The rest of the weekend seemed to drag. James moved around the house full of nervous excitement that his plan was moving forward. Even though it was a Saturday afternoon, he had called his solicitor as soon as they had come home from Aidan’s house. He wasn’t going to waste time waiting until the working world reopened after the weekend. He had managed to set up a meeting for first thing on Monday morning and Helena was dreading it. It seemed she was being dragged along on his crusade, whether she liked it or not. She was already so entrenched, in far deeper than she had ever wanted to be, but she had no one to blame but herself.
Why on earth had she done that test? Why couldn’t she just have left everything as it was and she wouldn’t be facing this nightmare she now found herself in. She was due back in to the surgery soon, but she had called Ken and told him she would need more time and he had readily agreed. She knew she was in no fit state to return to work. She wasn’t sleeping at night, she was barely eating. She felt guilt gnawing away at her constantly. She really hadn’t thought the consequences through properly; she had been so sure that the test would tell her that James wasn’t Milly’s father and then, when the truth had been revealed, she had assumed that James would be more reticent, like her, wrestling and wrangling with his conscience about what the right thing to do was, but he showed no apprehension and actually seemed certain that it was his duty to fulfil his claim on Milly. He would pause and lean onto his crutches, saying things like, ‘Imagine Christmas, Hel, we might have her in our lives by then – just picture it, baking cookies for Santa and then helping her to open her presents,’ or other times he talked about the legal side of things, ‘We’ve a really strong case,’ he would argue. ‘No judge could possibly refuse to let us be in her life.’
Helena wanted to cover her ears with her hands and block out his words and stop all of this madness. Had he forgotten that their marriage was still as delicate as old china? He seemed to think that because there was a chance to have a child in their lives, all their problems had been solved, but the truth was, Helena had never felt more distant from her husband or unsure what the future held for them.
On Monday morning, Helena woke feeling as though there was a weight sitting on her chest, pushing her down on the bed. She had slept fitfully that night, flitting in and out of sleep, slipping in between dreams and nightmares. She had woken in a sweat after one particularly awful one where James was literally pulling Milly out of Aidan’s arms and Milly was screaming at her, ‘Help me, Lena.’ She hoped that maybe the solicitor would talk some sense into James, advise him that it was better to tread carefully and take a considered approach instead of attacking Aidan with all guns blazing. Although she knew that by having proof that he was Milly’s biological father, James had already overcome the biggest hurdle and stood a really good chance of gaining access.
She could already hear James moving around down below, getting ready for the meeting. She pulled back the duvet and trudged into the en suite. She showered and dressed, choosing a silk shirt and slim-fitting three-quarter-length trousers from her walk-in wardrobe. Putting on a blazer, she squared her shoulders. As she looked at her reflection in the mirror, the confident woman staring back at her belied the mess that she was inside.
‘Good morning,’ James said brightly as she came into the kitchen a while later. ‘How did you sleep?’ He was sitting at the table eating a bowl of granola. His mobility was coming on well; he had had several physiotherapy sessions and was making new gains every day. Although he was still sleeping in the living room, Helena reckoned it wouldn’t be long until he was back using the stairs again. She had helped him to set up a workstation in there too and she would see him clacking away on his laptop and taking calls from Colm, but she knew he was itching to get back into the office again.
‘Not great,’ Helena admitted, hearing the wobble in her voice.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
She sighed. ‘Are you sure we’re doing the right thing, James?’ She had been asking herself this question all night long.
‘I don’t understand – I’ve watched you be completely broken over the last few years trying to have a child and now we have a chance to have one – don’t you want Milly in our lives?’
‘Of course I want to have a child, James!’ she replied with emotion threading her words. ‘But not like this. What about Milly – is it right to do this to her and the boys too… It’s too high a price to pay! I keep thinking of Aidan and all that he will be losing – it’s cruel.’
‘We’re not trying to take Milly off him, Helena, I just want to have her in my life. Put yourself in my shoes, if you suddenly discovered you had a child out there wouldn’t you do all that you could to be a part of their life?’
He had been saying a version of these words ever since he had learned about the paternity test result and she had no answer for him because deep down she knew she would do the same. She would do whatever it took – she would travel to the ends of the Earth – if there was a chance to carry a child of her own. It could never happen for her, but James had got a chance and she couldn’t blame him for wanting to grab it with both hands.
Helena knew she had a choice to make: she could either walk away from all this drama or stay with James in the hope that he was granted some sort of shared custody of Milly and have an opportunity to be involved in a child’s life. Wasn’t having a child all she really wanted? A part of her asked if it really matter how it happened? She knew from the families that came into her surgery that the days of the traditional family were long gone.
When she was growing up in Ballycladdagh, the tiny coastal village of her birth, everyone at her school was from a wholesome two-parent family: mother, father and children. People didn’t separate and there were no single parents, unless they had been widowed, but times had changed for the better and nowadays there were lots of blends in between. There were step-parents and stepchildren, half-siblings, children who spent one weekend with one parent and the next weekend with the other, children raised by grandparents, children born to same-sex couples, children that had been born by surrogate – she had seen it all. Would their situation really be so different? So what if they wouldn’t be the conventional family that she had always pictured in her head, maybe she needed to get past those ideas. But no matter how she tried to convince herself that if she wanted a chance to be a mother, then this was her only shot, it still wouldn’t sit right with her.
Later that morning as Helena turned her Volvo jeep onto Fitzwilliam Square, where the offices of Ward & Jones solicitors were located, her heart rate started to ratchet. They had only ever used Laurence Jones for the conveyancing on their house, Helena wasn’t even sure if he would have the necessary expertise to help them, but James had been confident that it was the best place to start. She pulled up outside the Georgian terrace and fed the parking meter with coins. She displayed the ticket on her windscreen, then helped James out of the car and onto his crutches. She linked his arm as he made his way up the granite steps, then he pressed the bell. As they waited to be let in, Helena felt as though there was a rock sitting in the pit of her stomach.
‘Good morning,’ the receptionist greeted after a few moments after she had opened the door to them.
‘We’re here to see Laurence Jones,’ James began.
‘Take a seat in our reception and I’ll let him know you’re here.’ She smiled kindly at them.
They sat down in the reception area, where they were immediately overpowered by the fragrance emanating from a large bouquet of lilies that sat atop the fireplace. The smell made Helena feel nauseous.
‘James, Helena,’ Laurence Jones said appearing in the reception area a few minutes later. They shook hands. ‘If you’d like to come with me.’
They followed him over the plush carpet down to his office. They went inside and Helena looked around at the dark mahogany bookshelves that were stacked with heavy leatherbound legal tomes. Although it was a generously proportioned room, it felt small, almost claustrophobic.
‘I must say I was intrigued when you called me on Saturday, James,’ Laurence began. ‘Do you want to fill me in on the background first?’
Helena knew that James hadn’t given him the full details yet and she cringed as he took a deep breath and began telling him the sequence of events that had led them here. He looked sheepish as he told Laurence about the one-night stand and everything that had happened since. As Helena listened, it sounded like something out of a soap opera, it was all so far-fetched and unbelievable. She saw Laurence Jones was doing his best to keep his expression neutral, but he couldn’t mask the shock in his eyes. She couldn’t believe how much the landscape of her life had altered in such a short period of time.
‘I don’t normally specialise in family law, but there are a few things which immediately jump out at me. Firstly, under Irish Law, when a married couple have a baby, the woman’s husband is assumed to be the child’s father and has automatic guardianship rights even if he may not be the biological father. I need to ask how did you procure the DNA sample from the child? I presume you had the necessary consent paperwork in place from the child’s legal guardian?’
Helena felt heat creeping up along her face.
James turned to her, wondering how best to answer the question. She looked down at the floor. James turned back to Laurence. ‘Helena took the sample,’ he admitted after a moment. ‘Aidan had asked her to sit with Milly while he was at the funeral and she did it then.’
‘And you had consent from the child’s father?’ Laurence repeated.
Helena thought she was going to get sick. ‘Well, that’s the thing…’ she began. ‘I just took her toothbrush—’
‘Without consent?’ Laurence reiterated.
Her palms grew clammy as she thought about the false patient identities that she had forged on the consent forms. If anyone ever found out about them, she would be in a world of trouble.
‘Okay, I know she didn’t follow strict legal protocol,’ James interrupted, ‘but if Helena hadn’t done the test, then I would never have known the truth.’
‘I really didn’t think it would come back with the result that James was her father and I thought I could forget all about it,’ Helena explained. But she realised how pathetic it sounded in the cold light of day.
‘But that’s not what happened, is it. Instead you have discovered that James is in fact the child’s biological father.’
Helena nodded. She wanted the ground to swallow her up. It felt as though the room was spinning around her.
‘Look, can you help us or not?’ James asked, jumping to her defence with impatience.
‘You need to be aware that Helena could be struck off by the medical council for engaging in this type of behaviour.’
‘But she wasn’t working there!’ James protested. ‘This has nothing to do with her job as a GP.’
‘The man left Helena in the care of his daughter, while he attended his late wife’s funeral,’ Laurence explained.
‘As a friend – not in a medical capacity – Milly had her own medical team at the hospital,’ James interrupted. ‘Helena was not involved in her care at any point.’
‘Nonetheless, some would argue that Helena abused her position as a medical professional. There are also patient confidentiality violations.’
‘Wh-what do you mean?’ Helena said slowly. She hadn’t even considered this.
‘You overhead a medical conversation taking place between the child’s doctor and father and then you used that confidential information for your own needs.’
‘But her father asked me to be there – I wasn’t doing anything underhand by being present,’ Helena interjected.
‘As a doctor, it could be construed that you had a greater understanding of blood types and their genetic profiles than most laypeople would have. It could definitely be argued that you used your own medical knowledge to take advantage of this man.’
‘So what you’re saying is that I could lose my job over this?’ Helena asked in shock.
Laurence Jones nodded. ‘There is a risk. I have to make you aware of every possibility or I wouldn’t be advising you properly. You need to be fully prepared for all events if you do decide to proceed with this case. Mr Whelan’s team could throw the rulebook at you and they’d have a very good case. It could get nasty. Think carefully,’ he warned.
‘When you say it like that, you make it sound like we’re the ones who are wrong here, but we were lied to,’ James protested angrily. ‘I’ve been denied a chance to be present in my daughter’s life for the last three years. We’re victims here too, y’know!’
Here it was again, Helena thought, James using ‘we’ and ‘our’ except it wasn’t ‘we’ and ‘our’ – she was acutely aware that Milly was James’s child, not hers – no matter how much she had imagined it differently in her head.