‘And you have a phobia of girls.’
She blinked. ‘Is that what they’re saying?’
‘’Fraid so.’
‘Goodness. I’m the headmistress of a girls’ school, and I have a phobia of . . .’ She took a sip from the coffee mug on her desk, with a snorting little laugh. ‘Extraordinary. However, we’re getting off the point. Two detentions in one day! You’ve never been in trouble before. You’re said to be very able. This isn’t your normal behaviour, is it?’
I shrugged.
‘So tell me. Why today?’
‘Everyone calls her Mrs Hag, not just me. I honestly don’t know how she got the job.’
I knew I was behaving badly, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was what was going on in the county court at that very moment. That was my past, my present and my future.
‘Why all this trouble today?’ Maggie persisted. ‘What’s happening in your life?’
‘Stuff,’ I muttered. ‘Just . . . stuff.’
‘Would you like to speak to the school counsellor?’
I shook my head. My nose was running, and I rubbed it with my sleeve. ‘I can’t handle it.’
‘What can’t you handle?’
‘My stupid father.’
My phone vibrated in my pocket. We aren’t allowed to have our phones on at school. We’re supposed to turn them off when we arrive, and not look at them all day. This is a ridiculous rule and of course we all break it. The teachers turn a blind eye, but I had a dilemma now because to get out my phone and read a text when sitting right in front of the headmistress was asking for trouble.
But I had to. I just had to.
‘I’ve got a message,’ I said desperately, pulling it out. ‘It’s life or death. Please can I look at it?’ I didn’t wait for her to reply.
The text was from Hannah.
Hannah
‘Go ahead,’ said Jane to the security man. ‘Give us the good news first.’
He obviously had a soft spot for her. If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging. ‘The good news is that Joseph Scott is here! Came dashing in off the street three minutes ago.’
‘Oh
no
,’ I whispered.
Jane touched my arm before turning back to him. ‘And the bad?’
‘The bad news is that you won’t have time to talk, because His Honour wants to see all parties in court immediately.’
‘Isn’t there another case in there at the moment?’
‘They’re negotiating. They want more time.’
Jane sailed towards the door. ‘Thank you, Malcolm. Come along then, Hannah, Frederick—let’s go!’
We followed her out and across the lobby. I heard another door open behind us, followed by the rumble of male voices. I didn’t look back. Freddie took my arm, and we almost ran into the courtroom. It was a modern space; windows ran along one side, overlooked by the skeletons of leafless trees under a colourless winter sky. The electric lighting seemed gaudy.
Jane led us to the far side of the room, parking us in a row of seats while she set up shop directly in front of us. There was a raised area at the front, upon which stood the judge’s bench. No judge.
Frederick squinted up at the royal coat of arms. ‘
Dieu et mon
droit
,’ he murmured. ‘Quite a claim.’
I sensed Scott’s presence nearby. Any second now, and he’d be in the room with us. ‘I can’t do it,’ I whispered to Frederick. ‘I can’t sit here when he comes in.’
Jane turned around and met my eye. ‘Yes you can. Hannah, you are better than him. Stand your ground.’
The words weren’t out of her mouth before the door from the lobby clunked open, and Frederick’s fingers tightened around mine. I didn’t look. I wouldn’t look. I stared rigidly ahead, listening to their footsteps.
Then there was someone else at the far end of our row. Frederick sat to my left, and now there was someone to my right. I heard the seats creak, saw a shadow. It was as though someone had dropped a tarantula beside me. It took all my will just to sit still.
By turning my head very slightly I could watch his solicitor, who was at the other end of Jane’s row of seats. The man was middle-aged, tall, with a square forehead. He wasn’t quite ugly and yet he reminded me irresistibly of Frankenstein’s monster.
He cleared his throat and took a pen from his breast pocket. ‘Do we need to ask for more time, Mrs Whistler?’
‘You tell me,’ replied Jane tartly. ‘It’s your client who arrived late.’
‘Anything we can agree?’
She flapped a hand. ‘You’ve got my draft directions, Richard. If you’re really going ahead with this it will have to be set down for final hearing. I want the criminal papers and a report from Nanette Marsden. We’ll probably be calling schoolteachers. Time estimate of two days.’
‘That can all be agreed.’ He leaned closer and dropped his voice. ‘But what about interim contact?’
‘
No
,’ I bellowed. The word erupted from me, echoing around the big room. I felt my face flaming.
O’Brien cast a startled glance over his shoulder before subsiding into his seat. Perhaps it was fortunate that a woman chose that moment to burst in as though she owned the place. Jane told me later that this was Vera Taylor, court clerk and supreme Ruler of the List. She was voluptuously overblown, sporting a winter tan.
‘Everybody ready? I’ll wheel him in,’ she promised brightly, and banged her way through a door behind the judge’s bench.
The next minute passed in grim silence. We sat rigidly in our tableau, aware of every sniff, every movement in the room. It was a strange suspension of time, an echoing last breath before battle was to be joined. Then the buxom clerk reappeared, calling to us to rise. She was followed by a man who strode in, nodded to us all and sat down at the bench. I was reminded of an elegant Siberian husky my sister Eliza used to keep: dapper but shrewd, with oddly pale eyes. I never trusted that dog.
‘Mr O’Brien,’ he said briskly. ‘Mrs Whistler. I’ve read the papers. Any agreement on contact? No?’
Jane hadn’t sat down. ‘If Mr Scott cannot be persuaded to withdraw his application, we’ll have to have a full hearing. I do hope that won’t be necessary because of the destabilising effect this is already having on the children. If I could describe—’ The judge held up a hand. ‘It would be disingenuous of me to pretend I’m not aware of the background to this matter, Mrs Whistler. The criminal proceedings were reported in minute detail in the press. You can ask me to disqualify myself if you like, but I doubt you’ll find a judge on this circuit who doesn’t remember the case.’
Jane pressed on. ‘Indeed, Your Honour. So you will understand that these children witnessed the violent death of their mother at the hands—’ He interrupted her again. ‘We don’t need that kind of emotive language, do we? It really doesn’t help.’
‘I’m simply outlining the unpalatable facts,’ retorted Jane. ‘It’s difficult to describe the manslaughter of a woman without using words such as
death
and
violent
.’
He regarded her with those lupine eyes. ‘It strikes me that what we have to focus on is whether it is in these children’s best interests to have a relationship with their father. Now, I read in the application—and I doubt whether you can gainsay this—that he had a close bond with all three, and there is no suggestion he was ever violent towards any one of them. Nor, indeed, that he’d ever raised a hand against the mother before that fateful moment.’
Jane was obviously riled. ‘He certainly made up for that, didn’t he?’
The judge sighed and turned to Scott’s solicitor. ‘Mr O’Brien, what’s the applicant actually wanting?’
It was like a children’s game. Jane sat down, O’Brien stood up. See Saw, Margery Daw. O’Brien had an irritating habit of buttoning and unbuttoning his jacket while he talked.
‘At this stage, he merely seeks to re-establish contact. Otherwise the children will effectively be orphaned—another tragedy for them.’
Jane was back on her feet. ‘What does Mr O’Brien mean by
at this stage
? Are we to understand that the father’s true agenda is to seek a change of residence?’
‘I never said that,’ protested O’Brien.
Jane cast him a sceptical glance. ‘These children want nothing to do with Joseph Scott. Scarlet declares quite categorically that she will not see him—no matter what the court decides.’
The judge grinned at her, his head to one side. It occurred to me that he liked Jane. He’d probably crossed swords with her hundreds of times. ‘Come, Mrs Whistler. You and I know that children are routinely said to be reluctant to see their absent parent. I’d say I encounter it in—ooh, fifty per cent of contact applications? And generally, their reluctance is easy to overcome.
Sometimes
’—he emphasised the word, blinking innocently—‘they’re merely reflecting the negative feelings of whoever is taking care of them.’
I really thought Jane was going to bang her fist on the desk. Her voice rose by several decibels. ‘But not in this case! It’s hardly run-of-the-mill when the father has just served three years for manslaughter.’
‘All right. Thank you. You’ve made your point.’ He motioned to her to sit down, and she did so with a huff of exasperation. Then he leaned over his desk and stage-whispered to Vera, ‘Is Mr Hardy still here? Could you get him in? I’d like to know how quickly he can file a report.’
As Vera bustled out, he said, ‘I’m going to ask for a report from the family court adviser. Now, let me make this very clear: it is my expectation that Mr Hardy will observe one or more contact visits between these children and their father. More, I hope.’
The floor fell away, and I felt Frederick clutching at my arm.
Jane shot to her feet. ‘Then I insist upon your hearing evidence today!’
‘And raise the emotional temperature even further? No, Mrs Whistler, I’m against you. If Mr Hardy has concerns, I have no doubt he will have the matter relisted before me.’
‘You cannot properly make such a decision without—’ ‘Mrs Whistler!’ There was an edge to the judge’s voice now.
He wanted all the nastiness brushed under the carpet, nice and tidy. ‘How can these children’s fear of their father be assuaged if they do not meet him?’
That did it. I could feel my heart thumping. ‘This is simply crass,’ I cried, in my lecture-hall voice. ‘You don’t know me, you don’t know Frederick and you’ve no intention of meeting three very intelligent children. They went through hell when Joseph Scott murdered our daughter, and they’ll be back there again when your namby-pamby social experiment goes wrong!’
‘Shh, Hannah,’ murmured Jane, leaning over the back of her seat. ‘You can’t do this.’
‘The man’s an idiot,’ I argued loudly.
‘Indeed; but it doesn’t help to tell him so.’
At that moment, the door to the lobby opened. I glanced around—and found myself staring straight at Joseph Scott, sitting not four feet away from me, looking truculent. He was wearing a dark coat and those round-rimmed glasses I remembered so loathsomely well. I had to summon every ounce of self-control not to spit at him. I forced myself to turn away. There was some kind of conversation going on between the judge and a bearded man in his fifties, but I was past caring.
Suddenly, it was all over. The judge had gone; the clerk was getting ready to call on the next case, and Jane was guiding us back into our horrible hen coop of a room.
‘Outrageous!’ she exploded. ‘I’m tempted to appeal, but it won’t get us anywhere. We’ll have to wait and see what line Lester Hardy takes.’
I looked at Frederick, who was shaking his head in utter bewilderment. ‘This adviser,’ I said, ‘what if we refuse to talk to him?’
‘You’d shoot your own feet right off.’ Jane held up warning hands. ‘That’s the worst thing you could do. The family court adviser is the oracle. You need to get him on your side.’
It wasn’t a tactful moment for Richard O’Brien to intrude: Frankenstein’s monster, his square face looming up at the glass panel in our door. Jane quickly stepped out to meet him, pulling the door shut behind her. She was fast, but not fast enough. I heard his opening gambit, and it drove me right over the edge.
‘Ah, Jane!’ he exclaimed jauntily. ‘Progress at last!
Now
can we talk about contact?’
I, Lester Brian Hardy, was appointed family court adviser
in this matter on 7 January by His Honour Judge Cornwell
sitting at York County Court. The children are Scarlet Scott,
aged thirteen years and ten months; Theodore Scott, aged ten
years and six months; and Benjamin Scott, aged four years
and seven months. I was asked to report on the issue of
contact between the children and their father, Joseph Scott. Judge Cornwell expressed the view that interim contact should
take place, supervised by myself, unless there were very pressing
reasons to militate against such contact.
I met Joseph Scott in the court building directly after the
hearing. As he lives some distance away, I took the practical
step of having a detailed discussion with him on that day.
Mr Scott is thirty-seven years old. He told me that he
was born in Tyneside. His father, John Scott, was a butcher;
his mother Irene worked part time in a fish and chip shop
throughout his childhood. He reports that the marriage was
not a happy one and his parents separated once he and his
sister had left home. Mr Scott was close to his mother, and
she represented a very significant figure in his early life. He
describes his father as ‘pathologically selfish’ and ‘a man with
zero imagination or humour’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Joseph
Scott is estranged from his father, who now lives in Spain.
Irene Scott died suddenly, eighteen months ago. This is a
great sadness to Joseph, especially as she appears to have been
his only family support. He fears that she died ‘of shame’ due
to his conviction and incarceration. He has an older sister,
Marie, who currently manages a women’s refuge in Gateshead.
She has cut all ties with her brother since the death of Zoe
Scott, and is thought to be unaware of the present application.
I have not made contact with her.