The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel

by Schaffner Anna

  When I was ten we went on a long summer holiday to Spain. Dad had rented a big camper, and we drove all the way from Madrid through Castilla-La Mancha to Andalucia. We had an incredible time. I don’t know how my parents managed. Julia was seven and Amy just three. Amy cried a lot as a child. She was quite poorly from birth and my mother worried about her constantly. But generally they were laid back about everything. Each morning, we just headed off into the unknown. Dad used to let me sit right next to him while he was driving. He would tell me all about the advantages and disadvantages of the various makes of cars that passed, and stories about how the Moors used to rule in that land and how their empire had fallen. On a few occasions, all camping sites in the area were full and we parked our camper in a wild meadow for the night instead.

  In the evenings, we always built a fire. My sister and I would go and gather the firewood. We would conscientiously arrange it exactly in the way Dad had shown us: putting small pieces of bark and kindling in the centre and arranging the bigger logs in a tepee structure above them. Dad plays the guitar. Very well, actually. He used to be in a folk band and they even produced an album before I was born. After supper, when we were all gathered around the fire, he and my mother would sing old English ballads together. My sister and I took turns holding Amy on these occasions, so that my mother could focus on the singing. She has a beautiful voice.

  Dad and I used to have a special relationship. He can chat away to anyone – cleaners, janitors, CEOs, politicians. He is a great small-talker and makes people immediately feel at ease. When I was young he would sometimes take me hiking with his male friends in the Lake District. Later, when I was a teenager, he would talk to me at length after work about some of his cases and explain to me in detail the complex financial and legal decisions his clients were facing. I learned so much from him. My interest in finance and business was definitely stimulated by my dad. It was only because of my sister that there were tensions between us.

  When I was eleven I developed an interest in British military history. I started to collect little tin soldiers, the kind you had to paint yourself. The tin soldiers were another thing over which Dad and I bonded. We would spend many evenings after supper in the games room, painting different types of more or less historically accurate uniforms onto the blank figurines. While we were painting, Dad would tell me about heroic British military achievements in the Napoleonic Wars and during the Normandy landings. I never wanted to hear about losses and defeats. We would re-create famous battles on a big wooden board with our painted mini-troops. One evening we were about to set up our armies for the Battle of Waterloo. Both of us had been looking forward to it for days. But then we noticed something appalling when we opened the box in which our soldiers were kept: every single one of the figurines had either an arm or a leg missing. Sometimes both. With painstaking precision and iron determination, someone had broken off the limbs of about two hundred tiny tin soldiers. A few of them even had their heads removed, probably with a small metal saw or pliers.

  Dad and I had no doubts about who the author of the tin soldier massacre was. My sister, who was about eight years old at the time, must have dedicated an entire day to her dark task. I was terribly upset about my mutilated toys, and started to cry. I demanded she be punished for what she had done. Dad took me in his arms and tried to calm me down. We sat there for a long time. He murmured soothing words into my ears and stroked my hair. Later, we went up to Julia’s room, hand in hand, to confront her. Julia and Amy were lying on the carpet. I think they were looking at an illustrated fairy-tale book together.

  ‘Julia,’ Dad said gently but firmly, ‘why did you destroy Jonathan’s toys? Look how upset he is!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Daddy; I didn’t mean to upset Jonathan. But that’s what happens in wars: people lose their arms and legs and sometimes much more than that, and many people die all the time. I saw it on TV. War is not something fun, you know. It’s not a game.’

  I was far from satisfied with that explanation. I still believe that she did what she did purely out of jealousy and spite rather than to educate me, as she claimed. But Dad could, as so often, see her point. Julia can be very convincing. She is an expert manipulator of people. Unfortunately, Dad wasn’t immune to her powers of persuasion. I fear he still isn’t, even now, after everything she did. He gave Julia a little half-hearted sermon on the value of other people’s property and their right to explore things in their own way, even if she had different opinions on the matter. But he didn’t mean it. Even then I could see that secretly he was enormously proud of his daughter, who was so intelligent and articulate and original and mature beyond her years. He tried to hide it then and there. He probably felt he owed it to me to be stern with her and to take my anguish seriously. But just two hours later, when I went back into the games room to take another look at the calamity that had befallen my troops, I saw Julia sitting on his lap. Dad’s eyes were shining with pride. He spoke with an animation that I never noticed when he was talking to me.

  The first thing I ever openly disagreed about with Dad was my sister’s perverse relationship with Amy. Just look at her now: she is a physical and psychological wreck, and she has been in that state for years. I firmly believe that Amy was my sister’s first true victim. Julia played a sick game with the poor girl. To the outside world it looked as though she was a saintly super-sister, who had altruistically taken it upon herself to care for her poorly younger sibling. In reality, however, she had fucked Amy up from the very start. Moreover, I am convinced she did it on purpose. Now more so than ever.

  Julia always needed followers. She enjoyed having a little groupie-admirer kid-sister trailing behind her throughout her teens. It made her look good. She loved power games and manipulating others. And she first honed her dark art on Amy. Amy was her creature: a star-struck and utterly defenceless devotee. And when Julia got bored with Amy she just dropped her overnight, without warning. The cruel rejection she suffered at the hands of her adored sister broke Amy completely. She has never recovered from it.

  I tried to reason with my parents about that issue many times, but they were too in awe of Julia. They thought the sun shone out of her arse. In their view, she was perfection incarnate: beautiful, good, clever, brave and oh-so-caring. They just couldn’t see the psychotic hatred beneath her pretty exterior. We had numerous arguments about Julia’s corruption of Amy. Especially about all the age-inappropriate activities to which she dragged her along. No sane person would like it if their ten-year-old sister were taken to violent political protests, or to the local cemetery where all the junkies hung out, or to all kinds of dubious parties. But my sister had wrapped everyone in my family so tightly around her finger that they always sided with her. I, on the other hand, got a reputation for being an uncool conservative killjoy as a result of my attempts to protect Amy. Even Amy never thanked me for it. On the contrary, I think she felt I was her enemy. Julia had corrupted her so deeply that she never fully trusted me. She still doesn’t. We are not very close.

  My parents were strangely blind with regard to my sister’s true nature. They just wouldn’t listen to me. Their persistent misjudgement of her character really is the only thing for which I blame them. But then again, it was intricately bound up with the qualities I cherish most: their tolerance, their family loyalty and their generosity. They simply never really believed in the existence of evil in people, least of all in their beloved daughter.

  There were numerous incidents that should have made my parents’ alarm bells ring. One occurred when Julia was fifteen and I was eighteen, in my final year at school. It was early summer, a few weeks before the end of term. There was a heatwave and everyone was tense. All of a sudden, stories began to circulate about a PE teacher at our school, Johnny Harris. He was rumoured to have touched girls inappropriately. Personally, I never believed these stories. Mr Harris had taught me for two years and I had never seen him touch anyone in an improper manner. He was simply a tactile teacher, an old-fa
shioned sports instructor. He would put his hands on both girls and boys when showing them how to mount and dismount the pommel horse. There was nothing dubious about that, in my view. But there is so much paranoia about sexual abuse around these days that he probably did make himself vulnerable to criticism by doing things the way he did.

  In any case, a growing number of girls grew hysterical about him. My sister was aware of the stories that were circulating. I could see her having hushed discussions with a small group of older girls after school. I suspected they were up to something. My sister wasn’t even in any of Mr Harris’s classes, but had nevertheless decided to fight the cause of the other girls who were complaining about him. In my view, the whole affair was a witch-hunt.

  Back then already, Julia was entirely devoid of scruples when it came to achieving her aims. One day she drugged Mr Harris’s coffee during lunch. How exactly she did that I never found out. Perhaps she used some of my mother’s sleeping pills. When he was fast asleep in a soft chair in the gym, she sneaked in and with pink superglue wrote ‘PERV’ on his forehead. I will never forget the hurt and bewildered look on the man’s face when he rushed past us in the corridor a few hours later, after someone had found and woken him. The defamatory word was clearly legible for all to see.

  Julia was caught entering and leaving the gym on CCTV. She was summoned by the headmaster that very afternoon. Our parents were called in, too. But my sister must once again have delivered one of her manipulative speeches, since she was never punished for what she did. Instead, Mr Harris was forced to accept a package and to resign. There was never any solid evidence against him apart from the hyped-up stories of a few pubescent girls. Four years ago, by pure chance, I read in the papers that he had been killed by a train on a small level-crossing in Sussex. It didn’t sound like an accident to me.

  I think Julia has always hated me. When she was younger, she treated me with open hostility, and later with cold contempt and mockery. I suppose in her twisted view of the world I stood for everything she despised most. In her eyes, I was the epitome of self-satisfied bourgeois normality. I never had a teenage rebellious phase; I never wallowed in angst; I have never felt guilty about my privileges, just blessed. I always believed that a good work ethic, self-discipline and intelligence can get you anywhere, regardless of your background. I always had concrete aims and realizable dreams, and I worked bloody hard to achieve them. I am not ashamed of anything I have done.

  When I was seventeen I told my family that I had decided to study for a business degree. Julia just laughed out loud, in that scornful way that she masters so well. Then she said: ‘Of course you have, Jonathan. What else would you study?’ When I announced to my family a few years later that Susanna and I had decided to get married she rolled her eyes and once again laughed out loud.

  ‘How cuuuuute,’ she said. ‘Congratulations!’

  There was so much loathing in her voice that Susanna, who was present, was really taken aback. She just couldn’t understand where Julia’s contempt was coming from. She found it really upsetting. But as we were to find out, that incident was nothing compared to what my sister did on our wedding day.

  Susanna and I got married on a Saturday in August 2008. Julia was studying at Oxford at the time. I think it was her last year. She had very reluctantly agreed to come down and celebrate the big day with us. I think my parents must have more or less forced her. We got married in a beautiful thirteenth-century church in a little village in Surrey, close to where Susanna was born. Her parents still own a large country house there. After the ceremony, we celebrated in their beautiful gardens. We had erected a white marquee for the occasion. It was a stunning day and everyone was in great spirits. There were about 150 guests, many of whom had brought along their children. They were chasing around between the tables and the trees. There was laughter and birdsong, and the sun was shining. Susanna was six months pregnant, and looked dazzling in her white lace dress. We just couldn’t stop smiling at each other. It looked like it really would be the perfect day of which we had dreamed.

  My sister missed the church ceremony in the morning, which really upset Susanna, who is more religious than I am. She turned up late in the afternoon. She was wearing ripped jeans and a washed-out oversized T-shirt that kept slipping down her shoulder. It was a slap in the face, that outfit.

  Susanna and I had carefully planned every detail of our big day. We had debated at great length different wedding menu options. In the end we opted for a Middle Eastern finger-food buffet. A little unconventional, but we wanted something that wasn’t too formal, so that people wouldn’t get stuck at one table and with one group all evening. It worked out perfectly. Our guests kept drifting to the buffet table and mingled freely in the marquee. During the wedding supper, friends and family delivered various speeches. My best man gave a wonderful speech, and the atmosphere was fantastic. But then, to our horror, Julia signalled that she wished to give a speech, too. And speak she did. I will never forget it and I will never forgive her.

  ‘Congratulations to the artfully made-up bride and her solid groom!’ she began, in a mockingly sweet tone. ‘To the charming setting, the expensive pink champagne that is bubbling away so cheerfully in our glasses, and to the tasteful finger-food buffet! Jonathan, my brother: may your wealth and happiness increase in equal measure. I wish you the best. May all your dreams of shiny SUVs and Bentleys, of two-point-four kids, and of a chic townhouse in Chelsea, come true. Now, with a ring on your finger that fully confirms your traditionalist credentials, will you finally follow the siren call of duty and accept a nomination as Conservative candidate on the local council? After all, the Tories have had their eyes on you since you reached the age of three.’

  At this point, people were still laughing, but Susanna and I had grown tense. I didn’t like where this was going one bit.

  ‘You are their man, Jonathan. You were born to fight for the petty little rights of petty little citizens, such as wider parking spaces so that people in oversized cars don’t suffer discrimination. You could launch a petition to paint all kittens white so that we can see them in the night. You could start a campaign to ban the competition-stifling caps on bonuses for bankers – isn’t it outrageous that some deluded continental Europeans think that 500 per cent of one’s annual salary should be enough? You could fight for a special policeman to watch over the playground your two-point-four children will be frequenting, to make sure that no poor people and no black people ever set foot in it. Hurrah for the family values of middle England!’

  Most people, except for a few very drunk ones, had stopped laughing. There was an uncomfortable silence in the marquee when Julia continued.

  ‘Oh, but hang on... What do I see in my hand-blown crystal champagne flute? Dark clouds are gathering in the future. I see a midlife crisis in your early thirties – no surprises there, either: you’ve always acted twenty years older than your age. But the horror! Your once-so-pretty housewife has grown bored with the kids and her little creative pottery projects. She’s started to comfort-eat and – I hate to break this to you, Susanna, I know how much your looks matter to you – she’s grown fat. She has begun to hate herself and her out-of-control body that never quite got back into shape after the second pregnancy, and she resents you because you’re always working. She’s nagging you. The nagging is benevolent at first, but over the years her attacks grow ever more vicious; she hates the way you chew, the way you swallow your food with an audible gulp, the way you button up your shirts to the very top; she hates the too-pungent scent of your aftershave. She also resents the hell out of you for having a life outside the family, and for having a successful career. You now regularly stay out late and go to strip-clubs with your banker-friends to avoid the spiteful spouse who’s waiting for you at home, ready to attack you as soon as she hears your keys in the lock. You no longer touch each other; you stopped having sex after the second child. Instead, to satisfy your still active cravings, you fuck your average-looking but w
illing secretary on your desk twice a week after everyone else has left the building.’

  ‘Stop it, Julia, that’s quite enough now,’ my mother, who had stood up, said sharply. ‘I think it’s time for more music, don’t you all agree?’

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ Julia said. ‘I’m almost done, I promise. I hate to break it to you, Jonathan – after all, this is a festive occasion, isn’t it? – but things are getting even worse. Oh dear! Your once gorgeous girl-children, who’ve grown up in an atmosphere of barely repressed hostility and poisonous resentment that has done horrible damage to their psycho-sexual development, are troubled. Seriously troubled. One of them is firmly in the clutches of a classic middle-class eating disorder. The other daughter is more aggressive; she’s angry as hell. She feels she’s never been properly loved; she feels that her mother has never forgiven her for ruining her pre-pregnancy figure. She marries young, just like you and Susanna, she gives birth to two-point-four gorgeous girl-children, but she can’t really bring herself to love them, and she soon begins to resent the hell out of her husband, who is always away, and she repeats the whole pointless story all over again. So, once again, my warmest congratulations to you two! Hurrah! To Jonathan and Susanna!’

  Nobody clapped, nobody laughed. Everyone had stopped eating and drinking. My parents looked pale and sombre, and Amy had started to cry. It was blatantly obvious to everyone that this wasn’t just a drunken, ill-judged attempt to deliver a funny speech. In fact, Julia was completely sober. She never drinks. It was an aggressive, malicious affront, deeply insulting to both Susanna and me, and designed to spoil our wedding day.