3. Guest v. Finbow Day One
GUEST V. FINBOW: DAY ONE
Gazing around Courtroom Six, I am astonished at the sheer circus of it all, at how the Finbow family estrangement has resulted in this very public trial.
The absurdity of the situation strikes me again: How can a rift between a mother and daughter end up in the highest court in the country?
Don’t we all have the right to disappear?
Not according to Anna, who refuses to accept that Mary simply wanted out of her old life.
No: it is her therapist who has poisoned her, to the point that Mary no longer knows her own mind at all.
All stories have a source tale that precedes it, an origin myth.
Talk to me about your childhood , asks the probing therapist, in the recurring stereotype, when we are invited to make sense of our lives.
In this case, the seed of Anna’s legal battle was planted online via her newsletter, The Peony , which was circulated to millions of inboxes on Friday afternoons.
Anna often uploaded posts about the agony of her family estrangement.
Usually, there were no consequences to this public outpouring of emotion; her fans had come to expect it.
But the legal mistake she made, and which landed Anna in court on charges of libel, was to name Jean Guest outright.
The defamatory text was sandwiched between a recipe for Earl Grey granita and a feature on summer garden games for kids:
Many of you will have read about the plight of our family in recent months… To all of you who have got in contact to offer me your sympathy and support, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Before Mary began working with her so-called therapist, Jean Guest , she was the happiest, brightest girl.
Everyone who met her was touched by her joy.
But after receiving hours of “healing,” our daughter has been turned against us.
False memories have been inserted in her mind to isolate her and make demons out of those who love her most. Stay ALERT to unqualified therapists, new-age healers, life coaches, etc.
They are modern-day cult leaders, twisted, dangerous, and sick people who recruit talented young women like my daughter for their own financial gain.
Bonamy and I shall fight this. We will not rest until this industry is properly regulated in the United Kingdom and psychological manipulation has been made a criminal offense.
So please do support our cause by signing this petition .
In the meantime, keep me in your thoughts. Hold your loved ones close for me.
x Anna
I often imagine Anna writing the newsletter.
It makes me want to shake her by the shoulders.
What kind of mental fog must have descended upon her to pen something so irresponsibly provocative and hit send?
When it was first published, almost eighteen months ago now, the press described it as a “blind” and “brokenhearted” post. But I’m not sure I believe that.
I picture Anna crafting it with purpose, sitting in that cathedral-sized kitchen in Notting Hill, typing, as she always did, with her index finger, a frosted glass of white wine within reaching distance.
I see her posting the piece, then taking a deep, vitriolic swig.
This is the way she views the world, of course. “Them” and “us.”
A letter from Jean Guest’s solicitor arrived before lunchtime the following day.
Mary’s therapist was seeking seven-figure damages from Anna Finbow, for reputational harm.
But even as the legal case against her mounted, Anna always dismissed the newsletter as her “little rant.” She refused to make any out-of-court settlements to Jean Guest, because she believed that what she had written was true.
Since then, Anna has not wavered from that defense.
Yet, discerning the truth behind her “truth defense” is what brings us to the high court today.
Jean Guest will insist she is a dedicated healer who only wants the best for the troubled people she works with.
Anna will counter that she is a cultic abuser, ripping families apart.
At the center of it all, there is the poor young woman, Mary, who has repeatedly stated that she only wants to be left alone.
Still, the two women will go on with this battle about her life choices, fighting over her like a torn doll.
For all the horror of the circumstances, I know that Anna is actually looking forward to seeing Mary in court.
She’s had only one brief sighting of her daughter in the twenty months that have passed since Mary began her sessions.
The first day of the trial will be, at least Anna is hoping, a family reunion.
So, now, when a door in the upper gallery opens, I watch as Anna swivels round, her gaze scanning desperately along the row of spectators.
Bonamy catches her eye from the front row and shakes his head.
They can only bitterly conclude that Mary has not come.
At five minutes to ten, another commotion catches their attention. Bonamy looks down, and the tips of his ears redden. Jean Guest is arriving with her legal team.
It is a remarkable thing, to feel the presence of another human travel up and down your spine.
There is a tingling feeling in the base of my skull—my hackles rising—then a slow heat, which seeps down to my seat bones.
Jean lingers by the wooden desk she will sit behind, conferring with polite ushers.
Her modest handbag and navy crepe skirt suit give her a soft appearance: the bearing of a harmless academic, as if she poses no threat other than beady intelligence.
She greets her team with terse smiles, thanking them graciously.
All the while, she avoids Anna’s furious stare.
“That fucking witch!” mutters the woman next to me, Lucy, in an accent unused to swearing.
Together, we watch Jean take her seat to the left of the raised judge’s bench, sitting parallel with Anna, whose defiant gaze is now trained forward.
Shaking her head, Lucy whispers, “She took my little girl. My only little girl.”
I consider reaching over and squeezing her hand or making some other kind of gesture that would comfort us both, but soon the usher is calling us to rise for the judge’s arrival.
We clatter to our feet as Justice Larkin settles himself down, reading out information on fire exits and issuing a long apology for the heat in the room.
“But moving on from our air-conditioning: a word of warning about your own circulation. No doubt you will have encountered the cameras outside.”
He glances upward and addresses the gallery. Do I invent the harsh way his stare fixes mine?
“Please refrain from speaking to any members of the press during the course of this trial. We are fortunate enough to have invited a number of journalists up here in the gallery, so we may trust that the fourth estate will report on our proceedings accurately and adequately without our input. These proceedings already deal with the complex nature of public discourse. Please do not add any more noise to it.”
And with that, Justice Larkin invites opening submissions. Jean Guest’s barrister rises, and a momentary calm descends. I wonder if it is relief that the moment has finally arrived, that we have risen from the tabloid gutter into the more upright realm of reason and procedure.
Still, I can’t help praying that I will somehow be spared all of this.
The desperate hope that, before my part, a key legal precedent will be unearthed at the last minute and unravel the case entirely.
I summon the scene: After a day or two of debate, a loophole is discovered.
Bang , the judge brings his hammer down.
The trial is over. I remain merely a spectator, not an actor.
Fantasies. I’m good at those. I was once told that it stemmed from all the shame I carried around.
I had developed a capacity that made me inventive—deviant, even—to avoid exposure.
I was encouraged to see how this emerged from an impulse to protect myself, a survivalist instinct to secure my part in an alternative world, a better life than my own.
Others will say that I was grasping upward. An ambitious social climber. The lawyers will soon hurl the same insult that Anna once spat in my face, too. Perhaps without her sneer. Perhaps without her hand snatching my arm.
The sting of it, all the same.
Leech.