Duplicity (3 page)

Chapter 4

The long drive was tiring, but I was used to the all familiar feeling of unrest. On top of this the adrenaline I felt was unnerving but almost exciting.

I pondered to myself my unnatural reaction to the dangerous situation I was facing. Was I abnormal? Some people get their kicks from sky diving or base jumping. Maybe this was just my kick. A sense of urgency dawned upon me and I pressed my foot to the floor. The engine roared into action, zipping down the road toward my childhood.

I reached the gates of the school around 2.30am. Those gates were the ones I would stare through any chance I got, hoping my father would come and get me. He never did. I resented him for dumping me there. In all honesty, it probably wasn’t his fault, as after my mother passed away he set about replacing her with a much younger model. This turned out to be a very poor idea, for the lady in question was the stereotypical evil stepmother, and after a while she grew bored of me, stealing my father’s money before running off in the middle of the night. We never heard from her again. An all too familiar story.

Dad took it badly; he truly loved her and her betrayal cut him deep, something which he later took out on me. He turned to drugs and alcohol for the comfort he craved. It never fulfilled him. So he blamed me for pushing her away, often beating me and torturing me in a mental capacity. Love is something that a child should never be deprived of. 

He sent me to boarding school so he “didn’t have to look at me anymore.” My childhood from there took a turn for the worse. Dad never visited me, and despite the way he had treated me, I still desperately sought his approval. I had no confidence and the other kids would taunt me and bully me because I was an easy target.

My confidence and charisma grew from a need to survive. It was like a light switch just flicked on in my mind one day and I became someone else. Someone strong, someone confident, someone who would take shit from no one! When this “new me” began to manifest itself, it began as anger. I felt like the world owed me something and I would act out at school. It wasn’t until I learned to channel this power into being a better person that my life became my own.

I know now that the reason I love women so much is because like my dad and his drugs, I am just looking to replace the feeling of being loved and wanted. It took me three years in therapy and a hell of a lot of good old American dollars to work that one out by the way! But none of the women really did that to me, they brought the kind of comfort you could buy, for one night only, but I had never met someone who made each day feel as though it was worth living. My only real love was my work, which was very sad, but at least I knew that.

I had five hours to kill before I could go into the school, so I sat in my car pondering the memories I had had there, some good, some bad. I had excelled in my education and was granted a scholarship straight out of high school into a prestigious law school. I never asked my father for a thing. I was lucky if he gave me a Christmas card there was no way I was going to owe my education to him.

I thought that if I laid my head back in the seat that I may doze off for a while, alas this was not the case. My thoughts jumped from one scenario to the next trying to figure out this maze I had inadvertently found myself in the middle of.

Before I knew it, minutes turned into hours and daylight had unexpectedly sprung upon me. A young boy startled me knocking on my car window.

“Can I help you? Are you waiting to see the head sir?” he asked. His polite manner was impressive for a boy of no more than nine years old. I wondered if I had portrayed manners like that at his age. St Anne’s was a good school. There was no doubt about it, my beef was not with the school, but with the fact I had been left there against my own will.

“Yes, please erm… Mrs Stephenson, is she still here?” I queried. It was a long shot, Mrs Stephenson must have been in her late fifties when I was there, and I imagined she had long retired by now.

“Follow me.” He said smiling. I was impressed again. Mrs Stephenson must have been archaic by now, and she was still dedicating her life to these boys.

We walked toward the school; it hadn’t changed in the slightest. I looked up at the window above the door which used to be my room. Wondering which boy now had that window as their place to daydream.

The boy instructed me to take a seat outside of the office while he announced my arrival to Mrs Stephenson. I wondered what she would look like after all these years. Sitting there on that green leather seat outside the office brought some sort of familiar comfort. My feet began to twitch with anticipation.

“Come in dear.” I heard in the tone of an aged woman. I stood up from my seat. I braced myself to enter the room, dusting the creases from my pants as I walked toward the door. After all these years I still wanted to make a good impression on her.

Mrs Stephenson was the only person I had ever been able to rely on, other than myself of course, and had I not had such an issue with intimacy, she is probably someone I would have stayed in touch with.

She stood in front of me, her kind eyes smiling at me, and her actual smile a little gappy! She really was one of earth’s angels. Sure she could be strict if she needed to be, but she made me what I am today. She got me through the issues with my father and encouraged me to be the best I could be. I owed a lot to her. Suddenly, a guilt came over me that I had come empty handed. Flowers would have been an appropriate gesture, I stood staring at her, unsure how to act after such a long absence from each other.

“Come and sit down, my boy.” She soothed. I did as I was told, but only after giving her a kiss on the forehead. I towered above this once fierce woman who was now a paling version of her younger self.

“So what can I do for you.” She asked, looking at me from over the top of her glasses.

“I am sorry to arrive unannounced, and well, so early in the morning.” My voice started to trail off as I felt myself welling up a little bit. The emotion of being there, seeing her, was almost too much to handle. The sleep deprivation I was suffering from probably didn’t help matters much, either.

“I would like to see my file, if I could.” I continued.

Mrs Stephenson did not speak a word, just nodded her head in agreement as she got up and went to her filing cabinet. She pulled out the long metal drawer that seemed to go back an eternity and went right to the back, pulling out an old brown cardboard file with my name neatly printed in black ink on the front and slid it over the desk to me.

“Normally records of this age are put in the archives, however, I had a feeling you may come someday asking to see this. So I kept it here.” I had not realized it in my youth but Mrs Stephenson was one of the wisest people I had ever had the privilege of knowing. I found myself wishing I had written down every piece of advice she had ever given me.

I stood up, from the desk and gave her a thankful look. She knew my gratitude was beyond anything I could convey through words. It was a thank you for all those years of wiping tears and cleaning knees, for encouraging me to succeed and for consoling me when I was the only child left there for Christmas. She was and still to this day, is the only person who had ever seen my sensitive side.

I walked out the office, clutching the file to my chest. I took note of everything around me as I walked back to my car. The old green crispy paint hanging from the ceiling, the heavy wooden front door with the bronze door knob, the mahogany benches that aligned the halls, and the wrought iron gates, covered in the crunchy autumn leaves that had fallen from the old oak tree above it. I had a feeling this would be the last time I would see that place, or Mrs Stephenson and a tear came to my eye as I hopped into my car to depart for the final time.

Chapter 5

I reached home at around 2:30pm and immediately sat down at my kitchen table and plonked the file in front of me. I rested my head on my hands as I contemplated what could be inside. What mysteries my past would hold that had such an effect on my present.

I flipped over the cardboard outer of the file quickly, like tearing off a Band-Aid. I hoped that would make it less painful. It didn’t.

I began to read my school reports which were situated at the front of the file. The academics were not too bad, but the emotional stuff was disturbing. I hadn’t known it at the time but I was a train wreck waiting to happen.

Abandonment issues, anxiety, psychological solitary confinement.

The words jumped from the page, forming images in my mind of my childhood, things that had been long deep and buried in a place where they could not harm me anymore. Memories of sitting in that window, staring out at the old oak tree, wondering if I could jump from my window to the tree and make my escape.

I flicked past my school reports feeling they were of no benefit to my current conundrum, and then I found two pieces of paper stapled together, marked ‘confidential’ on the top. One seemed to be a police statement given by Mrs Stephenson, and the other, a hospital record.

I read the police report first.

On the 28
th
day of April, 1990, I attended the Queen Elizabeth Infirmary with one of the students in my care. Namely, Connor Donovan.

I had found Connor buried in soil at the Stony Brook Cemetery, after another of my pupils, Steven Harris ran to me, informing me that some of the other boys had buried him as a joke.

When I reached the cemetery, Connor’s body was limp and so I immediately called for an ambulance.

On talking to the boys involved I learned that Johnathon Maxwell had been the initiator of the prank and coerced the other boys into acting with him.

I am releasing Jonathon Maxwell into the care of the state, for interview, psychological analysis and if necessary, correction.

Margaret Stephenson.

Johnny Maxwell. The flashback in court. I had to really try hard to control my anger. The pieces of the puzzle that was my history were starting to come together, but I could not understand the relevance to me being left body parts. I started to read on, compelled by the mysteries of my youth.

Queen Elizabeth Infirmary 28
th
April 1990

Patient: Connor Donovan

Connor was brought into us at 3pm on the 28
th
of April, 1990. His airways were blocked and he had stopped breathing. He was dead on arrival.

Connor was resuscitated using a defibrillator which was successful on the second attempt.

Due to the lack of oxygen for an extended period of time, we have yet to establish the extent of any psychological or neurological damage that may have occurred, but at the moment, he is in stable condition.

Connor will need to be assessed regularly by his primary care giver to establish any long time physical or psychological damage that he may have sustained from the aforementioned event.

I died! I actually died. I staggered away from the table backward. I needed a drink. I poured myself a glass of my finest aged scotch and sat back at the table to read the next instalment. A psychology report. I found it a little sad that I had a shrink at 11 years old. I guess I was more screwed up than I thought.

Connor Donovan

Interim Psychological Analysis Report

Since the accident three months ago, Connor is displaying unusual behaviours.

His usual timid personality has been overridden by anger. He often lashes out on people and things and becomes frustrated very quickly when not in control of the situation.

His sleeping patterns are often disturbed and he regularly sleep walks. We have prescribed the appropriate medication to control this.

I recommend another assessment in 6 months to assess progress with weekly psychotherapy sessions in the meantime.

My knees felt weak and my heart was racing. I guess I owed more than I realized to Mrs Stephenson, for helping me through it all. It was not until now that I knew the extent of exactly what she had had to help me overcome. I flicked to the back of the file, not wanting to read anymore.

I could still not establish a connection between my past and my present, other than the one common denominator. Johnny Maxwell. A rogue then and a rogue now, not really the kind of person I wanted to be associated with, but whatever my feelings a prison visit seemed to be in order.

I didn’t have a visiting order and it wasn’t visiting hours, so I would have to use my capacity as a lawyer to get in. Arranging a visit to a prisoner who had committed a crime against a client of mine was no easy feat. Luckily, I had a befriended the man who worked at the desk with charm and small talk, after years of standing there signing release forms and other mundane paperwork.

And so I set off for the prison, on what was beginning to feel like a wild goose chase, but as wrong as it was, I had to admit that I was enjoying the hunt a little. Goose tastes quite good when served correctly…