Playing Nice

He’s always said he needed to password-protect his laptop to prevent Theo from playing with it—“No screen time at all until he’s two, and no more than thirty minutes a day fully supervised after that. I read an article—in Silicon Valley, the people who really know about this stuff don’t even let their five-year-olds play with iPads unsupervised.” But had it actually been to protect Theo from coming across his browsing history? Or indeed, to stop me from doing the same?

If he could lie about that so easily, what other lies has he told? Could he even have lied about the most important thing of all?

“I’ll go and pack a suitcase,” he says when I don’t respond. He waits for me to say something. But I can’t.

Only as he starts trudging up the stairs do I manage to add, “What else happened at the interview?”

“Oh…” He shrugs wearily. “I said ‘no comment’ to every question. And I could see the detective getting more and more convinced I must have something to hide. So now it’s a trade-off—has he gotten so frustrated he’ll decide to investigate anyway, or will he think it’s a waste of resources when they have so little to go on?”

It seems inevitable to me now that there’ll be a full investigation, not least because so far, everything that possibly could go wrong for us has. And because, behind it all, guiding events with a push here and a nod there, I can feel the invisible, irresistible force of Miles Lambert, who’ll stop at nothing to get his son.

Perhaps if we’d handled it better, he’d have had less to work with. But now the tiny lie Pete told about seeing the security tag on Theo’s leg is the hairline crack that, when more pressure is applied, could shatter our family apart. Theo could be taken away. Pete could go to prison. And what will happen to me in that situation? If they decide I knew all along, my leave to remain in the UK could be revoked as well.

An abyss has opened up, and we’re teetering right on the edge.

“I’ll call Greg,” Pete says. Automatically, his hand reaches into his pocket for his phone. It comes out empty. “Shit,” he says, furious at his own stupidity. “Shit.” He takes a deep breath, and I know he’s trying to hold himself together.

“I’ll do it,” I say. “You go and pack.”

“Tell him…” He stops, then continues. “Tell Greg I’ll come late. When Theo’s asleep. I want to do bedtime. It could be the last one for a while.”

72

PETE

AS I UNDRESSED BEFORE lying down on Greg’s sofa, something fell out of my pocket. It was a card the police had given me. Headed Your Release from Custody, it explained that Inappropriate contact with anyone linked to your case, either directly or indirectly, through a third party or social media, may constitute a criminal offense. If found guilty, you could face up to life imprisonment.

Life imprisonment. Could this really get any worse? And what constituted “inappropriate contact,” anyway?

When we got to the police station my lawyer, Mark Cooper, had gone to speak to the police on his own. He’d told me to expect that—it was part of the process, apparently, the “disclosure.” He came back somber but encouraging.

“Well, they’re not obliged to tell me everything, but even so I’d say they’ve got very little. My advice is, we stick to ‘no comment.’?”

“Do we have to? It just feels wrong, somehow. When I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Let me explain something.” Mark Cooper was no older than me, but he had the pale, flabby look of someone who’d spent too much time sitting in these grubby rooms with their flickering strip lights and discarded paper cups. “In this country, the criminal law is based on an adversarial system. That means it’s the police’s goal to get a suspect arrested, charged, and brought to trial, not to worry about whether he’s actually guilty—that’s someone else’s job. On top of that, they face intense pressure to improve their conviction rates. The police are trained in interviewing techniques, and they’re often very good at getting suspects to say something that, however innocent, will help to convict them later. Or, even worse, getting them to tell a small lie that will undermine all the rest of their evidence when it comes out in court. Right now, if they had enough evidence to charge you, they’d have done it. So our objective is to leave here today with that situation unchanged, and the surest way to do that is to answer ‘no comment.’?”

I understood his logic, but it had been agony. When the policeman—a pleasant, cheerful man who introduced himself as Detective Inspector Richards—cautioned me, and got to the words, “If you do not mention now something which you mention later, a court might ask you why you didn’t mention it at the first opportunity,” I shot Mark an anguished glance. He only shook his head warningly.

When the caution was out of the way, DI Richards asked the first question. “I understand that you transferred to St. Alexander’s with your premature baby in an ambulance. That must have been a very difficult time for you.”

“On the advice of my solicitor, I am answering, ‘No comment.’?”

DI Richards looked pained. “We’ve agreed to speak to you today to hear your side of the story, Pete. I’m neutral in this—I’m just trying to see what’s happened.”

“On the advice of my solicitor, I am answering, ‘No comment.’?”

“No one’s currently accused you of any crime, Pete. We just want to make sure we’ve got your version of events as well as NHS Resolution’s.”

“On the advice of my solicitor, I am answering, ‘No comment.’?”

DI Richards shrugged and picked up a document. “You told the NHS investigators you were in a state of complete panic when you got to the intensive care unit. Does that sound right to you, that you were panicking?”

I hesitated. Had I really said that? “On the advice of my solicitor, I am answering, ‘No comment.’?”

“I can understand why you’d be anxious, Pete. You’d had a conversation with the paramedics in the ambulance, hadn’t you? They’d told you your little boy was probably going to be brain-damaged. That must have been hard.”

“On the advice of my solicitor, I am answering, ‘No comment.’?”

And so it went on. Even when he asked about Bronagh, and whether I’d been in touch with her since leaving the NICU. I blinked but managed to say, “On the advice of my solicitor, I am answering, ‘No comment.’?”

And then there’d been the moment, near the end of the interview, when he’d sprung on me that they’d gotten a warrant to examine my computer. I must have looked anxious, because then he asked whether they’d find anything on it that related to the investigation.

I started to shake my head, then remembered. “On the advice of my solicitor, I am answering, ‘No comment.’?” But inwardly, I was already thinking of what I would now have to tell Maddie.

Finally, he got to the end of his questions. Since I wasn’t answering, it hadn’t taken long—no more than fifteen minutes. “That’s it,” he said with a sigh. Then, as I relaxed, “Oh, just one last thing. We’ve been contacted by a Miles Lambert, who says he has information that may be relevant to our inquiries. Is there anything you’d like to tell me first?”

I tried very hard not to react, but whatever he read in my face—fear, perhaps, or despair, or even loathing—it evidently satisfied him, because he nodded.

“On the advice of my solicitor, I am answering, ‘No comment,’?” I mumbled, but DI Richards was no longer listening.

* * *

—

GREG AND KATE HAD replaced their downstairs curtains with blinds, which lit up with every car that passed. Sleep was impossible. I lay on their narrow sofa, my mind churning. Theo. I’d told him I was going away for a few days. He’d barely reacted, just asked who was going to take him to Moles’s house tomorrow. Maddie. I couldn’t help thinking she didn’t seem desperately upset by the social worker’s demand that I move out. She’d seemed distant, almost wary of me as I packed my things. Perhaps she needed time to process what I’d told her. Did she despise me now? Did I disgust her? I’d tried so hard to be the person she wanted me to be, but the truth is, I wasn’t, and never had been. I was a fraud.

Which was ironic, because if I was convicted of child abduction, I would almost certainly be charged with fraud as well. Everything had gone wrong, and our family was going to pay the price.

And with that thought, finally, I allowed myself to weep; in the darkness, quietly, so as not to wake Greg’s sleeping kids upstairs.

73

Case no. 12675/PU78B65, Exhibit 38: Extract from CAFCASS safeguarding letter regarding Theo Riley, addendum to previous recommendations, presented to the family court by Lyn Edwards, Family Court Adviser.

CONCLUSION

In the light of these revised circumstances, the court should direct CAFCASS to complete a Section 7 report to further explore the issues raised, including:

The possibility of child abduction and any subsequent psychological implications for the child.

The possibility of alcohol abuse. Madelyn Wilson has stated that she regularly drinks more than double the maximum of ten units per week recommended by NHS guidelines for women.

Madelyn Wilson’s mental health and how it could impact on the child. In addition to a history of psychosis, she has stated that she is no longer taking the medication she was prescribed for her condition, a fact of which her GP was unaware.