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‘Did your mother ever think of leaving him?’ she asks, without meeting my eye.
‘She should have done,’ I say. ‘She didn’t have the courage. She was too afraid of being alone. She couldn’t support herself: she hadn’t taught since they’d got married, and she was too scared to retrain. She thought it’d be better for me to have a father, but no father is better than a violent one.’
Stacey stares down at the table.
‘He promised he’d change,’ I say. ‘Every time he knocked out a tooth, or blacked her eye, or broke a bone, he’d swear it was the last time he’d ever hurt her. And it was. Until the next time.’ My voice takes on a bitter edge. ‘She couldn’t even leave him for us.’
‘Maybe she was afraid he’d come after her,’ Stacey says.
‘She could have—’
‘Maybe she knew he wasn’t the kind of man to give a damn about things like restraining orders,’ Stacey adds rapidly. ‘Maybe she realised he’d never let her go. He’d kill her first, even if it meant he’d spend the rest of his life in jail.’
The knuckles of her clenched fists are white.
The waitress stops beside our table, notepad in hand. ‘Have you decided what you want, or do you need a bit longer?’
‘Give us five minutes,’ I say tersely.
The girl nods and backs away.
‘There are always options,’ I tell Stacey, once the waitress has gone.
‘Only on paper.’ She looks up, and her eyes are filled with despair. ‘In the real world, might is right. You know that as well as I do.’
My phone rings in my bag. I want to ignore it, but the ringtone tells me it’s Tom, and he wouldn’t interrupt unless it was important.
‘It’s Peter,’ he says, as soon as I pick up. ‘There’s been an accident. The ambulance is on its way, but you need to get home right now.’
chapter 17
millie
You don’t realise how much you love your child until you might lose them.
There’s been an accident.
I arrive home just in time to watch the paramedics load the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, knowing better than to get in their way. My baby looks so small and vulnerable suddenly, dwarfed by the vehicle.
Tom is already clambering inside it. ‘I’ll meet you there,’ he says.
‘It’s going to be OK,’ I say, the reassurance more for myself than for him. ‘They have to do this with head and neck injuries, just in case. It’s just a precaution.’
‘I should never have left them alone,’ Tom says.
The summer holidays have just started. Our children are thirteen and ten. Tom works from home most of the time: the majority of his client meetings take place on Zoom these days. The kids are old enough to look after themselves for a couple of hours on the odd occasion he has to go into central London for lunch.
He should never have left them alone.
Tom and I knew we were taking a risk when we had children: psychopathy is an inherited trait. The genes that make us unfeeling or narcissistic are often selectedin evolution because they have benefits, especially if you are in a profession where a cool head is paramount. Evolution doesn’t care about how altruistic you are, or how much good you do. Only that youwin.
Genetics is just part of the story, of course. Psychopathy is frequently linked to familial violence and abuse. A child who grows up with a violent father and a neglectful, self-absorbed mother will discover they can only get attention and resources by becoming manipulative. They’ll learn that negative behaviour is encouraged, and even rewarded. Their psychopathic-behaviour muscles will get stronger, until this pattern of being becomes hardwired into their personality.
I’m living proof.
When we decided to have a baby, we knew we couldn’t do anything about the DNA it would inherit, but we could make certain it wasn’t amplified by violence or neglect. Tom and I spent a year hammering out the parameters of our parenting before we tried for a child. He agreed to take on the scut work: ferrying the kids to school, chivvying them with their homework. I know my limitations. But I wanted to be the best mother I could possibly be. I might not be a natural parent, but I was determined to be agoodone.
Psychopathy can’t be ‘cured’ any more than you can change the colour of your child’s skin. But it can bechannelled. Given the right parenting, it can be modified with a reward system that taps into a child’s self-interest.
