Medea's Curse (15 page)

‘Did it? For a while?’ asked Natalie gently.

Georgia turned slowly and looked at Natalie with a blank expression.

‘Make it better?’

‘Oh.’ Georgia took a breath. ‘Yes. Paul and I could still plan our life together.
The pregnancy was relatively easy which helped. And I was interested in sex again.
I was able to keep Paul happy
.’
Natalie circled the word
happy
and added a question
mark. ‘Labour was okay. Olivia was even easier than Genevieve. Placid. Everyone loved
her. She loved being dressed up.’ Georgia unzipped the bag and pulled a photo from
her wallet, a child in a ballet tutu. It must have been taken shortly before Olivia
died. She looked about two years old.

‘It was just fancy dress,’ Georgia explained. ‘She would have done ballet classes
the next year.’ Natalie stared at the photo; Olivia was the perfect pretty extension
of her mother. Had this been Georgia’s fantasy? If so, what had gone wrong to alter
it? Cried once too often? Too needy and demanding?

‘What was her health like?’

‘Oh, she had the usual colds and things.’

Natalie looked at the general practitioner’s summary that had finally arrived. Georgia
had been in to see him weekly with Olivia, sometimes more often. A battery of tests,
well outside the usual range, had been ordered. A normal reaction from both GP and
Georgia after an earlier SIDS? Or was it Munchausen’s; in this case, Munchausen’s
by proxy? As a nurse, Georgia would have known exactly how to fake illnesses to ensure
particular tests were done. She could have given her children medications that would
have induced vomiting, taken their blood to make them anaemic,
ensured that faecal
material contaminated collections or caused urinary tract infections. Natalie had
looked hard at the tests and the results. It was hard to see them as anything more
than anxiety driven. Nothing too invasive and no recurring theme.

Georgia started to say something then stopped, still staring at the photo. Her face
again seemed devoid of emotion.

‘Georgia?’

She continued to stare blankly. Natalie started timing. Five excruciating minutes
passed. Natalie got up and knelt down beside her, putting her hand gently on the
other woman’s arm. ‘Georgia?’

Georgia looked at Natalie dreamily. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘Where have you just been? What were you thinking about?’

‘Uh, I don’t know,’ said Georgia, looking confused. ‘We were talking about Olivia
weren’t we?’

‘Yes.’ Lost time? She cringed at the thought of eating humble pie with Wadhwa.

‘Tell me more about Olivia. What was her relationship with Paul like?’ Because Natalie
still had a hand on Georgia’s arm, she felt rather than saw the stiffening. It was
so fleeting she wondered if she had imagined it; Georgia was smiling broadly.

‘Oh he was wonderful with Olivia. Called her his little monkey.’

Natalie stared at her. Georgia’s sudden brightness was patently excessive and completely
at odds with the preceding fifteen minutes. Still, the overly bright Georgia had
her uses. She gave her permission to contact Paul, as well as her Aunt Virginia.

‘How can I tell if it’s real?’ Natalie watched as Declan finished arranging his desk.
The file in the corner was now exactly square.

‘The only way you’ll ever be certain is if she tells you. And even then?’ Declan
shrugged. ‘You can look for inconsistencies, lies over unimportant things, maybe
an overall gut feeling. Just don’t draw conclusions too soon.’

‘Do you believe in dissociative identity disorder?’

‘I understand it’s popular with our American colleagues.’ The expression suggested
he wasn’t going to add a bust of any American analyst to his mantelpiece in the near
future. ‘
The United States of Tara
was very good, I hear.’

‘You can’t disregard the diagnosis on the grounds of it being dramatised on television.’

‘No, but it may be a culturally based—in this case American—phenomenon.’

‘So you’re saying it can exist?’

‘The human brain is very complex. Rather than ask yourself if you believe in some
disorder that is an artificial construct, ask yourself if you believe in dissociation
as a phenomenon.’

‘I’ve had it. A reaction to antihistamines. I felt like I was separate from what
I was actually experiencing. But I knew what was going on. And I didn’t kill anyone.’

‘You’ve been depressed and not tried to kill yourself too.’

Suitably chastised, Natalie thought for a moment. ‘One of my borderline patients
used to feel she was hovering around the ceiling watching as her stepfather raped
her.’

‘Analytical theory aside, what’s the point? Does it help?’

‘It’s a survival technique. It helped my patient separate herself from the terror
of the experience. It develops young.’

‘Because that’s when it’s most needed. How does a child of five or even ten make
sense of furtive behaviour, threats and pain from an adult they want and need to
trust?’

‘Okay. But dissociation isn’t the same as D.I.D.’

‘I agree. But is it a first step? What would it take to explain the subconscious
taking refuge in different personalities?’

‘Wadhwa would say a ton of abuse, perhaps specific abuse creating conflict in the
child: “I love my father, I hate my father”. The different personalities are supposedly
a way of managing the contradiction.’

‘And you’ve already established Georgia represses emotions. Can you conceive a way
that other personalities would resolve it?’

‘Gut feeling? It just seems too convenient. What I’ve seen could still be borderline
and besides…’

Declan raised his eyebrows.

‘Perhaps the police have this one right; the most obvious simple explanation rather
than the deeper psychological one. A jury are going to take on board that she got
angry and killed them more readily than Wadhwa waxing lyrical on separate personalities
developing, one for rage, and others for fear and shame.’

‘The jury is not your concern. She may have D.I.D. She may have a personality disorder.
Or it may be something else.’ Declan considered her gravely. ‘But whatever Georgia’s
diagnosis, this is not about you and Wadhwa.’

‘Urgent message to ring Dr Cortini at the prison,’ said Beverley, handing her, at
the same time, a note from Jacqueline Barrett suggesting a time to meet to discuss
Georgia. Beverley had outdone herself today, dressed in the full array of rainbow
colours, and her mood seemed to be in line with it. Natalie
left her to organise
the meeting with the barrister.

‘Amber has just heard about Travis’s second child going missing.’ Lucia Cortini’s
voice was always gravel and strine. Today it sounded like it was coming around a
cigarette parked in the corner of her mouth.

‘She’s taking it hard?’

‘She’s coming up for her parole hearing. I don’t want another fuck-up like with her
bail.’

‘You think the parole board will see her as still unstable?’

‘Yes. Someone put it in her head that it’s her fault.’

‘She isn’t to blame.’

‘Yeah. I get that. But she’s not listening. She wants to see you.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You mean won’t.’

Shit.

Declan had been clear. ‘You are going to cause more harm than good. You’re over-involved
and not seeing things clearly. It’s affecting your judgment. You shouldn’t be seeing
her.’

‘I can’t stop,’ Natalie had protested. ‘She trusts me. She still has a lot to work
through.’

‘This is a directive,’ said Declan. ‘Explain, and then hand her over.’ The threat
of him reporting her and her losing her ability to practise gave her no choice.

Amber had been understanding and accepting, but only because she considered herself
unworthy. Now, over a year later, Amber was asking for help and there was no one
else who understood what she needed.

‘No,’ Natalie said to Lucia. It wouldn’t be fair to Amber to drop in and then out
of her life again. ‘Give her my best wishes but there are professional reasons I
can’t see her.’

‘Of course. Professional reasons. You just look after yourself.’ There was a sound
akin to a snort and Lucia hung up.

When Natalie got home she found herself looking into the shadows, thinking she’d
seen something. The only movement was at the end of the lane near the brothel. A
man disappeared into the door below the red light.
No
. She would not be intimidated.
She opened the door tentatively. No envelope.

Bob flew around the warehouse and swooped down past her.

‘Bob, you’re an idiot!’ The bird seemed to sense her displeasure and sat up on a
rafter and refused to come up to the kitchen with her.

‘Suit yourself,’ said Natalie. She was tired. She wanted to run a bath and get an
early night.

She wasn’t about to get to bed in a hurry. At the top of the stairs sitting on the
kitchen bench was a red envelope.

Chapter 14

‘Have you touched anything?’

‘I live here,’ said Natalie to the green constable the police station had sent, the
same one who had taken her initial statement about the notes.

They had deduced that the uninvited guest had entered via one of the high windows
in the garage. They were old and would have been easy to push in. The window that
the intruder had chosen was next to a telegraph pole and an indent in the brickwork;
both would have helped him manoeuvre in and out. She’d been lucky Bob hadn’t escaped.

‘I meant, have you touched the envelope? We need to get the crime scene team in.’

‘Just the edge where I got the USB out.’ She had needed to know what it said.

Constable-wet-behind-the-ears and his female colleague frowned but she didn’t care
what they thought. Her mind was still preoccupied with the contents:
You won’t win.
They belong to me.
There was also a scanned photograph. A gravestone, and one she
recognised: Eoin’s. Under his name her stalker had overlaid another: hers.

‘So which rule do you think this refers to?’

At the police station the next morning—after she had watched new locks being put
on all the windows and door of her warehouse—Senior Constable Tony Hudson, a tall
cadaverous-looking man with a South African accent, was taking things seriously,
meticulously repeating the words of each note in turn. ‘Do you have a problem with
your mental health?’ he asked after the third.

‘No.’

‘What’s this about mood stabilisers?’ was inevitable after the fourth.

‘Medication.’

‘What for?’

Jaw set, she stared at him. ‘Not relevant. The medication works.’

Senior Constable Hudson leaned forward. ‘Seems to me he knows a lot about you.’

She knew that, felt it.

‘He knows your friend had an accident. Did Eoin have family that’d blame you?’

That was a laugh. They had cut him off before he died. It had been
her
mother that
had wanted to hold
them
responsible for her injuries.

‘He knows about your mental health problem.’ Senior Constable Hudson paused. ‘Any
chance it could be a health professional?’

The suggestion jolted her. ‘No.’ She’d answered without thinking and his expression
suggested he was going to sit there until she did consider it. ‘My doctor is hardly
going to stalk me.’ She looked quickly at him and sighed. ‘There would be others,
from when I was admitted. But that was seven years ago.’

‘So how does he know?’

‘It has to be a patient.’

‘Any thoughts as to who?’

‘I have no idea. All my current patients are female. A lot of them are incarcerated.’

‘The notes say
they belong to me
. Any thoughts about who “they” might be?’

‘I don’t have any patients who are from the same family. Partner and child perhaps?
I’ve helped women leave violent partners with their children, but as often as not
they go back.’ Maybe it wasn’t about her patients at all, but as fast as the thought
came to her she dismissed it.

Senior Constable Hudson could angle one eyebrow well into his forehead so that it
disappeared under a thick brown fringe.