by Anne Buist
For a moment Natalie thought Jessie was going to push her and grab it, and she leaned back to show that she wouldn’t prevent her. Jessie stood, hesitated.
‘If you understand it, maybe you can save me,’ she whispered.
At the end of the session, after the door closed behind Jessie, Natalie pulled out the computer and looked at it. There was something on it Jessie was ambivalent about. Should she look? Did Jessie hope she would?
Beverley caught Natalie before she took Georgia in.
‘The Prosecutor’s office rang,’ she said.
Natalie wondered if Beverley and Carol hit it off. Maybe they swapped dentist details or nail specialists. Beverley’s latest nails were impressive. ‘Very patriotic,’ Natalie remarked, noting the green and gold.
‘What? Thanks. I said you were busy until Thursday and then in Sydney.’
‘Did they say what they wanted me for? Do I need to ring back?’ Had they found something in the car Travis had borrowed from Rick?
‘Don’t know,’ said Beverley.
Natalie handed her Jessie’s computer. ‘When you get a chance can you back the files up?’ Beverley started listing the things she had to do but Natalie was already collecting Georgia from the waiting room.
Georgia looked like she wanted to be anywhere but where she was. Her clothes, all black, seemed to have been chosen to fit her mood. She denied she was feeling anything other than ‘fine’ when Natalie made the observation, but her statements were terse until Natalie asked her to talk about Jonah.
‘Why? It’s just all the same stuff again and again,’ said Georgia. ‘I can’t see it’s getting me anywhere or what it’s achieving.’ She gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘We waited three years before getting pregnant again.’ Georgia was staring out the window as she spoke. Natalie took notes.
‘It had been horrible. I can’t tell you how horrible. People saying how sorry they were was almost as bad as when they didn’t know what to say. People saying how brave we were to try again…We felt we’d had our bad luck.’
‘You were a nurse. Did you ever consider it might have been a genetic problem?’
‘Not really. I mean, the children all looked perfect. The pregnancy was difficult. I was tired, I threw up a lot. Paul was very worried about me.’
Georgia was still looking out the window. ‘Jonah came a week early. He seemed fine, though. A good feeder, better than the girls. Hungrier, at least.’
‘Did you breastfeed?’
‘I didn’t make enough milk. Jonah was a very unsettled baby. I wonder sometimes if my being anxious through the pregnancy affected him somehow. That’s possible isn’t it?’
Natalie nodded.
‘He was always hungry but he gulped, you know, then he’d get wind and throw up. We took him to the GP and the paediatrician. We tried different formulas and medicines. They said he’d grow out of it. Of course that never happened.’
‘What happened the night he died?’
‘Nothing,’ said Georgia. ‘He fed at eleven and then three in the morning, and I went back to bed. Paul checked him at seven and couldn’t wake him.’
Natalie and Georgia looked at each other. Georgia’s coldness was back: a form of self-protection or was it how she really felt about the loss of a third child? And a boy that perhaps neither of them wanted? Was there any significance of it being Paul who’d found the child?
‘What about the next pregnancy? Tell me about the knitting needles.’
Georgia turned her head slowly and stared. Natalie had to work hard at keeping her expression neutral. ‘You read the papers.’
‘Yes.’
‘There were no knitting needles.’ Georgia crossed her arms.
Natalie made a note to ask her lawyer. Any inconsistency needed consideration: as much as she didn’t want Wadhwa to be right, ensuring Georgia was properly diagnosed and treated was more important than their point-scoring, as Declan had reminded her.
‘I got another card,’ Georgia said suddenly. She tossed it onto the desk.
‘Where’s the envelope? Did you recognise the writing?’
‘I threw it away. It was typed.’
Natalie picked up the card. On the surface it was less concerning than the last one. One large rabbit and a smaller one: a scene from Peter Rabbit.
‘It’s him and Miranda,’ said Georgia in a voice barely more than a whisper. But Natalie wasn’t paying much attention. Her focus was on the small hand-drawn logo on the back. Had it been on the last one too? It looked just like the one Liam had sketched for her on the napkin.
Amber, finally out on parole after two years, was booked to see her next. She needed to tell Declan. He couldn’t blame her for Amber making the appointment but he would insist Natalie not see her again. Given the connection Amber had with Tiphanie, this did make sense. But it was hard to deny the strong sense of responsibility she felt towards Amber. No one she referred her to would care as much.
When Natalie walked into the waiting room, Amber stood then hesitated. Natalie took the initiative and stepped forward and hugged her. ‘You’re out.’
Amber nodded. She was crying. ‘It’s all so strange.’
In Natalie’s office Amber was no more settled. She looked like she hadn’t been sleeping.
‘Tiphanie’s still in prison.’ Amber sat in the chair but moved almost immediately to perch on the armrest.
‘She’s in hospital.’
‘She can’t leave,’ said Amber, dropping back into the chair. ‘I can’t bear this. Isn’t there anything you can do?’
‘A lot is being done, Amber. She isn’t you.’
‘I could have stopped it if I’d told the truth.’
‘Talking about the threats wouldn’t have changed anything,’ said Natalie. Amber knew as well as she did that the lawyers believed that bringing in the battered wife argument would have undermined the infanticide defence.
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’ Amber didn’t look at her. Natalie was conscious of holding her breath.
Amber whispered something that Natalie didn’t catch.
‘Sorry?’
‘It didn’t happen the way I said it did.’ Amber was looking directly at her.
‘All right.’ Natalie kept her voice low and even. ‘Tell me what did happen.’
Was Kay right after all? Amber had tried to tell her something in the prison, but she’d been too high to hear, interrupting rather than listening. She was listening now.
‘We’d been arguing. Like always. Bella-Kaye had kept us up the night before and she’d been unsettled all day. I was tired and I was crying. He said things to me.’ She sniffed, fishing in her bag for a tissue. ‘Like you can’t do anything right, you cow, and what sort of mother are you?’
‘Did you respond?’
Amber shook her head. ‘I had dinner ready for him.’ Her voice was faint and flat. ‘Bella-Kaye started crying while I was finishing it off and I froze. I couldn’t settle her or finish dinner. I just stood there watching it sticking to the bottom of the pan and Travis threw it over me.’ Tears had starte
d to trickle down her cheeks. A full minute passed before she continued. ‘I was just standing there covered in potato. Carrots in my hair. It had splashed on my face and it burned me, but I don’t remember feeling anything.’
Natalie remembered her face on the police video and how flushed Amber had looked. Not flushed; scalded. In the version of the story that had gone to court, Travis hadn’t been there, had yet to arrive home from work.
‘Travis was laughing. He said how stupid I looked. He told me I had better clean myself up, said I looked pathetic.’
Amber grasped the edge of the chair tightly. ‘I was pathetic. I can’t believe—’
‘Amber,’ said Natalie, ‘you had put up with months of abuse; he’d made you believe it. You were acting how he was telling you to.’ No worse than the psychology students in those prisoner and guard experiments. In Amber’s case there had been a long lead-up, a concerted campaign on Travis’s part, to belittle her. Not many people could withstand a constant barrage of being told they were worthless and not start to believe it.
‘I went to the bathroom, like a robot,’ Amber continued. ‘I had run a bath for Bella-Kaye but I had forgotten about it and the water had gone cold. She started screaming, you know, in her bassinet. I think she was hungry, but Travis yelling scared her. Her eyes used to go wide and…and her bottom lip would tremble.’ Amber looked up at Natalie through her tears. ‘She was only six weeks old.’
Natalie kept her hand on Amber’s. They were both there, one reliving it and the other picturing it so clearly that she had to swallow to stop bile filling her mouth.
‘He started yelling even louder, calling Bella-Kaye… a…a…cunt just like me. I, I didn’t know what to do. So I…I went out to get her and I thought I could give her a bath. I mean, I was washing myself, and I guess I knew baths soothed her and she hadn’t had one.’
Amber’s body was racked with her sobs. She had never told the full story, even to her family. Even through the therapy with Natalie, her shame—the deeper belief that she was everything Travis had called her—had made her hold this back.
‘He followed me. He was still yelling and Bella-Kaye was screaming and I…I just couldn’t think straight. I put her in the bath. She…she even had her clothes still on. It was cold by then so of course she cried even more. Then…then…’
Natalie waited, not wanting to hear but knowing she had to. Had to allow Amber to tell the truth so she could get on with her life. Not guilt-free. But perhaps, eventually, she could forgive herself.
‘Travis yanked me back and wouldn’t let go,’ said Amber, now a whisper again. ‘He…oh my God, he laughed. I can still hear him laughing.’ She shivered. ‘I saw Bella-Kaye disappear under the water and the look of surprise on her face, but she…she was quiet and it seemed, seemed…easier.’
‘He was holding you.’
‘Yes.’ Amber bit her lip. ‘But he wasn’t holding me that hard.’
Natalie put her arm around Amber, fighting her repugnance, knowing that what Amber said was the truth but that there had been no malice in her action—or rather inaction. It had been a desperate and hopeless acquiescence to the peace she’d craved. Respite from the confusion, the fatigue; the overwhelming inability to think rationally. But by giving in, she had failed to save her much-loved and wanted child.
‘It’s why I didn’t ask for bail,’ she said after a moment of silence. ‘Travis did it but I let him, I didn’t fight him. He had said one of us needed to die and I let it be her and it should have been me. He wanted to kill me too; after she was dead he said it was my fault and I had to do exactly what he said, how he didn’t deserve to have such a useless wife who couldn’t even protect her own child. So instead of dying, I’m living in hell.’
It all finally made sense. By the time of the plea Amber had wanted to leave prison. Natalie had thought it was the reality of prison life setting in, but she had also broken up with Travis, and had gained some insight into how he had manipulated her. Natalie broke the silence.
‘Amber, you need to tell this to the police.’
Amber looked up. ‘No.’
‘You can talk to your lawyer first,’ said Natalie. ‘You’ve already been convicted so it won’t affect your charges in any negative way. You need to do this for Tiphanie.’
‘I can’t go through it again, I just can’t. I don’t want to ever see Travis again.’ The diffidence had vanished. ‘I’ve already killed my father; it would be the last straw for Mum.’
‘I don’t think she’d be…surprised to find Travis did it.’ Had Travis really confessed to Amber’s father or to someone Kay didn’t want to implicate? Or had Kay simply guessed?
‘It doesn’t matter. She had to sell part of the farm to pay for my lawyer. We can’t afford to do it again. You can’t make me, and you can’t tell anyone what I’ve said.’
Amber was right. But if Damian and Liam knew, they could use the information to help Tiphanie.
‘Tiphanie will get out anyway won’t she?’ Amber asked.
‘What if she doesn’t?’ Natalie pushed her harder, for Tiphanie’s sake. Damian and Liam were both slower than she would like. And there was the neighbours’ testimony to complicate matters, information she couldn’t share with Amber.
‘I can’t,’ Amber repeated, starting to shake. ‘You promise, don’t you?’
Amber was her patient too. If she had come clean earlier, things could have been so different. Had she closed Amber down too soon? Been too ready to let her accept the blame?
Natalie knew that the confession had taken strength. It would take more to face a charge of perjury or, perhaps worse, face her mother, brother and friends and help them make sense of what had really happened. Amber and her family had already been through hell. If Amber told the truth now it would be all rehashed; she’d be back in the papers. The police or courts might well not believe her.
‘I promise,’ said Natalie.
‘Senior Constable Hudson here. Tony.’
‘News?’
‘Possibly.’ Senior Constable Hudson’s tone didn’t fill Natalie with hope her stalker had been charged and locked away. But ringing this early in the morning meant something.
‘Are you going into your rooms today?’
‘No.’ She had finished there for the week.
‘I’d like you to.’
‘Care to expand on that?’
‘There was a break-in. I want to know if they were after you.’
She felt a wave of nausea. He seemed to be taking her little problem very seriously, but she wasn’t sure that she found that comforting.
When Natalie arrived at the Punt Road rooms, the police were long gone. Glass shards were pushed to one side of the door; Victorian mansions weren’t built as fortresses and the broken glass panels gave easy access to the door handle. The thief would have been eyeball to eyeball with the small sign saying No drugs kept on the premises.
‘Anything missing?’ she asked Beverley.
‘Not that we’ve found.’
Her two colleagues in the coffee room said their rooms were untouched; so not a random vandal. She walked into her room, which she shared with another psychiat
rist who used it on her days at Yarra Bend, and hadn’t arrived yet.
Natalie looked at the filing cabinets and opened the drawers. She only kept her current files here, the rest were in the storage room. Nothing missing; but she could feel the intruder’s fingerprints. The files were still in alphabetical order—but backwards, as if he had taken them all out to go through them. If there was one that he was after, he had read it. He was making sure she knew.
Natalie stood in the middle of the room and closed her eyes. She knew her imagination was being fuelled by fear but she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was in the room with her. There was nothing obvious. No papers thrown over the floor or vase smashed on the hearth of the fireplace. She sat in her chair, aware of the sweat of her palms against the leather. Closing her eyes she tried to picture the room as she had left it. Opening them she stared at her desk. Then saw it. Or rather, saw what was not there.
The photo had always been a bit of a joke. Psychiatrists weren’t meant to have anything personal in their rooms, no family photos or things that identified them as anything other than the neutral holding container that the patient could use as they needed. Not that Natalie would have put up family photos even if she had been allowed. But a photo Tom had taken of Bob reminded her to keep a sense of humour. Now it was missing. The thief had already been in her home, knew Bob was her housemate. It was a direct threat.
Chapter 22
The cheapest fare to Sydney for the annual forensic conference was first thing on Friday morning. Tom was taking Bob to his house. The theft of the photo had made her jumpy.
Bob greeted her with ‘How do you feel!’, landed on her shoulder and bit her ear. ‘Ouch, Bob!’ said Natalie. ‘Keep doing that and I’ll let the stalker have you.’