Chapter 21

The day before I left, my solicitor had arranged a three-cornered telephone meeting with an immigration specialist. They painted a bleak picture. Coming back with Tina was not a good idea, he thought.

It was at this point that she and the babies could be refused entry and deported. I was to try to distance myself from her and her sons and go through the EU channel carrying, somehow, the three babies and a pile of supporting evidence. If I were waved through, I had to declare that I wanted permanent settlement for the children. I had to be upfront and state the full circumstances.

Both legal specialists advised me to delay my trip and apply for a visa from the British Consulate in Los Angeles. However, having paid for eight transatlantic tickets, arranged a brief stay for my father in a nursing home and organised a sitter for the house and cats for the duration, I was unwilling to change my plans and apply for a visa that might be stalled by red tape. I also wanted at last to have the babies in my care. Tina had done a brilliant job, but it was time for both of us to pick up the threads of our lives and move on. I would take a chance with Immigration at Gatwick.

I was told what papers I would need. I would have to prove my paternity. I phoned Dr Smotrich and asked for a statement of this. ‘Ian Mucklejohn is the father.’ It needed to be clearer. I phoned again and a clearer statement of my role in the fertilisation came over the fax machine. ‘Ian Mucklejohn’s sperm was used to fertilise the enbryos.’

I had to prove that I had suitable females to care for the babies. Newbury Nannies organised a day nanny in addition to the maternity nurse already arranged and faxed confirmation. I had to prove that I could afford to bring up three children. I had to ask my accountant to supply the latest company accounts and tax returns. I had to arrange for my house to be valued and for the valuation to be faxed to me in America so I could present it at Immigration. I had to bring my latest bank statements. All this during the afternoon before my flight. All this because I was a man coming in with my own, provably my own, children. It was demeaning and illogical. A clear case of the law being an ass.

The QC’s opinion faxed to me that afternoon raised the issue that the local authority might judge whether I was suitable to have my own children live with me.

He referred pointedly to the Kilshaw case that had been making headlines a few years earlier and that had ended disastrously. In that case a couple from Wales had adopted twins from Missouri after outbidding by $6000 the US couple that had originally taken the girls in for $5900. After saying to the US family she wanted to see her babies one more time, the mother handed them over to the Kilshaws, who adopted them in Arkansas, where adoption rules are relaxed. When their genetic father and the earlier family claimed custody, a British judge decided that the twins should be returned to Missouri to have a court decide who should raise them.

Although a case totally different from my own, it had focussed attention on the difference between American attitudes and our own tightly regulated system and portrayed the former’s contractual arrangements as being casual to the point of laxity wherein anything might go wrong and quite possibly would. I would have to live with the suspicion the Kilshaw case had caused. ‘If public authorities do become involved… Mr Mucklejohn would be ill-advised to have his case tainted by any perceived illegality or deception in bringing the children in to the UK,’ was the QC's view.

While I was taking advantage of the liberal Californian approach to surrogacy as opposed to the (for me, at least) impossible English system, I could see no connection whatever between the Kilshaws’ adoption and my own case. The boys were without a shadow of a doubt my children.

The QC thought there might be a problem authorising medical care for my own children. Without a residence order or other clarification of the legal position, as an unmarried father, I would not have parental responsibility Though he added ‘the point is unlikely to be taken in an emergency and I am told that Mr Mucklejohn’s’ GP is aware of the situation and sympathetically supportive.’

I would deal with this if the occasion arose. As I had never had trouble authorising medical care for my students, I was quite confident about my ability to deal with such eventuality for my own children.

Sister? Cousin living locally? There weren’t any. Effectively, according to his opinion of the law, the local authority could quite easily take my children away from me.

I thought of the many children already on the ‘authority’s’ lists; neglected children who roamed the streets late at night, children at risk, and could not imagine that anyone in authority, anyone with any sense, would follow this line of thought. Nevertheless, I would have to ensure that I would not be seen as the main carer in order not to fall foul of the law.

In case the local authority would want to consider taking care proceedings, the QC (who used the word ‘when’) added that ‘the appropriate response will probably be a cross-application for a residence order. A possible resolution may be a residence order coupled with a supervision order in favour of the local authority for a limited period.’

So I would be put on probation. My own children would be taken in the care of this amorphous ‘local authority’, who might license them back to me.

I had an early warning about the media, too: ‘This is potentially an extremely attractive story for tabloids and broadsheets…. The press can be expected to run it from a questioning and even hostile angle… I am certain that Mr Mucklejohn would be ill-advised to take any initiative whatsoever to use the press to support any application to the Home Office.’

It had never even occurred to me to do so. I had no desire for my private arrangements to be spread across the pages of newspapers. Compared to the earlier case, I did not see mine as much of a story really. But in a few months I would see how the press could add some embroidery to make it one. Tiny children, the elderly, the truth—all of these and anything else could be sacrificed on the altar of tabloid circulation.

A quick e-mailed query from the immigration specialist about the chance of an immediate visa were I to arrive in Los Angeles and request one had elicited a dispiriting response.

‘I spoke to the Consul... As it stands the children have no right of abode in the UK. Nationality for these children is derived from the birth mother and [they are] not entitled to British Nationality. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require further information. Please contact this office.’

My boys had no right to live in the UK. No right to be British. I was on my own. Legal thunder clouds were gathering as I began my journey. I had known for months that I had few rights to the children. It now seemed that my children could simply be taken away at any moment by the authorities as they mulled things over.

And there was more. From the day the babies were born, I knew that there was something else that could go so terribly wrong that I could not even contemplate the ramifications. Although Tina had signed away her rights to them, this document, legally binding in the US, had no validity whatsoever in English law. She was the mother. She had all the rights. If there were a change of heart, everything would have to be argued out in America and there the babies would remain. I had absolutely no reason to believe that this would happen and it flew in the face of all the evidence, but it was a worst-case scenario that had preyed on my mind and against which I had guarded myself. Until the babies were in my home, in my care, I could not give way to my feelings for them; could not yet bring myself to consider them mine.