49 pages • 1-hour read
The Children Act
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Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness.
Fiona reflects on the state of marital dysfunction since 2012. She thinks about all the instances of partnerships breaking apart and child welfare she’s witnessed over the years. Because of these social trends, her work with the Family Division has been consistent. She wonders if it’s coincidental that “so much marital conflict” has come her way in the courts, and she’s now facing a similar conflict in her own life (138). Over the following weeks, she tries not to let her issues with Jack and longing for a child impact her work.
Life at Gray’s Inn has been quiet but tense since Adam’s case. Fiona and Jack have barely interacted, which is a relief to Fiona. She was tired of him telling her that he loved her so often. While she gave him a new key to the flat, she hasn’t let him back into their bed. Even when their nieces and nephews visit on the weekend, Jack sleeps on the couch. One weekend, while their nieces are there, Fiona notices how good Jack is with children and softens towards him. When they leave, Fiona feels distant from him again, and her sadness returns. It doesn’t dissipate until she returns to work on Monday.
Nigel brings Fiona a letter from Adam, but she procrastinates reading it. She hasn’t spoken to him since the case but checked in with Marina to see that he was okay. Marina informed her that Adam has been growing stronger and doing well since the transfusion and treatment.
In Adam’s letter, he tells Fiona about how things have changed since her ruling. After he received his transfusion, his parents sobbed by his bedside. He initially thought they were upset because they’d broken God’s commandments but soon realized that they were crying tears of happiness because he was alive: They’d followed their beliefs as best they could, and their son had survived.
Confused and frustrated, Adam stopped attending Kingdom Hall (where Jehovah’s Witnesses hold their services) and swore off the faith shortly after his release from the hospital. The whole religious system seems like a sham to him now. He is thankful to Fiona for changing his life and helping him see differently. He still thinks about her visit and wants to talk to her again.
Adam closes his letter by asking Fiona to write back. She writes a reply, sets it aside, and discovers how cold it is when she returns to it later. She decides not to mail it.
Weeks pass, and Fiona keeps working on new cases. In September, she receives another letter from Adam, this time at home. In his second letter, Adam says he’s upset that Fiona might have forgotten him. He assures her that he doesn’t want “to harass [her] or anything like that” but wants to talk to her about how his life is changing (148). Instead of responding, Fiona emails Marina. Marina responds by saying that Adam is doing well and excelling at school, although he’s had some troubles at home with his parents about religious differences.
The following week, Fiona packs up for a work trip to Newcastle. She and Jack go about their morning routines, but Fiona feels something imperceptible shift between them.
Fiona relishes her trip to Newcastle. She used to visit Newcastle as a girl and would stay with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She loved being away from home, and one year, she even fell in love with a musician named Keith. The relationship didn’t last, and her family eventually left Newcastle, but Fiona still enjoys visiting whenever she can. Approaching the town now, she feels the same youthful potential she felt years before.
Fiona arrives at Leadman Hall, where she often stays with a group of other judges. She settles into her room and joins the other judges in the drawing room for drinks. Everyone shares the cases they’ve been working on. Caradoc Ball tells her about his upcoming murder retrial before everyone gathers in the dining room for dinner. Then Ball mentions Fiona’s conjoined twins case, encouraging her to tell the table. The other judges exclaim at and commend her work. Fiona feels positive until Nigel interrupts, telling her that Adam is there to see her.
Heart racing, Fiona leaves the dining room to see Adam, who followed her from London to Newcastle. She notices how different he looks now that his strength has returned while listening to him talk. He apologizes for troubling her but insists he needs to talk to her. He left his parents’ house after a fight and doesn’t know where to go.
Fiona insists he text his mother, Noami, with his whereabouts before they continue talking. He obliges and then explains how much he’s changed in the past months. He feels silly for having been a Jehovah’s Witness and wants to learn as much as he can about the world now. He asks if he can stay with Fiona and her husband and become her mentee. She says the arrangement would be impossible and suggests he pursue a college degree instead. Adam protests, but Fiona doesn’t change her mind. She has Nigel call Adam a cab to take him to his aunt’s house (where he mentioned he might go).
In the front hall, Fiona moves in to kiss Adam on the cheek, but they end up kissing on the mouth. Afterwards, she stands on the front steps and watches him leave in the cab.
Chapter 4 Analysis
The aftermath of Adam’s case furthers the novel’s explorations of The Tension Between Different Moral Codes. Chapter 4 introduces a temporal shift, protracting time to depict the events that transpire in the wake of Fiona’s ruling and Adam’s subsequent blood transfusion. The narrative pacing accelerates at the chapter’s start to show how Fiona’s life is elapsing after she finishes working with Adam, the Henrys, and the hospital. She does her best to put Adam out of her mind, though she does check up on him, discovering from Marina that Adam is “making good progress, out of hospital, catching up on schoolwork at home, and expected back in his classroom within weeks” to assuage her personal fears (142). Otherwise, Fiona doesn’t meditate on Adam’s fate because she doesn’t want to violate the legal parameters of her job.
However, when Adam repeatedly contacts her via letters, Fiona feels the walls between her personal and professional lives begin to crumble, developing the theme of Resolving the Intersection of Personal and Professional Lives. Adam’s reappearance in Fiona’s life outside the context of the courtroom compels her to ask new questions about her own moral code. In his letters, Adam explains that he is doing well physically but that he is in need of spiritual and personal guidance. His decision to never “[go] near Kingdom Hall again” has launched him into an unknown he doesn’t know how to navigate on his own (144). He is now a legal adult, but because he’s been so entrenched in the Jehovah’s Witness tradition since his childhood, he has little idea of who he is and where he belongs. He goes to Fiona for help and guidance because she saved his life, set him free, and in so doing “brought [him] close to something else, something really beautiful and deep” (145). His letters have an imploring and heartfelt tone that conveys his longing for understanding and help. Furthermore, his epistolary tone appeals to Fiona’s heart and, thus, her sense of empathy and morality. Indeed, Fiona ultimately decides not to mail her response letter to Adam not because she feels guilty but because she can’t stand how sterile the reply seems: “[I]t wasn’t the friendliness that struck her, it was the coolness, the dud advice, the threefold impersonal use of ‘one,’ the manufactured recollection” (146). Fiona longs to communicate with Adam from her heart, but the coolness of her letter shows her continued allegiance to her professional obligations. She can’t engage with Adam in a way that feels authentic because doing so would bring her personal and professional lives into further conflict.
Fiona’s trip to Newcastle excavates new facets of her interiority and calls into question who she is and what she believes. Because she has “a history with Newcastle,” she “fe[els] at ease” (151). The setting is nostalgic for her and thus reminds her of a purer, more innocent version of herself. Being in Newcastle in the past made her feel that “she could change, become truer, more real”; and in the present, returning to Newcastle reignites this “hazy notion of renewal” and “undiscovered potential” (153). Therefore, Fiona is in a more pliable emotional place when in Newcastle. Leaving her quiet, monotonous life in London offers her the chance to be someone different and rediscover more tender aspects of herself. This is the state she’s in when Adam appears at Leadman Hall and begs for her help. Despite his authenticity and desperation and Fiona’s supposed openness to change, Fiona sends Adam away. Her decision originates from her legal sense of right and wrong: It’s right to maintain distance from Adam, and it’s wrong to let him into her life. However, this decision also reveals how the legal system has shaped Fiona’s personal morality. She has essentially become an extension of the court, even when she’s outside its jurisdiction, illustrating The Psychological Impact of Judicial Responsibility.
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