Playing Nice

Maddie phoned Lyn and demanded that Theo be allowed to come home now. Lyn said she thought that, on balance, Theo should remain at the Lamberts’ “to see how he settles.”

“I must say, he does seem very happy there, Maddie. And really, that’s everyone’s main concern in this situation, isn’t it? What’s best for Theo, do you see? As his primary carers for the last two years, I’m sure you and Pete must want that for him, too, in the end.”

93

PETE

THE DAYS TICKED DOWN toward the hearing. We dug in. That’s the only way I can describe it—as if we were underground, enduring, waiting for the bombardment to finish so we could emerge, blinking and shell-shocked, into the real world again.

But all the time, there was a huge, Theo-shaped gap in our hearts. The house seemed very still and quiet. It was like being inside something broken, like a stopped clock.

And I had a horrible feeling that, when all this was over, we wouldn’t be emerging into the same world we’d left. If we lost Theo for good, everything would be smashed, including us. Without us even really noticing it, he had become our raison d’être, the point around which our relationship circled.

Not for the first time, I found myself wishing that Maddie hadn’t always been so set against marriage. Anything, however intangible, that bound us to each other would have been a help. But now it was hard to see how we could possibly survive as a couple if we lost him. Like parents who split up in the aftermath of a child’s death, because the grief would only be survivable with someone who didn’t feel the same pain as you, whose agony didn’t reflect yours every time you looked into their eyes.

* * *

—

MEANWHILE, THE LEGAL SIDE of things intensified. We had to write statements, go through the evidence—in particular, Lyn Edwards’s devastating report. She’d recommended that Theo be returned permanently to the Lamberts. He felt safe there, apparently. But so what? Theo felt safe everywhere. Theo would have felt safe on top of a burning skyscraper.

Even though we’d half expected it, seeing it in black and white like that was another crushing blow. Anita told us encouragingly there were lots of things in the report she could challenge. But I remembered what she’d said about CAFCASS in our very first meeting. It’s very, very rare for the judge not to go along with their views.

And now that Theo was staying with the Lamberts, they’d become the status quo. There was a reason possession was called nine-tenths of the law. If he was there, and settled, our strongest argument for keeping him—that moving families would cause disruption—now worked in their favor, not ours.

I invented a new word: CAFCA-esque. Like Kafkaesque, only with added heartbreak.

I still went to the parenting classes, even though I didn’t currently have a child to parent. I didn’t want to give CAFCASS any reason, however small, to say we weren’t being cooperative.

At the classes I talked to the other parents, and heard tales of unbelievable misery—misery even worse than ours. Parents whose kids had been taken away after anonymous tip-offs by disgruntled neighbors, or because hospitals had concerns about minor injuries, or because a parent had lost their temper with a social worker. Mothers who, having proved they were clean of drugs, relapsed into addiction when the system refused to give their kids back. Or even worse, mothers who stayed clean, only to be told that their kids were now settled and happy with their foster families and it wasn’t in their best interests for them to be moved again. Many of the people I spoke to were chaotic, admittedly, or working their way through various rehabilitation programs. But many were just sad and desperate and broken.

And one woman whose story chilled my soul—a woman about Maddie’s age, an artist, heavily pregnant, who’d been told that, because she’d been in a psychiatric unit in the past, she was considered “capable of abuse.” The psychiatrist who had written those words had never even met her. But unless she could convince a judge his diagnosis was wrong, her baby would be taken from her soon after it was born and given up for adoption. It was all to do with numbers, she told me wearily: Removal of newborns had more than doubled since the government introduced adoption targets. I checked, sure she must have gotten that figure wrong. But she was right.

Once, I would have written about these people, and tried to shine a light on the injustices they were suffering. But even if there’d been a newspaper I could publish in, I wasn’t allowed to write anything that related, however tangentially, to our case.

Ironically, as the hearing about Theo neared, the case about David was just getting going. I tried to spend some time researching hypoxia, so I could sound more confident when a social worker asked how we were going to care for him. But the more I read, the more futile it seemed. I looked at our tiny house and wondered how on earth we could accommodate a severely disabled child.

If we even had a tiny house. We could barely afford the first mortgage, let alone the second mortgage that was now covering our legal fees. And if we failed to gain custody of David, there was a high likelihood we’d end up having to pay child maintenance for him.

If worse came to worst, and we lost both Theo and David, there would be another consequence, too. I would no longer have a child to be a full-time father to. I’d have to get a job—not in journalism, obviously; that ship had sailed, but maybe stacking shelves in the local supermarket. Would that cover our mortgages? I looked to see how much shelf stackers got paid. The answer was no, it wouldn’t.

We couldn’t sleep. Night after night, we lay side by side, staring at the ceiling and twitching with stress. Even eating was difficult—the tension made it hard to swallow. There was a time when Maddie would have drunk to relax, but now the pills she was taking meant we couldn’t even have alcohol in the house.

I started sleeping in Theo’s room. There was still a faint, puppyish smell of him lingering in the sheets. I even turned on his nightlight. It helped, somehow.

One night I woke to find Maddie sitting on the side of the bed. I glanced at the clock. It was four A.M.

“Perhaps it’s time to let him go,” she said softly. “Perhaps we should just stop fighting it. We could go back to Australia, have another child. Start again.”

I didn’t answer. After a moment she got up and left. In the morning, I wasn’t even sure I hadn’t dreamed it.

94

MADDIE

PETE IS BRILLIANTLY DOGGED. It’s a situation not unlike the NICU—the kind of crisis that requires resilience and determination, not quick thinking or decisiveness. Left to my own devices, I’d probably do something impulsive: shout at Lyn, or try to run away. But Pete just grits his teeth and keeps going. Researching David’s condition, writing legal statements, going through the evidence.

We both suspect it’s hopeless. But we don’t want to get to court and think there was something, anything, more we could have done.

I find myself remembering the period when I first fell in love with him, back in Australia. We were sleeping together, but I still regarded him principally as a friend and I had no expectation that the relationship would ever become anything more. Then I was invited to go and see my grandparents in Tasmania. Pete had never been, so he tagged along, too—we planned to do some hiking after the visit. It was only after we got there that I discovered the real reason I’d been asked: Grandpa was dying. A series of small strokes I hadn’t been told about had left him barely mobile. The day after we arrived, a larger one paralyzed his left side and made him incontinent. Instead of dropping in on an active elderly couple for a few nights, Pete found himself in the middle of a family drama, with relatives flying in from all over Australia and me an emotional wreck. He just quietly got on with it—ferrying people from the airport, shopping, cooking, even taking care of soiled bedsheets. Not once did he mention the missed hiking. When, one time, I’d started to say Sorry, I know this isn’t what you signed up for, he just looked at me as if I was crazy. “Thank you for letting me take care of you all,” he said simply.

Later, after my granddad passed, I was reminiscing with my grandmother when she patted my knee and said, “I hope you and Pete will be as happy as me and your granddad were.”

“Oh, we’re not serious,” I began, but then I saw the look on my grandmother’s face. And realized that, of course, we were. Pete was a keeper, and I’d have been mad to let him go.

* * *

—

I PHONE THE DAILY MAIL to say I can’t do an interview after all. But when I get through to the news desk and ask to speak to Kieran Keenan, there’s a pause.

“Are you a relative of his?” the man who picked up asks.

“No. It’s in connection with a story he’s working on.”

“I’m afraid Kieran won’t be coming back.”