The Water Is Warm

By Jennifer Stawska

This is the story that Simon, with whom I used to share a room in chambers, sent to me from Sri Lanka. It tells of how he crashed out of the Family Bar after a disastrous relationship with a former client, Catherine, abandoning her and her daughter Martha in London after a court case. However, more than anything, it tells of how Simon found faith, redemption and happiness in civil-war-torn Sri Lanka with Josh, the man whom he loved. Together Simon and Josh helped rebuild the lives of Sunil and his uncle, Raja, in the beautiful setting of Unawatuna on the south coast of Sri Lanka after they had lost everything in the tsunami. Simon and Josh never did make it to Sweden, Josh's home country. But yes, Simon, the water is warm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brown Dog Books
• Release date: Apr 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785452901

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Josh and I used to play a game. ‘Describe what you can see,’ he would say and I would do my best to put into words the scene around us. Then he would do the same for me, reaching out into the world before he spoke and then drawing into himself everything that he could see, hear, touch and smell. He would hesitate, caught in that moment of doubt which he did and which always floored me, look straight into my eyes and pause for a second more before breaking into his smile, with its soft hint of ‘you’ll have to help me with this Simon.’

‘Go on,’ I would tell him and often I would touch his arm with my hand. Then he would start, quietly, gently, full of tone and full of colour, pouring words like shafts of light into my mind.

‘So…’

I would close my eyes, clear my thoughts of everything else and just listen as his voice filled every corner of my being. He had the most beautiful voice.

We would play the game when we were lying next to each other on the benches outside Raja’s hotel at Unawatuna looking deeply into the equatorial night sky while listening to the sounds of the beach. We used it to fill each other’s minds while we watched families busying themselves around the sun-bleached tents of the refugee camp in Galle, as we smelt the spices and smoke of their cooking. We played it in words of buzzing anticipation as we painted in spoken images our future lives together in Sweden, in Lulea where we should be now, while lying beside the waterfall near Belihuloya, surrounded by birdsong and the smell of damp vegetation. Even in the hot stillness of the shack in which we lived, before we slept surrounded by the rhythm of the sea, your head on my chest as I stroked your hair or traced your hand with my fingertips and smelt you next to me – that unique smell. Part earth, part salt, part fresh sweat. Your smell.

It was at night-time, though, that the game of words really mattered. Times when I woke in the dark, often with the monsters eating into my mind or the rain hammering on the corrugated iron roof above us. Times when I turned into you, moved my head so I could feel you breathing, stroked the side of your face, your hair, your arm to wake you. Felt you stir, slowly, softly.

‘Tell me, Simon.’

And I would lie on my back and I would do just that. I would tell you all about the world around me, taking you to the thoughts that kept gnawing into my brain. All of it, the reservoir of words I could never have said before. You would rest your head against me and let me glide my fingers through your hair as I searched for what I wanted to say.

There were times when the anguish of the past still caught up with you, too, despite everything that you were. Then, well then, I would wake to feel your arm sliding from your side of the bed under my neck, the soft warmth of your breath as you buried your face into my back, the gentle draw of your hand as it traced the contours of my body, calling to me for comfort from the night’s fears. I would feel your feet guiding my legs to you as your knees fitted into the back of mine and the thrilling, electrifying warmth of your chest when it first touched my back. I would push against you, fold into you as if you were a comfortable chair, feeling you surround me, wanting as many parts of me to touch you as I could.

‘Tell me, Josh.’

Then you would tell me with words that spanned the universe. It all came more easily to you, the words flowed like the sweetest nectar, but I learnt soon enough. And it wasn’t all monsters and anguish either. It was the excitement and the silence of the night, too, as we learnt to be together. Learnt a new way of life. Told each other about ourselves as we inched our way forwards, blending our thoughts and our bodies together.

Those were long, long talks in the dark. Talks about the past, about faith, about love, about the future. About things that needed to be said and which we could only ever say when wrapped in the safety of the world we created. Just the two of us. Emptying ourselves into each other, opening the sluice gate on our fears and letting them flow away, then falling back in the afterglow, every muscle in my body, every cell in my brain having sung its song and been heard. And then sleeping in peace. The peace of God, where heaven lies. Where you and I lay.

‘I will always love you, Simon.’

That’s what you told me whenever you were just about to fall asleep. When you said it, I took hold of your hand so that your arm lay across my body. And I didn’t let it go until I slept, too. It was a ritual. It was what I needed then and it is what I crave for now.

Why am I writing this? I’m doing it because nineteen days and four hours ago you did the one thing that you were not supposed to do. You died, leaving me behind. I could have coped with anything else. Now all I can hope to achieve is that I can find a way to remain linked to you and I think that this is the only way I can do that, even if nobody ever reads it. I am determined to carve a headstone for you, Josh, to leave a mark of the person you were and of our time together. If there is anything that I am to leave behind me I want it to be this.

I suppose that what I’m trying to say from the start is that I will always love you, but you know that already. Whatever I do and whatever is left of you, I will always love you. And, maybe, just maybe, by loving you, not letting go, I can keep you alive for a while, with me as I write. If I experience you it means that you are here – work that one out, Descartes. That’s all I want to do right now. Beyond that, who knows? It’s all horribly confused.

Well, this therefore is the story that I want to tell of how I have come to be here so that I can put into context what we had. I want this to be a beautiful tale, a tale of your beauty. A tale of your face, a tale of your touch, the way that you moved, the way that you spoke. A tale of the person you were, the life that we made together and the faith by which we learnt to define our lives. It is a tale that I love – I don’t know how to emphasise that; do I say with all my heart? Anyway, it explains, as best I can, why you meant everything to me, why you were my family, my father and my friend. My love, my home, my ambition and my man. My brown eyed boy. I suppose it’s my love story and, do you know what? I like that.

CHAPTER TWO

How would I describe the present scene to you if we played the game now? I am in the war-torn Eastern Province of the island where, for the first time, I have been fully exposed to the effects of the bitter civil conflict from which we were largely protected when we lived in the south. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE as they get called) were driven out of this province in July of last year, 2007, after the Battle of Thoppigala but the threat of a major government military incursion to the north still hangs here like a poisoned cloud over every conversation, over every day.

People here expect that the current skirmishes in the north will develop once again into full scale civil war. If they do, they will spill over into this part of the country leaving innocent citizens once again trying to escape the opposing war machines as they consume the Northern Province and as the government army eats its way towards the capital of the Tamil Tigers, Kilinochchi in the Northern Province. They expect nothing here but death, or at best economic destruction, in this obscene conflict that has been waged in this beautiful country for so long but is now revived officially by the government, led by the President, Rajapakse. Only two months ago, on 2 January, it revoked the ceasefire that had been so carefully brokered by Norwegian mediators, just as the country was beginning to recover from the tsunami.

They know exactly what to expect here. Why? Because they have seen it all happen before, when this province was cleared out by the army after the LTTE cut off the water supply to government held areas by closing the sluice gates on the Mavil Aru reservoir in July 2006. However, they say, this time it will be for real. It will be final. I have this sense, this smell, of watching people on a conveyor belt to death.

As for me, well I am working on a laptop in a room where there is one, low wattage light bulb and a single socket. The hotel where I am staying is next to a beach in a place up the coast from Trincomalee called Nilaveli and is owned by a couple called Dharan and Karunya. They are both Tamils, both civilians, both waiting for the onslaught that they know must come sometime from one side or the other and which they expect will tear their lives apart again. The building is silent and empty as there seem to be no other guests. The war drove away the tourists here ages ago even though there is a veiled pretence that everything is normal, that peace is restored. There are even signs in English attached to the walls surrounding the beaches here: ‘Peace begins with a smile.’ Well, I can’t say that I have seen too many smiley faces since I got here.

But at least the geckos seem to smile as they skit across the walls and ceiling of my room. They just watch me, exuding a dippy constancy, even if not companionship. In the distance there is the sea, which has wrought so much destruction but to whose rhythm we used to listen at night. I am working on a small dressing table which I am using as a desk and on which there is just enough room to place my computer. The bed, offering sleep like the grapes of Tantalus, sits vacant next to me smelling slightly of damp but with a reasonably clean mattress and reasonably clean sheets. In the corner of the room there is a wicker seat where you should be sitting, reading quietly. I keep it just out of my sight while I am typing so I can pretend that you are there. The air around me pulsates as the ceiling fan beats away constantly as long as the electricity does not fail, which it does from time to time. The walls must once have been white but now bear lots of damp patches and cracks. Through a green painted door there is a shower which competes with the hole in the floor, that is the lavatory, for the limited cold water and for the distinction of exuding the strongest smell. Because there is no air conditioning, the room is hot and very humid.

How do I feel right now? I wrote pages and pages of drunken rant about that two nights ago. And I’ve deleted the lot. It’s not what this is about. I just wish you were here.

CHAPTER THREE

So, if I am going to get this writing underway properly I am going to make it easy. I’m going to start with a painting of you, me and Sunil – he is Raja’s nephew - at home on the beach where we lived and where we helped to rebuild Raja’s way of life after the tsunami had swept away his hotel and his family along with everything else.

We are all sitting together under the shade of Priscilla, our favourite tree, as she rocks her 1960s haircut in the coastal breeze like a stoned hippy.

Sunil is resting his back on your chest with his arms crooked against your knees as he reads out loud from a book. You are following the words of the book with your finger and occasionally correcting Sunil when he stumbles. I am lying on the sand next to you, resting my back on a towel draped over Priscilla’s branches, listening to your voices as you read together and occasionally opening an eye to watch you. But otherwise I am dozing in the cool breeze that wafts in from the sea and mingles with your voices which float softly in the air. The heat beyond the shelter of Priscilla’s shade dances like silent spirits along the beach, distorting the view of the distant headland. Above me Priscilla’s leaves play an offbeat melody to the rhythm of the waves as they bring the jingling sand to life at the water’s edge.

Your attention is fixed on the book and on the words that Sunil is reading. Occasionally you say something quietly into Sunil’s ear and you both laugh together. But you keep on reading and then I see the flash of the look between you both as Sunil seeks reassurance by scanning your face as he hesitates over a word and you give him what he is searching for through the broadening of your smile, the slight challenge in your eyes, the softening of your voice.

‘You know that word. Spell it out.’

You spell it together, phonetically.

‘Now, put all the letters together.’ He does as you tell him.

‘Clever boy,’ you tell Sunil.

He smiles at you and then turns back to the book. You turn to me, knowing that I am following every second of what is happening. You don’t smile, you don’t raise your eyebrows. You just look at me and I know precisely what you are thinking because I am thinking it too. I hold your stare but, in the end, it’s too much and I have to close my eyes. Nothing can ever compare with that moment, it makes me the richest man on earth.

From there I can move on to the next beach scene easily where I see you bringing Sunil’s attention back to the book. I watch you both as Sunil keeps reading, with you sending out the same message of patience that I saw when you cared for families in Galle, drinking sweet tea in smoky tents. I can see Sunil hitting another difficult word and I can watch you writing it slowly in the sand with your finger and hear the grinding movement of the sand as your finger glides through it to form the letters. Then I can hear you explaining the word to Sunil, getting him to concentrate on it, to learn it, before smoothing the sand over with your hand. And I can study your finger and watch your hand next to me and I feel myself turn, once again, towards it as I do still at night because it helps me sleep. I used to love tracing your hand with my fingertips while I watched you, waiting for you to draw in your breath.

So then, when the book is finished, I can see you putting it down and both of you pelting along the sand to the sea and playing in a way that only you could. Fresh, frenetic, chaotic play, riven with noise and activity, a memory full of your theatre as you mimic and challenge Sunil, turning him upside down, throwing him into the water, chasing him up the beach. And it is full of Sunil’s smile, feigned complaints and outrageously loud laughter as he turns the chase on to you. I watch you. I watch you and never want to stop doing so, even now.

And seeing that now reminds me of how, after he was orphaned when the tsunami roared into the train at Peraliya, Sunil had been petrified by the sea and would not go into it for any reason at all – not for fishing, not for washing, not for swimming and not even for cooling down. A nine-year-old boy living on a beach, helping his Uncle Raja rebuild his hotel there, but tormented by the sea. Sunil would stand near to the sea sometimes whimpering in distress wanting to go into it but too afraid to do so because the sea had taken away his parents, his aunt and his cousin and nearly took him away too. The little boy who, despite all his own losses, had looked after me in the hospital at Batapola when I was injured in the same train disaster in which, it is said, at least 1,700 people died.

And I can go on to remember how, when you came back here from Sweden, you coaxed Sunil into the water, slowly, patiently helping him to overcome his fear and turning the sea into a shared playground. How you walked along the edge of the sea, you with your arm around Sunil’s shoulder as you spoke to him quietly, knocking together as you joked your way along the beach. How you and I both helped Raja to leave the bottle behind and love his nephew with a warmth that outshone the sun.

I can see you holding Sunil’s hand as he stepped deeper into the water, smiling at Sunil and offering him encouragement, giving Sunil your full attention. Once again, I can see you holding Sunil’s hands as Sunil half laughs, half cries as you take him into the water so that it reaches up to his waist and I watch you bouncing on your feet as the waves come in with the sunlight dancing on the water’s surface.

Now, in the next picture that I want to paint, Sunil is a confident swimmer again and I watch as the two of you duck under the waves, jump up from the floor of the sea collapsing side-wards like whales and race each other through the water. But most of all I watch you glide down into the water, your straight, tanned, powerful legs pointing up with God given grace and beauty that I did not deserve to see. And when you come out of the sea I see you both shake your heads to clear the water from your hair and riddle your ears with your fingers as if mimicking each other.

You walk up the beach towards me, with Sunil dancing in front of you, pretending to stamp on your feet, and you shout: ‘Hey Englishman, why are you not swimming today?’ before coming to lie down on the sand next to me in the shade with an oomph of relaxation as you stretch out and put your hands behind your head, resting it on the towel next to me

‘Hey, Viking,’ I smile at you. ‘Get back on your longship. Can’t a man sleep?’

But you and Sunil laugh and exchange looks to take the piss out of me. ‘What does that spell, Sunil?’ you ask, writing in the sand.

‘Lazy,’ Sunil replies and you both point towards me.

‘OK. OK. OK. My turn’ and I take over, playing and swimming with Sunil and this time it is you who stretches out on the sand and watches.

And that is happiness. That is what I knew and that is what I have lost. That is Sunil. And that is you, Josh, about whom I could write enough pages to fill an art gallery with descriptions and probably will try to do so. And if that is not as close as anyone can get in this mortal life to the peace of God, then I don’t know what is. Living in the love of the God that we found and knew; and living in the love of each other. My brown eyed boy.

Time to get on with this, that’s way too long a run-up. I’ve already deleted pages and pages about sitting with you under the Bo tree in the gardens in Colombo when you first came back here, watching the sea together from the veranda at Arugam Bay, swimming under the waterfall near Belihuloya, riding the motorbike together like twenty year olds, finding faith together…Loads of stuff. All that can come later.

Six years back I go, to when I screwed up my life in London before I met you – that’s the context of how we came to meet so it has to go in; it’s also why I know you as my redemption. How much can I remember of what happened at the point where I must really get underway? Quite a bit, actually, because we talked about it a lot and, do you know what, Josh? When I can’t remember I can plug the gaps by making up the story. Why not? That’s something else we learnt. How to tell each other stories. In the quiet of the night when all I could hear was your voice as you lay next to me in the half light of the shack. Or when I would take my mind to the borders of imagination filling you with stories that I had put together during the day, longing to upload them into you, full of anticipation. Anointing you with words and coconut oil.

So, here goes. Start at the beginning, go on until the end, and then? Well then, fuck knows – there’s a joke about that which I might tell later, along with the one about the man wearing only underpants at the fancy dress party.

CHAPTER FOUR

I used to work as a barrister, before I came here. I practised in family law cases and, like all my colleagues, worked on a self-employed basis from a set of chambers in the area of London with the Masonic sounding name of ‘The Temple’.’ I was a member of the Inner Temple - that sounds even worse now, when I come to think about it. I had always done cases concerning children, parents and relationship breakdown. I wore the uniform, competed with the aim of winning and played the part.

Chambers was a very rich and traditional place to work that now belongs to a totally different life – it feels like a different planet. The shack where we lived in Unawatuna would probably fill only half of the waiting room, if that. The carpets were red, the walls were painted a soft golden yellow and there was a constant smell of freshly brewed coffee. I shared an expensively furnished room with another barrister and friend called Jennifer Stawska, who plays quite a large part in my story. The walls of our room were lined with bookcases filled with leather bound law reports and there was a mahogany table in the middle of it around which we would hold meetings or, as they are called in the legal world, conferences. The room smelt of leather and polish and the bright lighting came mostly from the central and ornate chandelier whose many bulbs shone out a disgraceful but defiant disregard for the preservation of the environment.

We both had mahogany desks with brass table lights which were topped by green glass shades. There was a large, golden framed mirror at the end of the room above a false fireplace which was surrounded by a black cast-iron mantelpiece on which we kept two decanters, one containing port and the other single malt whisky both untouched for years. On a leather topped side table we kept our legal papers – our briefs - wrapped in traditional pink ribbon and sent in by solicitors. If I turned up in chambers now I would be thrown out as a stinking beggar – it is four and a half years since I set foot in the place but it feels like a lifetime ago. I can’t even remember what it feels like to wear a suit, never mind a wig and gown. If you went in there, Josh, I can picture you blinking at the lights, saying that you didn’t belong there and that you felt two inches tall. I would have to do a huge emotional repair job.

Well, it is to my room in chambers that I must beam myself back and introduce Catherine Warrenberg who came into it for a conference. Catherine’s daughter, Martha, had been admitted to hospital as an emergency on three occasions in the first four months of her life, having stopped breathing. On each occasion Catherine had been alone with her in her flat in Battersea. However, on the last occasion, the hospital’s suspicions had been aroused because fingertip bruising had been noted on Martha’s forehead; what is more Catherine had reported that she had noted blood coming up into Martha’s mouth just before the paramedics arrived and that was interpreted by the hospital doctors as consistent with attempted suffocation. As a result, the social services had issued care proceedings alleging that Catherine must have attempted to suffocate Martha in a display of that mythical phenomenon which those with a fetish for Freudism used to call Munchhausen’s syndrome by proxy.

By the time that I got involved in Catherine’s case a deal had been struck with the social services by which Martha lived with Catherine’s mother and step-father. It was a temporary arrangement, meant to last until a court hearing called a fact-finding hearing, could take place within the care proceedings to decide whether the social services could prove its allegations against Catherine. Part of the deal was that Catherine could only spend time with Martha if her mother or step-father were there - it’s called supervised contact in legal language. There had been a glowing assessment of Catherine’s family by social services in which Catherine had told a social worker all about her own upbringing – how her mother and father had divorced, her father abandoned them all and how her step-father, a now retired senior police officer, had stepped in and saved the family.

Catherine was being represented by a QC, a leading barrister from chambers, but my job was to help the QC and, in the initial stages, to draft a statement in which Catherine had to explain to the court what had happened and to record her formal denial that she had done anything to harm her daughter.

When I picked up the brief, therefore, there were already medical reports from the doctors who had treated Martha in the hospital which suggested that there was no medical reason for Martha to have stopped breathing. But more importantly, the doctors were saying that suffocation could cause bleeding within the lungs or airways as blood pressure builds up in the body’s attempt to pump oxygen around it. Further, the doctors were saying that no satisfactory explanation had been given for the bruising to Martha’s forehead. It was being said that the high acid levels in Martha’s blood were consistent with her having stopped breathing on each occasion; so, said the social services, this was not a case of Catherine fabricating stories that her child had stopped breathing – they said that it was a case of deliberate attempted suffocation.

That was how the first meeting with Catherine was tee-ed up. I had been a family barrister for nearly eighteen years by then and, at the age of 39, was at the point where I was thinking with the endemic paranoia of the bar about whether to apply for silk or to apply to sit as a part-time judge, a Recorder. I used to fret about the effect that taking silk might have on my income – would I find that nobody wanted to brief me as a QC? It is all a bit different here in Sri Lanka, where the average monthly income is about 20,000 rupees - that’s about £90 in the UK; however, like faith, that would have meant nothing to me then.

I knew from the start that it would be a difficult case, not least because Catherine was herself a member of the family bar, albeit from a different set of chambers. It was Jennifer who first warned me of the pitfalls, when I was preparing for the first conference.

‘Watch your back, Simon,’ she said when I told her that Catherine was a member of the bar.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, if you win, the silk takes the glory. If you lose you get crapped on. You won’t get any thanks for this.’

‘Yes, but I can’t turn the brief down, can I? The clerks would kill me.’

‘It’s not the clerks who will be pilloried around the Temple if things go wrong.’

‘Great. Thanks.’

‘Just watch your back, that’s all. She’ll be high maintenance. You wait.’

That’s the gist of what she said. Jennifer didn’t take prisoners and, invariably, she was right. The conference went something like this.

‘I’m really sorry, this must seem really strange for you.’ I tried to start the conference on a note of understanding.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Getting advice from another barrister.’

‘Let’s just get on with this, shall we?’

I can remember that first conference very well, even now. I have this image in my head of sitting in a room with a person trapped inside a block of ice. Also sitting in the room was an articled clerk from the solicitor’s office who did nothing to ease the atmosphere. She kept her mouth firmly closed, her head down and directed her Herculean efforts to trying either to write down every single word that was spoken or, during periods of silence, to pull split ends out of her hair.

‘Can we go through the three occasions when Martha stopped breathing, please?’ I tried to take charge.

‘Haven’t you read the draft statement that I sent to the solicitors? That says it all, surely. What else do you need to know?’

‘Yes, of course, but I do need to ask some questions about it to make sure I understand.’

‘OK, you tell me, what is it that you don’t understand?’

That’s pretty much how the atmosphere remained during the conference until right at the end - I asked a few details but if ever I asked anything that already appeared in her draft statement she slapped me down. After about an hour I had as much as I was going to get and, what’s more, I had had enough and I thought I would try to wrap the conference up.

‘How’s contact going?’ It was a simple question but very badly worded.

‘Contact? What do you mean, contact? This is my daughter you’re talking about.’ And then she burst into tears. It was like watching a plastic ruler snapping. ‘This is such fucking rubbish. I don’t want contact with my daughter. All this is for clients, not me.’ I certainly remember the swearing. Then she drew her legs up onto the chair holding onto them around her knees, looked pitiful and sobbed.

Catherine is a slim, golden haired and very attractive woman, then in her early 30s. Her voice, which bears a slight lisp, is quiet and soft but she has the ability of shifting her tone whenever challenged or when asserting her own professional identity. As I got to know her better I learnt that she also had a tendency to close herself off from her emotions suddenly, like a door slamming in a hurricane, shutting people out. Then, when the pressure on the door got too great, there was an overwhelming outpouring of stored up feeling. Later that is what drew me to her like a magnet, especially when I heard her release it into her singing. However, this was my first experience of it and it blew me off my feet.

‘Would you mind going to the waiting room,’ I said to the articled clerk who was still taking notes. I then walked around the desk and squatted down next to Catherine, holding the arm rest of her chair.

‘I’m really sorry,’ I said to her. By that stage I was genuinely sorry that I was stuck with a sobbing client when I had loads of other things to get on with. I was actually asking myself what I was going to do and whether I was ever going to get this weeping woman out of my room.

‘No, it’s my fault. You’ve been very kind and I’ve been a complete prat today.’ She sniffed and then looked towards me, trying to smile politely. ‘I must be the client from hell.’

‘Oh, I’ve known worse.’ Catherine even made an attempt to laugh at that. ‘But we need to work together. Can we try and do that please, even if you do think I am a complete dick?’

She laughed again, looked at me, put her hand on mine and said ‘I’ll try. You’re not a dick. I am just finding this hard. You’ll have to bear with me please.’

‘Well you can always come back to see me again. We barristers need to stick together. And, no, you’re not just another client.’ That seemed to work. I haven’t the first clue if I meant it. Maybe, maybe not.

Catherine pulled herself together and I went with her to retrieve the articled clerk who was still scribbling notes in the waiting room, head down. ‘Dirty habit’ I said quietly to Catherine, nodding in the direction of the articled clerk, as we approached the waiting room.

‘What?’

‘Playing with a biro all the time. Makes you blind.’ She laughed. She has a wonderful laugh.

After the conference I remained in chambers to complete her statement. Not only did I draft the statement but the events of the case changed my life so I remember it all very well. The statement gave a brief account of Catherine’s background and career but gave a full version of the three occasions when Martha had stopped breathing. I suppose I should mention them now.

The first occasion happened before Catherine went back to work. She was in her one bedroom flat in Battersea with Martha asleep in her cot. It was about 8 o’clock in the evening. While watching the television, Catherine said, she suddenly became aware that Martha was not breathing regularly. Alerted to this she went over to Martha and, by the time that she had got there, Martha had stopped breathing altogether. She said that she picked Martha up, held her over her left hand and slapped her back with her right hand. When that did not work, she pinched Martha’s nose and gave her a gentle kiss of life. Catherine had estimated that, after about 25 seconds, Martha had given a gasp and started to breathe again which is when Catherine rang for an ambulance. Martha was taken by ambulance to the hospital where she was detained overnight and for the next day but the hospital could find nothing wrong and sent her home again.

The second occasion was similar to the first except by this time Catherine was back at work and Geraldine, her mother, had cared for Martha during the day in a routine that they had established. Catherine was working at her desk at the flat in the evening, she said, when she again noticed that Martha, who was then 3 ½ months old, had stopped breathing. She started breathing again this time after being slapped on the back. Again, the hospital could find nothing wrong although, this time, they kept her in for two days to carry out a larger number of tests. Catherine said that she complained bitterly to the hospital staff about the decision to discharge Martha but the hospital decided that she could not be detained indefinitely and made an outpatient appointment for her to be seen by a consultant neurologist. They provided Catherine with an under-sheet sensor which was intended to sound if Martha’s breathing became irregular and advised her not to place Martha on her front when she went to sleep.

The third occasion happened on Easter Monday, 1 April 2002 – that date is indelibly imprinted in my mind, not just because it was April Fool’s day but because it was chewed over time and time again as the case progressed. Catherine said that she had been working at her desk again, the sensor sounded and she noticed that Martha had stopped breathing. This time Martha did not respond to being slapped on her back. Catherine said that she had then used her little finger to ensure that Martha’s airways were clear and had held Martha’s forehead firmly as she tipped her head backwards so as to reveal her airways more clearly; this, she thought, might explain the bruises on Martha’s head and she said that it was quite possible that her finger nail caused the bleeding by nicking the side or back of Martha’s mouth.

It was not a difficult statement to draft because Catherine had already done a very neat and succinct job on it. Jennifer also worked late in chambers after the conference that evening so we both got on with what we had to do.

‘How did the con go?’ Jennifer asked during one of our frequent breaks for tea. Con is barrister language for conference. I told her what had happened.

‘I feel so sorry