the fact that this happened didn’t have any bearing whatsoever on my opinion that she was a thoroughly competent mother.’

  ‘No further questions.’

  Up came Lucinda Fforde.

  ‘Now, Ms Sanjay, didn’t the breastfeeding incident of which you speak happen after your dealings with Ms Goodchild?’

  ‘That’s right. She entered hospital for a time thereafter.’

  ‘She entered a psychiatric unit thereafter … the breastfeeding incident being the event that brought her to hospital. So how can you say that you know that this incident was just a common mistake if you weren’t there?’

  ‘Because I’ve dealt with these sorts of cases before.’

  ‘But you didn’t specifically deal with this one …’

  ‘I dealt with Ms Goodchild …’

  ‘But before the incident, is that not right?’

  Pause. Jane was cornered, and she knew it.

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s right.’

  ‘As for your claim that “though the child goes floppy for a bit, he or she just sleeps off the drugs”, I have a clipping here from the Scotsman, dated 28 March of this year – a short news item, detailing a death of a two-week-old boy in a Glasgow hospital after his mother breastfed him while taking a similar sedative. No more questions.’

  ‘Re-examination, Ms Doherty?’

  ‘Yes, My Lord. Ms Sanjay, have you ever dealt with a death like the one just described?’

  ‘Never – but I am certain it could happen. But only if the mother had ingested far beyond the normal dose of sedatives. I’d be interested to know if that mother in Scotland had been a drug addict – because many addicts mainline high doses of the drug. And if you then breastfed a baby after mainlining an overdose of sedatives, well … a tragedy like that can happen.’

  The judge came in here.

&
nbsp; ‘Just out of interest, was the Glaswegian mother a drug addict, Ms Fforde?’

  Ms Fforde looked profoundly uncomfortable.

  ‘She was, My Lord.’

  After Jane was dismissed, the moment I was dreading had arrived. Maeve Doherty called my name. I walked down the aisle, entered the witness box, took the oath. I looked out at the courtroom and had that same sensation I had the one-and-only time I appeared onstage in a school play: the sheer terror of having all eyes upon you, even if the audience (in this case) was such a small one.

  Maeve was brilliant. She stuck to the script. She didn’t ooze sympathy (‘That won’t play with Traynor’), nor did she lead me by the nose. But, point-by-point, she got me to explain the whirlwind nature of my relationship with Tony, my feelings about falling pregnant in my late thirties, my difficult pregnancy, the horror of discovering that Jack was in intensive care after his birth, and the fact that I began to feel myself mentally slipping into a black swamp.

  ‘You know, the expression, “In a dark wood”?’ I said.

  ‘Dante,’ Mr Justice Traynor interjected.

  ‘Yes, Dante. And an apt description of where I found myself.’

  ‘And in those moments of lucidity when you re-emerged from this “dark wood”,’ Maeve asked, ‘how did you feel about shouting at doctors, or making those two unfortunate comments about your son, or accidentally breastfeeding him while on sleeping pills?’

  ‘Horrible. Beyond horrible. And I still feel horrible about it. I know I was ill at the time, but that doesn’t lessen my guilt or my shame.’

  ‘Do you feel anger towards your husband about how he has behaved?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I also feel that what’s happened to me has been so desperately unfair, not to mention the most painful experience in my life … even more so than the death of my parents. Because Jack is my son. The centre of my life. And because he’s been effectively taken away from me – and for reasons that haven’t just struck me as unjust, but also trumped up.’

  I gripped the rail of the witness stand as tightly as I could during this final statement. Because I knew that if I let go, the entire court would see my hands shaking.

  ‘No further questions, My Lord,’ Maeve said.

  Lucinda Fforde now looked at me and smiled. The smile of someone who wants to unnerve you, wants you to know they’ve got you in their sights and are about to pull the trigger.

  ‘Ms Goodchild, after being told of your son’s critical condition while at the Mattingly Hospital, did you say: “He is dying – and I don’t care. You get that? I don’t care”?’

  I gripped the rail tighter.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Did you, a few weeks later, call your husband’s secretary at work and say: “Tell him if he’s not home in the next sixty minutes, I’m going to kill our son”?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Did you breastfeed your son while taking sedatives after being specifically told not to do so by your GP?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Did your son end up in hospital after this incident?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘Were you hospitalized for nearly two months in a psychiatric unit after this incident?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘In 1988, did your father attend your commencement party at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘Did you give him a glass of wine at that party?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Did he tell you that he didn’t want that glass of wine?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘But you made the comment, “How middle aged,” and he downed the wine. Was that the correct sequence of events?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he then drive off later that evening, killing himself, your mother, and two innocent passengers in another car?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘I thank you, Ms Goodchild, for confirming that all the major accusations against you are correct ones. No more questions, My Lord.’

  ‘Re-examination, Ms Doherty?’

  ‘Yes, My Lord. But before I begin, I would like to take issue with the fact that Counsel used the word “accusations” in the context of my client. It should be noted that Ms Goodchild is not on trial here.’

  ‘Noted,’ Traynor said, with a bored sigh.

  ‘Ms Goodchild, did you mean what you said when you said: “He is dying – and I don’t care. You get that? I don’t care”?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean it at all. I was suffering from postoperative shock.’

  ‘Did you mean what you said when you threatened the life of your child?’

  ‘No – I was suffering from clinical depression.’

  ‘Did you ever commit any violent act against your child?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Did you ever breastfeed him again while taking sedatives?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Are you now over your postnatal depression?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Did you give a glass of wine to your father on the fateful June night in 1988?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Now even though you didn’t force it down his throat – and, in fact, made nothing more than a flippant comment – do you still feel guilty about giving him that glass of wine?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ve always felt guilty about it. And I’ve lived with that guilt, day-in, day-out, for the last fifteen years.’

  ‘But do you think you deserve that guilt?’

  ‘Whether or not I deserve it, it is there.’

  ‘I think that’s called having a conscience. Thank you, Ms Goodchild, for so clearly stating the real facts of this case. No more questions.’

  I stepped down from the bench. I walked down the aisle. I sat down next to Nigel Clapp. He touched my shoulder and said, ‘Well done.’

  High praise from Mr Clapp. But I still thought that Fforde had scored serious points against me – and had pointed up, for Traynor, the fact that I had validated all the accusations against me.

  There was one more witness before lunch. Diane Dexter’s former housekeeper – the Hispanic woman I had met on that day I had rushed to Dexter’s house. Her name was Isabella Paz. A Mexican, resident in the United Kingdom for ten years. In Ms Dexter’s employ until four months ago. And she confirmed that Mr Hobbs had been a regular guest to her residence since 1998 … and no, they did not sleep in separate rooms during these occasional visits that occurred when he was back in London from assorted overseas postings. She confirmed that Ms Dexter had gone on holiday with him in 1999 and 2000, and that she had spent a month with him in Cairo in 2001. And yes, he had been regularly visiting Ms Dexter since then – and, in fact, all but moved into her house for around eight weeks this past year … which, as Maeve Doherty helpfully added, was the eight weeks when Jack and I were resident in the psychiatric unit of St Martin’s.

  ‘In other words, Mr Hobbs and Ms Dexter had been carrying on an occasional romance since 1999, and a rather steady romance since his return to London in 2002?’

  ‘That was how I saw it, yes,’ she said.

  During her cross-examination, Lucinda Fforde said, ‘Weren’t you fired by Ms Dexter for theft?’

  ‘Yes – but then she took back what she said, and paid me money.’

  ‘And before Ms Dexter, didn’t you work for a Mr and Mrs Robert Reynolds of London SW5?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘And weren’t you fired from that job as well? For theft again?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘No further questions.’

  ‘Re-examination?’

  ‘A very fast question, Ms Paz,’ Maeve said. ‘Were you ever charged with theft by Mr and Mrs Reynolds. Officially charged, that is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you don’t have a criminal record?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And if the court wanted proof of the dates of, say, the holidays Ms Dexter took with Mr H
obbs, how could they obtain proof?’

  ‘She keeps a diary by the phone, writes everything in it. Where’s she going, who with. Once the year is finished, she puts the diary in a cabinet under the phone. She must have ten years of diaries down there.’

  ‘Thank you, Ms Paz.’

  When we broke for lunch, I leaned forward and asked Maeve, ‘Did she really get done for stealing in her first job?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she whispered. ‘A diamond necklace, which was fortunately recovered from the pawnbrokers where she sold it. And I think it was her mad plea for mercy that made her employers decide not to involve the police. And I’m pretty certain she did steal from Dexter – but, knowing that she was involved in this case, Paz decided to scream false accusation and raise the roof. Which is why Dexter paid up. So, if you’re looking for a housekeeper, don’t hire her. She’s completely larcenous … but she certainly served our purpose.’

  Then she gave me a little shrug of the shoulders, as if to say: I know it’s not pleasant, but if you want to win, you have to engage in a little suspect play, just like the other side.

  ‘You did well in the witness box,’ Maeve said.

  Rose and Nigel shot off to retrieve our two last-minute witnesses. Maeve excused herself to prepare for her final two examinations in full. So Sandy and I took a walk by the Thames. We didn’t say much – the pressure of the hearing and yesterday’s revelations stifling any serious conversation. But my sister did suggest that the morning went well for me.

  ‘But how well?’

  ‘Tony and his rich bitch were caught out lying about the newness of their relationship, and about only being just friends until after he snatched Jack. And I thought you were impressive.’

  ‘I hear a but coming on.’

  ‘But … I did think that Tony’s barrister nailed you in her cross-examination. Not that you did anything wrong. Just that all the question marks hanging over you were confirmed by you. But maybe I’m just being overly pessimistic.’