The Blue Bedroom

When Sophie’s six-year-old son sees the glamorous new mother at his school, he recognizes her immediately. Helena Vale is the lady from the blue bedroom. Helena says they have never met. Max remembers pale blue walls, a moon-shaped lamp, special hot chocolate, and cards asking questions about home. Sophie soon realizes that the playdates arranged while she was recovering from surgery were not what she thought. Max had been spending time alone with Helena, talking about his family while a camera recorded every word. Helena has built an online empire teaching parents to listen to their children. Behind it sits something far more private: detailed records of struggling families, sold as “insight” to people willing to pay for information they were never meant to hear. Now Helena has hours of Max describing the worst months of Sophie’s life, real moments of pain, absence and anger that Sophie cannot simply deny. And someone wants those recordings brought into her custody arrangements.