7. Guest v. Finbow Day One
GUEST V. FINBOW: DAY ONE
After repeating the oath, Anna smooths down her starchy black dress and rotates her shoulders.
The atmosphere in the gallery stiffens; we are all making mental adjustments to the sight of Anna off-screen, comparing it to the more flattering soft focus of her television image.
Still, a lightly sycophantic laugh ripples around the gallery when, after thanking her for attending, the judge asks if she is comfortable.
Anna quips, “Rather warm, your lordship.”
Then Ms. Carr, Anna’s barrister, begins, her black onyx earrings swinging as she talks.
“I’ll first take you through the statements that you have provided for this case, Mrs. Finbow.
You should find to your right an impressive array of documents and files.
We’ll need the second file, the yellow one.
” Anna primly wets her finger against her lip, then turns the pages.
“You have it there, Mrs. Finbow? Very good.”
Ms. Carr warms her up by asking a few questions about her career. First the band, then the yoga videos she made in the mid-nineties as she tried to soften her image. Anna’s face lights up as she talks. She has always been her own favorite subject.
“That’s right,” Anna preens. “I am credited with bringing the concept of downward-facing dog to every British housewife.”
And when she is quizzed on the company, she says, “I launched it when I was pregnant with Mary, and was rather bored. The band had imploded, the DVDs were out and selling. I suppose I was feeling a little rudderless. In the back garden of our London house, I made a few cereal bowls and some eggcups. Just as a hobby. But then, as luck would have it, they were featured rather prominently in a dear friend’s film.
It ended up doing very well, here and in the States.
After that, demand went berserk . We moved our production from our poky garden shed to Bellinter. ”
“That’s your factory in Stoke-on-Trent?”
“Correct. We’re British made and very proud of it.”
From there, Ms. Carr asks Anna about her broadcasting work.
“Would you say that you understand the great responsibility of a public platform, Mrs. Finbow?”
“Very much so.”
They run through presenting stints she has had. Her newspaper column. The time she guest edited Woman’s Hour .
“Did you fully understand,” Ms. Carr says, “the legal limitations on discussing real people on these platforms?”
“Yes. As I wrote in my statement, I’d received media training on an annual basis.”
Ms. Carr tilts her head in inquiry. “Have you ever experienced any complaints from the media outlets you worked for, throughout your career?”
Anna thinks for a moment. “Once, yes. I was referred to the Broadcasting Standards Commission. It was live, a Children in Need thing, or Red Nose Day, I can’t remember which.”
“Are you referring to the broadcast on thirtieth October, 2005?”
“Yes.”
“Would you care to explain what happened?”
Anna smiles. “I put on my jumper during an ad break, and when we went live again, there was a wasp trapped inside it. I’d plucked it straight from our washing line at home, you see. The insect stung me three times.”
Ms. Carr winces. “And that was the only time you have been reprimanded for any statement made in public?”
“Yes, it was. It is.”
“To confirm, they found fault with you for—”
“Swearing, yes. I said ‘fuck.’ Repeatedly.”
A laugh goes around the gallery. Even the corners of the judge’s mouth are twitching.
Ms. Carr allows the laughter for a moment, then she asks calmly, “Did you fear any reprimand over your newsletter, The Peony ? The email that mentions Ms. Guest?”
Anna’s nostrils flare. “No, I did not.”
“And why was that, Mrs. Finbow?”
“Because I was telling the truth.”
Ms. Carr leaves a pause to allow the simplicity of that defense to land. Then she inquires about the dynamics within the Finbow family.
“I’m referring to the time before the fracture,” she says. “Your relationship… how would you describe your bond with Ms. Mary Finbow?”
For the first time today, Anna’s voice falters. “It was the strongest of bonds. We were a perfect trinity, the three of us: Mary, my husband, and I.” Her chin quivers. “We loved her, still love her to death.”
Ms. Carr takes her through a number of affectionate text messages that have been submitted as supportive evidence. Then a handmade Mother’s Day card is projected onto a television screen nearby. The judge pivots on his chair; Ms. Ibrahim’s team maneuvers itself to see.
On the front of the card is a cutout of a glossy photograph showing the Finbows at a dinner table beneath a palm tree.
Anna and Bonamy are in matching linen clothes, wearing identical suntans.
Mary is between them, breast buds visible beneath her vest top, hair in holiday cornrows.
She has stuck stars and furry animal stickers around the photograph.
“?‘To Mummy and Papa,’?” Ms. Carr reads as she flicks the screen to reveal the message Mary had written inside the card. “?‘Never forget how much I love you.’?”
Anna fails to stifle a cry with the back of her hand.
While someone brings her a tissue and she collects herself, the journalists in the gallery scribble furiously.
My chest aches as I imagine them publishing these details later this evening.
Mary’s intimate correspondence. The intrusion of it.
The transgression of boundaries: exactly what a therapist would seize on.
“This note was written when Mary was twelve years old. How did your relationship change as your daughter grew up?”
“We remained close. Mary was always a confident, active, happy, and curious teenager. There were a few bumps along the way, of course. But what teenager doesn’t face the odd setback as they navigate life?”
“Could you be specific?” Ms. Carr asks, head tilted.
“Well,” Anna ponders. “Schooling was sometimes a bit contentious. Mary wasn’t hugely academic, but then, neither was I.”
I study Anna closely to see if her face betrays the far more complex truth she is concealing.
She hardly blinks, because she is desperate to convince the court that her daughter’s upbringing was perfect.
The two women labor this point for some time, with Anna producing more and more evidence of her daughter’s devotion: holidays in Kenya she had organized for her parents’ wedding anniversaries; the fact that she dutifully followed their advice and attended the art school of their choosing.
“An art school in Rome, is that correct?”
My breathing turns shallow. I concentrate my gaze onto the palms of my hands, the gray sweat beads in their shallow creases. The abrupt ending of my lifeline.
“Yes. She was very happy there. Her view on the place only changed when she met Ms. Guest.”
“You claim that, shortly after your daughter began sessions with Ms. Guest, she left school and severed all contact with you. Is it your evidence that Ms. Finbow is being coerced by Ms. Guest? Encouraged by the claimant to ostracize herself from those she loves?”
“Yes. We were told as such in the first email we received from her.”
There is a pause as the email is located within a folder of evidence, and Ms. Carr reads out loud, “?‘The longer I spend in session, the clearer it becomes that I must enforce a healing separation from you both.’?”
Mrs. Ayres makes a small cry of recognition. “ Healing separation ,” she whispers, shaking her head. “We got the same line.”
Ms. Carr lowers her file. “How could you tell these were not the words of your daughter?”
Anna scoffs like it’s obvious. “The very fact that it was spelled correctly. My daughter has many talents,” she says dryly. “Spelling is not one of them.”
In the row behind me, someone laughs, but Anna’s criticism feels jarring. Ms. Carr senses this and recovers it.
“My lord, this advocation for isolating the individual from their social milieu closely aligns to Temerlin and Temerlin’s 1982 definition of cultic organizations that we have relied on in pre-hearing.
Typically, charismatic cult leaders identify, or else invent, faults with their target’s network of social relations, in order to gain control over their lives. ”
“In this case it is sheer invention ,” Anna interrupts.
Ms. Carr nods. “Let’s return once again to the email, shall we?
” Ms. Carr reads, “?‘As I journey backward into my past, I am rediscovering many frightening moments from my childhood that I have tried to bury. These cannot be reintegrated into my consciousness nor healed while I maintain our poisonous relationship.’?”
There is a creeping feeling in my scalp at the assumed privacy of her words. A feeling of relief that Anna’s daughter is not around to hear this.
“Do you have any knowledge of what these ‘frightening moments’ are, Mrs. Finbow?”
“None whatsoever. They are being invented by Ms. Guest. She’s persuaded our daughter that we have done deplorable things. And the worst thing about it is, we cannot defend ourselves. It is impossible, when we have no idea what Mary has been made to believe.”
“Your newsletter asserted that Ms. Guest has, for want of a better phrase, a modus operandi . That she inserts false memories into her clients with deliberate intent. Do you still stand by this statement? That Ms. Guest has purposefully ruptured this bond with your daughter?”
“I will stand by it forever. That’s why I wrote the newsletter. It was a warning, published in good faith. A decent practitioner should seek to unite families.” Anna’s face darkens as she points toward Jean’s table. “That woman over there only seeks to break us apart.”
Ms. Carr nods gravely, then places her folder of notes on her desk.
She cocks her head at her client and asks, “Before we close, Mrs. Finbow, I’d like to ask the simple question: Why ?
Why would the claimant deliberately pursue your daughter in such a calculating way that you felt it was your duty to call it out in public, as you did in The Peony ? ”
“She goes after wealthy women, girls of independent income. We certainly wouldn’t be here if that woman wasn’t obsessed with material gain.
” Anna’s jaw tightens. “But it’s also my belief that there are other sinister reasons at play.
” She pauses and haughtily shakes her hair.
“This is also about me. I have something of a public profile. Ms. Guest wants that for herself.”
A journalist sitting close to me smirks and makes a note of what has been said.
“So your view is that Ms. Guest is motivated by envy?”
Anna scowls over to where Jean sits, her hands primly clasped on the table.
“Perhaps it’s fruitless to hypothesize about someone so evil.
But, at the deepest level, this has always been about me.
About who I am. That woman wrongly sees me as someone who has everything.
And so, she takes my only daughter. In doing so, she has shattered our lives. ”
Ms. Carr nods silently, allowing the courtroom to digest her words. Then she places her palms together. “My final question, then, Mrs. Finbow. If it’s not too painful to reflect upon, please, tell the court: How does it feel to live without Mary?”
Anna considers the question for a moment.
She looks down at her hands, then back at her lawyer.
Her eyes brim with the tears I know they have rehearsed.
“I’m lost,” she admits quietly. “When your child is born, it’s like you get these strange new coordinates.
One is your life and the other is theirs.
They might grow up, but their life is still inside you.
They remain always inside you. Nested, just like a Russian doll.
Without her, it’s like there’s something missing inside me.
I feel—not just lost—but utterly hollowed out. ”
A subdued silence descends over the courtroom. Up in the gallery, Lucy Ayres covers her face with her hands. Ms. Carr returns to her desk and sits back down. The curtain falls on Anna’s first performance.
There will be no further questions, my lord .