Page 74 of Clever Little Thing

But no. I tried so hard to have this second baby because Stella needs a friend, or at least an ally. Besides, I can’t leave any child to be raised by Pete. I thought Pete was a good father, but you can’t be a good father and a cheater and rapist.

I don’t have anything else to offer him. But maybe I can offer him a negative inducement—threat rather than reward. How can I terrify him so much he’ll do whatever I want, even give up his own children? And then I realize: it is so simple.

I message Pete and tell him to set up a meeting with a mediator for the following afternoon. I tell him I want to “discuss next steps and get the ball rolling,” which I think sounds important and Nathan-like, but also nice and vague. I’ll keep him guessing as to what I want to discuss—separation, divorce, custody?—and that way it’s harder for him to prepare.

39.

Phil, the mediator, is an older man with grey hair. His office is in an Edwardian terraced house on the fringe of Muswell Hill. “You’re a couple of minutes early,” he says with a touch of reproach. Once I would have apologized, but now I say nothing and follow him inside. It is obviously his home, though he’s removed personal belongings from the hallway and the doors are closed. He leads us through to a glass-roofed extension off the kitchen. The kitchen has also been depersonalized, no magnets on the fridge or remnants of cooking, though the scent of Heinz baked beans hangs in the air. In the extension stands a circular white table with a small bowl in the center that looks as if it contains fluffy pompoms of moss. Even his potted plants are nonthreatening.

I can’t help thinking that if your office space is your kitchen and dining room, then you clearly live alone, and if that is the case,what does that say about your ability to negotiate with your own family members?

On the wall hangs a portrait of three Victorian rabbits. Or rather, they are three people, a mother, father, and child, the father in a dark suit, the mother and child in long, dark dresses, and they wear rabbit masks. White cardboard muzzles, perky brown cardboard ears. Maybe they remind him of the happy animal families depicted in children’s books. But the picture makes you wonder why these solemn people are wearing rabbit masks and apparently not having any fun.

The doorbell rings, and my heart flutters, not because I am nervous about seeing Pete, but at the thought of what I have to do. Pete is freshly showered and shaven, wearing a soft, expensive-looking T-shirt and jeans. He is so sure he’ll get what he wants that he hasn’t troubled to dress up.

“Tea, anyone?” Phil says. “Coffee?” We both shake our heads, united in our desire to get this over with. We sit down, and Phil shuffles papers and drones on about sustainable outcomes and respectful processes. He explains, “The goal is to be ‘amicable, equitable, and expedient,’ or as I like to say, ‘friendly, fair, and fast.’ ” He twinkles: apparently this amounts to a humorous quip in the world of mediation.

I don’t twinkle. There is nothing friendly or fair about what I am about to do. Pete asks if he can speak first, and I say yes. I am in the mood to be generous. He launches into his litany of grievances: the dead bird “in” Stella’s bed, the night I “abandoned her” in the park, my “obsession” with reading her diary.

“Charlotte, would you like to contribute?” Phil says when Pete is finished.

“Where so much is wrong, there’s no purchase for disagreement,” I say. “It’s like trying to argue with someone who thinks school shootings are faked by crisis actors.”

Pete doesn’t flinch. “The stress of miscarriages, hereditary depression, and a difficult birth have pushed Charlotte into florid postpartum psychosis. Unless she seeks aggressive treatment, she should not be allowed near my daughters.”

Phil looks at us, clearly wondering why we thought we could find common ground in mediation. “Florid psychosis?” Phil ventures.

“She suffers from Capgras delusion,” Pete says. “The belief that a loved one has been replaced by an exact duplicate.”

“That is a misrepresentation,” I say.

Phil looks alarmed. “This is more confrontational than I expected,” he murmurs.

“Isn’t yourjobdealing with confrontation?” Pete snaps.

Then Phil takes a deep breath and says, “Pete, assuming what you’re saying is accurate—we all know there’s more than one side of a story in divorce—”

“I can get a letter from a medical professional at her psychiatric facility attesting that my wife left against medical advice,” Pete says.

“If Charlotte does have medical issues that prevent her from caring for your daughters—and that would need to be verified by a professional—you’ll need to seek primary custody and Charlotte will need to seek treatment—” Here Phil looks at me as if expectingme to wave a rotting seagull in his face. “She will need treatment at once.”

“That’s exactly what I think,” Pete says, brightening. “I’ll pay for it. I have no ill will towards Charlotte, I want her to get well.”

It is so transparent, really, what he is doing: focusing all the attention on my mental health to distract from his own monstrous behavior. I wait for my turn to speak. When Pete has said his piece, I say, “My husband sexually assaulted our babysitter, Blanka Hakobyan. Four days later, she took her own life.”

Pete’s eyes widen. I have to hand it to him: he looks genuinely shocked. “That is a complete fabrication. I reject that absolutely.”

Phil looks grey-faced. “Let’s listen to Charlotte speak now.”

“I have proof,” I say. “She wrote about it in her diary. Her mother recently discovered it and showed it to me.”

Pete blusters. “This is absurd! What did she say exactly? It was probably just a fantasy, poor girl—I mean, woman.”

“It says that you assaulted her. I can show it to you.” I’m bluffing, but it works.

Pete massages his temples. “OK, OK. We did have a quick thing, which I’m not proud of, but it was just a one-off, it meant nothing. It was a mistake.”

“A ‘quick thing’? You assaulted her,” I say, feeling a little wrong-footed by his self-belief. He isn’t lying. He really believes that it was consensual. How can two people see the truth so differently? And it isn’t his word against hers. All I have is the testimony of a ghost.

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