Hydra

by Matt Wesolowski

  Arla, who will therefore see out the rest of her living days at Elmtree, never contested her guilt; the only questions were around the degree of her responsibility – whether she was aware of what she was doing at the time. I’m in no way qualified to comment on mental illness – I won’t give any pop diagnosis; it would be an insult to the psychiatric profession for me to even try. All I can say is that Arla’s guilt and her diminished responsibility were eventually decided in a court of law and her sentence was passed accordingly.

  —Of course, it’s too simplistic to explain what exactly is ‘wrong’ with Arla Macleod. We understand so much more about mental illness – and specifically the psychosis that the psychiatrists in court presented – that I think I’m safe in assuming her condition is a complex combination of things.

  The voice you’re hearing belongs to a doctor of criminal psychology, Dr Sarah White. Dr White has appeared on many television true-crime documentaries, most recently the three-part award-winning documentary on Robert Bonnet, The Quiet Ripper. She talks to me via Skype.

  —I’ve never spoken to Arla Macleod, so I can’t say with any true conviction what it is that’s ‘wrong’ with her. I can only make a reserved judgement from what I know.

  —You can speculate though?

  —We can all speculate, but we can’t give a diagnosis. That task is for her doctors at Elmtree, and I imagine that they’re not at liberty to discuss their conclusions with you, right?

  —That’s right. Hence I’m talking to you.

  —I’ll take that as a compliment…

  —So what are your thoughts on Arla’s condition?

  —Like I say, I can only speculate based on the evidence before us. From what we know about the case, I think I can say with some confidence that Arla Macleod was, and perhaps still is, suffering from psychosis. I strongly suspect she has been for a number of years.

  —Psychosis?

  —It’s an umbrella term used to describe a range of different diagnoses, including schizophrenia.

  —So is it possible that Arla Macleod was or is schizophrenic?

  —Yes, that’s entirely possible. However, each person’s experience of psychosis is individual. Psychosis is characterised by the following symptoms: extreme paranoia, hearing voices, and hallucinations. From what I’ve read of the case and the therapy I know is practised at Elmtree Manor, I wouldn’t be surprised if Arla is struggling with a degree of extreme psychosis.

  —What do you think made Arla that way? As far as I know, that sort of condition does not run in her family.

  —While we’re getting closer to answering that age-old question of whether ‘monsters’, as they’re called, are born or made, we still don’t have a definitive answer. Arla’s psychosis could be explained as a genetic predisposition, exacerbated by environmental factors.

  —And you? What do you think?

  —I think there’s no straight answer. A person’s childhood, their home life in their early years, can have a huge impact; but it can also aggravate underlying problems or conditions. It is also entirely possible that psychosis is simply chemical.

  —What do you mean?

  —People with psychosis produce too much dopamine in their brains. Dopamine is a chemical, produced naturally, that acts as a sort of filter, a buffer for the sensors. At normal levels, it helps the brain focus and choose between perceived and actual threats. So someone whose brain is producing too much dopamine struggles to decipher what is important in their immediate environment and what isn’t. So, for example, the woman pushing the pram next to the busy road becomes as threatening as the busy road, as does the bird singing in the roadside tree, the music coming from inside the corner shop. Does that make sense?

  —It does – too much dopamine produces a sort of state of constant fear?

  —More or less. A constant state of hypervigilance.

  —And this, combined with hearing voices and hallucinations, could have caused Arla to do what she did?

  —Causation is a tricky one. I’m talking generally, and each sufferer of psychosis experiences things differently. As I say, I don’t know enough about the case, but in short, yes, Arla Macleod’s psychosis could have caused her to do what she did. But we don’t know the full story, do we? Will we ever?

  —Is there any cure?

  —Not as far as we know. Arla will be treated with medication – antipsychotics, I imagine – which we know help block the action of dopamine when it’s released in the brain, helping to make the paranoia and hallucinations subside. She will have complementary therapy; Elmtree Manor has an outstanding reputation for their therapeutic practice. A lot of it is new, but it seems to be having decent results.

  I must apologise to those of you who are unfamiliar with the case – although I doubt there are many of you. I am yet to explain fully what Arla Macleod was charged with, what she is proved in a court of law to have done to her family. We will hear about it, I promise you. In this episode, we’ll hear both the facts as they were presented and Arla’s version of what happened on that cold night in 2014.

  This is Six Stories with me, Scott King.

  This is the story of Arla Macleod.

  This is episode one.

  —I first saw them when I were about fourteen … fifteen … I can’t remember really; it seems like a long time ago now. We were … we were away somewhere, on holiday.

  After Arla agreed to talk to me, Elmtree Manor wrote to me at length – lists of things I could and couldn’t talk about. Discussion of her medication and details of her therapy are prohibited. As are the condition of the hospital, Arla’s room, the therapy sessions. I suppose because all of it is tabloid fodder. No one wants to learn about innovation and state-of-the-art therapy; they want to see Arla Macleod rotting in a cell.

  But if Arla volunteers any information … well, we’ll see.

  —We stayed in this big white hotel. I don’t remember much … just the swimming pool and the cocktails. They did kids’ ones with juice and fresh mint and that. I thought I was so cool, just sat there drinking them. A bit of me remembers doing that with Mam and Alice, taking photos of them on Mam’s camera while the sun went down behind us. But maybe that’s just rose-tinted glasses, I don’t know.

  Arla’s holiday with her family took place around 2008, she thinks. It was summer and Arla was about fifteen, Alice, just a little younger. Arla can’t remember the name or the location of the hotel, but tells me it was on the coast in Cornwall – an all-inclusive place: kids’ clubs in the day, entertainment at night. From what I know of the Macleods, they would have saved for this holiday for a long time.

  —In the basement of the hotel there were this games room. There was a pinball machine, I remember, and a few arcade games. We all went down there when we first arrived. Just to have a look. I remember begging Dad for coins to play pinball. I remember him getting cross, telling me it were pointless, saying you ‘don’t win nothing’ and Mam putting her hand on his arm. ‘We’re on holiday, love,’ she said.

  It goes all blurry then. I can’t remember properly. Mam and Dad and Alice, they weren’t there anymore; it were just me. I … I remember it were hot outside, really hot. And everything had that smell, like when you’re abroad? Like sun cream and warm skin. But we weren’t abroad. It were England. Down in that games room it were cool, the walls and the floors were marble, and there were those cheese plants everywhere. Big, thick, waxy leaves like green hands, waving.

  I remember it were the last day and I wanted to be on my own. I remember walking to the very back of the games room where there were some fruit machines. I remember they had flashing lights but no sound, like someone had turned the volume down. It were well weird.

  And that’s … that were the first time I knew that something … something weren’t right.

  I’m sorry, I know – let Arla tell her tale. I will, but I need to make one thing clear: I have no way of corroborating what Arla is about to say next.

  —I had my headphone
s in – those ear-bud ones. I had my music on dead loud, Skexxixx proper blasting my head. Alice hated that music. She were into all that Katy Perry and X-Factor rubbish. She had no idea. She agreed with Dad. He said it were ‘satanic’, that it would ‘corrupt’ me. I used to ask him what his ma thought of Elvis wiggling his hips – that were ‘satanic’ too, right? He would get all red then and so I would just walk away.

  Anyway, down in the games room that day, I remember the music just stopped – just cut out – and this … this wall of silence fell around me.

  Suddenly I knew I wasn’t on my own anymore. I could feel that someone else was there, in that room. It were like I could hear them holding their breath.

  —There was more than one person?

  —Yeah. It were like they sort of appeared, like, sort of just slithered out from a crack in the wall or something.

  —Who did?

  —It were these kids … these little kids. They were all standing suddenly round one of the fruit machines, like they’d been there all along. It were horrible.

  —Do you remember what they did?

  —I remember being scared, frightened cos they were just … silent … all of them clustered around this fruit machine like an old photograph gone wrong.

  —Did they speak to you at all?

  —No and that was what was so weird. They were silent. There was a boy, a few years younger than me, and he started pushing the buttons on the machine, but all the while, his head was turned round towards me.

  —This sounds like a vivid memory.

  —It is, and now I’m saying it out loud it sounds so … it sounds so nothing-y. Like, maybe they were simply some people – another family that had just arrived that day and I hadn’t seen them before. I were in a funny mood that day, I were feeling … lost. So at first I thought maybe I hadn’t seen them, like it were a daydream or something. And back then, I were used to people staring, cos of the way I dressed and that. I were a proper little goth back then, in my Skexxixx T-shirt and all that black eyeliner. I were used to kids looking at me but…

  —But?

  —It was like … they didn’t look right, just standing there, all of them together like that. Then it seemed like there were more of them – like there were suddenly five when before there’d been two, and they were all just silent, staring. It was as if … as if they’d been waiting for me…

  Yeah, that’s how it felt, like they’d been waiting.

  For me.

  In all the research I’ve done about Arla Macleod, I’ve never heard this story. It’s a strange thing to make up – if indeed Arla has made it up. Going on from what Dr White has told me about psychosis, there could well have been a group of children at the hotel and Arla’s condition caused her to distort the intentions behind an inquisitive gaze at a teenage girl. Looking at images of the musician Skexxixx and his fans, you can understand, as Arla alludes to herself, why someone might stare at her. Or, of course, the children may have not been there at all. Dr White also implied that this could have begun as a form of dissociation. Although why at this point, I’m not entirely sure. Arla continues.

  —It were proper odd but maybe explainable – like, they were just some kids. Maybe they were shy, or scared, or just weird, right? Maybe they were just weird, like me?

  —It does sound like quite a strange thing to see.

  —But there were something else about them that just weren’t right, that was just like … off.

  —Go on.

  —You see, however long I looked at them, I couldn’t tell how many of them there were – one minute there was just two and then there was five.

  But that wasn’t the only thing. That wasn’t what was so off about them. What freaked me out about those kids was their faces, their skin. They all had this really smooth skin, like … like those china figurines that Mam collected; like, Little Bo Peep, all innocent-looking with huge eyes and pouty lips. Their skin were immaculate, smooth, like it were made of plastic; their lips just these perfect little bows. But they weren’t happy, they didn’t smile at me. They just stared like they were … like they were hungry.

  This is certainly a strange story … or is it? Arla’s memory is almost certainly distorted. That’s no slight, it happens to us all, it’s natural. And I don’t doubt for a moment that Arla encountered other children on that holiday. But this chance meeting with an idiosyncratic group of children on her last day, while it only lasted for a few moments, seems to have remained with Arla for a long time.

  Arla continues.

  —After that holiday in Cornwall, I saw them again … I saw them all the time.

  —Back up north?

  —Yeah.

  —In Stanwel?

  —That was the thing. Not in Stanwel. We could never afford big holidays like that one in Cornwall. That must have been a one-off; maybe Dad won the pools, I dunno. But we did go to a caravan in Cleethorpes a lot – it belonged to one of Dad’s mates, and we often used it when he wasn’t there.

  —Did you see them there?

  —Yeah but not there, if you know what I mean.

  —Go on…

  —Like, I’d see them when we were on a day out at the market, or in the town. Jesus, I remember seeing them once at the swimming baths – all of them again, and they looked so wrong. They were in one of the cubicles. The door sort of swung open as I went past, and they were there, all of them just staring at me.

  —Are you sure it was them? I mean those specific children. How can you be sure?

  —Yeah. And no. I mean, like, there was something inside me that just sort of knew, you know? I knew it was them somehow.

  —Did you tell anyone? Your parents?

  —No, never. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have even known how to start. ‘Mam, I’m being stalked by a bunch of kids.’ She’d have thought I’d gone mad. What would folk have thought of us then? Mam would have lost it with me. And then Dad would have had an episode and … well, I couldn’t be doing with all that praying and stuff…

  We pause here. Discussing Arla’s late family is a flash point that the staff of Elmtree Manor have warned me about, so I let Arla compose herself. When Arla comes back, the tears I can hear at the other end of the line sound genuine. During this break, I’ll briefly discuss Arla’s parents.

  Both Lucy and Stan Macleod were staunchly religious. From what I understand, Stanley had ‘saved’ Lucy from her former husband and attributed his ability to do this to the power of God. Lucy was, I gather, a follower by nature, and often felt indebted to Stanley – a debt he apparently referred to whenever she disagreed with his views about how to raise the girls. The ‘episodes’ that Arla mentions earlier sound very much like fits of internalised rage Stanley experienced when he saw or heard something he didn’t like or couldn’t comprehend.

  During our earlier discussions about family life, Arla describes one of these moments.

  —His face used to get red and he’d clench his fists and start muttering. It were like a giant baby about to throw a tantrum. He used to shout all this Bible stuff and then we all had to hold hands and pray – like, right there and then, wherever we were. It were so embarrassing. We used to make sure he never saw, like, ‘sinful’ stuff; we made sure we never went anywhere good when Dad was there – the cinema, the fair, anything. Honestly, even the sight of a woman in a skirt could set him off. Mam just sort of let him get on with it; never told him he were being daft…

  I’m not here to criticise anyone’s religious beliefs but I do know Stanley McLeod’s attitude was far from progressive. He was anti-abortion, he found the LGBT community ‘abominable’, and don’t even start on his attitudes to music. I imagine that Arla’s tastes and dress sense as a teenager were in direct opposition to this. It is interesting to note, though, that Alice Macleod didn’t follow her sister; she never showed any resentment about her father’s ways.

  From a young age, both Arla and Alice were expected to pray, attend church and be fearful of their parents’ God.
Restrictions were in place for both children. While Alice put her head down and complied with her parents’ wishes, Arla felt these restrictions tighten as she grew from a child into a woman.

  Smoking, drinking and boyfriends were a big no-no for Arla. Her life was lived under the law her parents imposed. Could this have played a part in what happened? Undoubtedly, yes, though how significant that part was is difficult to gauge. It could be said that Arla had become disappointed in the reality her parents had carved out for her and the restrictions they imposed. But many parents are protective; and many are religious.

  As we’ll discover, Arla rejected her parents’ values almost completely when she became a teenager. It’s hardly a surprise, and I doubt Mr and Mrs Macleod had the nuance to realise that the more they tried to limit her, the more Arla would rail against them.

  The media played up this aspect of the case to almost ridiculous excess. In a bizarre succession of headlines and articles, the tabloid press suggested that Arla’s teenage rebellion was the most likely cause of what happened in 2014, conveniently forgetting the fact that by the age of twenty-one, Arla Macleod was very different from how she’d been as a teenager. The online community that holds Arla Macleod up as an icon certainly like to keep her perpetually frozen in this rebellious phase of her life. We’ll look at this in more detail later in the series, when we start building a true picture of who Arla Macleod was and who she now is.