All Chapters of Claimed by my ex husband’s uncle : Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

THE PHD VIVAELENA'S POVThe viva is on a Thursday in March, at two in the afternoon, in a room on the fourth floor of the university building that smells of the same institutional coffee as every other room in the department.Two examiners: Professor Marsh's colleague from the legal theory department, whose published work I have been reading for two years, and an external examiner from a university in Edinburgh whose recent paper on comparative evidentiary frameworks was the source of the third chapter revision that Professor Marsh requested eighteen months ago. I have been preparing for both of them specifically — their questions, their intellectual positions, the points at which my argument intersects with or departs from their established views.I am prepared, I have been prepared for three months. The preparation is not the absence of anxiety — it is anxiety converted into readiness, which is the only conversion available.The viva runs two hours and twenty minutes. I answer fort

THE VALE AWARD, YEAR FOURELENA'S POVThe fourth Robert Vale Governance Award goes to a woman who has spent eleven years as a regulator.Her name is Dr. Patricia Osei. She is fifty-six and she has spent her career inside the regulatory body that failed to act on the anonymous complaint filed against my father's business in 2007 — the complaint Victor Hale arranged to be filed through a contact inside that body. She did not know this when she started her career. She discovered it, seven years ago, in the course of reviewing historical case files as part of an internal reform process.She documented what she found, and she submitted it internally. When the internal process stalled, she submitted it to the body's oversight authority. When the oversight authority was slow, she went to the relevant parliamentary committee — the same committee I gave evidence to in February, as it happens, though in a different session and on a different matter.The documentation she produced is what enable

SOPHIA VISITSELENA'S POVSophia arrives on a Friday in May for two weeks, which is the longest she has been in London since she moved to New York eighteen months ago.She comes through the door with the specific energy of someone who has been in transit for eight hours and has decided that this will not affect her in any way, drops her bag in the hallway, goes directly to Robert, lifts him from the bouncing chair with the authority of his primary New York-based cultural influence, and tells him about three things he has missed in the past month.He looks at her with the focused attention he gives people he has met before and is re-encountering, which is different from his expression for new people — less assessment, more recognition."He remembers me," she says."He has excellent recall," I say."He gets it from me," she says. "He spent the first three weeks of his life in this house and I was here most of those days, we bonded. It is real."Roberta appears from the garden, she exami

WHAT PRIYA SAYSELENA'S POVEthan and Priya's wedding is on a Saturday in June, and it is, like all the weddings in our extended family, exactly the right size.Twenty people in a room that fits twenty. Priya's family, who are warm and specific in the way of people who take relationships seriously, and Ethan's family, which is us — Lucien and me and the children and Clara and Daniel and Lily, who has just finished her first year of law school and who arrives with the specific energised quality of someone who has spent a year becoming themselves in an institutional context.The ceremony is conducted by a celebrant Priya chose with the same precision she brings to legal instruments — someone whose manner is warm without being performed, whose words are chosen for their accuracy rather than their effect. The vows are specific and real. Priya says, among other things: "I promise to disagree with you honestly rather than agree with you conveniently." Ethan says, among other things: "I prom

ROBERTA AT THREE AND A HALFELENA'S POVAt three and a half, Roberta has opinions about everything and has developed the capacity to express them in full sentences with subordinate clauses.She has opinions about the order of the books at bedtime, which she considers fixed and non-negotiable. She has opinions about which shoes are appropriate for which surfaces, which she derives from first principles and applies with complete consistency. She has opinions about breakfast, specifically that porridge is acceptable on Mondays and Wednesdays and unacceptable on other days for reasons she has explained twice but which neither Lucien nor I have fully followed.She has opinions about Robert. He is doing well, in her assessment — she revises this upward monthly as he acquires new skills and demonstrates new understanding. When he pulled himself to standing for the first time, she watched from across the room with the expression of someone whose protégé has achieved a significant milestone an