by Laura Elliot
‘I’m not the one who needs to see a therapist.’
‘This self-harming must never happen again.’ He ignored her comment and bundled her nightdress, along with the towel, back into the laundry basket. He removed a silver bowl in the shape of a curved leaf from the dressing table. Amelia used it to hold her rings and earrings. The only thing resting in its hollowed centre when he carried it back to the bed was a razor blade. He sat back down and balanced it lightly between his fingers.
‘Why did you feel it necessary to lie to my mother?’ he asked.
‘What lies did I tell her?’ A reason at last. Amelia fixed her gaze on the razor blade. Such a slender weapon, so slick and fast.
‘You accused me of being a violent husband.’
‘How else would you describe yourself, Nicholas?’
‘A husband who adores you. I don’t have a “dark side” to my personality, as you so dramatically put it. All I’ve ever wanted to do, and will continue to do, is to love you until death do us part. Think about what that means, darling. You could have slashed your wrists last night and drowned in the bath, especially as you had taken an overdose of tablets. I might not have found you in time. The preciousness of life. How easily it can be taken from us.’
* * *
She stayed in bed all day. She was unable to eat and refused food each time he carried a tray into the bedroom. What had happened to her last night? Another blackout? That was impossible. Apart from the two glasses of champagne he had pressed upon her, she had not touched alcohol since that evening with her friends. Two days since they were here. Two nights since Jay. The freedom in the air then. So palpable she could have hugged it. Now, it was sucked dry, acrid, and even the memory of Jay, his tenderness, the joy she had experienced in his arms, all gone, dispersed by this new terror. She pulled her nightdress from the laundry basket and examined the splatters of blood on the front of it. How could she have cut herself and been unaware that she was committing such a violent act? The only answer was the obvious one. Nicholas had cut her. This accusation almost choked her when he returned to the bedroom and laid a cup of coffee on the bedside table, but she forced herself to remain silent.
She stood in front of the full-length mirror after he left and examined the bruise on her left breast. Reddened skin, as if teeth had sunk deeply into the tender skin around her nipple. The same kind of mark on her thigh. Did it explain the dull, throbbing ache between her legs? The bloodstains on the nightdress blurred as she felt her mind exploding. The night of the Christmas party; she was back there again, hearing the roar of the sea. No… no… She clamped her hands to her head as she tried to force the images into a shape she could understand. She had been in the bath, water cascading, bubbles. Her legs going from under her. Eyes open, her body floppy, unresponsive, jolting. Tendrils of wet hair in her eyes, unable to fight back. Last night had been the same. Whatever had occurred during those forgotten hours was somewhere in her consciousness, waiting to be freed. He had found another way to violate her. Another memory stirred. Paper, she had signed something. She recalled the pen in her hand and Nicholas picking it up when it fell from her fingers. What document would demand her signature? Her will? It was the only answer. She had willed Woodbine to him in the event of her death?
The bandages had been tight on her arms, wrapped with clinical precision. No need for them. The wounds would heal easily. It was what they symbolised. A binding. Her throat tightened, as if his thumbs were already pressing hard against the carotid arteries.
Rohypnol. When he left for work the following morning, she keyed the word into her laptop. Impaired memory, partial amnesia, especially when mixed with alcohol, confusion, panic attacks, breathlessness. It was as she suspected. The drug of choice for men who need to prove they are not firing blanks. She wiped the history from her laptop, knowing that Nicholas would find a way to probe through the sites she had opened, the information she had absorbed, the memories that had been returned to her.
She walked to the empty space where her father’s cross had stood. Leaves were beginning to turn, their green vitality seeping into the rustic hues of autumn, but Amelia could only see his body falling into the ditch below her. Water flooding his mouth, blinding him. Echoes rustled between the reeds and, in their sway, Nicholas’s voice rushed upon her once again. It gurgled in the rising stream and it seemed as if her disjointed memories had become the spate of a river in full flow… blue lights shining – jets of water… his hand on her mouth – whore, bitch, cunt – ’til death do us part… I’ll find you if you dare to leave me – I’ll find you even if it takes forever…
* * *
The madness of those first letters. What a purging. Each violent act held up to the light and judged for what it was. Leanne wrote back by return of post, addressing the letters to Amelia’s interior design studio. Nicholas opened every envelope that came to Woodbine. Nothing was safe from his curiosity; emails, texts, phone calls – all could be the breeding ground for her infidelity.
She shredded the letters as soon as she had read them, afraid to leave anything to chance. When he arrived unexpectedly at her studio one evening just as she was destroying Leanne’s most recent letter, she shoved the page and envelope she was about to shred into her pocket.
It was, Nicholas said, the anniversary of their first date and he had booked a meal for her in their favourite restaurant, the Peach Tree. How could he remember a date that she had wiped from her memory? When she returned home, she added the envelope to the store of mementoes in the ice house, rushing back to the living room before he could notice her absence.
Her fear grew as the gap between sanity and madness began to close. Her fear of his willpower became deeper than her fear of water. Her longing to escape deeper than her love for Woodbine. Her affection for the old house had turned it into her prison and, two months later, knowing there was only one way to escape from his violence, she made her decision.
Part Three
Thirty-Three
The Present
The policewoman is gentle but firm as she pries Elena’s children from her arms. She hands them over to the social worker who has arrived to take them to a place of safety. Elena is escorted to the squad car and driven to Kilfarran Garda Station. In the interrogation room, she huddles in a chair, her mind spinning from one fragmented impression to another. Joel crying, Grace shrieking, black uniforms, hi-vis jackets, cold steel handcuffs on her wrists, the smell of coffee brewing on a hotplate, faces pressed too close, asking questions she can’t answer, a glass wall with ears and eyes, a table in the interrogation room with scars scored into its surface… her children gone – gone – and Nicholas, his blood spilling from him.
She narrowly missed the aorta in his abdomen. Dully, she absorbs this information. Yvonne and Henry are keeping vigil by his bedside. He will recover, providing he does not develop sepsis from being stabbed with a rusting ice pick. She rocks back and forth as she lists the assaults she has suffered at his hands. Some are too hazy to remember clearly and she shakes her head each time she is asked for evidence. The only bruise she can show is on her neck. She knows what her interrogators are thinking. A bruise administered in self-defence when Nicholas tried to ward off her grievous attack. Why didn’t she go to hospital when she was beaten up? they ask. Why didn’t she call the gardai? Why didn’t she leave Nicholas, take out a barring order against him, confide in her friends?
She is adrift, unable to think straight until Rosemary Williams arrives. She had heard about the attack on Nicholas from Christopher Keogh. KHM is in turmoil but Christopher, remembering the friendship between Isabelle Langdon and Rosemary, had decided to inform her that Elena had been arrested.
Rosemary had practised as a defence lawyer early in her career before retraining as a specialist in contract law. Her arrival at the police station proves that she has lost none of her assertiveness in the intervening years.
Elena is released on bail, the conditions clearly outlined to her. She must re
side at Rosemary’s address and not leave that jurisdiction until her next appearance in court. Nor is she allowed to trespass near Woodbine or Nicholas’s parents’ house, where her children will live for the foreseeable future. Elena knows she is lucky to be freed on bail. It is Rosemary’s tenacity that has made it possible and this fact penetrates the numbness that has possessed her since she confronted Nicholas in the ice house. In the office of the small law firm that Rosemary opened after she was forced to resign from KHM, she silences Elena’s tearful gratitude. She has appointed a barrister, a close friend from her student days, to represent Elena in court at her arraignment. The judge has demanded reports on her psychiatric and psychological state of mind before then.
Appointments are made. The experts nod sagely as they burrow into Elena’s mind to try to understand why she would attempt to kill the father of her children. Was she suffering from post-partum depression? An inability to manage two babies? Depression after her mother’s death? Labouring under the belief that Nicholas stole her inheritance? Scribble, scribble – they remain impassive as Elena struggles to prove she is not a vindictive and neurotic would-be killer. The evidence proves otherwise. After all, she did attack the man she had loved in happier times with an ice pick. They focus on her obsessive jealousy of his dead wife when Nicholas was struggling to move on from that tragic history. What are they to make of that?
Once again, Amelia Madison has become a headline. Husband of Tragic Drowning Victim Stabbed. Pictures of Mason’s Pier have been plucked from the archives and shown on the news. So, too, are the replays of Nicholas leaving the church after the memorial service. Yvonne, supporting him, is dabbing her watery eyes with a handkerchief. Then, as now, she is offering him her unconditional love.
Maurice Turnbury, Elena’s barrister, is a soft-spoken, colourless man with rimless glasses and sparse grey hair. His desk appears to be too large for him, but when he stands to greet her he projects an air of authority that reassures her.
‘He looks harmless but don’t be fooled by his appearance,’ Rosemary warned her on the way to their meeting with him. ‘He uses it to disarm the opposition. In court he’s a viper and that’s what you need in your corner.’
Physical and mental abuse is difficult to prove without evidence. Maurice comes straight to the point. Is there anything Elena can say to convince him that Nicholas Madison is capable of violence?
‘I found a letter in the ice house,’ she says. ‘I think it was written―’
‘You think?’ Maurice’s question is sharp. His reptile gaze demands more than conjecture on her part.
‘I believe it was written to Amelia. The sender warned her that her life was in danger.’
‘The name of her friend?’
‘It was just one page. There was no name on it.’
‘Where is this letter now?’
‘Nicholas tore it up. That’s when I…’ Elena hesitates, then decides she has to name it. ‘When I stabbed him.’
‘Did you mention this letter to the gardai?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was their reaction?’
‘The same as yours.’
‘Are you surprised?’
Dully, she shakes her head.
‘You failed to convince the gardai that you were a victim of domestic abuse and now you want to add another layer to your defence by bringing his dead wife into the equation.’
‘Nicholas doesn’t leave signs behind him.’ Rosemary interrupts the barrister’s questioning. ‘I know that to my cost.’
‘I believe you’re telling me the truth.’ Maurice ignores her comment but smiles at Elena for the first time since she entered his office. ‘But that’s only because Rosemary wouldn’t waste my time with a dud. However, a jury won’t know that. Nor will the judge. Post-partum depression, that’s our best line of defence.’
‘I wasn’t depressed.’
‘How can you say that when you’ve told me you were being physically and mentally abused by your partner? It’s the view of your psychiatric team that you display the classic symptoms. Low self-esteem and lack of confidence, an inability to cope, irritability, exhaustion.’
‘My baby is not responsible for that.’
‘I’m quoting from your medical notes. If we can prove that you were of unsound mind―’
‘Unsound mind?’
‘Temporarily.’
‘I was distraught, frightened for my life. That’s not insanity.’
‘I never said you were insane, Elena. I’m just explaining what I consider to be the best course of action. You haven’t been able to produce any evidence that you were acting in self-defence. If you plead not guilty, you’ll be charged with grievous bodily harm. A guilty plea will do away with a trial and post-partum depression can be offered as a viable legal defence. You’ll receive the necessary psychiatric treatment while you await your court appearance―’
‘An asylum, that’s what you’re suggesting? Where’s the justice in that?’
Maurice is patient but determined that Elena must listen to him. ‘The alternative is a prison cell. I’m not suggesting you’ll be committed to an asylum, anyway. You’re in Rosemary’s care and you’ll receive outpatient treatment. Nicholas’s legal team will strongly oppose this measure, so the slightest infringement of your bail conditions will be disastrous for you.’
A current of air passes through the small office and plays over Elena’s face. She is convinced there are cold fingers pressing on the back of her neck. Amelia. This tingling awareness gives her the strength to listen carefully to Maurice. She thinks about the fatal decision Amelia made to escape the misery of her marriage. So many parallels. Elena could be her pale reflection. But there is one difference. Amelia chose death. Elena is determined to choose life. She is alert now, listening to Maurice as he elaborates.
Post-partum depression is the only explanation that makes sense. It’s understandable, fixable, unlike the unseen fist and boot. Maurice will enter a plea of guilty by reason of insanity and a judge will sentence her to a rock or to a hard place.
Which will be more endurable?
Thirty-Four
The word Kingsdale has been carved into a granite rock that stands at the entrance to the housing development where Yvonne and Henry live. The houses are detached and spread out around a large communal green space. Elena doesn’t stop as she walks past their house, but nor does she quicken her pace. A slow saunter and a sideways glance over the gate. Only one car in the driveway. Henry must be at work. The house is screened by a high privet hedge and the gate has been tied with rope to prevent small children escaping.
She once lived in a similar development called Leeway Valley, where children played on the green and the residents organised annual sports days. In her teens, she would congregate there with her friends, drinking cans and smoking, until the council, tired of complaints from neighbours about noise at night, cut down the shrubbery and deprived them of their shelter. ‘The graveyard’, that’s what they used to call Leeway Valley. Elena had despised its suburban symmetry and unchanging routine. Now, she longs to wrap those safe structures around her once again. Instead, she must deal with a new normality. But this – this deliberate taking of her children – what is normal about that?
Yvonne and Henry’s hatred towards her remains implacable. She almost killed their son and they are not prepared to listen to excuses about self-defence. They believe her unhinged from her inability to manage two babies and they have taken them into their care. Elena’s court hearing to grant her visiting right to Grace and Joel has been postponed three times. Rosemary warned her that Nicholas’s barrister would find every available legal loophole to delay the case. No matter how anguished the wait becomes, Elena must not do anything reckless or foolhardy to jeopardise her chance of a fair hearing. She has tried to be patient. All she wants is a glimpse of Grace and Joel. That will be enough – just a glimpse – and she is prepared to wait all day, if necessary. Her face is shaded by a hood and her z
ip-up hoodie and jogging pants are a nondescript grey.
Four days a week, she works at Rosemary’s law firm. Business is beginning to pick up and being busy keeps Elena sane. Since that terrible morning Rosemary has been like a surrogate mother to her, a kind friend and a wise advisor. She is an early morning jogger who encourages Elena to rise early too and pull on a tracksuit. Elena hated it in the beginning, her body protesting as the road rose and fell under her. But only her body cried. She had no energy left for tears. She is swimming again, old rhythms returning. Sometimes, as she battles with the waves and the cold rush of the Irish Sea, she feels the return of that familiar exhilaration and welcomes it, despite its briefness. To forget everything except the buoyant waves and sting of salt is amnesia at its most powerful. But as she drags herself from the water, it is no longer possible to pretend that her life – and her children are her life – has not been taken from her.
A man emerges from a neighbouring house and jogs past her. Further up the road, a silver-haired woman is walking two dogs on leads. Elena crosses the road to the green, where a horse chestnut tree has shed its leaves. The tree and a semicircle of dense foliage form a natural boundary to the road. It will shelter her from the houses on the opposite side but she will be visible if anyone walks across the green. A stranger in a hoodie will be enough to alert suspicions in this quiet development.
Children have forged paths between the shrubbery’s burgeoning roots. So, too, have teenagers, if the empty beer bottles and cans are any indication. Some things never change. She moves into this leafy space and crouches down. Drivers leave for work and children amble towards the nearby school. This spurt of activity is soon over and Kingsdale settles back into a mid-morning quietness.