Page 79 of Can You See Her?

She nods. ‘When you gave your statement you were suffering from delusions caused by overwhelming levels of stress, but also, I believe, from a form of menopausal psychosis, which took us longer to diagnose but which ties in with the postpartum psychosis you suffered when Kieron was born. There is also the great weight of grief.’

I nod. Tears fall down my face as usual, but they’re different tears somehow.

‘Rachel, are you clear that I’m not a detective and I’m not a lawyer but a forensic psychiatrist?’

‘Yes. But I thought you were building a case. Studying a murderer for insight or something. I didn’t care. I just wanted someone to listen to me. To see me.’

‘Of course. I understand completely. But once it became clear that reasoning with you would not work, my chosen course of therapy was to let you tell your story from beginning to end according to your truth, without interruptions or corrections. I wanted to listen to it as you lived it and see if I could gain insight into the roots of these strongly held delusions and how I might help you overcome them. We’ve discussed how every attack tied into elements of your life that troubled you, have we not?’

I nod, reach for the tissues.

‘And how you were working through these things, but that what lay at the base of all of it was your son’s death, your feelings of loss and guilt relating to that and the subsequent loneliness you felt at the further loss, as you saw it, of your family – your husband and daughter – who were struggling to cope in their own ways, and your best friend, who couldn’t figure out how to be close to you.

‘Your empathic nature made this very difficult, Rachel. Empathy without boundaries is dangerous. It can make us ill. It made you very ill indeed. Quite simply, from the moment Kieron died, you felt the pain of every victim whose story you read and printed out. You felt their pain and the pain of their families as if it were your own, because in a way it was your own. On top of that you felt guilt for every one of them, which was your own terrifying guilt at not being there for your son in his last moments. And as if that wasn’t enough, you made yourself responsible for all those deaths because you felt on some deep level responsible for your son’s death, do you see? Your own failure, as you saw it, to protect him. When the attacks and deaths happened close to home, that responsibility you felt, coupled with Ingrid Taylor’s campaign of hate against you… well, eventually it became a reality. You took full responsibility. You turned yourself in.’

I press the wad of tissues to my eyes. ‘We drove straight to the hospital, but Kieron was…’

‘It was too late. I know. And that has been more than you or your family could bear. It’s more than anyone should ever have to bear. It broke you into pieces, but you were not aware that it had done so. You carried on as if you were whole because your family were relying on you to be whole. You wanted to take your own life but you felt trapped by the responsibility of staying alive for those you love and who love you. All three of you carried on, your husband, Katie and you; you carried on with no real idea how or why or what you were doing or how to talk about it to one another, and so, quite simply, you didn’t.’

I hear her chair creak. She slides my notes onto the coffee table. I can see her hands clasped on her knees. ‘Emotions are like water, Rachel. Didn’t you tell me that? Anger is the leak in the bathroom and hate is the water that escapes through the kitchen wall? You have described yourself as water more than once. All feelings are water. They can be and often are misdirected.’

‘I did say that.’

‘Yes. You had the answers all along. The hate of the world, hate for others, prejudice, bigotry is often no more than misdirected anger for something altogether different. Our own pain. Our own dissatisfaction. Our own failure. We can’t control our pain and often we can’t identify where it’s coming from. We drink it or gamble it away, find comfort where we can. Whether it’s true or not, your reflection on David King having tattoos done because it was a pain he could at least control was very perceptive. The same with Phil, your customer. He gambled for the stress of it because it was a stress he understood. So when you believed that no one could even see you, you were alone with your pain, with all of it, do you understand? And when you picked up loneliness in everyone you met—’

‘It was my own loneliness.’

‘Precisely. So you see, I had to let you tell me what you thought had happened in its entirety, almost as a story, and together we’ve had a think about what that story means. And it occurred to me that the only attack you never claimed was David King and the reason for that was simple. You didn’t know about it.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that you, or your mind, only claimed your victimsafteryou’d read about them. You can’t take responsibility for something you know nothing about. If you’d killed David King, you would have known about it. The others you read about. And because you’d read about these people, and met them and spoken to them, your empathy for them and sense of responsibility towards them, which had been raised to harmful levels since your son’s death, combined with a difficult hormonal mix, not to mention a dangerous woman who had misdirected her anger towards you and attempted to ruin your life, well, all that was enough to create chaos.’ She sits back, an expression almost of satisfaction on her face.

‘Wow.’ I shake my head. If it’s possible to blow a mind into repair, well, that’s what this feels like, like an explosion in reverse. ‘I can’t take it in, but at the same time it makes perfect sense.’

‘It’s quite a load. Your mind created memories that would support your idea that you were to blame for the injuries and deaths because you felt that you were to blame for your son’s death. But they weren’t memories, they were horror. The horror you felt at what happened to your son. You weren’t to blame for your son’s death and you weren’t to blame for the deaths in the newspapers and you weren’t to blame for Joanna’s or Anne-Marie’s or David King’s deaths either. That glass globe you were carrying on your back? It’s no wonder it was too heavy. You were quite simply trying to bear the weight of the entire world, which you felt was being destroyed by hate. Single-handedly and in a very fragile state, you were trying to stop hate from breeding hate by using love.’

‘Love on steroids.’

‘Exactly.’ She smiles. ‘Love on steroids. And meanwhile, Ingrid Taylor had made you responsible for all her woes. She was disgraced, ostracised. Her husband had left her. She was looking for somewhere to put her pain and humiliation. Do you see the difference? You took on responsibility for the world; she made you responsible for hers. Her unhappiness, her divorce, her childlessness…’

‘But she said she didn’t want children.’

‘She lied. People like Ingrid Taylor lie with no problem whatsoever. They rewrite history, they reinvent the world so that it fits with their very problematic subjectivity.’

‘My subjectivity was hardly a walk in the park, though, was it?’

She laughs. ‘Well, no. But hers was devoid of empathy, the principal trait of the narcissist. They simply cannot conceive of how their behaviour causes pain to others, or rather, they know it does but they don’t care, not really, not in any depth. To Ingrid, you were a thing. A thing to be moved out of the way.’

‘Moved?’

‘Well, yes. It seems that in her hate campaign against you, she… how can I put this… realised that there might be some spoils for the taking.’

‘Spoils?’

‘Your husband. Mark.’

‘So I was right?’

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