by Katie Lowe
‘That makes sense. Look – if you want me to … come over, afterwards, or whatever, you know to give me a call, don’t you?’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’
At the door, she turns. ‘And remember what I said, about these … friends of friends. Just be careful, won’t you?’
She doesn’t wait for an answer. My phone buzzes again in my hand: Tomorrow?
I stare at it for a moment. And then, I reply.
No problem. See you there.
I watch the smokers outside the hospital doors. For the first time in years, I feel the itch of it: the old craving. A habit I’d given up as a teenager, not long after my mum’s first hospitalization. I haven’t touched one, since. The air outside is bracing, compared with the stuffy heat inside, the dust from powdered shakes and ancient radiators adding to the effect. I walk around the unit, slowly, letting the fresh air fill my lungs.
I glance at my phone to check the time. Ten minutes until my next appointment. I sit on an empty bench and open a browser window. Hawkwood House, I type, slowly, into the search bar. What happened to archives.
I recognize my post – the top result – instantly. I’d clicked the verification link, weeks after I returned home with Evie. I was sleep-deprived, and exhausted, and I couldn’t quite remember what it had been for. It was just an automatic click. As the window slid into view, Evie began snuffling, growing to a scream. I’d closed the window, and forgotten all about it.
I click. There’s one reply. Last updated: 12 April 2008. @hmcll, have you read this? Might help with your search. My pulse rises a little in anticipation. I tap the link with my thumb. Nothing. Tap it again. The screen turns white and reloads. 404 error. Page could not be found. I squeeze the phone tight in my palm. I stand and return to the unit.
‘Tell me about this blog of yours.’
Amy’s eyes widen, the whites like half-moons. She pulls her sweatshirt around her, and says nothing.
‘I know you’ve been asking the nurses to give you the iPad. And I think it’s only fair that you understand why they’re going to continue to say no.’
I’m playing a part today. Sometimes, it’s necessary to be more authoritative with these girls, though it’s never come naturally to me. It’s a professional flaw of mine. Deep down, whether it’s good for my patients or not, I want to be liked.
But I’ve made this mistake before. It’s a mark on my ledger, a cross against my name. A death, for which I was – beyond all reasonable doubt – responsible.
It’s a mistake I don’t intend to make again.
‘Amy, I’m not trying to pick on you, or be mean, by bringing this up.’ She rolls her eyes. I choose to ignore it. ‘I just need to understand what’s going on. Because it’s clearly a destructive behaviour for you. And the impulse still seems to be there to do it.’
She says nothing. Only looks down at her hands, fingers tapping on her knees.
‘Do you want to know what I think?’ I raise a hand. ‘Don’t answer that. I know you don’t.’ These words, and this action, feel hackneyed, old hat. I’ve delivered this speech more times than I can count, with more patients than I care to remember. ‘But I’m going to tell you anyway.’
She sighs. ‘Of course you are.’
I let the words linger, a beat longer than polite. I watch the blush creep into her cheeks. She’s not a bad girl. This bravado doesn’t suit her, and she knows it.
‘I think you know, better than anyone else, that recovery is much, much harder than staying where you are. Moving forward takes work and, at the moment, I think you’re choosing to take the easy option instead.’
She looks down at her palms.
‘You know these things you’ve written, they’re …’ I adjust my tone. I soften. ‘I think you write them down to convince yourself they’re true. But they’re not.’
She looks up, her eyes fierce. ‘Well, you’d know all about that.’
‘Excuse me?’ My tone is icy.
I feel a thud of guilt. Teenagers, I remind myself. Push them, and they push back, three times as hard.
I’m gentler when I speak. ‘Tell me what you mean.’
‘I heard the nurses talking about it. About your husband.’
I say nothing. I wait for her to go on.
‘They were talking about it in the staff room, but … the door was open. I could hear them. We all could.’
‘And what did they say?’
‘Just that …’ She looks away, all her ferocity evaporating. ‘I don’t want to get them into trouble.’
‘You won’t. But I do need to know, Amy. Because if there are other patients thinking I can’t help them, because of some rumour going around about me …’ I know, as I say this, that I’m overstepping my bounds; I know I ought to gloss over it. To address it with the nurses directly.
But I know they won’t tell me the truth.
‘You’ll be doing me a favour by telling me. Because if I need to reassure you – and the rest of the patients, here – then I will. But I can’t do that if I don’t know what exactly I’m reassuring you about.’
She shrugs. ‘It was just that … They said they didn’t believe you when you said you couldn’t remember what happened. Not that they thought you’d killed him or anything – they weren’t saying that. But they just thought maybe you didn’t want to say what had really happened because it was … risky. Like maybe you were threatened into keeping quiet, or something.’
I nod. ‘OK. That’s helpful, Amy. Thank you.’
She says nothing. Only looks at me, curiously.
She’s waiting for me to deny it.
To tell her the nurses are wrong. And I could, without – technically – lying. Because the theory the nurses are spreading, according to Amy, at least, is the only one I know for a fact isn’t true.
‘It’s probably not appropriate for me to go into too much detail about my personal life. Therapeutically … it’s inadvisable. But …’ I try for a carefree laugh. It falls flat. ‘Well, it’s hardly my private business any more, is it?’
‘I guess not.’
‘The thing is, I really don’t remember what happened. It’s not all that uncommon. Every mind copes with trauma in a different way. And there’s no way to predict how any given person is going to react, until they’re in that situation. Some people remember the event so clearly that it’s almost like watching a movie. A lot of the time, with people like that, they’re part of the memory, but they’re also disconnected from it. It’s why people talk about having an “out of body” experience. The memory’s there, but – to help them cope with it – their mind puts them at a kind of remove.’
There’s a flicker of something in her face here; almost, I think, an identification.
She knows this feeling; knows it well. With this look, I’ve learned more than she’s ever shared with me, in almost a decade of therapy.
‘But then, you have other people who, for whatever reason, block the whole thing out. Maybe they’ll remember fragments: smells, sounds, certain words, which will trigger a sense of recognition, or … something like that. But their minds, to protect them from experiencing the trauma itself, will just … go elsewhere. They’ll dissociate from it, in theory because committing it to memory is worse than remembering … nothing at all.’
She’s silent for a moment. ‘Well, they’re both shitty options.’
I smile, and tap my pen against the page. ‘The thing is, if I could remember what happened – I’m speaking only from my own experience here, but … I think if I could remember, I’d probably want to work through it. Because I do believe – from working with other patients, with other traumas – that it’s better to process things like this than to let them fester. Which is why I’m always pushing you to talk. I know you hate it, and I know it’s an uncomfortable feeling – it’s scary, trying to face something you’ve kept inside for so long. But it’s got to be better than the alternative.’
I scan her face. I want to see if she beli
eves me. Because I’ve never felt like more of a hypocrite. I see her uncoiling in the silence. I say nothing. I wait for her to speak.
‘OK,’ she says, finally. ‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. OK. Let’s talk.’
By the time we finish our session, I’m elated. It’s a rare thing, to really get through to a patient. And for it to be Amy – whom I’ve watched grow up, the living shadow of Lucie, the girl I lost – feels like a personal victory. It almost makes the horror of Conviction worthwhile, for giving me an excuse to open up; to break down the therapeutic boundaries between us.
But, of course, it can’t last. As soon as I step outside, I scroll through the hundreds of notifications on my phone: the influx of emails from strangers, texts from half-forgotten friends.
Episode Two has gone live.
I throw my phone into my locker and walk away.
The insistent buzz of it gnaws at me each time I pass for the rest of the day.
16
‘Are you ready?’ Dan’s eyes glimmer in the dim light, the phone upturned on the table between us. ‘Because really – if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.’ And he’s right. I don’t have to. I suggested this. There’s no arguing that fact.
But it feels like my hand has been forced. Because it’s not a choice. I can’t disappear from him, each week, when the episode airs. I have to sit with him, to remind him who I really am. Or at least, who I’ve made him believe I am.
‘No,’ I say, with a reassuring smile. ‘I want to. I think … I think it’ll help.’
He picks up his phone. ‘Battery’s at twenty-four per cent. Should be enough.’ He presses play, and I hold my breath. It feels like we’re attending a séance, waiting for a ghost.
‘A good story,’ Graham says, all echoes and reverberations, the ancient tape wavering. ‘A good story has a life of its own. It’s a thing that lives and breathes. A thing that comes to life in a kind of agreement between the teller and the listener – a shared fantasy that makes even the wildest illusions real. They make us complicit, when we believe in them. They make us say, “Yes, I agree – I accept it. It exists for me.”’
The screen turns black, and the music begins.
‘Graham Catton loved stories,’ Anna Byers says, gently. ‘They were his great passion. He built his life around them, because he believed stories had power. He knew that they had the power to change things – to bring worlds to life, and to alter the course of history.
‘But the team prosecuting his murder knew that, too. They knew how to use that grain of truth to construct a story – one that led the jury to find guilt, where there was only bad luck, and coincidence.’
The music picks up the pace. My pulse rises in response.
‘They were led by a Mr Alastair Guildford, QC, a well-respected criminal barrister, with an impressive track record in prosecuting similar cases. Even the people who liked him called him “the bulldog”, thanks to his approach to questioning witnesses. He’d find their weaknesses, and refuse to let them go. It’s a skill that made him exceptionally good at his job.’
I remember him, in hushed conversation with Graham’s mother and the rest of his family. He seemed to make a point of never speaking to me. I wondered if that was a tactical decision: if he could only argue his case so long as I didn’t disprove it. If the stink of guilt on me – to him, so attuned to it – might throw him off his game.
‘I’m going to read his closing statement in its entirety, so that you can get a sense of what the prosecution wanted the jury to believe. Imagine yourself one of them – the twelve strangers listening, at the end of a nine-week-long trial. Put yourself in their shoes as you listen – and try to work out what you would believe.’
She takes a breath. The music changes, and she begins to play her part.
‘“The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that for all the obfuscation on the part of the defence, we know what happened, on that awful night. The chain of events can be read in the bruises Mrs Catton wore”’ – Doctor, I thought then, and think again, now, Dr Catton – ‘“in the blood that covered the walls of the Catton home, which soaked into their sheets and made a mockery of the life that they’d made. We can follow the defendant, Mike Philips, in our minds, as he slips into their home through an unlocked door – the sign of a sense of security and peace, if ever there was one.”’
In the memory, he turns to me, with a split-second glance. The jury’s eyes follow and settle there. There’s a woman among them who looks like me. I wonder if this will work in my favour; if our similarity will make her more inclined to take my side, or if she’ll recognize in me her own worst impulses – the version of herself she’d prefer not to see.
‘“We can see him, surprised to find Mrs Catton in the hallway, having left her husband sleeping as she went to check on her daughter, in bed. He hides, for a moment, in the bathroom. When Mrs Catton turns to face him, he takes his opportunity. He grabs her throat, like this.”’ I see his hand, stubby fingers forming a half-moon in the air.
The audience – jury, gallery, all of them – are rapt. They can see me, held there. They’ve seen women like me, like this, a thousand times, on screen; they’ve read this story in a thousand books. They can picture it without blinking. Without feeling it at all.
‘“He grabs her, and slams her into the wall, with incredible – ruthless – violence. She is knocked unconscious, instantly.”’
It may not feel real to them. But this – this is a moment that feels real to me. The memory of the impact aches in my teeth.
Dan’s fingers wind through mine and squeeze. His skin is deathly white, eyes hollow as bruises. I squeeze back. I remember the time Graham fractured a bone in his foot in a weekend rugby match. His foot. Not mine. But still, I felt it. I felt myself walk unsteadily on stairs, my ankle aping his roll to the right for weeks. I wonder if Dan feels the same.
As the thought rises, he rubs his free hand on his throat. Guilt threatens to swallow me whole.
‘“This is a vicious assault. But, at this point, the defendant could have left. We might then have viewed the attack on Mrs Catton as a mere moment of panic, of lashing out – of self-preservation, even. Philips was, after all, an inexperienced burglar – he didn’t know any better.
‘“And even if, after the assault, he’d taken what he came for – the couples’ mobile phones, jewellery, cash – and then run … His might have been a crime we could, as onlookers, have found a way to understand. Poverty, after all, makes people do reckless things. And for the Cattons, losing a few material possessions would, yes, have been a violation – but one that they could no doubt live with.
‘“But the facts of the case – the facts of what happened, in the Catton home, that night – tell a different story. Because Mike Philips looks down at the unconscious woman lying at his feet. And he feels something in him change. He becomes aware of the power he has, in this situation. And he likes it.”’
Anna Byers goes on, right away, though I remember it differently. I remember the silence. I remember the pitying eyes of the jury on me, while I tried to look impassively on. I remember the sour, sickly taste in my mouth. The sense that something had been missed; that some part of this story was wrong.
‘“He feels the weight of the knife in his hand – the one he’d pulled, minutes earlier, from the kitchen, intending to use it only as a threat. But now, he’s excited. He’s alive. Now, it feels full of a dark – an evil – potential. He leaves Mrs Catton unconscious on the floor, and walks on.
‘“Through the half-open bedroom door, he sees Graham Catton, asleep in his bed. He closes the door behind him. Graham Catton doesn’t hear a thing.”’
The music swells and recedes. Across the table, Dan shivers, and then smiles, apologetically. I smile, weakly, back.
‘“He’s a deep sleeper. He doesn’t hear his wife being knocked unconscious two rooms away – and he doesn’t hear Mike Philips’s footsteps on the hardwood f
loor. It’s only at the last moment – while the defendant stands over him, watching him sleep – that he opens his eyes. Just in time to see the face of the man who will take his life.
‘“Mike Philips – the man in front of you today – plunges the knife into his throat, once. Decisively. Like a man who knows exactly what he means to do.”’
There, for a moment, and gone: Graham’s body, in front of my eyes. The wound in the neck, the teeth terribly bared, skin already turning slack and chalky white. Dan clears his throat, nervously – and the memory disappears.
‘“This is what the evidence shows. This is what Mike Philips did to this innocent husband and father. Maybe he waited to watch him die; it certainly wouldn’t have taken long. And he wouldn’t have been afraid of Catton fighting back. A wound like the one he inflicted would have his victim unconscious in no time at all.
‘“What we know is that, after, he walked away, leaving almost no trace of himself behind. He walked by the still-unconscious body of Mrs Catton, and closed the door behind him, disappearing into the night.
‘“When he got home, at last, he threw his gloves into the bins outside his flat. He climbed the stairs and went to sleep. And the next morning – after leaving a wife without a husband, and a five-year-old girl without a father – he went out to play football, as though he didn’t have a care in the world.”’
The music cuts in again. A swell, a grand fermata. I wait. Hold my breath. Dan shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, and looks at me. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he mouths, aged by it. Stricken.
I want to mouth something back, to offer some comfort. But I can’t.
‘The thing is, though …’ Byers draws breath. I feel her lean into the mic. Gone is the soothing voice adopted as she’d played the barrister’s part. Now she’s all herself; all teeth, cheerfully bared. I wonder if she imagines me among her listeners. I wonder if it’s my face she pictures in the darkness beyond.
‘For all Guildford’s fabulous speeches, and all his admittedly convincing storytelling … the evidence doesn’t really show that. These things we know happened. The chain of events we can follow – so many of these are founded in what on one hand might be a reasonable assessment of the case as provided by police, but on the other might be described as barely more than a fantasy. A story. Something spun, frankly, out of thin air, by a detective so determined to get a conviction that she would ignore clear gaps in the evidence in front of her, just to put someone away.