Inside, rows of plastic chairs faced a small reception desk. A mismatched handful of people sat in ones and twos while a middle-aged receptionist tapped at a computer.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, approaching her, ‘my name’s Anna Jeffreys. I’ve got an appointment with Dr Donald Hargreaves at two o’clock.’
She tapped at the computer again, consulted some notes I couldn’t see. ‘Take a seat,’ she said at last, ‘I’ll let him know you’re here.’
I sat and waited. To my right, an elderly couple exchanged occasional tense asides. ‘I’m sure Nick’s all right now, dear,’ the man said quietly, ‘it’ll be nice to see him again,’ and the woman murmured something I couldn’t quite catch. A new man entered the reception area through the double doors that clearly led to the Unit’s inner workings. He was dressed for a casual office, but I recognised the neatly clipped black beard from his picture on the internet.
‘Anna Jeffreys?’
‘That’s me.’
I rose to my feet, approached him—a brief handshake, a quick, meaningless smile. ‘Don Hargreaves,’ he said. ‘If you’d like to follow me.’
I didn’t know exactly what I’d imagined existing beyond the double doors; sheer ignorance had hinted at a scene straight out of Bedlam, blood-curdling shrieks echoing down corridors, burly nurses racing in their direction like a crack SAS team. The reality both reassured and disappointed; the atmosphere was quiet and pale and sterile, a sense that mental illness was as mundanely regrettable as diabetes. Our footsteps rang out sharp and flat in the silence until we reached a side door and entered his office.
‘I was a very young man when I first met Rebecca,’ Donald told me. ‘Starting out in my profession, you could say. I’d graduated three years before, and was working for East Lancashire District Council, dealing with young offenders in various settings, the Southfield Unit being only one of those. Before Rebecca arrived there, I’d had very little to do with the place…the majority of its inmates posed no danger to themselves or others. Occasionally I’d be called in for sessions with one, but very rarely. Of course, Rebecca was an exceptional case. I came in to talk to her once a month.’
I sat across from him, facing him over a wildly overcrowded desk. His back was to the window, beyond which I saw a tidy but featureless expanse of empty garden, fenced in with tall, rather overgrown hedges. ‘How did she behave during your sessions with her?’ I asked.
He was easier to talk to in person than over the phone—frank, grave, courteous—but still seemed disconcertingly comfortable with silence. Seconds passed as he looked thoughtfully into the middle distance; I was about to rephrase my question when he spoke at last. ‘She was extremely unforthcoming in the beginning. In fact, she couldn’t have been a great deal less cooperative. I’d been prepared for that, of course—I’d had full access to her confidential file before meeting her, and they told me she’d behaved in exactly the same way with the police psychiatrists who’d tried to interview her before. But I had no idea quite how odd her behaviour would be when I spoke to her in person.
‘There was nothing aggressive about it, nothing so much as impolite. She simply refused to give detailed answers. Even to the perfectly innocuous questions I asked at the beginning of our sessions, just to put her at her ease: how was she taking to life there, for example, was she enjoying the activities on offer? She’d answer in tense monosyllables, sitting bolt upright. At best she’d look wary, at worst quite terrified. I was reminded of the way I behave in the dentist’s chair…it’s a lifelong phobia, I turn into a frightened rabbit the second I set foot in the surgery. Something about the whole process petrified her.
‘I can’t tell you how hard I tried to get to the bottom of that fear, over the first few months. To begin with, I thought it might well be to do with the setting—our sessions took place in a rather bleak and institutional side office, and I’d always been aware that it looked unwelcoming. I had a quiet word with the unit’s manager about it, and he set the common room aside once a month for our private use. But, even in such a familiar environment, which she associated with camaraderie and relaxation, her manner didn’t change at all. It had nothing to do with the place, I realised. She was terrified of the sessions themselves.’
‘How did she avoid answering your questions?’ I asked curiously. ‘What exactly did she say?’
‘There were no real answers to give—I kept my questions as open-ended as possible, hoping to draw her out in some way. For example, I’d ask her if she missed her old school, expecting the reference to trigger a flood of personal memories and emotions, but far from it, she’d reply as if she’d learned her words by heart. “I miss it sometimes,” she’d say, “but I’m happy here as well.” And any other line of enquiry would meet exactly the same kind of response. I can’t quite describe how appallingly tense she seemed, as if one wrong word could condemn her to death. There seemed to be no way on earth that I could put her at her ease.
‘The sessions quickly began to feel like a formality—I was required to come to the unit, she was required to come to me. For those first few months, no progress was made by either one of us. I couldn’t understand her in the slightest. While I could imagine her reasons for being less than forthcoming before her trial, they simply didn’t apply any more; she’d already been sentenced, and had nothing to lose by cooperating with me. In fact, she had everything to gain. By not communicating, she only made herself appear more disturbed. I pointed that out more than once, after realising that nothing else seemed to work. And again, she responded in exactly the same way. “I’m trying my best,” she said, “but there’s nothing else I can say.”’
‘It must have been pretty frustrating for you,’ I said.
‘It certainly was. It’s an appalling situation for any psychiatrist to find themselves in, for the most petty and arrogant reasons imaginable—it makes you question your own professional skill when you meet such a brick wall with a patient. But, after a while, personal concern and curiosity began to overcome that. Sometimes, during our sessions, I could tell that she wanted to talk very much…you may well think that I imagined it, but I can assure you that wasn’t the case. You could sense such a conflict in that child. Wanting to communicate and confide, but—for some reason I couldn’t guess at—simply not being able to. It was painful to watch her at those times. Painful and bewildering.
‘I began taking a different approach. She seemed far more comfortable listening than she did talking, so I started to tell her about my own life. I felt that might help to break down her distrust; she’d realise I was nobody to be afraid of, and that, by association, neither were our sessions. For some time, that met with no visible success either. She seemed perfectly relaxed for a change, but she still wasn’t giving anything away. Then I mentioned my brother. My parents had adopted him, and I told her so—I recalled that she’d been adopted herself, and thought it might help her relate to me.
‘Normally, at those times, she’d be listening as politeness demanded, passingly interested but no more than that. Suddenly, however, she seemed very alert. “Did everyone know?” she asked. “That he was adopted?”
‘“Of course,” I said. “We certainly didn’t make a secret of it.”
‘She said something very odd, then. “Everyone must have hated him.”’
Another long silence. He sat as if meditating, hands steepled together, chin resting on his fingertips. ‘She sounded so sad,’ he said at last, ‘so sympathetic. I suddenly felt I was on the brink of understanding her. “Why do you say that?” I asked. “What makes you think it?”
‘And she said, quite matter-of-factly, “People think you’re bad, if they know you’re adopted. They think your real parents didn’t want you, even if they did really, even if they just died. And if they think your real parents didn’t want you, they won’t want anything to do with you, either. Nobody will, even people who seem nice.”’
‘I just stared at her, stunned. Her whole manner was so earnest, as if sh
e was explaining some complex fact she’d been taught at school. “Rebecca, that isn’t true at all,” I said. “Who told you that?”
‘“It is true,” she said defiantly, “My mother told me. She tells me all the time.” And I realised she was talking about her adoptive mother, who’d committed suicide over a year ago.
‘She just clammed up after that, during that session. She wouldn’t say another word on the subject, no matter how hard I tried to draw her out again. But, when it was over, I went back to her file and read about her adoptive parents, made some informal enquiries of my own, wanting to understand what kind of people they’d been.
‘The local authority had unearthed quite a few damning facts about them, in the aftermath of Rebecca’s trial. I’m surprised jobs weren’t lost over the matter. They should never have been allowed to adopt in the first place; I could only imagine the corners that had been cut. The woman was diagnosed manic-depressive in her late teens, spent over a year in a mental institution…she came from a wealthy family, and they must have effectively bribed her way out. She certainly wasn’t stable after she was released…there were rumours of alcoholism, unhealthy promiscuity. From what I gathered, she’d hidden those things very carefully in public; it seems to have been morbidly important to her what other people thought. The little people especially, if I can use such a patronising term. It seemed the only way she could feel secure and superior, hiding behind a certain lady-of-the-manor façade with Teasford’s poorer residents.
‘A lot of this is guesswork and hearsay, obviously, but I’m quite convinced that it’s close to the truth. She had a real terror of those ordinary people knowing the less salubrious details of her life—the breakdown, the drinking, the men. Also, the fact that she couldn’t have children naturally. She’d become pregnant in her early teens, and there had been complications with the abortion…afterwards, she was left sterile.’
So much seemed to fall into place as I looked at him: Rebecca’s fury with the boy in the common room, her constant references to Mummy and Daddy. ‘She passed on her own fears to Rebecca, didn’t she?’
He didn’t answer directly, but went on thoughtfully, looking into the middle distance again. ‘It’s extraordinary, the damage that adults can do children. Often, they’re unaware that they’re doing the slightest thing wrong. Rebecca’s adoptive mother took on a deeply traumatised and confused little girl, and poisoned her with her own instability. She was terrified that Teasford would discover Rebecca was adopted, seems to have had some bizarre idea that, if the little people knew she couldn’t have children of her own, they’d immediately know about the abortion and the mental institution and Christ alone knows what else. So she made Rebecca as terrified of discovery as she was. Brainwashed her with the most despicable lies—nobody would ever love her if they knew, she’d be an outcast in the world—simply in the interests of her own paranoia.
‘You can imagine the effect that would have on a vulnerable five-year-old orphan. Soon, Rebecca had become more obsessed with concealing her adoption than Mrs Fisher was, and the roots of that obsession went deeper than I can describe. Even at the age of eleven, they couldn’t be eased out. I could explain to her as often as I liked that it wasn’t true, but at some all-important level, she simply didn’t believe me. She wouldn’t have believed anyone who’d told her. I’m aware this goes directly against the principles of my profession, where everything in the human mind is supposed to be mendable and treatable and curable…but in some cases, the damage has already been done, and is literally irreversible. Looking back and discovering how and why it happened does nothing whatsoever to change that.’
‘So she didn’t discuss her adoption any further?’ I asked.
‘Only in the most superficial way. She seemed to trust me a great deal more after that breakthrough session, when she’d finally acknowledged some key element of herself…she’d talk quite unselfconsciously about her earliest memories, how she could remember a small terraced house and a nice fair-haired woman tucking her up in bed at night. She never seemed happier than she did at those times, as if she could somehow transport herself back there. Her early childhood appeared to have been idyllic—everything in her file told me the same thing.
‘But when she described her life following her adoption, she was like a different person—stilted, tense—and at those times, we both went directly back to square one. She’d loved her adoptive mother very much, she told me, she’d been heartbroken by her suicide, she was still devoted to her adoptive father. When you’d heard her discussing honest feelings it was very easy to tell when she was lying, and at those times, I’d have been prepared to swear under oath that she was—perhaps to herself as much as to me. I was reminded of the transcripts I’d read of her trial. She’d behaved in exactly the same way on the stand, denying the most overwhelming evidence in a way that wasn’t even slightly convincing.’
‘Did she ever talk about Eleanor’s murder at all?’ I asked.
‘Not for a very long time. But gradually I began to understand the events that had led to it. As Rebecca came to trust me more, she began to refer to her old primary school in passing, and then to discuss it in some detail. She said that she’d always felt on edge there, that she knew the teachers would expect her to be perfect. “What makes you say that?” I asked. And she said that people always did, that they’d never love you if you got things wrong. Sometimes at home, she said, she wet the bed, and her adoptive mother was furious…she told Rebecca that she hated her at those times, that they should never have taken her in the first place. Rebecca described that so matter-of-factly, as though it was a perfectly natural response from a parent. “Grown-ups always do hate you,” she said, “if you make mistakes and cause trouble. I knew the teachers at school would be just the same.”
‘She’d have been twelve at that time—she sounded so much older than she was, and at the same time, so disturbingly young. “That’s not true at all,” I told her, “children make all kinds of mistakes, and people still love them. What could you ever do at school so terrible it would make your teachers hate you? You were well-behaved, weren’t you?”
‘“I tried to be,” she said. “But I got upset sometimes. Usually, nobody even knew; I just felt lonely and scared and kept it to myself. I did something terrible at school once, though. I killed our class pet. He was a hamster.”’
I remembered Annette Watson’s description of Rebecca crying over Toffee’s cage, and listened intently, utterly alert as Donald continued. ‘I was very shocked, mainly because I’d never expected her to confess to anything like that with me… I tried not to show it, thinking it might drive her straight back into herself. “What happened?” I asked her. “Why would you want to do something like that?”
‘“I didn’t,” she said, “not at first. I always came in to feed him at lunchtimes and things; I really cared about him. I got to take him home in the summer holidays and treat him like he was my own pet. But then I had to bring him back next term, and everything changed.
‘“It was horrible,” she said, “I’d started thinking he was mine, and then it was all different… I was just one of the girls who put their names down to feed him. I came in to do that one lunchtime, and I thought—it was like he didn’t know me, I could have been anyone—I was just so angry all of a sudden, I picked him up, and—”
‘It was the first time I’d ever seen her cry. I tried my best to comfort her. “I don’t know why I did it,” she said. “I just couldn’t do anything else. Not then, at the time…”
‘It was sad. It was also very frightening. You’d be amazed how easy it was to forget she was a murderess, but I suddenly saw that quite clearly. The red mist that’s become such a cliché…that’s what she was talking about, in the voice of a sweet, lonely little girl. “Someone else got into trouble for it,” she said. “I felt so bad about that. But I couldn’t have told them it was me. My mother would have been furious. Might even have sent me back to the children’s home; she threatened
to do that sometimes…
‘“I wish I hadn’t done it,” she said. “I wished that as soon as he was dead. But I couldn’t change what I’d done. Not then.”
‘I remembered reading about Eleanor Corbett, at that moment—how sweet she’d been, and how small for her age—I knew there’d never be a better time to ask. “Was it the same way with Eleanor?” I asked her. “That you felt you weren’t as important to her as you wanted to be?”
‘“No,” she said. “It was nothing like that, nothing at all.”
‘I believed her at once… I’d got to know her by then, as I’ve said, and it was easy to tell when she was lying if you knew the signs to look out for. Still, she wouldn’t yield another inch on the subject during that session. She seemed fearful all over again. Nervous, as though she realised she’d gone too far, and expected to be punished for it at any moment.
‘It was months before she really came out of her shell again…a good three sessions later. I was talking about this and that as I had done in the beginning, trying to put her back at her ease. She spoke up unexpectedly, apropos of nothing. “I had a nightmare last night,” she said. “About Eleanor. I often have them, since she died.”
‘It was so unexpected, it was hard for me to think of anything to say. “Do you miss her?” I asked.
‘“I miss the way she was in the beginning,” she said. “When we first met. The other girls didn’t really talk to me, but she was so friendly straight away—I liked her so much. She was the first real friend I’d ever had. We always went round together. We went to this house nobody lived in any more, and pretended that we lived there ourselves… sometimes that we were sisters, sometimes that I was her mother. I brought all kinds of things there, from home. When my mother was…well, angry…she broke things, and they all went into the dustbin. I took them out when nobody was looking, mended them with glue. And there was cutlery. That wasn’t broken, of course, only the handles had got stained. The big knife was part of that; a knife for carving meat. We just put it in the corner with the rest of our things, and didn’t think any more about it.
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