When Judge Cameron entered and Estelle revealed the results of the test, Grace let out a single, solitary sob, then smothered her mouth with a handkerchief and let her head collapse onto her husband’s shoulder.
The judge nodded sympathetically in the direction of the Ardens, and her associate produced a box of tissues. Priya, too, felt powerful emotions. She was so close to getting to hold her baby in her arms. But it was by no means assured. She wasn’t free yet to hope.
‘Are you okay?’ Priya felt her sister’s hand on her shoulder. Dan and Grace were whispering with their lawyer. Dan’s eyes shone, wet. Large tears were rolling down Grace’s cheeks. Priya reached for her glass of water. Her mouth was dry.
Estelle stood. ‘Your Honour, there is one more thing before we deliver our opening arguments. Ms Laghari asks that until the case is resolved, the baby be given over into the custody of a court-appointed guardian to avoid the risk of the family absconding with him.’
‘What? No!’ Dan jumped out of his seat.
‘Your Honour,’ his lawyer bellowed at the same time.
Priya’s head snapped up. They had discussed this the week before, but she had been so focused on the DNA test that the request to remove the baby early had completely slipped her mind.
The judge ignored Dan’s interruption. ‘Mr Jones?’
‘You can’t remove a child from his parents simply because of an as yet unresolved dispute,’ the lawyer said hotly. ‘You would be punishing my clients for no good reason. Not to mention it would hardly be in the best interests of the child. He’s only a few months old. He needs to be with his parents.’
‘It is a reasonable concern.’ Estelle’s gravelly voice was slow and authoritative. ‘There is a risk the family will try to flee.’
‘What risk? On what grounds?’ The opposing lawyer demanded.
‘Mrs Arden recently underwent testing for post-natal depression and scored an eight on the Edinburgh scale,’ Estelle said.
‘In English please, Ms Forlani,’ said the judge.
‘It places her in the high-risk category for post-partum depressive thoughts. It’s in the documents.’ Estelle lifted a thick ringbinder that contained the evidence in the case.
‘Are we in the business of removing children from loving mothers simply because a test finds they are at risk of potentially developing a common mental illness?’ Elliott Jones said. ‘If so, the courts are about to become very busy rehoming an awful lot of babies.’
Judge Cameron frowned. ‘I agree with you, Mr Jones. But it may well be that Baby S needs to get used to being without the people he has come to know as his parents.’
Grace let out another choking sob. Judge Cameron turned to Grace and Dan. ‘Mr and Mrs Arden,’ she said gently, ‘where is Baby S now?’
‘He’s at home being cared for by his grandmother, Your Honour,’ Dan said.
‘Grace has a very close relationship with her mother,’ Elliott said. ‘She also has a good job and many supportive friends. At her school she spearheaded a program to feed the homeless.’
Judge Cameron murmured.
‘It’s a question of risk,’ Estelle said. ‘The prospect of losing the baby will exacerbate the potential for depressive thoughts. Who knows what an unstable mother might do? People have fled the country over less.’
Priya could see Grace’s cheeks burning with shame and rage. Dan pulled her closer to him, his expression stoic.
‘Enough, Ms Forlani,’ Judge Cameron said. ‘Mrs Arden is not on trial here, and her potential future actions certainly aren’t. She is a gainfully employed woman with ties to the community, a supportive family and an impeccable record. Removing such a young child from parental care will distress him and his parents. I see no reason to increase the level of anxiety everyone is feeling about these proceedings. Baby S will remain with Mr and Mrs Arden until the custody hearing is complete. Now, we will take a fifteen-minute recess and then you, Ms Forlani, may open your case.’
Priya watched Grace leave the courtroom, the rawness of the mother’s grief chipping away at her determination. Outwardly, she would remain steadfast. But sympathy for the Ardens had crept into her heart. She reached for Nick’s hand and held it tight.
When Judge Cameron returned to the court Priya sat up straight, trying to focus.
‘Are we ready to begin?’ the judge asked.
Estelle stood, her expression confident as she prowled back and forth across the front of the courtroom. She started with some rhetorical flourishes before plunging into the guts of the matter. ‘In 2015 Priya Laghari engaged the Empona fertility clinic to help her fulfil a life-long dream of becoming a mother. Like many women it is a wish she had cherished from a young age.’
‘Flash forward three years …’ Estelle went on, teasing out the details of Priya’s life like a seasoned storyteller; how her marriage had faltered, how her desire for a child was so strong she sought a donor.
‘If a mother leaves her child with a friend while she goes away for a weekend, the child does not become the offspring of that temporary carer. That might seem a ridiculous concept, but it is, in essence, what the Ardens are contending. This child, Priya Laghari’s child, was in the care of the Ardens for a short time. Five months, to be exact, from his birth to now. That does not make him theirs.
‘Grace Arden, we know, works at a boarding house, where she cares professionally for many children while their parents work overseas or on remote farms. She cares for them nine months a year, yet she knows that does not make them hers. The only difference between those children and Baby S is that Baby S’s rightful mother did not agree to hand her child over to the care of Grace Arden. It happened by accident, through no fault of Ms Laghari’s.
‘We can employ all the rhetoric in the world,’ Estelle went on. ‘In the end it comes down to one simple fact: Priya Laghari is this boy’s rightful mother, by blood and by design. I say design because it was through her actions that the father of Baby S provided the sperm necessary to fertilise her egg. It was through her actions that an egg—her egg—was extracted so that it might be so fertilised. The combination of this chosen father’s sperm and her egg did create a viable embryo, and it was through Priya Laghari’s actions that this embryo was placed in a womb so that it could safely grow into the baby he is now. The only thing in Baby S’s life that Ms Laghari did not plan for was the gross incompetence that led to her son being placed in the wrong womb. And of course she had no way of knowing that the woman who would carry and give birth to her child would conspire to hide him from the world.’
Estelle Forlani argued that the months that Grace and Dan spent bonding with Baby S were only allowed to occur because they didn’t alert the clinic as soon as they suspected a mistake had been made. ‘They cannot lie to the world and then cry foul when the people hurt by the lie attempt to reverse its effects.
‘If Baby S is removed from their custody it will be painful for them, there is no doubt of that. But if they had not tried to conceal him in the first place their pain would be far less.
‘It’s not too late to rectify this error,’ Estelle said. ‘No harm will come to the child by removing him from the Ardens now. Indeed, when he is a grown man, he will not remember the few months he spent living with two people who have no biological connection to him.’ Estelle paused for dramatic effect. ‘He will never even know they exist.’
There was a booming echo of a closing door. Grace had fled the court.
‘Well,’ Viv said when they broke for lunch, ‘that seemed to go as well as could be expected.’ They were huddled around a metal cafe table on a footpath of a busy city road.
‘You were very convincing,’ Nick told Estelle. ‘At first when you started talking about looking after other people’s kids I thought it was a long bow. But you’re right, it is just the same. He’s stayed with them for a bit. That doesn’t change who he is. What do you think, Pri?’
Priya’s voice was quiet. ‘I just want it to be over.’
She had been buoyed by Estelle’s performance, but fear still weighed heavily on her heart.
‘I think it will be really hard for them to make a stronger argument than that,’ Nick said.
‘Don’t pop the champagne yet,’ Estelle said, lighting a cigarette in spite of the ‘no smoking’ sign. ‘It’s still their name on the birth certificate.’ Her phone rang. ‘Excuse me. That’s the office. My associate is trying to track down the doctor who exposed the mistake.’ She accepted the call. ‘Yes? You haven’t? No, it’s not too late. Keep trying. We don’t want to leave anything to chance.’
‘Isn’t the error proven by the DNA test?’ asked Viv.
‘Yes, but what’s not clear is how much the Ardens knew. If this doctor told you, perhaps she told them. We have a chance to show the type of people they are. Are they sneaky? Are they deceitful? Are there other things that might make them unsuitable parents? If so, I’d like it on record before the court.’
‘Is that really necessary?’ Priya asked. ‘We’re already putting them through so much, do we have to attack them as well?’
Estelle flicked the ash from her cigarette onto the ground. ‘We do if you want to win this case.’
After lunch it was the Ardens’ lawyer’s turn to present his argument. Before he began he buttoned his jacket and ran his palm down his tie. None of the lawyers were wearing black robes and wigs, as TV dramas had taught Priya to expect.
‘Your Honour, Ms Forlani has tried to confuse the issue by stating that Priya Laghari is this child’s mother, and this is simply a matter of a switched-at-birth style mix-up. She has ignored the role Grace Arden played in the creation of this boy’s life and tried to reduce the question of maternity to a matter of genes. To do so is to overlook a crucial thing,’ said Elliott Jones. ‘Birth cannot occur without pregnancy. Carrying a child in your womb, nurturing him from a two-cell embryo to a baby with lungs and eyelashes and toes, is an essential part of mothering him. To fall back on genetic links disregards this important, precious task.’
Priya reluctantly found herself in agreement and a fog of confusion settled over her. This case, she realised, wasn’t about an immutable truth. It was about definitions, collectively agreed upon and codified. It was about humans messing with the laws of nature, and obscuring certainty.
The lawyer continued. ‘Ms Laghari had trouble conceiving with her husband, that’s why she went to Empona. We do not know that if this embryo had been transferred into her uterus it would have developed into the healthy baby now at the centre of this custody dispute. Grace Arden, who was forty-four at the time she conceived, was deemed high risk but she put herself in danger in order to bring this pregnancy to term. She ensured the foetus was monitored and nourished and kept safe. Every day and every night for nine months she devoted herself to the baby, and when he arrived in the world, after a gruelling twelve-hour labour and twenty-six stitches, she redoubled her efforts, and was up with him day and night. That is not the same thing as “caring for a child” the way Ms Forlani characterised her work at the boarding house. What Mrs Arden did was create life. Without her, this baby would not exist. How then can Ms Forlani say she is not his mother?’
Elliott went on to address Estelle’s other points. When the Ardens were handed their bright-eyed baby, they didn’t know it had been a mix-up, he said. Dan’s lineage included ancestors from Syria, Lebanon and Malta. They had believed the doctor who told them Sam’s complexion was the result of that ancient bloodline rising to the surface of the gene pool. How could they not? The baby was born from Grace’s own womb. Who else’s would he be? ‘Why should these good, loving people’—he gestured at the Ardens—‘be punished for the clinic’s mistake?’
‘In cases of mix-ups at hospitals, newborns are quickly returned to their rightful parents. But we also know of times when the error isn’t discovered until after the parents and child have had a chance to bond and so offspring have elected to stayed with the non-biological parents. What, then, is the limit on the growing affection between parent and child? The Ardens have loved and cared for Baby S for five months now, in addition to the nine months they spent nurturing him in utero. How short does a period of parenting have to be for it to be dismissed as irrelevant? Ms Laghari here, why, she’s never even seen Baby S. She wasn’t even sure she was his biological mother until it was confirmed by a lab. Her bond is purely theoretical.’
Estelle got to her feet. ‘The relationship developed in utero is not mutual,’ she responded. ‘The Ardens may have felt love for Baby S during the gestation but there can be no question that he returned that love, as he was a foetus.’
‘Your honour, what do we know of the mind of a baby?’ Elliott asked.
‘If our chief concern here is the baby’s welfare, the bonding up to this point is moot,’ said Estelle. ‘He won’t even remember them.’
‘There is no way you can know that for sure,’ Elliott replied.
And Priya, agreeing, began to regret that she’d allowed herself to hope.
Forty-one
‘Are you ready? Are you feeling okay?’ They were back in the airless interview room and Elliott was looking at Grace, seeking her assurance. ‘You can do this,’ he said, rubbing her arm. She could see the tiny red veins in Elliott’s eyeballs from the late nights he was working.
‘I want to know more about that man,’ she said to Elliott and Dan. ‘The tall one. He’s not the donor, so why should he be in our child’s life? If the crux of their argument is biology, he’s no more the father of the child than Dan is.’
‘We’ll focus on him tomorrow. Today is about you.’
‘Neither father has a biological connection to Sam, but Dan is his birth father. Doesn’t that count for something? A point in our favour?’
‘We’ll address the fatherhood issue later, Grace. Today I want you one hundred per cent focused on your role as Sam’s mother. Do you want to go over the questions again?’
‘No, I’m okay.’ She smoothed her skirt.
The lines they’d agreed on were on a constant loop in her head. She’d been up late, practising them until she forced herself to take a sleeping tablet so that when she took the stand she wouldn’t appear as crazed as she felt.
The Family Court witness box was only three steps off the floor, but to Grace it was an endless climb to the gallows. She gripped the polished wood rail and took her seat to plead her case. Beth gave a discreet wave from the body of the court. She had taken the day off to be a friendly face for Grace to focus on. Fiona had also offered to come, but Grace had said no. ‘I need you to stay with Sam,’ she had said, clutching her mother’s hands. ‘Make sure he feels loved.’ There was no one else she could trust.
‘How are you today, Grace?’ Elliott asked, his eyes crinkled by a kind smile.
She nodded bravely, just like they had practised. ‘I’m okay. Considering.’
‘You gave birth five months ago. Tell me, how has life changed since you became a mother?’
Grace swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘It has been the happiest time of my life.’
She spoke of the day she first laid eyes on Sam and how the love she already felt for him had expanded. She was careful with her language. When she looked down at her baby the euphoric love she felt was like nothing she had ever known.
‘The bond was instant,’ Grace said. ‘And Sam, he is such a content, sweet little boy.’
‘Tell me about him,’ said Elliott.
‘He loves to suck his own toes,’ Grace told the court. ‘He’s always trying to get them up into his mouth. And he’s very verbal. He makes little sighing sounds like he’s fed up.’ She couldn’t help but smile. ‘A sort of “a-humph”.’ She looked at her husband. ‘Dan and I call it The Harried Businessman. We say he sounds like he’s worn out after a busy day of being a baby.’
A-humph, she heard in her head. A-humph, she silently replied.
The room was still. Beth was mouthing something to Grace. It looked like ‘I love you
’, but it was hard to tell. Priya was crying; her whole face shone wet. Grace felt a kick of annoyance in her gut. How dare that woman feel sadness, or pity, or anything at all, really, given she was the one putting them all through this.
What did Priya know of Sam’s short life? She didn’t even know his father. She claimed history and biology were the only things that mattered, yet half of Sam’s remained shrouded in secrecy, hidden by the Empona clinic’s privacy policies. Grace had bled for that child. She had carried him for nine months and torn herself in two so that he could live and she’d do it again if it meant she could keep him.
But she didn’t voice any of these things. The cost could be too great. Instead she spouted inspirational quotes about motherhood. Blessed, fulfilled, willing to do anything for him was how she described her frame of mind. She felt like a pageant contestant parroting answers about world peace. Poise, poise, poise, said the voice in her head. Show them you’re unflappable; the calm, collected, ideal person to raise this boy.
‘He likes stewed apples,’ she said. ‘They’re the only solid he’ll eat. And easy-rock radio, since before he was born. When he was inside me, the radio would come on and he’d stir as if to say, “What’s that?”’ She remembered how happy it had made her.
‘I gave him life,’ she said. ‘Me. I love him.’ She could feel the anger rising in her. She tried to push it down, but it reared up, uncontrollable. She was wrung out. On edge. ‘How can she love him?’ Grace looked at Priya. ‘She doesn’t even know him.’
The Mothers Page 28