33. New Year’s Eve
NEW YEAR’S EVE
Anna’s email arrived during my first Christmas at home in three years. The email address was anonymous, but the plain energy and spite of the writing was unmistakable.
Congratulations on your pathetic court performance!
You let us down again and again. Just as you lied OVER and OVER.
Forget therapy, you need actual MEDICAL ATTENTION.
If you ever come near my family again, I will ruin you.
You are UTTERLY DELUDED to think you ever had a chance with our beautiful daughter.
My heart plummeted. Anna wouldn’t have written this if she’d won the case.
I immediately searched online for the judgment, but nothing had been published.
Then I checked Anna’s profiles. She’d posted multiple childhood photographs of Mary, with captions which were hardly cryptic: We’ll never be separated , she wrote, under an old picture of herself and Mary at a film premiere.
The news outlets caught on and ran wild with speculation over what was due to be announced.
Then, for two days, Anna fell silent. It was illegal to make any reference to the outcome of the trial until the judgment was formally handed down.
Perhaps Anna had learned from her ordeal and finally worked out when to shut up.
Just as I did, with the long responses I typed out in my notes but never sent back to her.
Christmas at home was subdued but, in its own way, significant.
After the trial ended, I gently prized open channels of communication again with my parents.
I kept waiting for their questions about what had happened, why I had been so quiet for so long, but they seemed unwilling to mention it.
Instead, we talked by text on safely neutral subjects.
In our sessions, Jean had reinforced their failures, forcing me to dwell on the different ways my parents had let me down.
But, as we began speaking again, I started to value their consistency.
Our exchanges were curt and often quite dull, but no message I sent was left unanswered.
I sent unoffensive photos of winter skies, or the cat that lived in our studio building.
My mother replied with pictures of one that had been visiting her back garden.
One day, I noticed that she was leaving a saucer of milk out for the animal.
When I noticed it in the right-hand corner of the image, and saw that it had been present in the others she’d sent, I found myself in tears.
She had carefully warmed that milk—probably nervous of wasting it—and placed it on the step, hoping and coaxing the creature inside.
Through my tears, I remembered Anna’s words from months before: At the moment you work it out, bam. Your children are grown up.
I knew then that it was time to go home and try again.
The judgment is finally released on New Year’s Eve.
I am back in Stoke, returning from the shop with food and drink for a party which is taking place in my studio building.
The news alert illuminates my screen, and my body starts to shiver uncontrollably: Judge rules against Anna Finbow in blockbuster libel trial.
Justice Larkin’s judgment runs over eighty pages.
I scroll through the headline findings. His first points explore the meaning of the burden of proof, how the civil court differs from a criminal trial in that the truth of something can be ascertained if it is probable but not wholly proven.
At this, my hopes almost lift, but then he goes on:
“There can be no doubt that these costly and lengthy proceedings point to the need for a closer regulation of the therapy sector, but that dispute was not at the heart of this case. Ms. Guest’s methods may be unconventional, even maverick, but I cannot find evidence that the central sting of the libel asserted in The Peony , that Ms. Guest is a modern-day cult leader, can be substantially proven to the civil standard that is required. ”
He describes Mary’s evidence in favor of Ms. Guest as “compelling.” He comments on her age, the claustrophobia of her family milieu, and her freedom to spend her income on whatever she chooses.
“It may be evident that Ms. Guest is transgressing the conventional boundaries between coach/therapist and client. Yet, as we heard from many of the claimant’s current clients, they consider it a privilege they are willing to pay for, and they are perfectly within their rights to do so. ”
One piece of evidence which shocks me is a statement from Robert Bute.
It was Beaker who was cross-examined in a closed court during the third day of the trial.
He was granted anonymity on account of his recent rehab stint for his own substance issues, which had attracted unwanted press attention.
Mary easily developed infatuations, Beaker said.
She was also a determined young woman, deeply committed to whatever path she chose to follow.
His character reference is used by the judge as an illustration of Mary’s right to autonomy and self-improvement, not her susceptibility.
I wonder, as I read, whether Beaker was simply on his own healing path and ready to salute anyone taking drastic steps of their own.
But it is a reckless statement which only underpins the script Mary sold of herself.
Eventually, I find the judge’s response to my evidence.
Scarcely three sentences. More than I deserve.
I have shown contempt of court by failing to admit that I initiated the intrusion into Mrs. Finbow’s most private exchanges.
I am described as a “wholly unreliable” and “meddlesome individual” who complicated proceedings and wasted court time, risking “the gravest of consequences.”
There is some relief to see my reproval in print.
Here it is, finally made known. The unreliable parts of me that have always existed.
The parts that I hadn’t wanted to hear, but Jean did.
Those tendencies she exploited for her own gain.
I’m furious to think of the justice she has evaded, but she has won. For now, at least, she has won.
I skip the party. Instead, I go online to see if she is there, as she often is in the late evening. There is a community I belong to, a closed group, all about Lawrence Melrose. I’m hopeful that the judgment might have triggered a post from her.
He was never called as a witness by the Finbows, in the end. Apparently, an urgent health issue kept him in Rome. I read about that earlier on the forum, and felt some slanted encouragement that the Finbows were finally taking my allegations seriously.
I discovered the group a few months ago.
It had begun years before with a few ex-students posting anonymously, but it soon spread wider.
I read the stories—some of them going back decades—with grim indulgence.
There was an uneasy comfort in the banality of his acts, how similar they were to Mary’s experience.
He had also bullied these girls into an infatuation with him.
They, too, had believed they were in control.
He was helping ignite their craft, they reported, until suddenly he extinguished it.
The girl I sometimes talk to there goes under the name of a Joni Mitchell song she used to paint to: shadows+light . I assume a different name entirely, never revealing that it is me she’s engaging with, but proceed on the assumption that it is her. Mary.
She’s candid with everyone on the group about her experiences with Lawrence.
It started when he came on a family holiday. I had just turned sixteen.
Did you tell your family? someone asks.
I thought they knew about it before but turns out not… Now they are aware.
Mary sometimes shares updates on everyday life: She posts on the group that she has recently had a baby and that motherhood has reawakened her.
She says that hearing the news of Lawrence’s dismissal from his position at the school has liberated her, too.
In between all the feeding and the naps, she’s making the best paintings of her life.
I desperately want to ask if Jean’s retreat has freed her as well, anything that might absolve me from the guilt of withholding the evidence I recorded, but I’m too afraid to tell her whom she’s really corresponding with.
Instead, beneath her comment, I tell her I’ll be exhibiting soon in Rome.
I feel like going over to his apartment and confronting Lawrence in person!
I type, feeling an uneasy twinge as I post this.
These are not my accusations to make, but she likes the post. A few others do, too.
Emboldened, I write a reply, suggesting we meet for a coffee one day and talk about our work. I lie and tell her I’m a painter, too, that I live in London. Mary likes the suggestion and for a moment I feel hopeful.
But that is our last interaction. Shortly after that, she disappears.