‘You got depressed again – worse than ever. What did you think the medication was for?’
‘I was stressed, that’s all, a little down. I was under pressure. It happens to a lot of people.’ He grabs my arms again, and there’s something about the way he’s staring at me that tells me to run. He’s messing with my mind. The two of them are in this together. He’s part of her awful games. Why didn’t I see this before?
‘It was more than stress, Sandra.’ I try to pull away from him again, only this time his grip is too tight. ‘You had a complete breakdown. It had been building up for months. Ask Alice. Ask any of the others. They’ll tell you.’ He takes his mobile from his pocket, releasing my arms. ‘Ring any one of them,’ he says, holding out the phone. If I take it, he might grab me again and I’ll never get away. I don’t touch it. Instead I roar, ‘They never said anything to me. If they had, I would have remembered.’
‘You blocked it all out, Sandra. The doctor said it was part of the process. He said you would remember everything in time. It hasn’t been long, not even a month. He told us not to bring up the subject unless you asked about it. There was no point upsetting you.’
He drops the arm holding out the phone, and I run to the door, but he gets in my way. ‘You haven’t been taking your medication,’ he says, ‘have you?’ I see his eyes narrow. If he knows that, he knows other things too.
‘You’re lying!’ I shriek. ‘You’re like her. You want to mess with my head.’
‘No one’s doing that, except you.’
‘But things were moved around the house, her silk dressing gown and the lipstick I found in our bedroom, the notes in my diary … I don’t understand. You’re making this up.’ My voice is hysterical.
‘Why would I do that?’ He fakes a sympathetic look.
‘I don’t know!’ I yell wildly. I turn cold. ‘Because you’re having an affair with her – she’s put you up to this, hasn’t she?’
He’s staring at me as if I’m crazy, then turns away, like someone defeated. I look at the open door to the hallway. I rush past him and run up the stairs. On the drawer of the bedside locker, I can see the markings on the wood where I prised it open. I pull out the drawer looking for her lipstick, Carmine, needing proof that what I remember is really true. It’s then that I see the key. The one I had taken from the house, the one that should be in my bag. I grab it, put it in my pocket, not understanding how it got back into the drawer, as I hear him coming up behind me.
‘Sandra, I need you to listen to me.’
Stop saying that! I scream inside my head.
He’s stomping around the bedroom. Then he opens the wardrobe doors. ‘Look inside,’ he pleads. ‘These clothes, they belonged to you.’
I don’t know why he’s lying, but I know I need to get out of there. I take a step back: my path to the door is clear. I run past him again, down the stairs, praying the back door isn’t locked. I can hear him following me as I open the door. Rushing down the street after me, he calls, but I can’t stop. I open the car as quickly as I can and, like that time at the hotel, I pull out blindly. The man and his two dogs are crossing the street. He pulls the leads to get the dogs out of the way. I blast up the road, knowing exactly where I’m going. The hotel isn’t far. I see Edgar get into his car, wanting to come after me. I’ll need to keep going. If I get out of here fast enough, I can lose him. I don’t trust Alice or Lori any more. One of them is part of all this. I know it.
MERVIN ROAD, RATHMINES
KATE OPENED THE door to her apartment and went directly to her small office at the back, unlocked the Shevlin case file and read through all her notes again. Driving home, she had been thinking about the delusional aspects of the killer’s life. Most certainly, she could convince herself of intimacy with her choice of sexual partners. She could also compartmentalise and separate the killings, submerging them within a distorted logical context. But what if her dissociative disorder was causing more than self-delusion?
Assuming the killer had experienced sustained early trauma, her brain’s development in adolescence could be of primary importance, because of the potential damage and repercussions it could cause. The brain undergoes substantive changes over the early years and, depending on the severity of the abuse, can become sufficiently traumatised to split conscious thought.
Certain things began slotting into place. Kate pulled down a number of reference books covering dissociative identity disorder. She hadn’t seen it in any of her patients, as it was relatively rare, but she knew it normally began as a protective piece for the sufferer, the victim behaving in a way that was at odds with other aspects of their personality. What starts as protective, when a child is unable to fight or flee, and they attempt to distance or dumb themselves, then becomes learned behaviour, the mind dividing into two sides, or more, of the person.