27 Jul 2014, 08:53

Dear Jay

I’m sorry for any embarrassment, frustration and annoyance you experienced on Friday evening: it can’t have been pleasant for you and it was a shame. (I don’t mean I’m sorry in the sense of an apology: that it was my fault or that there was anything I could have done to alleviate it. Just that I’m sad about it on your behalf and would have preferred it not to have been so for you.)

Incidentally, this is not why I’m writing but I was also sad to hear from Alex, not for the first time, that he understands from you that we have been ignoring you. I thought we’d made our position clear but perhaps we have not done so enough so I will again: we have taken frequent and careful professional advice in recent months, most particularly of course over how to protect Rosie from distress in the current situation, but we have also had a number of professional consultations specifically in response to your email entitled “Bridges” and what course of action we should take. (You confessed yourself “Baffled” so perhaps I should spell out further: we take very seriously Lara’s current state of health; we are not trained or qualified in that area; we therefore take as much expert advice as we can as no doubt you did when [your child] was ill.) The advice we have been given, by a mental health professional we very much respect who also took advice from a colleague before giving a well-considered answer, was that it would not be wise for us to meet up with you without Lara present, and all initiative must come from her. We have no reason to put our own judgement above this, and we are therefore powerless to do any more if Lara does not wish it and chooses not to take action. Perhaps it needs spelling out even further that we consider her health to be so much more important than our relationship with you that there is not really any meaningful comparison to be made between the two. (Again, no doubt when [your child] was ill you would have put his health far above any friendship with us, if you had known us at the time, and we would fully expect you to. As you would with [any of your children].)

So, again, I’m sorry for any collateral annoyance on your part. We are not particularly ignoring you or not ignoring you. We are going through a time of great grief, bereavement and anguish and there isn’t much we can do about it except take decent professional advice and protect Rosie as best we can. The loss of a friend we have known for a few years doesn’t begin to register compared with the loss of our very dearly beloved and sorely missed daughter and I don’t suppose it would for you.

I am taking the liberty of copying Alex in on this, because he has expressed himself puzzled at the discrepancy between your account and ours. I would probably copy Lara in too if I thought there was any point: we have nothing to hide from her.

With good wishes,

Anne

30 Jul 2014, 15:34

Anne and Shaun,

I have a pretty thick skin: I’m not bothered much by your repeated rudeness, by your attempts to have me ostracised, or by the falsehoods you apparently spread about me. Plainly we can’t be friends until you apologise, but I have other friends. However, your behaviour does upset Lara a lot. In particular, she made it very clear on Friday that she’s not willing to go anywhere (such as [her grandmother’s] party) from which I have been explicitly excluded or uninvited. I encouraged her to go and enjoy the party while I found somewhere local for dinner, but she was quite insistent on this. While I waited in the car for her to wish happy birthday to [her grandmother], she herself came out to have a chat with me, which was charming, and said that she would feel the same way in Lara’s position.

In short, by cutting yourselves off from me, you are cutting yourselves off from Lara, because she refuses to have anything to do with anyone who treats me this way.

Lastly, I’m intrigued by the idea of a mental health professional who would give a professional opinion without having seen or assessed the patient, without taking a history, and without knowing anything about current or recent symptoms, therapy, or treatment. There’s a word for such behaviour, but it’s not “professional”.

Jay

30 Jul 2014, 18:04

Dear Jay

Of course we will apologise for anything we’ve done wrong. Please explain further, so that we can do so.

I’m aware, of course, that we turned you away from our door, once, some months ago, which was distressing enough to do and must have been far worse to experience. Perhaps you were not aware that it was the first time we had seen our daughter for many months, for much of which time we had had no news of her whatsoever – not even knowing whether she was alive or dead for some weeks – and it was a very precious evening for us. As I told you at the time, we were too busy for you: we could not contemplate sharing the evening with somebody outside the family (apart from anything else we had personal things to discuss, including regarding our child’s welfare, which we could not have talked about with an outsider present). So much so that we did not even include my father, which caused him considerable distress, though he quickly understood our dilemma and of course forgave us immediately. It was most unfortunate that you turned up, and we had done everything we could to prevent this as we realised how unpleasant it would be for you: Shaun, Ben and I had all tried repeatedly (via email, text and telephone, over 24 hours) to ask Lara not to bring you, as we did not want you to have a wasted journey and the unpleasantness of being asked to go away again. I can see that this will have come across as rude and I am very sorry indeed and apologise unreservedly (though I confess I was then and remain still at a loss as to what else we could have done). Please let us know of any other rudenesses so we can put those right too.

With regard to telling lies about you, that is a very serious allegation indeed and again, if you could kindly tell us what the lies have been (and what the truth is) we will of course not merely apologise, but contact anybody we have allegedly lied to and correct what we have said. Naturally I am not aware of doing this on purpose but it is still very serious indeed and I’m not surprised you are angry.

We are not really in a position to apologise for Friday evening, as we have no say over which guests [Shaun’s sister] chooses to invite into or exclude from her home. We had certainly not asked if we could influence her guest list. (Though it would be disingenuous not to add that, unusually, Shaun had asked his sister to let him know in advance who would be there as we were contemplating giving the evening a miss.)

Your observations on professionals are interesting, thank you, but have not shaken our confidence in those we have consulted. Partly, perhaps, because you are not in possession of all the facts: partly of course because it is not your area of expertise.

With very best wishes,

Anne