“Madeleine, I would like to begin by recounting your own experience of March twentieth last year when Clara fell ill,” the barrister said. “Can you talk us through the events of that day?”
“Yes. Clara had been a little sniffly the night before, and my husband commented that she might be coming down with chicken pox. The school had sent a note home—another girl in my daughter’s class had come down with it that week—so we knew that it was going around and I was prepared for the fact that Clara might well catch it. She’d never had the disease before but Jake, my eldest, had.”
“Indeed. And how did you feel about that?”
Madeleine decided to be circumspect. She’d agonized over how she should play it today, especially knowing that she and Tom had always been considered unconventional, or even cavalier, in their approach. And as that same approach had been criticized long and hard well before this whole thing started, she felt there was no point in trying to paint things any differently to how she saw them. The judge, and indeed the media, would see right through that. “No parent likes to see their child ill,” she said, “but these diseases, particularly among school-going children, are almost a rite of passage.”
“I see. So the idea of Clara contracting such a disease didn’t bother you.”
“Not at all. Chicken pox in particular is an uncomfortable but relatively harmless illness. In fact, many parents hold chicken-pox parties so they can control when their children fall ill with it, and thus can make work arrangements around this.”
“Just for clarification, you’re saying that some parents arrange to actually infect their children on purpose?”
“Correct. In my experience, this occurs often when there are a few siblings involved so that all children in the house can be cared for at the same time, and particularly in the case of working parents, so that no further time off is needed to deal with the same illness subsequently. But I am lucky in the sense that I work from home, so I don’t need to plan around these things as much as most.”
“But you did have a work commitment on the morning of March twentieth, did you not?”
Madeleine took a deep breath. “On that particular morning, yes, I did. The nature of my work sometimes necessitates media appearances, which by their nature are often time-sensitive and last-minute.”
“But you were aware of this prior commitment on Monday evening, were you not?” McGuinness probed.
“I was, yes. But chicken pox usually takes a couple of days to develop and I’d hoped, as did my husband, that Clara’s sniffles were the result of her immune system trying to fight off the numerous bugs and infections all school-going kids are exposed to. As I’m sure most parents know, if you worried about every little cough and sneeze, you’d never be able to sleep a wink.”
She winced a little, realizing that last remark had come out a little more glibly than she’d intended, and she hoped it hadn’t made her come across as uncaring. But she got the sense that the judge was a bit of a no-nonsense sort who wouldn’t be inclined to mollycoddle every child with a runny nose, and she needed him to view her as a competent, sensible parent and not the feckless, irresponsible monster the media, and indeed Kate’s solicitors, had painted her thus far.
And Madeleine also felt it was especially important to get a mention of Tom in there, too, so everyone could see that both parents were equally unconcerned about Clara’s prognosis, so much so that they both intended to carry on the following day as planned.
“OK, so you assumed, although you couldn’t yet be sure, that Clara might be coming down with chicken pox?”
“Based on the school note we’d received, I thought this was a reasonable assumption, though of course I couldn’t be sure. Like I said, there are always various bugs going around at all times. She could just as easily have been coming down with a common cold. Or nothing at all.” She paused then. “But, as we know now, it wasn’t quite that simple and, of course, with the benefit of hindsight—”
“Objection. The witness is illustrating hindsight bias.”
“Agreed, Counsel,” said the judge, before turning to address her. “Mrs. Cooper, if you can, try to continue your testimony without referring to the outcome, so as not to distort your recollection of events.”
Madeleine swallowed hard. Damn. Matt Townsend had warned her about this, that hindsight bias was a cognitive phenomenon that could be especially damaging in a defense situation. She needed to focus her testimony on how things actually happened rather than try to alter them based on her knowledge of the outcome.
She cleared her throat. “Sure. I’m sorry.”
The defense barrister helped her along. “So on the morning of March twentieth, your family got ready for the day as normal. Was there any further development or deterioration in Clara’s condition—perhaps a difficult night or any sickness?”
“No, nothing at all. We went to her grandmother’s house after dinner, and she even seemed to brighten a little as the evening went on. I gave her some acetaminophen as a precaution before bedtime and had her eat an orange and some blackberries to boost up her levels of vitamin C...”
This earned a titter from the media gallery and Madeleine flushed despite herself. What, were they laughing at her naivety in attempting to, God forbid, use a natural means of boosting her child’s immune system? Talk about hindsight bias...
“OK, so Clara showed no sign of further deterioration. Talk us through what happened the following morning.”
“She woke up, again a little sniffly, but, for the most part, she seemed OK. She refused breakfast, but can be a fussy eater at the best of times, so this didn’t ring any alarm bells.”
“So, to your mind, there was still no outward reason to keep her home from school?”
Madeleine paused. “That’s correct. So I made a call. Just like every parent up and down the country would do in a situation like this. I can’t deny that she was a bit off but seemed OK, and I honestly didn’t see any reason to keep her home. And my husband and I already had other commitments, responsibilities that couldn’t be canceled last-minute for something that we both felt was your typical childhood-sniffles situation. And you have to understand that more often than not, kids are troupers—they can be at death’s door one minute and then bounce back the next as if nothing had happened.” Again, she grimaced inside, wishing for Kate’s sake that she’d phrased that a little better. But the room was so quiet when she was speaking, and everyone clearly paying close attention, that she felt she was coming across OK.
“Yet you still decided to engage your friend Lucy as backup, just in case, did you not?”
“That’s correct; of course I wasn’t going to head off that morning without a care in the world. And because on that particular morning I would be away, I needed to ensure that someone would be there for Clara just in case she did happen to get worse.”
Madeleine was very careful this time not to evoke hindsight but it was almost nigh on impossible. If she’d known then what she knew now, obviously things would have been very different...
