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Teresa was fed up and hungover. The day before had been a bad day. When she got home, she had drunk almost everything in the house to commiserate and felt she was getting a cold. Touching her forehead, she was sure she was running a temperature and went into the bathroom to run a hot bath.
She had been fed up for a long time, fed up with all these meetings and hearings. There had been a mediation meeting, which had not gone well — phone calls from police and social services which, again, could have gone better. Then there was the first hearing in which William and herself could not agree on anything. The result was that the court decided a fuller hearing was necessary. They called this the fact-finding hearing during which William said terrible things about her, about her drinking, her inability to raise Annabel, her sham of a drinking diary, which was a work of fiction.
Then came the dispute resolution appointment in which did not resolve their dispute because both wanted custody of Annabel, and neither was prepared to concede. The Children and Families Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) report had not been favourable.
William moved out of the flat and into the house of his new girlfriend. He said he wanted a divorce, but she refused one on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour, so he would have to wait until they had been separated for two years.
Yesterday had been the final hearing, and it felt just like her visit to the magistrates when she was prosecuted for failing to give a sample. William said terrible things about her, and when she was asked if she had given up alcohol, she could not bring herself to lie. Her drink diary in the rehabilitation programme had been a work of fiction, but this was a court. This was different. Her mother taught her that honesty was more important than anything, but when she admitted she was still drinking and saw the look in the eyes of the judge, she regretted it.
The judge listened to the evidence from both sides and then pronounced her decision. William, she said, was in a better position to raise Annabel and that it was in Annabel’s best interest to live with William and the bitch he had shacked up with. The judge said that Teresa could see Annabel on weekends. During the week, she could not tuck her into bed, read her a bedtime story, take her to, or pick her up from school, comfort her when she woke with a bad dream. William and his bitch would do all those things. They would raise Annabel.
Teresa searched the kitchen for the remnants of alcohol and found half a bottle of vodka but there was no tonic, all she found was an ageing carton of orange in the fridge. Sniffing it, it seemed okay, so she made herself a screwdriver and slipped into the hot bath.
Laying with her eyes closed, she contemplated how events could have turned this sour and worried that she hadn’t told her family back in Brazil; they still hadn’t forgiven her for keeping her marriage and pregnancy a secret.
She didn’t want to worry her mother, Teresa received a message from her sister-in-law, Selma, telling her that her mother was ill again. She had been ill before, but it sounded more serious this time. Teresa wondered whether this might be the perfect time to take a break from everything that was going on in the UK and visit her family in Brazil for the first time in over seven years.