A Special Relationship (37 page)

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 on to the floor. Once again, My Lord, this is documented in the – witness statements, taken by the nurse in question – a Miss Sheila McGuire, who has 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 postnatal care for her son.”’

The ebb and flow of postnatal 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 tranquillizers 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 grace —
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 whom, 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 behaviour at this critical time can only be regarded as exemplary.’

And then, suddenly, it was all 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 loo.’

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 loo, whereupon I locked myself in a cubicle, fell to my knees and spent five long minutes divesting my stomach of its entire contents.

When I emerged from the stall, Deirdre Pepinster regarded me with nervous distaste, looked at her watch, and said, ‘We’d best be getting back.’

I managed to swill some tap water around my mouth before we left. When we reached the court, I saw a look pass between Deirdre and Ginny Ricks.

Then the court clerk announced the entry of the judge. We all stood up. The side door opened, the judge walked in. He sat down. So did we. After clearing his throat, he began to speak. He spoke non-stop for just five minutes. When he was finished and the courtroom was empty, Ginny Ricks leaned over to me and said, ‘Well, that’s about as bad as it gets.’

Ten

T
HE JUDGE DIDN’T
look at me as he talked. He seemed to be speaking to some nether place, located on the floor just beyond his desk. But his crisp voice was aimed directly at me.

His ‘judgment’ was brief and to the point. After due consideration, he saw no reason to change the initial
ex parte
order – and therefore he was allowing this Residence Order to stand for the next six months, until ‘The Final Hearing’ regarding residence could take place. However, he was adding a few provisos to the original order. Though he concurred that the safety of the child was paramount, he also ordered that ‘the mother be allowed weekly supervised contact at a contact centre within the borough of her residence’. He also commissioned a CAFCASS report, to be filed five weeks before the Final Hearing which he fixed for six months’ time, ‘at which time the matter will be decided once and for all’.

Then he stood up and left.

Lucinda Fforde leaned over and proffered her hand to Paul Halliwell. From the brevity of the handshake and the lack of conversation between them, I could sense that this was a mere end-of-hearing formality. Then she and her solicitor hurried off, a quick nod to Ginny Ricks, hearing finished, job done, on to the next human mess. My barrister had a similar approach. He packed up his briefcase, picked up his raincoat, and left hurriedly, muttering ‘We’ll be in touch’ to my solicitor. Even though he had only been parachuted into the case today, he too looked decidedly embarrassed by the outcome. Nobody likes to lose.

Deirdre Pepinster also stood up and excused herself, leaving me and my solicitor alone in the court. That’s when she sighed a heavy theatrical sigh and said, ‘Well, that’s about as bad as it gets.’

Then she added, ‘Like Paul Halliwell, I’ve always said about cases like these: I can only play the hand I’m dealt. And I’m afraid you’ve dealt me a busted flush. Had I only known …’

I wanted to respond to her – to tell her exactly what I thought of her. But I kept myself in check.

‘I just need,’ I said, my voice shaky, ‘a translation of what the judge just said.’

Another weary sigh. ‘A Residence Order is exactly what it sounds like. The court decides with whom the child should reside – and in this instance, the judge has decided to maintain the status quo of the last order. Which means that your husband and his new partner will have residence of your son for six months – which is when there will be what the judge called “A Final Hearing”, at which time you will be able to argue your case again and hopefully work out a more favourable custody arrangement. For the moment, however, as he said, you will be granted supervised contact at a contact centre – which essentially means a room in some social services office in Wandsworth … where you will have an hour to be with your child once a week, under the supervision of a social worker, who will be there to ensure that the child comes to no harm. CAFCASS stands for “Child and Family Court Advisory and Support Service”. And the CAFCASS report which he commissioned means that, in the ensuing six months, the court reporter will be investigating your background, and that of your husband and his new partner. And to be absolutely direct about it, given the case they have compiled against you, I honestly don’t see how you will be able to change the court’s opinion. Especially as, by that time, the child will be overwhelmingly settled with his father and his new partner. Of course, should you wish to instruct us to take the case …’

I raised my head and stared directly at her.

‘There is absolutely no chance of that,’ I said.

She stood up, gave me another of her supercilious shrugs, and said, ‘That is your prerogative, Ms Goodchild. Good day.’

I was now alone in the courtroom. I didn’t want to move from this spot. A court had declared me an unfit mother. For the next six months, my sole contact with my child would be a weekly sixty minutes, with some social worker standing by in case I went psycho. And Ginny Ricks was right: given the evidence stacked against me – and given the wealth and hyper-social standing of Ms Dexter – the chances that I would be granted custody of Jack, or even permitted to see him on a regular, unsupervised basis, were around nil.

I had just lost my son.

I tried to fathom that – to reason it out in my head.

I had just lost my son.

I kept playing that phrase over and over again in my head. The enormity of its meaning was still impossible to grasp.

After ten minutes, the court usher came in and told me I would have to leave. I stood up and walked out into the street.

I made it to the Temple Underground station. When the train came hurling down the platform, I forced myself against a wall and clutched on to a waste bin – to ensure that I didn’t pitch myself under it. I don’t remember the journey south, or how I got back to the house. What I do remember is getting to the bedroom, closing all the blinds, unplugging the phone, stripping off my clothes, getting under the covers, and then realizing that, though I could try to block out the world, the world was still there, beyond the bedroom window, indifferent to my catastrophe.

Not having a clue what to do next, I stayed in bed for hours, the covers pulled up over my head, wanting the escape of oblivion, yet being denied it. This time, however, I didn’t find myself hanging on to the mattress as if it was the sole ballast that was keeping me from going over the edge. This time, though I felt an intense, desperate grief, it wasn’t overshadowed by a feeling of imminent collapse or a downward plunge. I didn’t know if it was the cumulative effect of the anti-depressants, or some chink in the armour-like depressive veil. All I realized was that I wasn’t sinking any longer. My feet were on terra firma. My head was no longer fogged in. The view ahead was clear – and thoroughly dismal.

So I forced myself out of bed, and forced myself to take a hot-and-cold shower, and forced myself to tidy the bedroom, which had become something of an uncharacteristic dump over the last few days. When I broke down – a wave of sobbing that hit me shortly after I finished hanging up the last pair of cast-aside jeans – I didn’t find myself falling into oblivion. I was simply convulsed by sadness.

I plugged the phone back in around four. Immediately it rang. It was Sandy. From the sound of my voice, she knew the outcome. But when I detailed the findings of the judge – and the supervised access I would have to Jack – she was horrified.

‘Jesus Christ, it’s not like you’re an axe murderer.’

‘True – but they certainly gave their barrister enough ammunition to depict me as someone who was on the verge of catastrophe. And I certainly didn’t make life easier for myself by …’

‘Yeah?’

And then I told her about my weekend trip down the country, apologizing for not informing her before now.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said, ‘though you should know you can tell me anything … like
anything,
and I won’t freak. The thing is, surely the court must have been sympathetic to the idea that you just
had
to see your son – which isn’t exactly an abnormal instinct, now is it? And, like, it’s not as if you pounded on their door at three in the morning, wielding a twelve-gauge shotgun. You just stood at the gate and looked, right?’

‘Yes – but also the barrister representing me hadn’t been properly briefed.’

‘What the fuck do you mean by that?’

I explained about the slapdash approach of my solicitor. Sandy went ballistic.

‘Who recommended this bitch to you?’

‘The husband of my friend Margaret Campbell …’

‘She was that American friend living in London, now back in the States, right?’

Sandy certainly had a terrifying memory.

‘Yes, that’s her.’

‘Some friend.’

‘It’s not her fault, nor her husband’s. I should have researched things a little bit …’

‘Will you stop that,’ she said. ‘How the hell were you to know about divorce lawyers in London?’

‘Well, I certainly know a thing or two about them now.’

Later that evening, the telephone rang and I found myself talking to Alexander Campbell.

‘Hope this isn’t a bad time,’ he said. ‘But your sister called Margaret at home today, and told her what happened, and how this woman —Virginia Ricks, right? – behaved. And I just want to say I am horrified. Truly horrified. And I plan to call Lawrence and Lambert myself tomorrow—’

‘I think the damage has been largely done, Alexander.’

‘Damage for which I feel responsible.’

‘How were you to know?’

‘I should have checked with other London colleagues about the best divorce firms.’

‘And I shouldn’t have accepted the first lawyer I spoke with. But … there it is.’

‘And now?’

‘Now ... I think I’ve lost my son.’

Margaret also called that night to commiserate, and to say how bad she felt.

‘Did they fleece you, those lawyers?’

‘Hey, you’re married to a lawyer – you know they always fleece you.’

‘How much?’

‘It’s irrelevant now.’

‘How much?’

‘A retainer of twenty-five hundred sterling. But I’m sure the final bill will come to more than that.’

‘And how will you cover it?’

With my ever-diminishing funds, that’s how.

In fact, the Lawrence and Lambert bill arrived the next morning. I was right about it running beyond the original retainer – a cool £1730.00 above the initial £2500.00 – every expense and charge laid out in fine detail. I also received a phone call from Deirdre Pepinster. She was as laconic as ever.

‘One thing I wanted to raise with you yesterday – but didn’t think you needed more bad news …’

Oh, God, what fresh hell now?

‘I checked the Land Registry. The house is in both your names …’

Well, that’s something I guess.

‘But before the hearing yesterday, we heard from your husband’s solicitors. Seems he wants to sell up straight away.’

‘Can he do that?’

‘According to the law, each party who co-owns a house can force a sale. But it takes time and the divorce courts can stop it. Now, if you’d had residence of your child, that would be a different matter altogether. No court would allow the house to be sold under you. But in this situation …’

‘I get it,’ I said.

‘They have made an offer – a settlement offer, I should say.’

‘What is it?’

‘Uh … Ginny Ricks said we won’t be representing you from now on.’

‘That’s absolutely correct.’

‘Well, I’ll just fax it to you then.’

It showed up a few minutes later – a lengthy letter from Tony’s solicitors, informing me that their client wanted to expedite the divorce, and to be as generous as possible under the circumstances. As their client ‘would be retaining residence of his son’, there were no child support issues to deal with. As I’d had an extensive journalistic career before moving to London, his client would argue that alimony was also not an issue here – as I was perfectly capable of earning a living for myself. And as their client had put 80% of the equity into the house, he could also expect to receive 80% of whatever profit the sale yielded (but given that we only owned the house for seven months, that profit wouldn’t be enormous). However, wanting to be generous in this instance, he was offering the following deal: as long as I didn’t contest residence, I would, upon the sale of the house, receive not just the £20,000 equity I had invested in it, but the £7000 for the loft conversion (as I had paid for this myself), plus an additional £10,000 sweetener, plus 50% of whatever profit the sale yielded. If, however, I didn’t accept this offer, they would have no choice but to take this matter to court, whereupon …

I got the point. Settle fast or be prepared for shelling out even more money in legal fees. Money which I simply didn’t have right now.

There was one small respite in this otherwise politely couched, but completely threatening letter: I had twenty-eight days to reply to this offer before legal action ensued. Which meant that I could dodge dealing with it for a bit. Especially as I had more pressing concerns to confront right now. Like my severe lack of money. Though I was expecting an increased bill, there was a part of me which hoped that, given the negative outcome of the case, Lawrence and Lambert might have reduced their costs. What an absurd idea – and just to pour battery acid into the wound, their invoice for the additional £1730.00 was marked:
To Be Settled Within Fourteen Days.

Of course, I wanted to crumple up this invoice and dispatch it to the nearest circular file. Or find another lawyer and sue Ginny Ricks for complete professional incompetence. But I also knew that, if I dodged this bill, Lawrence and Lambert would not only come after me, but might let word get around that, not only was I an unfit mother, but a deadbeat to boot. So I went to the bank that afternoon and bought a £1730.00 sterling draft, and posted it to Lawrence and Lambert, and sat in a coffee bar on Putney High Street, pondering the fact that my net worth was now around £2500 – enough to see me through the next few months, as long as I didn’t employ another lawyer to fight the custody case.