He Saved Her Child, Abandoned Ours novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Chambers

The woman at the door held out an envelope.

She kept her eyes on my face, and not on the man coming down the stairs behind me.

"It's a notice, Mrs Ashworth," she said. "Not a removal. Miss Sedley has applied to the family court, and the judge will see you on Monday."

"Applied for what?"

"A finding that Tilly isn't safe in your care." She hesitated. "I've read the file. I wanted you to hear it from a person first."

I took the envelope.

Rafe's phone buzzed on the hall table, and he read it with one hand on the banister.

"My solicitor," he said. "The paper rang her at five past nine last night. They watched your speech on a stranger's phone and they won't touch the footage."

"Then she's got nothing but the court."

"She's got the court," said Rafe. "It's enough to frighten anyone."

"Not me," I said, and found it was nearly true.

On Monday morning the judge's chambers were a room in Canterbury with a long table and a view of a car park.

Bridie sat on one side of me, in her navy dress, with her handbag in her lap.

Rafe sat on the other, in a plain dark suit.

Cressida sat opposite with a young solicitor and no Posy, in a grey dress I had never seen, and she looked small and tired and very sorry.

She did it well.

The judge, a white-haired woman with half-moon glasses, let her do it for ten minutes.

Cressida spoke of her concern for Tilly, her long friendship with the family, the awful scene at the charity dinner.

She said she had only ever wished to help.

"Thank you," said the judge. "Mrs Ashworth, anything to add?"

"I have nothing to add to the file," I said.

"I have read it." The judge turned a page. "The clinic's note, made by a social worker who watched Mr Ashworth leave his daughter in the waiting room. A printed email from a study at Hallam Court. An audio file, with a statement from the head of information technology at Ashworth Capital that it is an unaltered recording."

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