by Anne Buist
Back on the bike, Natalie headed into Welbury.
Sandra opened the door.
‘I need to see Tiphanie.’
Sandra stood firmly in the doorway. ‘She’s moving on. She doesn’t need any shrink in her life. Leave her be.’
‘Tell her I know about Japan.’ Natalie’s stance was just as determined.
‘It’s okay, Mum,’ said Tiphanie from the end of the corridor. She came to the door. ‘We’re going out.’
They walked.
‘So what do you think you know?’ Tiphanie was cautious, still hopeful.
‘I have a photo on my camera if you need to see it.’ Natalie let it remain hanging in its case off her shoulder. ‘It was you not telling anyone about the broken arm when you were a kid that got me thinking. That told me how tough you are. Then there was Amber squeezing your hand at the funeral.’ It wasn’t as if Amber wouldn’t sympathise with Tiphanie, but there had been a particular intimacy in that action.
Natalie paused. Tiphanie’s rigid stance wasn’t inviting empathy but she wanted to hug her all the same. ‘Then you visited her in prison; they keep records you know. You two were more to each other than just women who had children to the same man. But,’ said Natalie, ‘Japan finally did it. Two reasons, I guess. It’s a difficult language and to do it by correspondence you would have to be very motivated and work damned hard. Which means you’re smart.’
They reached a public garden space and Natalie leaned over the fence, watching children playing in the distance. ‘Then the toys, at the memorial service. They were too big. Little children like toys they can cuddle and hold close. The ones at the ceremony were not the ones you told me were her favourites. I saw one with her in the paper. I imagine the same one that goes to bed at night with her. Still.’ Natalie paused. ‘You provoked your mother because you needed to distance yourself and Chloe. The maternal child health nurse described you as an exemplary mother, which fitted with the story you told me of never leaving her. It fitted with how you missed her and worried about her, but only if you knew she was safe. I thought about the screaming the neighbours heard in the back garden that day, and about your explanation. I believed you. You were having fun. Because you knew you were going to have to separate for a while. Which was at odds with her watching cartoons all morning, and being left to fend for herself.’
There was a long silence as tears ran down Tiphanie’s face. She made no attempt to wipe them.
‘What’s the second thing about Japan?’
‘It’s a damn long way away,’ said Natalie.
‘I’m not coming back. Ever.’ Tiphanie looked at her hard. ‘If you haven’t told anyone I can still do it. We both can. Live happily ever after.’ There was focus and a fierceness Natalie had never seen before. Her father was right. She was a survivor.
‘My family don’t know,’ she added.
‘Amber’s family does.’
Tiphanie still wouldn’t acknowledge it. ‘If you tell Travis, he’ll kill me.’
All things considered, Natalie doubted it.
‘And, he’d have access to her,’ Tiphanie said. Her eyes narrowed, letting Natalie reflect on the implications that Tiphanie had weighed up over weeks, if not months. ‘I’ll never go back to him, but the fucking courts will give him access. Custody, if I get put away for what I’ve done. Without me there to protect her, he’ll kill her.’ She turned on Natalie and hit her hard on the chest, pummelling her with all her strength. ‘You fucking can’t. He tried to kill her once already, just like I pretended it happened. He threw her and she hit her head. It was what made up my mind. I was going to make a better life for us both. Protect her no matter what. Because he’ll do it again, I know he will.’
Natalie, who was much the same size as Tiphanie, was struggling to remain upright under the onslaught. In the end she swept her leg under Tiphanie’s so the girl landed on her butt.
‘This conversation never happened,’ said Natalie.
Chapter 34
‘You look calmer than I have seen you in a while.’ Declan observed.
‘Thank you for not reporting me,’ said Natalie. ‘I wasn’t manic and I’m out of those cases now.’
She wouldn’t relax completely until Travis had been convicted but he had been refused bail which augured well. She was taking her pills again; full dose. ‘I’ve made my mind up on Georgia,’ Natalie added.
Declan raised an eyebrow. ‘An absolute truth?’
‘No.’
Declan waited.
‘To be honest, I don’t know what I’m going to say in court.’
‘You have three options, as I recall,’ said Declan. ‘One: Bad—she had a personality disorder and acted in anger when killing her children. Two: Mad—she had D.I.D.’
‘It might be a variation of the third one: grey and murky. Personality disorder plus external influence; there was pathology in the relationship, no doubt. Paul isn’t the main driver if he’s involved at all. But that’s gut feeling, no real evidence.’
This wasn’t black and white, it was real life with all its complexities. But Georgia was in control. And when she had worked out what Georgia had been doing, it had opened her eyes to Tiphanie.
‘You’d better read it,’ said Natalie, putting her report on Corinne’s desk. ‘Wadhwa will go mental.’
Corinne’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I thought you decided he was right.’
‘She had me conned for a while.’
‘I’m meeting with him at eleven o’clock. Make sure he has a copy before then and be here to defend it.’
‘I don’t know about the genetics,’ Natalie began, feeling curiously detached and barely registering Wadhwa’s look of simmering fury. ‘Certainly the rejecting mother—both her real one and her aunt—and an affectionate but abusive father left their mark on her personality from an early age. She was a smart child who craved love and acceptance but saw that the love of a man was the kind that counted.’
‘Not the love of a child?’ Corinne rather than Wadhwa.
‘I think she mostly felt her children were in competition with her. The first pregnancy was no use to her, and I imagine it was quite easy for her to separate herself from it. The others? There were probably times she had positive feelings, even love. Olivia probably lasted the longest because she was little trouble. But ultimately as a toddler she was becoming her own person, and Georgia couldn’t tolerate that. She couldn’t share Paul’s affection.’
‘She dissociates!’ said Wadhwa.
‘Yes, but not into complete personalities, and not enough to explain murder,’ said Natalie.
Corinne looked at her curiously. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘She has a mixed Cluster B personality disorder—narcissistic, borderline and antisocial—and she’s smart. She doesn’t have well-defined personalities, nor shifts that last any length of time. She probably dissociates, but only briefly. And the time she did it in my office, at least, it was carefully orchestrated.’ She thought about the toy rabbit and the envelope that just happened to fall out of her bag. ‘She has had this planned for a long time; she planned it when she was in prison.’
Natalie wasn’t sure about everything, but most things had fallen into place. The card with the Sydney postmark? All she needed was a friend in Sydney. It was not beyond the realms of possibility that she had enlisted her mother, Lee.
But this was where the evidence ran out and her intuition took over and where she’d have preferred to present her third hypothesis. There were things about Paul that didn’t ring quite true. Why had he stayed in the marriage so long? The word amused rang in her ears; his word or hers? He had found Jonah, the boy, dead. He could have sent the cards.
But given the first pregnancy was before Paul, Georgia’s pathology was still the common factor.
‘She was in prison, a prison full of women from troubled pasts and not as smart as her on the whole. She just had to wait for the right one, with the right story.’
Wadhwa snorted. ‘I think you are spending too much time with the police and lawyers.’
‘Possibly,’ agreed Natalie, ‘though not for much longer.’
Corinne looked at her quizzically but said nothing.
‘I think she decided to see me because I have a reputation for telling the court how it is, for getting…over-involved. She thought I was a man-hater or at least a crusader against down-trodden women, from Amber, one of my patients in prison, and that she’d be able to use this to fool me.’
Georgia would have heard about the pink bunny rabbits from the prisoners, as well as directly from Celeste. Enough to allow her to frame Paul as a paedophile when she was afraid her D.I.D. diagnosis wasn’t going to work. And do it slowly and subtly. Georgia had known from Barrett that the chances of D.I.D. getting her off were low—and that Natalie wasn’t committed to it. Ironic in retrospect: when Barrett had asked, Natalie was on the verge of being convinced Georgia did have D.I.D.
‘Georgia had enough to set up her husband Paul. And there was an element of luck. There was a connection with a serious paedophile I knew about, and she picked my reaction, my request for a photocopy of her bunny card, and went with it.’ Natalie remembered staring at the logo on the card, Georgia watching her and then demurely agreeing to mention it to Jacqueline Barrett. Georgia must have thought she’d hit the mother lode.
Wadhwa looked as if he was going to explode. ‘This is preposterous!’
Natalie ignored him.
‘It’s particularly critical because if Georgia can get the murder charges changed to infanticide she’ll get a much lighter sentence. She may be able to do it because Olivia was one week short of her second birthday, and Olivia died in the year Victoria amended the act to extend infanticide up to the age of two. If I had to put money on it I’d say that had something to do with the timing of the death.’
‘This is a very brilliant legal case,’ said Wadhwa, ‘but not a psychiatric one. What is your evidence?’
‘Evidence?’ Natalie thought better of reminding him he had told her psychiatrists should rely on history and mental state. ‘I know about the link with Amber, which was her link to me. I think Georgia used to push the patients here for information too; all the abuse victims tended to get worse when they were here in Yarra Bend with her.’
Natalie took a breath. ‘Then there’s Paul, Georgia’s husband. Paul denies sending the cards.’ He had been convincing; maybe not totally innocent, maybe stupid, but thankfully for his daughter, Miranda, there was no evidence for him being a threat, beyond the line Georgia had spun.
‘Anything more?’ asked Corinne.
‘This.’ Natalie produced her notes from the prison.
Wadhwa grabbed at them. ‘And this is?’
‘Georgia was studying an arts course. These are the subjects she took.’
The three of them looked at the list: Freudian Analysis, Psychology and the Law, Mental Disorder and Criminal Responsibility.
‘So she plans to use this as an entry into a degree in criminology,’ suggested Corinne.
‘Right.’
Wadhwa started to object. He looked confused by Natalie’s sarcasm.
‘Ultimately,’ said Corinne slowly, ‘it is not up to you to apportion blame. You only have to state what you have been told and observed, and what your conclusions are, based on this.’
‘This is all nonsense,’ said Wadhwa throwing Natalie’s notes onto Corinne’s desk. ‘She has D.I.D. and she was not responsible for her actions.’
‘Possibly,’ agreed Natalie, ‘but we don’t know that do we? I’ve seen her angry and she was very much in control.’ She had turned the anger on herself. The self-harm had been occurring right after Genevieve was born. Mutilating her genitals was perhaps a way of punishing herself for failing as a mother, hurting herself initially, as the rage built, rather than hurting her children. Or perhaps hurting herself because of what she had done to them. With or without Paul pushing the buttons. She was damaged, of that there was no doubt. But she had the mental capacity to make choices and understand consequences. That was the difference, ultimately, between bad and mad.
‘I know she has D.I.D.’
‘Really, Associate Professor Wadhwa?’ Natalie and Wadhwa both stared at Corinne. There was a tense silence.
‘Are you questioning my judgment?’
Corinne looked at Wadhwa pointedly. ‘You think there is no chance she knew what she was doing?’
‘That is correct.’
‘Your certainty is rather alarming Professor Wadhwa. Natalie has been seeing Georgia Latimer for some time, and psychiatry has its grey areas, don’t you think?’
Wadhwa pulled out a well-used sheet of paper from his leather compendium. ‘I am the senior clinician. You must accept my professional judgment or I have no choice but to resign.’
Corinne looked at it, then at Natalie, before stretching out her hand. ‘Thank you, Professor Wadhwa. I’m sure we’ll all miss you.’
Operation Bunny was on the front page of the Saturday papers. Jesse Cadek had been arrested. It seemed like there would be months of trawling through his computers and following up but the police were already questioning two other men. There was a small inset picture of Liam O’Shea, and interviews with him on the evening news. He looked pleased. Travis made page three of the same edition. Bail denied. The media had already convicted him and cast doubt over the police investigation into the death of his first child. Amber’s family had declined to comment.
Damian came to Melbourne to have Sunday lunch with her. ‘Our boy is shitting himself. Thinks he’s going down for life without parole. Still saying he’s innocent.’ Damian looked at her hard. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’
‘Just a lot to take in.’
Damian looked like he was contemplating asking her something, but then decided against it. ‘Helped that we found out Travis was thrown out of school for downloading pornographic literature, among other things,’ Damian added. ‘When we impounded his computer Travis became convinced we were going to frame him for pornography. Probably more worried now if he’s read the papers.’
‘You deserve a promotion, Damian,’ said Natalie. ‘You got the bad guy put away.’
Damian just looked at her.
Chapter 35
Natalie hadn’t booked anyone in
to Jessie’s appointment slot, though she didn’t think Jessie would turn up. But people could surprise you. Beverley buzzed to say she was on her way in.
Jessie looked washed out, but managed a smile. It might have been a week since her hair had seen shampoo.
‘They took him away.’
Natalie nodded. ‘How are you feeling about that?’
Jessie looked out the window. Natalie watched Jessie use the silence that followed to feel contained, safe. Jessie had already shown great strength. Now she needed Natalie to believe in her: trust her to deal with whatever came up in the aftermath of her abuser’s arrest. Not alone, but empowered as well as supported by Natalie and those around her.
‘I don’t know,’ Jessie said. ‘The first thing I thought was that I needed to do something. Like I was to blame, and somehow I had to help him.’
‘And then?’
‘Hannah said I was talking shit. Thinks he’ll get what he deserves in prison. Kyle says he’s an arsehole too.’
‘Kyle?’
‘He never liked Jay. He’s being great. Better now he’s got it straight that I’m gay’—she grinned—‘and want to wait for Hannah.’
Natalie smiled. The beginnings of the support network she needed were in place.
‘I think Jay shopped Hannah to the police.’ Jessie looked to Natalie for confirmation.
Natalie nodded. The more she had thought about it, the more Jay’s acceptance of Jessie’s relationship didn’t gel. But he’d been able to effectively remove Hannah from Jessie’s life. Which meant he hadn’t been as worried about Hannah as he had been about Natalie.