shouldn’t have. You would have talked me out of it if you’d known. So yes, my bad. But considering everything else that’s going on, is that really the priority?”
“Probably not,” Maddie agreed.
We were both silent for a while.
“I think we should try to track down Tania next,” Maddie said thoughtfully.
“Why? Presumably she’ll have been handsomely paid off by the Lamberts.”
“She might be pretty angry, even so. She only had that job a few weeks, which doesn’t look good on anyone’s CV. And she lived in the house with them. I’ve a feeling she might be able to tell us something useful.”
“All right, then. But let’s do it quietly. I’d feel awful if she suffered the same fate as Jane Tigman and that whistleblower.” I went and put my coffee cup in the sink. “I’ll go and hurry Theo up. I want to read him his story before I head over to Greg and Kate’s.”
I took the stairs two at a time, relieved that our conversation about Bronagh was now over.
83
MADDIE
THE PRELIMINARY HEARING TAKES place in a bland, 1960s building on Cricklewood Lane—it could be a public library, if it weren’t for the royal coat of arms outside. There’s a smaller version of the same crest on the wall of the courtroom, which otherwise looks just like any medium-sized meeting room in a slightly run-down office. The judge, a brisk woman in her fifties called Marion Wakefield, wears a gray suit and sits behind a desk on a slightly raised platform.
The Lamberts sit with their barrister and solicitor on one side of a row of chairs facing the judge, and Pete and I sit on the other with Anita. It’s all surprisingly informal—none of the lawyers wear a wig or gown, or get to their feet to speak. Lyn the CAFCASS adviser—who turns out to be a tiny, innocuous-looking woman with sharp eyes—sits on her own, in the second row of chairs.
Judge Wakefield begins by reminding us that this isn’t a hearing to consider evidence, only whether the case can be resolved without the court’s involvement, and if not, what evidence she’ll need at the second hearing to help her make a decision. She looks at the Lamberts, then Pete and me. “So my first question to you, through your legal representatives, is whether there is any possibility you could come to an agreement.”
Miles’s barrister says, “My clients have tried to explore every avenue for compromise, madam, including becoming Theo’s godparents and inviting Theo to share David’s nanny. But ultimately, Theo is their son and, like any parent, they want to make the day-to-day decisions regarding his care.”
The judge nods. “Ms. Chowdry?”
“My clients have also tried to compromise—the suggestion that the applicants become Theo’s godparents actually came from them,” Anita says. “They regard Theo as their son, and believe it is in his best interests not to be removed from them at this important stage of his development.”
“Thank you,” Marion Wakefield says briskly. “This is clearly an unusual and difficult case, and for that reason alone, a fuller hearing seems necessary. I’m going to accept CAFCASS’s recommendation that there should be a more detailed report on the safeguarding issues. I’m also going to direct that Theo is assessed by a psychologist to see what impact changing families at his age might have on him.” She looks straight at me. “Ms. Wilson, I’m going to direct that you must not travel abroad without the court’s permission. And as there has been a question raised about your alcohol intake, I’m going to order that you give blood and hair samples, to be assessed for current and past alcohol intake respectively.”
An alcohol test. Anita warned me this might happen, given what Lyn said in her safeguarding letter, and also that there’s no way of disguising the amount I’ve been drinking—although the blood test will only measure what’s in my system at the time, the hair sample will show how much I’ve been drinking over the whole of the last year. I feel my cheeks burn with a mixture of anger and shame.
Anita says calmly, “Madam, we’d like to request that Mr. Riley be allowed back into the family home. While my clients absolutely refute the suggestion that Ms. Wilson could be unfit to care for Theo, it seems illogical to raise that possibility and at the same time bar his primary carer from caring for him.”
“I accept that argument,” Marion Wakefield says. “Accordingly, I will make no direction about Mr. Riley at