When She Was Bad(93)

36

Anne



I’m watching him on the news. He hasn’t changed much. Still the same confidence. More. Because now it’s confidence born of authority rather than confidence born of youth. He looks very much at home on camera, which isn’t surprising really. He’s been a regular expert on documentaries and news shows for years. Decades. He knows how to talk in soundbites. And he knows how to say ‘we got it wrong’ so it doesn’t sound like an admission of guilt but an honest summation of a difficult situation. Maybe we didn’t draw the right conclusion but our methods and motives were beyond reproach.

‘No one could have known,’ he says now. ‘We gathered all the evidence and, based on intensive assessment, made a professional judgement call in the child’s best interests – which was all anyone could have done in the circumstances.’ He looks straight at the camera as he speaks. His meaning is clear: you win some, you lose some. What can you do?

‘So you wouldn’t say your judgement was flawed, Professor?’ asks the interviewer.

Dan Oppenheimer shakes his head with a kind of half smile on his face as if to say, ‘I know you’re required to play devil’s advocate, but sheesh . . .’

‘You have to remember these were very different times. Our understanding of child psychology and the effects of early trauma on the psyche has changed beyond all recognition since then. And obviously we were up against huge time restraints. We wanted to give that child the very best chance at leading a good, normal life – which incidentally I think we did, up to now – and in order to do that, we had to make decisions very quickly.’

‘Would it be fair to say you built your career on that case?’ the interviewer breaks in. ‘The book you wrote at Stanford – The Boy Who Lived Downstairs (and the Girl Who Kept Him There) – was what first propelled you into academic stardom. Isn’t it still the best-selling publication by an academic press ever?’

‘In the States.’ Dan shrugs modestly. ‘But you know I should point out I’ve published plenty of other material subsequent to that, moved into other fields.’

The interviewer isn’t to be fobbed off.

‘But this was the book that cemented your reputation. And now it turns out you and . . .’ He glances down at the notes on the table in front of him. ‘. . . Professor Kowalsky made a wrong call when you decided to fast-track an adoption overseas. And as a result of that, you put people in danger and ultimately contributed to the terrible events in England we’ve seen unfolding on our newscreens.’

‘As you know,’ Dan says, all trace of levity gone from his expression, ‘Professor Kowalsky was the lead psychiatrist on this case, and there was also another junior academic who was involved in the assessment process.’

Alone in my living room, still wearing my sweatpants with my greying hair pulled back off my face by a thick black band, every one of my muscles tenses. Is this it, finally? The point where I’m unmasked? My own involvement finally recognized? I find myself both dreading and longing for it.

‘I don’t believe it would serve any purpose to name her now. She was a young woman not long qualified and I know she found the case . . . emotionally challenging.’

I breathe in sharply.

‘Obviously as Professor Kowalsky has since passed away, you’re the only one who can tell us what went on back then. Maybe you can give the folks back home an idea of what the child was like, Professor Oppenheimer. I mean, you green-lighted the adoption.’

‘Well, Brad, you have to understand we’re talking about a very young child here, so the personality is far from fully formed, but I will tell you this seemed like a smart child, very quick to learn and capable of showing empathy and remorse and forming relationships with others. Despite the terrible things that had happened in the family home, there was no hostility that we could determine and surprisingly little aggression.

‘Ultimately, as you know, it was Professor Kowalsky’s call. He was the senior psychiatrist. I was really just starting out, and though I have to say there were a few red flags for me, I very much bowed to the professor’s superior judgement.’

I am grasping the remote control very tightly. For the first time it occurs to me that there is to be no restitution, no righting of wrongs. Ed Kowalsky is dead – felled by a catastrophic brain haemorrhage as he was queuing at the juice bar after coming a respectable sixth place in the veterans’ cycling race. The irony was lost on no one. To everyone’s surprise, he hadn’t, in the end, capitalized on the sensational House of Horror case beyond using it to consolidate his role at the college here. His children had been his excuse. They were settled here. But really I think he just lacked the ambition. He liked being a big fish in a small pond. He liked the way the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor took him for dinner at their golf club and described him as one of the ‘jewels in the university’s crown’. And I don’t think he ever quite recovered from Dan Oppenheimer’s meteoric success. Ed published his own papers on the case, of course. All of them well received. But none of them ever made him a star outside the narrow walls of academia. I used to think I was the only one left scarred by the Child L case, but after Ed’s death I was able to see it wasn’t so.