Reade Saunders

I didn’t expect him to say thank you.

But I thought he might see what I was trying to do.

I arrived early. Always do. Old habit from court. Always be early, always observe the room before you’re observed. The café was sterile, unmodern, one of those places that pretends to be warm but smells of laminate and burnt coffee. I had Florence with me – ridiculous, really, the term “emotional support dog.” She has no sense of gravitas. Her tail thumps against table legs as if she’s keeping time for a joke no one’s telling.

I saw him before he saw me. Sharp lines in his brow, eyes darting across the page but not really reading. His mouth was fixed, neither tense nor relaxed. Prepared. As if his body were prepped for war while his hands went about peacetime tasks. I thought: He looks like a man representing himself.

Of course he was. Always has been.

I rehearsed what I would say, though I knew he wouldn’t let me finish. Something about how I had to be here, how I owed it to the truth, to the children. Something about how even if he hated me, my presence would serve a kind of balance. That I wasn’t there to betray, but to witness.

It’s funny, the way betrayal is always a matter of angles.

I walked in. Florence pulled slightly ahead. He didn’t look up at first. When he did, his face didn’t change. Not anger. Not sadness. Just… stillness. As if I were no longer relevant to his emotional landscape.

I placed the documents on the table, her papers. I thought he should see them. Thought maybe he’d want to know what had been submitted. Thought maybe he’d appreciate the insight. The effort. The loyalty. My hands trembled, slightly, but I held my posture.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The words landed with surgical precision. Not shouted. Not even whispered. Just stated, like evidence entered into record. No room for negotiation.

“I just thought…” I began.

“You should be ashamed.”

And I was.

But not in the way he meant.

I was ashamed that I had failed to protect him from himself. That he had become so much like me – so sharp, so composed, so good at cutting with silence – that he couldn’t recognise a lifeline when it arrived in a barrister’s mask with a stupid dog.

“I know… But I’m also a grandmother.” I said, without irony.

That should have meant something. It used to. But in that moment it was just a sentence, floating like smoke in an already empty room.

He repeated it. “You should be ashamed.” Not as a rebuke. More like a benediction.

So I left.

Florence’s tail still wagged as we crossed the sterile linoleum. She has no memory for humiliation. No understanding of the weight words can carry when they are spoken from someone who once called you Mum with a smile and a sticky hand.

I sat in the waiting room outside the courtroom, mask fixed. But I wasn’t present. I was holding my own internal hearing. Examining evidence. Cross-examining regret. Rebutting emotion.

And I found myself wondering—was I here for him? Fer her? For the children? For justice?

Or was I here to rewrite a story I had failed to control the first time?

Because here’s what they don’t teach you in law school:
You cannot be a mother and a lawyer in the same moment.
Not when your son is the one on trial.
Even if it’s only in the theatre of the family court.

He went in alone. I stayed outside.
And perhaps that was the last time I was ever close to him.