by Alex Lake
‘Right,’ Julia said. ‘I’ll put her down then you’ll throw me out. You must think I fell out of the tree yesterday, Edna. Go ahead. Say your piece.’
Edna shrugged. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘if that’s how you want it.’
Brian was impassive. When Edna began he looked away, almost as though he was ashamed.
‘As I understand it,’ Edna said, speaking slowly and taking care to enunciate every word, in the same deliberate way that someone might eat a meal they wanted particularly to savour, ‘the court’s main – if not only – concern is the welfare of the child.’
‘Which they normally conclude lies in granting custody to the mother,’ Julia said. ‘Unfortunate for fathers, but just the way it seems to be.’
‘They do,’ Edna said. ‘Unless the mother is incapable of taking care of the child. Say, for example, if she is unstable. Or depressed, or suicidal. Or has a drinking problem. Or an anger management issue.’
Julia opened her mouth to speak, but she did know what to say. Her tongue was dry and stuck to the roof of her mouth.
‘I see that you understand what I am saying,’ Edna said.
Julia did, but she couldn’t quite believe it, couldn’t quite grasp how serious the situation was. Grasping at straws, she shook her head.
‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘You’re wrong.’
‘I don’t think I am. I have taken counsel on the matter and, if a judge thought that a mother – say you, for example – had some issues to work through, then they might well award custody to the father.’
Julia stared at Edna. ‘Are you saying you’re going to lie about me in order to get custody?’
‘No,’ Edna said. ‘Not at all. The facts are what they are, Julia. Now, let’s think through what a court might see when presented with this case.’ She gazed at the ceiling, as though deep in thought. ‘First, you don’t show up to collect your daughter, who is then abducted. Then, second, it comes out in the press that you were planning to abandon her anyway—’
‘I wasn’t!” Julia said. ‘You know that! I might have wanted to leave Brian, but that did not mean I was going to abandon Anna! The press made all that up!’
Edna held up her hand, palm facing outwards. ‘I’m just telling you what might be presented in court. And as far as I know, you were planning to abandon Anna. If asked, I would say it seems precisely the kind of behaviour I might expect from you.’
‘I don’t believe you’re doing this. Even you, Edna. I can’t believe you would stoop so low.’
‘Who’s stooping?’ Edna said. ‘These are just the facts.’ She smiled. ‘And there are more. I’ll go on, shall I?’
Julia lowered Anna to the floor. She’d changed her mind. She didn’t want her to hear whatever was coming next.
‘Go and play in the sunroom,’ she said. ‘I’ll just be a minute or so.’
After Anna left, Julia turned to Brian. ‘Are you going to let her do this?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to be part of this? Because if you are, then it’s on your conscience.’
‘I have to do what’s best for Anna,’ Brian said, unable to meet her gaze. ‘And that means she stays with me.’
‘I have some more facts, if you’re interested,’ Edna said. ‘Ready?’
Julia didn’t reply; Edna cleared her throat theatrically. It was her turn to enjoy herself.
‘Third, you are mentally unstable. A few days ago you attempted suicide, which is not the action of a well person.’ She was holding out her fist and extending one finger for every point she made.
‘I did not!’ Julia said. ‘You’re lying! You know you are!’
‘But would a court know that, Julia?’ Edna said. ‘That is what you must ask yourself.’ She extended a fourth finger. ‘Fourth, there are signs that you have a drinking problem, a problem which may have played a part in your failed suicide. Fifth, and finally, you appear to be unable to control your anger, something that may also be a result of your alcohol abuse. The gentleman who was here yesterday happens to be a magistrate, and he was appalled at your behaviour. I am sure he would have no problem describing it in court.’
She held up her hand, all five fingers now extended. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Five reasons, any one of which might be reason enough for a judge not to award custody to you. In the presence of all five’ – Edna shrugged – ‘a responsible person would have no choice but to award custody to the father. Rare, these days, but not impossible.’
Julia found it hard to think what to say. There was so much wrong with what Edna had said, so much that was either a distortion or an outright untruth – she was not an alcoholic, nor was she suicidal, nor did she have anger management issues – but she knew there was no point denying it. Edna already knew none of it was true, but that was irrelevant. Edna was not asking her to give her opinion; she was showing Julia her hand.
And what a hand it was. A straight flush, or a royal flush, or whatever was the best hand in a poker game. Even before she’d had an opportunity to think it through she could see how strong a position it was, and how weak a position she had. Her neglect and desire to abandon Anna, and attempted suicide, were a matter of public record, at least, as far as the newspapers were concerned – and even though the press were wrong, it was her word against theirs, as she could hardly expect Brian to stand up for her – and as for the drinking and anger issues, well, they might not be provable, but they were also not disprovable, and once the allegations were made then the stink of them would hover over her.
Especially since the good magistrate had seen her screaming at Brian, and would take his place in the witness box to say so. Julia closed her eyes.
‘So,’ Edna said. ‘Any comments?’
Julia could think of nothing to say. All she wanted was to get out of that house as fast as she could. She faced Brian.
‘Your mother is going to ruin your life,’ she said. ‘In the end, she’ll ruin it, because she’s poison. Pure poison. I hope for your sake you get out before it’s too late.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Brian said. ‘You already ruined my life. All I have left is Anna, which is why I’m not going to let you take her as well. Remember Julia, this is your doing. You chose this. We could still be together, if it wasn’t for you.’
Julia looked from Brian to Edna, and back to Brian again. ‘No we couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t stand another minute with you and that twisted old bitch that gave birth to you. I’d rather be dead.’
‘More suicidal wishes,’ Edna said. ‘Tut tut.’
‘Fuck you,’ Julia said. ‘Fuck you, you inhuman bitch.’
‘And anger,’ Edna said. ‘Gosh. You never learn, do you? You created this situation, Julia. Don’t you see that? This all comes from your actions. Your neglect and anger and selfishness. Take those from the picture and there would be no problem here. But there they are, and so how could I leave my granddaughter in your care? God alone knows what might happen to her.’
‘I’m taking her with me,’ Julia said. ‘She’s coming home.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Brian said. ‘Don’t make this worse for yourself. At the moment you get access. Alone, with Anna.’
The threat was clear: give in or they would try and deny her any access at all, or limit it to supervised access. They would use what they had to paint a picture of her as wild and crazy and totally unsuitable for any kind of maternal role, especially when Anna had the option of solid, hard-working Brian and his heroic mother.
‘So now what?’ Julia said, her voice a whisper.
‘Now you go home,’ Edna said. ‘And wait to hear from our lawyers.’
Our lawyers.
That ‘our’ was as eloquent an expression of who was behind this as a thousand-word essay could have been.
Julia was reeling, her head spinning. She was a lawyer herself; she knew how to fight this. She just needed to think about it, to work through the options. But she couldn’t. At that moment she was unable to get any
purchase on the situation, unable to fully understand what Brian and Edna were saying, unable to tell whether they were right.
‘Can I say goodbye to Anna?’ she said. ‘Please?’
Edna started to shake her head, but Brian interrupted.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and get her.’
v.
Julia took a long time over the drive home. It was a warm day and the Cheshire countryside was showing its best: the ancient hedgerows buzzed with life, sun dappled the ponds and rivers, the stone cottages gleamed with fresh vigour.
She didn’t notice any of it. Julia could understand why Brian was doing this, or at least, why he was letting Edna do it. He would not have had the imagination or ruthlessness to do it on his own. It was simple enough: he wanted his daughter. Unlike many dads he had the chance to get her. If it meant destroying Julia’s reputation then that was a price worth paying. And he occupied the moral high ground, at least, as far as he was concerned, because he had not started this. It was she who had demanded that they break up, not him, and so she should pay the price.
But she had not started this. That was what he refused to see. Their marriage had failed. That was simply a fact. Look at how they were treating each other now. There was no love there anymore. All Julia had done was to recognize that, and apply the final mercy to what their relationship had become.
There was no blame in that. None. The opposite, in fact. It took more courage to put an end to something that was dying than it did to let it suffer. When she was a girl – perhaps seven, or eight – she had been eating lunch with her father (he had made his specialty dish: fried eggs, pickled onions, beans and bacon) when there was a thud against the window. Julia jumped up to go and look.
Tottering on one leg on the flagstones was a small brown bird.
Dad, she said, It’s a bird. It’s alive.
Its wing’s broken, her dad said. It’s a swallow.
Can we help it?
No, her dad said. We can’t.
We can take it to the vet!
There’s nothing he can do.
Julia felt a sense of deep injustice at the ways of the universe at that moment. How was it possible that there was nothing they could do to help this tiny, damaged creature? Nothing the vet could do. Nothing her dad – a superman – could do?
Well, she said. We can’t just leave it there.
No, her dad said. We can’t. I’ll sort it out after lunch.
What do you mean?
I have to put it out of its misery, Julia. It’s the only kind thing to do.
It had taken her a few seconds to understand what he meant, and when she did she struggled to believe it, struggled to accept that her dad could even contemplate such a thing.
You’re going to kill it? she said, tears both for the fate of the bird and at the cruelty of her father springing to her eyes. That’s horrible.
It’s not, her dad said. It seems that way, but it’s the kindest thing we can do for it. The bird is suffering, Julia, and it will suffer until it dies from hunger or thirst or at the hands of some damn cat. Sometimes you have to be tough. Sometimes that’s the only way to help something.
She’d understood it. She might not have if it had been anyone other than her father telling her – she might have just thought they were making excuses because they wanted to kill the bird – but coming from her dad, she could believe it.
Do it now, she said, and he had. He’d left the house and gone to his shed and come back with a shovel. Gently he pushed the bird onto the metal blade and carried it around the back of his shed, out of his daughter’s sight.
It’s ok, he said, when he came back, his face grave. The bird is happy now.
And that was what she had done to their marriage. It was broken, over. There was no point in letting it limp on. Of course, it was sad that it hadn’t worked, and that Anna would have to deal with the separation of her parents, but it wasn’t anybody’s fault. Some marriages worked, others didn’t, everyone knew that, and everyone knew that it was better to make a clean break than keep an unhealthy, unhappy marriage going. The days of living in misery because of the shame of divorce or ‘for the kids’ were over. Maybe Edna – and therefore Brian – didn’t agree, but so what? On this particular issue, Edna was wrong, not that she could ever have accepted that.
So Julia had done the right thing. She had told Brian it was over, adult to adult. She had avoided drama and affairs and high emotion, which would have been damaging to Anna, by taking the wounded sparrow out of sight – calmly, like her father – and giving it a dignified end. In doing so, she had prepared the ground for a civil and well-managed divorce, after which, Anna would live with her mum and see her dad as often as made sense. It was a situation that occurred all over the country every day.
And then Anna had been taken. That was at the heart of this. That was what had gone wrong. That was to blame, not Julia. If it hadn’t been for the kidnapping, right that moment Julia and Anna would be enjoying ice cream at a Cheshire farm.
But that was not what had happened. Anna had been taken, the press had built a simple story in which Julia was the villain, and now she stood, for the second time in as many weeks, to lose everything, and she wasn’t sure there was anything she could do about it.
The case they would make against her was strong. She didn’t need to be a lawyer to see that. Did it matter that half of it was embellished, twisted, or just plain wrong? Not really. There were enough facts – her late arrival at the school, her desire for a divorce, the so-called suicide attempt, her scratching Brian – to make the picture of her as an unhinged, alcohol-dependent, non-maternal monster seem plausible.
She couldn’t go home. Not yet. It was too empty, too obvious a symbol of what her life had become and what it would remain.
She needed something else, something human.
She needed her mum.
vi.
‘Hi Mum,’ Julia said.
The woman sitting on the worn upholstery of a large wing chair blinked at her. She had liver spots on the back of her wrinkled hands. She didn’t speak.
Julia put her hand on her mum’s elbow.
‘I missed you,’ she said. Normally, she would recount what had happened to her, what Anna was up to, in the hope that some of it went in, that some of it lodged somewhere in her mum’s shattered mind and maybe came out in her dreams, maybe gave her some subconscious comfort.
Now, though, she had no comfort to offer.
‘I missed you,’ she repeated. ‘I miss you.’
She blinked back tears. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said. ‘What happened? Where did I go wrong? Should I never have married him? It felt so right at the time.’
She hesitated, unsure of whether she should carry on, but she had no choice. Now she had started, she was unable to stop.
It all spilled out. She told her mum what had happened. About the divorce, about Anna, about Edna. About how it was her fault. About how she had been forced to leave her daughter, after only just getting her back, about how that made her feel like the worst mother, the worst person, in the world.
‘I just wish I could go back in time,’ she said. ‘Go back in time and fix it.’
Her mum frowned. Her jaw clenched, the muscles working. She turned to Julia, and blinked again. Her frown deepened, then, suddenly, there was clarity in her gaze, knowledge in her eyes. She chuckled, and patted Julia’s hand.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ she said. ‘You’ll be fine.’
For a moment Julia believed that her mum had returned, was whole again.
‘Mum?’ she said. ‘Are you ok?’
Her mum looked at her for a few, long seconds. The clarity gave way to a slightly puzzled, faraway expression, as though she was lost deep in thought, then the old lady’s eyes clouded over and she spoke again.
‘Whoever you are,’ she said.
She was gone – if she had even been there – but that fleeting instant was enough for Julia. She smiled, got to her f
eet, and kissed her mum goodbye.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I love you, Mum.’
13
Legal Questions, Moral Questions
i.
They are so foolish. They – the forlorn parents, the bumbling police, the rabid animals of the press – don’t know that they are all simply pieces on your chessboard, being moved around as you see fit, all the while thinking that they are in control, that their destiny is in their hands, that the things they do can make a difference to the final outcome.
They cannot. Their free will is an illusion. Whatever they do will lead them to the same place. Even if they do something you did not expect, you would adapt. Change your plans. Rethink. Make it so they are back on course. All roads lead to the same destination. They do not know that they are headed there, but they are.
Only you know what that destination is. They will find out soon enough.
For your plan is nearly complete.
For the girl, the end is coming.
For them all, the end is coming.
ii.
Julia’s office was quiet. It was early Monday afternoon and most of the lawyers were out, either in court or meeting clients. She was not ready to do either yet, but she had come into the office anyway. The prospect of staying alone in an empty house was bleak and unappealing. At least in the office she had things to distract her: administrative tasks in whose monotony she could lose herself. At home that morning she had found herself unable to resist the allure of reading the latest developments in her life, as told by organs of the Great British press.
One opinion piece, in particular, had stuck with her. It was written by a well-known crusader for family values, corporal punishment in schools, and prison ships in the Thames. Well, not that last one, but it would not have been too much of a stretch to imagine her calling for their return.
So, it began, she got what she wanted.
This column has learned that Julia Crowne, arguably the worst parent in Britain today and unarguably the most reviled, instructed her long-suffering husband and recently kidnapped daughter to leave the family home this weekend. Fortunately, Mr Crowne and Anna have the sanctuary of his mother, Dr Edna Crowne, to which they can retreat. Hopefully this will be a place where Anna can begin the process of healing after her terrible ordeal.