The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel

by Schaffner Anna

  We all accompanied her to Heathrow on the day of her departure. Even Jonathan had joined us to say goodbye. I’m pretty sure he was secretly relieved that she was leaving the country for a year. But I just couldn’t stop crying. I simply couldn’t believe that I wouldn’t see her for twelve months. I had no idea how I’d even begin to get through the year without her. I was kind of hoping that she would hate it in India and miss me so badly that she’d come back early. I even secretly hoped that she’d get malaria or cholera or some other hideous disease, so that she’d be forced to come home and I could nurse her back to health. I still remember the moment she walked through passport control: straight and bright-eyed and full of anticipation, wearing the cargo pants we chose together and a white pullover, her hair braided into a long, thick plait. She turned back three times to wave at us all, blew me a final kiss, and then disappeared.

  I checked my inbox almost hourly in the first days after she’d left – I was so desperate to hear from her, and to learn that she was safe, and find out what she was doing, you know? But her first email arrived only after two long weeks, and it was a lengthy and pretty angry report on the appalling scenes of poverty she’d witnessed in Mumbai. She wrote about beggar children whose parents had mutilated them in horrific ways so that they would elicit more generous donations from tourists. She wrote about the thousands of people who slept under bridges and on sidewalks and who didn’t even own enough to cover their emaciated bodies with clothes or blankets. She wrote about the perverse contrast between the rich and the poor, and said it made her sick. She wrote that wherever she went she was pursued by a flock of ravenous, disease-ridden children who tore at her clothes and backpack, begging her for food and money. She wrote about the appalling attitudes to women she’d witnessed and the primitive sense of sexual entitlement of Indian men. There was nothing personal at all in her message, and my heart sank when I realized that it wasn’t even addressed to me directly but to a long list of friends and family to whom she had promised updates from her travels. Almost all of her subsequent emails from India were similar. I sent her long, regular emails about my own admittedly pretty uneventful and empty days, but only very rarely received a personal message in response. Usually, she told me that she hoped I was eating well and that she thought of me and that we were all terribly fortunate and owed the world some compensation for our privileges.

  She ended up not following our carefully developed travel plan at all, and left Goa after just one week. She wrote that she had no interest in the drug and clubbing culture she encountered there, and that in fact she utterly despised it. Yoga, meditation and various other spiritual practices and doctrines people down there were interested in didn’t strike her as valid preoccupations either – she thought that the yogis and their mainly Western followers she visited were hypocrites, privileging the pseudo-enlightenment of a chosen few over the much more urgent task of redistributing wealth and establishing fairer economic conditions for the many. Or something like that. Her emails had become quite ranty in tone. She travelled through hundreds of small villages and visited numerous factories and farms on her way up north. She’d also inspected some sweatshops, and described in extremely graphic detail the conditions she saw there. Then she forbade everyone on her mailing list from buying textiles produced by a long catalogue of Western companies which she said mercilessly exploited Indian women and children. Every single one of my favourite brands was on that list. We could all tell that she’d become restless, and increasingly impatient to do something about all the horrors she was witnessing on her travels. In the end, she took up her work placement one month earlier than originally planned.

  Once she was installed in Punjab, her messages to us became less and less frequent. The organization she was working for was helping local wheat and palm-oil farmers to secure fair-trade deals: I think they provided practical, financial and legal support, that kind of stuff. Julia wrote a few articles about the initiative that were published in various British newspapers. She spent a lot of time interviewing the villagers in the Pakistani border area about their daily plight and she uncovered some totally scandalous practices for which two very well-known Western companies were responsible.

  After five months, her very infrequent personal messages to me dried up completely. It’s probably fair to say that she broke her part of our deal. I think that compared to the sufferings she encountered in India on a daily basis, my own issues must have paled into insignificance. I can’t really blame her, I guess. I know that my problems are boring. But it still hurt really badly that she just completely ripped me out of her life, like a weed or something.

  When she returned after twelve months I felt she’d changed. She talked mainly about economics and political stuff. She reacted quite badly to the fact that I was still battling with my weight, and told me really brutally that I needed to get a grip and snap out of that phase. She said it made her incredibly sad that I, who had everything and all kinds of privileges, wasn’t able to appreciate my gifts, and that I should travel to India sometime to see what children who aren’t starving for fun but for real look like. It was a pretty horrible thing to say. I felt like she wasn’t really interested in hearing about how I was. When I tried to talk to her, she seemed distracted and impatient. Shortly after her return, she left home to study PPE at St John’s College, Oxford. And then I just didn’t see her very often anymore. Only at big family gatherings, really. She sent me birthday cards, but that was it. Even when I was hospitalized for five weeks – I was being force-fed against my will – Julia didn’t come to visit. Not once. I mean, that’s pretty extreme, isn’t it?

  She graduated, with a sky-high First, of course, and then went to Edinburgh to take up a scholarship to study for an MA. You probably know the rest of the story. About halfway through her programme, she dropped out and went travelling again, with someone she’d met up in Scotland, I think. We didn’t hear much from her during that period, apart from the odd postcard. Mum and Dad worried a lot about her, and so did I. After about two years, she came back to London. Again I only really saw her at family gatherings, and even then very rarely. I don’t know what she did all day here. She had weird friends – people in radical political groups, activist types. The one person who was still in regular contact with her was Dad, and he was under the impression that she went to a lot of demonstrations and occupations and anti-globalization gatherings, and that kind of thing. The last two times we saw her, on Christmas Day last year and on Dad’s sixtieth birthday, were strained. She was pretty caustic and seemed on the war path with everyone. During Dad’s birthday dinner she made a long, passionate speech against the consumption of meat that just about spoiled everyone’s appetite. I guess she thought we were all hypocrites or something.

  I don’t know what to say about the attack. I really don’t. I haven’t seen Julia since it happened. I still can’t believe that my sister is supposed to have murdered all those people. She must have been corrupted by someone. I don’t think she’s well. The person who came back from those trips wasn’t the Julia I knew and loved. Something must have happened to her abroad. Someone must have radicalized her. Perhaps it even started as far back as with that Jeremy guy. One bad friend after another, you know? I wish she’d stayed with me; I wish I’d never lost her. Together, we could have done anything. She only ever wanted to make the world a better place. I really don’t know what to say about the attack. She totally broke my parents’ hearts. And mine.

  IV

  Amy seemed so starved of human contact, and so awfully thin, and so terribly fragile both physically and mentally, that I decided to contact her parents and her supervisor at UCL to alert them to her condition straight after our second meeting. Her supervisor emailed back right away and thanked me for my concern, but explained there was nothing they could do since Amy had been battling with anorexia for many years and was refusing treatment. Amy’s parents didn’t get back to me until later.

  Amy’s story troubled me, on various
levels. Although I did find her account utterly heart-wrenching (and there is no doubt that she really was and still is suffering), I couldn’t help but feel that there was also a passive-aggressive impulse that was driving her to starve herself to death. Anorexia is one of those conditions that is masochistic only on the surface. After all, while Amy is getting some (admittedly very sad and twisted) form of pleasure from her physical vanishing act, she is forcing those who love her to watch helplessly from the sidelines. Most acts of self-destruction are ultimately fuelled by reproach. You observed something similar once about Lailah: sometimes, you told me, you could catch fleeting glimpses of the furious hatred behind your wife’s limp and lifeless facade – and it made your blood freeze.

  Although Julia’s manner of dealing with Amy’s pain seemed hard, I could at least partly understand her reaction: her refusal to play the role that Amy wanted her to play in her psychodrama was also a refusal to be coerced into feeling guilty when, in fact, she had done nothing wrong. After all, what seems to have triggered Amy’s rapid physical decline is simply the fact that Julia had fallen in love with someone and subsequently loosened her sister’s dependency on her, which had, in any case, become decidedly odd. Perhaps she severed these strings too abruptly. But then again, being in love can be overpowering. I had to fight very hard not to lose focus when we got together for the first time, George – it cost me all my energy and willpower. I could have succumbed so easily to the impulse to let our relationship transform all my priorities and everything I ever cared for, in that radical, fairy-tale metamorphosis kind of way. But something in me resisted it. Whether it was genuinely my love of work, as I thought back then, or perhaps fear, I don’t know. And I still believe that you never forgave me for that.

  In any case, it was strange that Julia responded to her sister’s psychological problems so strongly, almost with aversion, and that her affection for Amy, which appeared deep and genuine, could have been stifled so abruptly. But even that reaction, I am ashamed to admit, wasn’t one that was completely unfamiliar to me. Amy’s story reminded me of a scene when Amanda and I were teenagers. I think I might have told you about it, during that phase when we told each other (almost) everything about ourselves, when we, with a mixture of anxiety and shy pride, spread out the darker details of our past lives before each other, hoping that they, too, would be met with approval. When I was young, I was driven by an insatiable curiosity. My mind was always busy – I read everything I could lay my hands on, indiscriminately, sucking up all kinds of information like a starved sponge; I wrote; I loved to argue; I liked to be among people; I was always pursuing projects. I wished the days had a hundred hours, and I simply didn’t have time for teenage angst, skipping that phase completely. But Amanda didn’t, and when she was fourteen and I was sixteen, it began to affect our relationship. I think in some strange way it still does.

  Even you admitted once that Amanda is much more beautiful than me. I have always thought that she looks like a skilfully Photoshopped and more feminine version of me: she is taller and her figure is fuller, her skin is purer and smoother, her hair longer and glossier. Her hair colour, too, is much more striking than mine, a richer, deeper shade of the dark burgundy that both of us inherited from our mother. Hers always made me think of moist Tuscan clay sizzling in the sun. Amanda would never be seen without mascara and her signature stardust-coloured eye-shadow, both of which further enhance the beauty of her eyes, which are ice-blue just like mine, only bigger and better – like everything else about her. Even her voice is smooth and sweet, while mine has more than once been compared to a scratchy jazz record, and, not very flatteringly, to that of a chain-smoking nightclub singer. Yet, in spite of all this, it was Amanda and not I who became obsessed with her appearance when she crossed the thorny threshold into adulthood, and she found it sorely wanting: her weight, her skin, her hair, her style – she began to dislike everything about herself. Soon, all her energy was consumed internally, used up in the perpetuation of self-flagellating thoughts. I hated seeing her doing that to herself; it pained me and I just couldn’t understand where it was coming from.

  It is such a sad female speciality, self-hatred – I see it everywhere, even here, even among the most intimidating and seemingly confident-looking women: they over- or else under-eat, they cut themselves, they drink, they smoke, they take drugs, they fall for people they can’t have or who treat them like shit, they cover their skins with crude tattoos that, like marks of Cain, loudly announce to all and sundry that they have broken the law, and not one of them uses her time to enhance her prospects for post-prison life. Instead, they turn on each other just to pass the time. Every day, the guards have to intervene in the many scuffles that keep breaking out. But so far, they all leave me be – even the most belligerent ones. I don’t know why. Perhaps word has got round about my crime. Perhaps that knowledge scares them as much as it scares me. I try not to think about it.

  Amanda had always been shy, but in her teens her timidity became so extreme that she would barely speak a word unless she was among family. She didn’t go out much and passed entire days alone in her bedroom, doing nothing; she struggled at school and grew ever more reclusive and lifeless, as though she was wilting on the inside. I realized just how much she had changed one Saturday in August. It was our great-aunt Myrtle’s birthday. As every year, Myrtle held a grand garden party in her Hampstead home. All our relatives and many of my parents’ friends came; attendance was a family obligation. Some cousins and nieces travelled all the way from France and Germany to be there.

  ‘She says she’s not coming,’ my father said in a low voice. My mother wrung her hands. Dressed up and ready to go, they were standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking uneasily at the closed door of my sister’s room on the first floor, as though something bad they couldn’t quite grasp was happening behind it. Although they didn’t speak about it, they had been worrying about Amanda in their quiet way for months. I found their silent sadness unbearable, and decided to go up and shake Amanda out of her stupor.

  ‘Amanda, I’m coming in,’ I called before opening her bedroom door. The air in her room was heavy with sweat and misery – it was a sweltering day, but her windows were closed and the curtains drawn, and my sister was lying fully clothed on her bed.

  ‘God, it’s stuffy in here!’ I said before drawing the curtain and opening her window.

  Amanda moaned and covered her face with her hands, as though the sunlight was hurting her eyes.

  ‘Dad said you’re not coming. We always go – Aunt Myrtle will be heartbroken if she doesn’t get to pinch your cheeks this year. Honestly, Amanda, get your act together. You know that Mum and Dad are too nice to force you, but they’ll be terribly disappointed if you don’t come. And why wouldn’t you? Look, it’s such a lovely day!’

  ‘I can’t,’ Amanda said.

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t? It’s not like you’ve lined up an exciting alternative programme for the day, is it? A bit of sunlight will do you good.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she repeated.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Can’t face it.’

  ‘Can’t face what? It’s our family – it’s not like you’d be walking into a place filled with hostile strangers. They all love you and would be really sad not to see you.’ I was genuinely puzzled.

  Amanda sat up and glared at me. ‘I know you don’t understand, but I just can’t. Everything always seems so easy to you. I never know what to say to anyone. I freeze up; I get flustered and stiff. People don’t feel comfortable around me. I’m so awkward it’s infectious. I embarrass them.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I had been aware that Amanda had confidence issues, but I had never realized just how crippling and deep-seated they were. Besides, she had said these things sharply, almost aggressively, as though the whole matter was somehow my fault.

  ‘But sweetie,’ I said eventually. ‘This is crazy. You’re clever and interesting and original, and lovely besides, an
d totally gorgeous. I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Everyone loves you – I think people like you much more than they like me, in fact. I’m the one who annoys people. I talk too much and too loudly and I’m terribly opinionated and I laugh like a drunken hyena at my own jokes. I’d always prefer your company to mine.’

  Amanda started to cry, and I tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away. ‘Bullshit,’ she sobbed. ‘That’s bullshit. You just don’t get it. You just can’t understand what it feels like to have no skin, to be constantly afraid of what others might think or say. It’s hell; I don’t want to go out ever again. I hate talking to others.’

  ‘But sis, I really can’t follow you,’ I said. ‘That’s all in your head. Nobody thinks that of you. Nobody. Really. Everyone thinks you’re lovely – perhaps a little shy, but that’s a good thing. Shy people are much nicer and better listeners. I’d say everyone actually prefers the company of a shy person to that of annoying blabbering extroverts. Like me. Really. I mean it.’

  Amanda didn’t respond.

  ‘Come on,’ I said after a while. ‘I’ll stay at your side, OK? I can always just step in if you can’t think of anything to say. I’ll just make some stupid offensive jokes as usual.’

  But Amanda turned her back to me and pulled her duvet over her head.

  ‘Seriously?’ I said. ‘You really aren’t coming? But you won’t even have to worry about small talk! I mean it. I’ll do it for you, OK? Come on – let’s go. Mum and Dad are waiting downstairs.’