Mummy Where Are You? (Revised Edition, new) (12 page)

              We chatted some more about the case over a few glasses of wine and then he had to head home.  I suspected he was married and was not expecting to see him again, although he did suggest he might come and take me out for dinner.  It was just an innocuous pleasant diversion and I headed back to the hotel and had a lonely dinner before going back to my room. 

              Having got nowhere with pressurising me, John now tried to work on my father to get him to persuade me to do what he wanted.  This annoyed me further and created greater friction between Dad and I.  The undercurrent of him shopping us was still very raw and it frustrated me that despite everything, he still did not seem to understand the corruption that existed in the Island.  He had, what I felt, was a naïve belief in systems borne out of a lifelong existence on the Island. I was a lot more streetwise having left the Island in my late teens, away from the goldfish bowl community. 

              Dad could not think outside the box and still wanted to believe that the Courts would do the right thing in the end.  He put his faith totally in lawyers and it was this naivety really that had been our downfall.  After the finding of "No abuse,"  I had wanted to appeal, but my then advocate had talked Dad out of spending the money on an appeal saying it would fail.  I had tried to insist but could not do this without Dad’s financial support and without the challenge to this finding when we still had the chance, I had been left with no alternative but to try and run to safety.

              The final straw came one night, when John started swearing at me down the phone.  Again he was saying I was crazy and needed to go into the
Priory
.  I refused point blank and said I was no more crazy than he was.  When he became aggressive, I lost my temper and suggested that I was not accepting the view of a man who had fathered several children outside marriage and was not with the mothers of any of them.  I lit the blue touch paper at this point as he 'F' d and blinded and said he was walking off the case, before hanging up furiously.  I was determined that that should be the end of it, but he then rang Dad, clearly not wishing to give up the money that the case promised to afford him.  Dad then tried to work on me and did not take my part in this which only increased the divide further.  Meanwhile I spoke to Andrew and Shaun who said they thought I should not be alone any longer and insisted on driving to Gatwick to collect me and bring me back to stay with them in Cambridge.  They had been trying to persuade me to do this for the last four weeks, but I had resisted thinking I should be close to the airport for meetings with John and also should I get an arrangement for contact which I had been trying to get through writing to the Social Worker. 

              I had offered to fly over to see M, but only with a guarantee that I would not be arrested.  They would not agree to any contact and I knew that I could neither afford to stay in the hotel or to be by myself without support any longer.  I conceded and whilst I knew I was very low and grieving for M so much that it would be difficult to be with other people, I gave in and allowed them to step in and bring me back to their house.  Their kindness knew no bounds and it was not the first time in my life that Andrew had been there for me in a crisis.  He had once driven to my house to have a cup of tea at three in the morning when my middle sister had died suddenly and he was one of my dearest friends.  I was nervous that this was too great an imposition, but I needn’t have feared, they made me welcome and were there with an ear to listen and broad shoulders to cry on and many cups of tea and hugs. 

              Once I got to Andrew and Shaun’s, they tried to think of ways in which they might help.  Andrew offered to try and speak to R and to persuade him to drop the charges against me for child abduction and let M come back to me.    R, however, now completely in the driving seat, refused point blank.  

              Shaun suggested I speak to a mutual friend that I hadn't seen for years who had been in an amateur dramatics group with me.  He was a criminal lawyer and he kindly agreed to meet with me for coffee so that I could run the case past him.  I had come to the end of the road with John, but I needed someone to liaise with the authorities and police on my behalf and he offered to do this.

              I found a psychiatrist at last to give me an assessment at the local hospital and I arranged to see him as soon as possible.  He wanted a letter of instruction from a lawyer and as I could not formally engage my Drama Group friend because the case was being held in the Island's Courts and he was not licensed to represent me there, he advised I let John do this one last thing for me. John was still on record and I did what was necessary in the way of communicating with him until this one last thing was done.

              When I was in America, the press coverage in the tabloids about our case, had resulted in me being in touch with a UK Liberal Democrat MP who was very much in the forefront of taking up causes such as ours relating to injustice and secrecy in the Family Courts.  I contacted him and decided to hire a car and drive to see him in Birmingham, which was his constituency.  I was determined that no stone should be left unturned in fighting to get M back with me.

              The following Saturday I drove from Cambridge to Birmingham and went to see John Hemming at his office.  He was an impressive, authoritative figure, a very successful businessman, not a lawyer himself, but with a great deal of knowledge.  He advised that I should get rid of my lawyer, self-litigate and stay in the UK as long as possible and wait for the case to come back when M  was eventually placed with his father on the Mainland.  I was finding it increasingly hard not to go back, but I agreed to try and stick it out a bit longer.  If they were going to follow the Care Plan that had been drawn up for M, then this should happen fairly soon.  However, M was still refusing to see his father and he remained adamant and unmovable about that, so the weeks dragged on and I could see that nothing was likely to change in a hurry.  M was also getting increasingly distressed that I had not come back and I felt that once I had the necessary reports done, I must go. I couldn't risk him thinking that I had abandoned him, which he was likely being told already.

              I saw the psychiatrist the following week and was put through a rigorous psychiatric evaluation.  Whilst it was a gruelling experience, I ended up with a very positive report that found no trace of mental illness.  I also saw a psychologist and gained the same result.  I instructed John to file these two reports with the Court during the next hearing which was set for the beginning of the following week.  He refused to do so.  The morning of the Court I emailed John Hemming whose advice was to fire him for refusing to take my instructions and so I released him asking him to go into Court and take himself off record and then send me an account of what happened.  I then wrote direct to the Court clerk and advised the Court that I was releasing him and filed the report with them myself by email. 

              It was a liberating feeling getting rid of John as I could not stand him and felt he had done nothing to help us whatsoever.  However, it meant I now had the problem of being a litigant in person for the very first time and whilst I had a Masters in English and could write a coherent letter, I was far from a lawyer and knew little of the legal complexities. 

              My Drama Group friend began to liaise with the police on my behalf who gave assurances to us that if I came voluntarily and made a statement, I would likely be bailed and be able to see M.  Offers to make the statement in the UK at a local police station were turned down. 

              Meanwhile, I decided it was time to leave the safety of Andrew and Shaun’s.  Despite our very close friendship, I could see that my being there was starting to create tension.  They both worked from home and I was in a very emotional state and did not want to encroach any longer. I would stay close enough to see them, but even the best of friendships can only withstand so much and Andrew had no children of his own and possibly found it harder than Shaun, who had children, to relate to my suffering.   I cannot stress enough though how kind they both were to me and how tolerant and patient they had been, but it was time to move on and to find a place of my own and I found an apartment not too far away and moved in. 

              I was encouraged by old friends and new that I had made since my return, to stay put in the UK and fly back and forth to the Island for contact, rather than return immediately.  I had also consulted with a lawyer friend of John Hemming's and his advice was that I could not, he thought be extradited.  The Department were still refusing to grant me any contact and I was stuck in a deadlock situation with them.  They said if I came back we could discuss my seeing M, but would not assure me that I would not be arrested on return, so had I gone back without the assurance of a firm contact day, I would likely have gone straight into custody without seeing my son. 

              The situation was agony and M’s distress at each phone call was a tug at my heart.  The only good thing about having my own place, was that I could vent my tears, anger and frustration without disturbing anyone.  I spent so much of my time just breaking my heart, but I knew I had to keep going for M’s sake and for now it seemed sensible to stay, whilst I continued to try to strike some kind of deal with the Department and the Police. 

              I was lonely, but mainly I was grieving for M and no amount of company could have made up for that.  There was nothing that would fill the void left by my son – I had had the most important part of me amputated and no artificial limb would help me stand.

              I reached out for comfort wherever I could find it and had reconnected with an old boyfriend quite by chance.  One evening when Shaun and Andrew had gone out to rehearse for a play they were both involved in, I had rung his number as he lived in the same village.  I needed some company and I didn't know anyone else. I was not looking for a romantic relationship, but I needed a friend and much to my amazement he answered the phone.  I had heard he was spending most of the year in Florida, so I was surprised.  We met for a drink and caught up.  He had been the longest relationship I had had with a man and we had lived together for about eight years and nearly married.  However, it had not worked out then  for lots of reasons, but that story is not important now and I only mention this because he was someone who helped and listened through my anguish.  I think he felt it could be more and I guess I tried to think it could be too, but he was right when he voiced the fact that there was no room in my life for a relationship and no room in my heart which was filled with my love for M and my loss.

              Whilst I had grieved for others in my life.  My beloved middle sister and my mother  and whilst both of these had devastated me, I had held my grief deep inside then, the former because I could not face losing someone so vital and young  and in my mother's case, her stroke had come when I was so close to losing M, that I simply had no time to grieve.  However, in time with death, one learns to accept and move on; whilst a part of your life is gone forever, you have no choice. 

              With my mother’s death, was very sudden and unexpected, it was the lack of talking to her that hit me most.  We had always been close and we had no secrets. Nothing could have prepared me for how much I would miss our daily chats by phone or her words of maternal comfort, especially now when the loss of M was all-consuming. 

              This was another aspect of what we were going through - the lack of space for anything else at all – no room for a relationship, little room for friends and no room for any other grief than the loss of my child.  The situation was overwhelming in its iniquitous devastation and the ripples spread far and wide.   How I longed to hear my mother's voice say “everything will be okay” with her usual, sometimes annoying, optimism in the face of adversity. This grief contained no closure, it was living grief, daily grinding and more powerful than any other feeling; The need to do something, the feeling that there must be something you could do – someone who held the key to all this? Someone who knew the answer as to why this had happened to us – a good, decent family – a mother who was devoted to her child and cared for his every need – why us?  I couldn’t fathom it and remained in a state of disbelief, despair and driven by a need to find the answer. 

              Days of sobbing for M, were replaced with frantic activity – emails written endlessly to the police, Social Worker and the Department’s hierarchy – mostly ignored – frantically going through court papers  - talking endlessly to friends on the phone who may know something of M’s whereabouts.  I knew the day was fast approaching where I must go back.  The day had long since passed where I could tolerate another minute of this cruel separation, at least in America I had had contact - those few precious hours were gold to me now. 

              Now, I had my reports and the police were beginning to put the pressure on, threatening to come and get me and bring me back – so whether Mike, the lawyer's view was right or not, in regards to extradition, I felt they would ensure I was brought back one way or another and I was in so much pain at being apart from M, that even the prospect of jail seemed a worthwhile risk.  In fact, fear of jail was never an issue, it was only my fear of how my being in jail would affect M and also the fact that I didn't know if my losing liberty would mean I would see him.

              I had taken the apartment on a monthly basis.  As things turned out, it would have been cheaper to have gone back into a hotel as I was only in it for ten days.  The Detective Inspector was now seriously putting the pressure on and I knew it was only a matter of time before there was yet another knock on the door by police.  I decided I must go back and face the music.  I needed to see M as soon as possible, even with no guarantee of contact with my son. I knew the day to return, had come.