Ainsley had made his own plans for lunch, and they left him at the doors to the courts. Desmond, walking at a cracking pace, led the team to a busy wine bar in a narrow lane off the Strand. It was a dark place with wood panelling, frugal lighting and a menu that tested Isabel’s health convictions to the limit, a fusion of chips, pasta, and pies which catered to the boyish appetites of its clientele. The five of them squeezed round a table designed for four next to the window and ordered from an Estonian waitress called Anna, whose name Desmond enunciated with an elaborate flourish, as if to endow it with the authentic pronunciation.
In the confusion of examining menus, breaking off and reclaiming conversations, Hugh didn’t hear what the others ordered, so that when some red wine appeared immediately in front of him he thought at first it must be Desmond’s, who always had a glass of claret at lunch. But Desmond, sitting diagonally opposite, was already clasping his wine, while to Hugh’s right Isabel and Sanjay were sipping mineral water. Which left Tom, immediately across the table, who was meant to be on the wagon.
Desmond was singing Ainsley’s praises. ‘A robust witness. Just the right amount of bloody-mindedness. Enough to irritate the other side, but not the judge.’
‘You’ll re-examine?’ asked Tom, who knew all the jargon.
‘Very probably,’ declared Desmond with a growl of a laugh.
‘That stuff about me making up symptoms?’
‘We’d certainly cover that, yes.’
‘And the depression thing?’
‘We’ll see . . .’ murmured Desmond, with a quick smile, clearly not intending to go down that particular route. ‘But the prognosis is certainly worth revisiting. We must press home the fact that your chances of recovery are extremely poor.’
‘Yeah,’ said Tom, looking blithely into the darkness of his own future.
‘But overall, a satisfactory morning!’ Desmond raised his glass in salute before swinging it smoothly to his lips. It was rare for Desmond to show anything as unguarded as optimism and Sanjay greeted this departure with a lift of his eyebrows and a quick amused glance at Hugh, while Isabel, blowing her nose, looked rapidly from one to the other with round, red-rimmed eyes. Tom, oblivious to these exchanges, was staring intently at Desmond, quietly noting and storing. When his gaze finally swung towards the table, he saw the unclaimed wine and picked it up.
Catching Hugh’s eye, he said, ‘I’m allowed some lunch and evening.’
‘Great.’ Hugh smiled to show that he’d intended no criticism, while wondering just what form this permission could have taken when Tom’s GP had told him he had a serious drink problem. ‘Your doctor must be pleased with you then.’
Before Tom could reply, Desmond swung his attention away from Sanjay and said brightly, ‘Now, Tom, what do we need to discuss by way of a confab?’
Tom reached for the folder he had ready on the table beside him. ‘Yeah . . . It’s Price’s stuff. I think I’ve found a couple of things we missed.’ Then, out of respect for Desmond, he modified this to, ‘. . .
could’ve
missed’. He drew out a copy of Price’s statement and handed it to Desmond.
The food arrived and Desmond, peering at the boldly
annotated and underlined statement over his steak and chips, led Tom through each query with a deft blend of argument, explanation and reassurance. Nothing had been missed, Desmond managed to convey; it was a matter of going for the points most likely to succeed and avoiding the weaker points that might not look so good on re-examination by the other side. Tom listened with fierce concentration, barely eating but gulping his wine, reaching for his glass even after it was empty, interjecting now and again to repeat his arguments about Price.
‘But that’s a lie,’ he said at one point. ‘I can prove it.’
‘Proof can be an elusive thing, Tom. It doesn’t always turn out to be quite as straightforward as one hopes.’
‘But the fact that he’s always had it in for me – that must count.’
Desmond said, ‘Yes, indeed. And we’ll certainly bring that into play.’
‘But if I could just tell the judge how it was,’ said Tom in a relentless tone. ‘If I could just tell him why Price is saying this stuff.’
Desmond took a mouthful of chips and chewed thoughtfully. ‘I’m not ruling it out, Tom. But I don’t think it’s actually going to be necessary. And I’ll tell you why – because our best bet, our primary objective if you like, is to make Price look unreliable, to encourage him to trip himself up, to show himself in a bad light. If we can achieve that, get him to reveal himself in his true colours, then the details of your falling out needn’t concern us. Price’s evidence will be discredited anyway. You see what I’m getting at?’
Tom said uncertainly, ‘Yeah . . .’
‘The fact that you fell out over a girl – well, everyone knows that story, don’t they? No need to spell it out in detail. Not even for the judge.’ Desmond glanced at Hugh, briefly sharing the joke. ‘Best to keep it simple.’ He made an expressive sweep of his fork, a signing off.
Tom began to nod slowly. ‘If you think so, Desmond.’
‘I do, Tom.’
Not looking entirely convinced, Tom turned distractedly to his food and began to eat without enthusiasm.
As the conversation drifted, Sanjay and Isabel went into a huddle over some pictures. Peering over Isabel’s shoulder, Hugh saw Sanjay and his wife in the pose of proud parents, the newborn baby in his father’s arms.
‘A hands-on father, eh?’ Hugh said.
‘Oh, I’m not so good in the middle of the night,’ Sanjay admitted, with a diffident smile.
‘Were you there at the birth?’ Isabel asked.
Sanjay beamed. ‘I was, yes. It was . . . it was . . .’ He searched fruitlessly for a word that would do justice to the experience and fell back on, ‘
astonishing
’. He added, ‘My family were horrified, of course. These things simply aren’t done, you know. Husbands are meant to keep away.’
Isabel passed the picture to Hugh. Sanjay’s wife was serene and long-haired, flushed with the beauty of motherhood, but it was Sanjay’s face that drew the attention, his expression of wonder as he gazed at his son. Hugh felt pleased for him, but with the pleasure came the old nudge of regret and curiosity, which, despite the long years of adoptive fatherhood, had never quite left him.
Sanjay asked, ‘What about you, Hugh? Were you a hands-on father?’
‘Oh, I’d like to think so. But really I stuck to the easy bits. It was Lizzie who did all the hard work.’
‘And were you there for the birth of your children?’
‘No . . .’ Hugh passed the picture back. ‘I didn’t have the opportunity, sadly.’
‘Bad luck. Not work, I hope.’
‘No . . .’ It was always a finely balanced decision, whether to tell people that Charlie and Lou were adopted, though with Lou it was obvious once they got to meet her. Hugh had always held the belief that the two children should not be defined by their adoption but by the kind of people they were, though given the world’s love of labels it was a battle doomed to be
lost. ‘No,’ he said, ‘neither Lizzie nor I were there. We got Charlie when he was one, Louise when she was six months.’
Confusion came over Sanjay’s face, then sympathy. He was about to speak when Tom’s voice cut in.
‘I saw two of mine born.’
Breaking the silence that followed, Hugh said, ‘Well, two out of three’s pretty good.’
The unasked question hovered over the table. Was it the birth of Holly, the beloved dead daughter, that Tom had missed? Or one of the two sons who lived in Devon with his estranged wife?
Tom said, ‘But being at the birth doesn’t matter, does it? It’s being there for them afterwards that counts.’ Bleak reflections, with their melancholy undercurrents, were a feature of conversations with Tom, to be given due consideration and gently worked through. But today, unusually, it was Tom himself who broke the mood by announcing, ‘Had my boys for half term.’
‘Did you?’ said Hugh in open surprise, both because it was the first he’d heard about it, and because Tom’s estranged wife Linda usually made access to the children so difficult as to be virtually impossible.
‘Took ’em to the Brecon Beacons. Rained every day. Blew like stink. Toughened ’em up pretty quick, I can tell you.’
Hugh thought of the younger boy, who was only eight, and hoped it hadn’t been too much of an ordeal for him. ‘You went walking, did you?’
‘Yeah. And orienteering. Got stuck in thick fog. But the boys, they worked out how to get us down. Got the nous, they have. Both of ’em.’ In his face was all the thwarted love and pride he felt for his sons.
‘Orienteering . . .’ mused Desmond, who’d been paying scant attention. ‘One day you must tell me what it involves, Tom. It sounds extremely useful.’
‘It’s about finding your way over difficult terrain, up mountains and over rivers and stuff like that.’ Then, with a glance
around the table, playing to his audience, Tom added, ‘And nowhere to buy a glass of red wine, Desmond.’
They all laughed, as much with pleasure at the lightness of Tom’s mood as at the idea of Desmond roughing it on a Welsh mountain.
Walking back to court, Hugh fell in beside Tom. ‘I’m so glad you had the boys for half term, Tom. That’s wonderful news. Things are better with Linda, are they?’
‘Yeah. She doesn’t put the phone down on me like she used to.’ Tom spoke in a matter-of-fact way, without his usual bitterness. ‘That’s because she’s having another brat, and she’s glad to get the boys off her hands.’
‘Another baby? Good God. I thought she’d only just had one.’ But Hugh had lost track of time. It was eighteen months since Linda had left Tom for the third and last time, and moved to Devon with her new boyfriend.
‘Lover-boy’s out of work,’ Tom said. ‘They’ve got money troubles. Suddenly she doesn’t mind talking to me again. Funny, that.’
‘Well, so long as you can see the boys.’
‘Yeah. Even better . . .’ There was reticence in Tom’s voice, but also a note of suppressed excitement. ‘She’s saying I can have the boys full time.’
Hugh stared at him in astonishment. ‘You mean . . . custody?’
‘Yeah. With access for her.’
Hugh hardly knew what to say. ‘Tom . . . I’m so pleased . . . That’s wonderful . . . And the boys? Is that what they want, to live with you?’
‘ ’Course,’ said Tom, a touch defensively. ‘They’ve always wanted to live with me.’
‘Well, in that case . . .’
They paused at a pedestrian crossing, a bus thundered past, while Hugh thought of all the reasons why it would surely be impossible for Tom to have full care and control of his children. His illness for a start, the poor prognosis and depressive
episodes. His drink problem, which flared up at regular intervals. The tiny rented cottage, riddled with damp, with no prospect of getting anything better till he was awarded his damages. The chances of Linda changing her mind.
‘You’ll go back to the family court for a new order, will you?’ Hugh asked.
In one of his rapid changes of mood, Tom seemed to withdraw abruptly. ‘Yeah . . . But it won’t be a big deal. Not when Linda’s thrown in the towel.’
Tom’s divorce had been heard in Exeter where to save on costs he’d hired a local solicitor called Emma Deeds. Hugh only hoped she hadn’t raised Tom’s expectations too high. ‘Well . . .’ he said. ‘I wish you the very best of luck, Tom.’
‘Yeah . . .’ Tom murmured. ‘Thanks.’
The afternoon began with the examination of delayed onset in post-traumatic stress disorder. Bavistock suggested that a year after exposure to trauma was the internationally accepted maximum period for symptoms to appear, while Ainsley argued that there were no hard and fast rules. For almost an hour Bavistock took Ainsley through the various scientific papers on the subject, trying to get him to agree that exceptions were so rare as to be insignificant. Finally, Bavistock came to his point.
‘Now, in Tom Deacon’s case it was
over
a year before he claims to have come down with PTSD. Fourteen months, in fact. That, you must agree, is almost unheard of?’
‘An exceptional person might try to struggle on for a long time before seeking help.’
‘But he sought help from his GP at regular intervals during those fourteen months – for depression. And according to his GP he never mentioned having flashbacks or panic attacks or an unusual fear of strangers. How do you account for that?’
‘I can’t comment.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I didn’t assess him at the time.’
‘But you accept the GP’s notes, surely?’
‘Yes. But most GPs have only fifteen minutes to see each
patient. That isn’t long enough to investigate the symptoms of PTSD.’
‘What, even when flashbacks are a universal feature of PTSD, and panic attacks a close second? Surely if someone was going through such frightening experiences, he would feel compelled to mention them?’
‘As I have said, a brave man might deny his symptoms for a long time, out of shame or pride or both.’
The debate meandered on until, with a symbolic closing of his file, Bavistock said, ‘If I may summarise, Dr Ainsley . . . I put it to you that at the time of the car accident Mr Deacon was already suffering a stress-related illness from his time in the Bosnian War, but that subsequent to the death of his daughter his main problem was, very understandably, a severe grief reaction.’ He raised his eyebrows to make a question of it.
‘I disagree. In my opinion it was and is a clear case of PTSD.’
‘Surely, the one thing we have agreed on is that it is
not
a clear case?’
Ainsley turned his gaze on Tom and said in measured terms, ‘Tom Deacon watched his daughter die in the most appalling circumstances, a trauma that no man of any sensitivity could survive unscathed. Since then, he’s been forced to relive the scene continuously in dreams and flashbacks. Irrespective of any bouts of depression he may have suffered in the past, or of any grief reaction, I repeat that he has one of the clearest cases of severe post-traumatic stress disorder that I’ve ever come across.’ Ainsley looked back at Bavistock with a cool stare, as if to say, beat that.
There was a heavy pause in which Bavistock adjusted to the fact that he’d been outmanoeuvred, and the judge gazed thoughtfully at Tom, who had lowered his head to conceal a fierce grin. Isabel, leaning forward, saw the grin and exchanged an uncertain glance with Hugh.