by Jane Shemilt
She hardly seemed to notice when I went back to work. I thought she was fine, quiet but fine. The opposite was true.
Two important relationships had developed concurrently. Alice became close to the nanny, Teko, hired to look after her brother. Teko provided a consistently supportive relationship.
Alice was positively attached to her tutor, Simon Katse, on whom she had projected idealized attributes. Delusional beliefs had clearly by then become part of her disturbed mental state and when the tutor left suddenly she developed further deterioration, which may have led to the auditory hallucinations (described in section 2.) below.
1. Delusional beliefs
Alice believed her mother disliked her brother because of his facial birthmark. She’d heard her mother positively discuss African babies being given away; she claimed Teko was sympathetic, having overheard the same conversation.
The latter delusion probably constitutes a psychological defence mechanism against self-blame; Alice was worried that the abduction was caused by wish-fulfilment; i.e., her desiring a safe home for her brother ‘caused’ the abduction; inventing Teko’s sympathy would lessen her own responsibility for her feelings because someone else shared them, a mechanism known as psychological scapegoating.
Alice must have overheard my stupid joke on the veranda; it would have fed into her deteriorating state with terrifying effect. She might have confided her worries to Teko in simple Setswana; if she believed Teko had understood a complex conversation in English, Alice must have been truly delusional.
2. Auditory hallucinations
Alice claimed she heard breathing noises, footsteps and voices in the days preceding the abduction. She attempted to tell her family but other explanations were found and her fears dismissed.
We didn’t listen when she mentioned footsteps. Not properly. Adam thought she had heard him getting up at night. She blamed him for the whispers she could hear. Even though she looked ill, it never once occurred to me she was hearing voices.
3. Severe feeling of guilt and self-blame
Despite ‘inventing’ Teko’s sympathy (i.e., psychological scapegoating referred to above) Alice maintains she herself, not Teko, actively helped in the abduction.
The night before the day her brother was abducted, Alice believes she was persuaded by a threatening shadow or ghost of some kind (possibly part of a nightmare) to assist in removing her brother from her own ‘bad’ family to a ‘better’ one where he would be loved. Alice becomes confused and highly distressed if encouraged to elaborate. Such hallucinatory episodes are known to have the subjective quality of nightmares; until Alice is comfortable with exploring this experience, there would be little benefit in encouraging her to relive it.
The understanding at present is that Alice claims she was told in the nightmare/hallucinatory episode to take the household members away from the house on the afternoon of her brother’s abduction. She did not inform the nanny, Teko, hoping the latter’s presence in the house would protect her brother. When Alice realized her brother had been abducted despite Teko’s presence, she assumed responsibility for his disappearance.
Making sense of catastrophic events through retrospective hallucinatory experiences by highly intelligent and sensitive children is not unknown though rare.
In the aftermath of Teko’s disappearance Alice concluded that Teko had been subsequently kidnapped as well; she took on responsibility and grieved for both losses. As the search for Samuel continued she realized how distressed her parents were and became actively suicidal.
Since the family’s return to England, in spite of, and subsequent to, her self-harming episode, Alice has worked closely with all members of the psychiatric team to uncover the sequence of beliefs and delusions related above.
Alice and I talked on the plane journey to London from Gaborone or, at least, I tried to, but it was obvious something was very wrong. After her outburst she’d wept and insisted she was to blame. Between sobs she claimed Sam had been taken in order to save him. Nothing she said made sense. She was wild with grief. I held her, told her we loved her, that it wasn’t her fault. Gradually she became silent, then slept. I knew we had a major problem, but I hadn’t sensed she was psychotic.
Megan met us as planned and got us through the seething crowds of journalists at Heathrow, then helped us push past the reporters outside our house. Once home, I phoned the psychiatric on-call team. I thought Megan was with Alice; she thought I was. Then Zoë told me she couldn’t get into the bathroom; in the end, Megan unlocked it with a screwdriver. Alice was on the floor. She’d taken paracetamol from the cupboard and swallowed it, along with a handful of diazepam from my bedside drawer.
Adam caught the next plane back. By then Alice’s stomach had been pumped and she was on the paediatric medical ward for liver-function monitoring. We spent the next few days beside her, holding her hand or lying with her on the bed as she slept. I watched her constantly, terror and love consuming me. We didn’t sleep for two days. We could have lost her so easily. Alice as well as Sam. It doesn’t take much paracetamol to poison a child. She recovered slowly from the overdose, and, as her psychosis unravelled, we knew we couldn’t believe anything she said. The psychiatric team asked us to step back.
The puppy feels heavier – he has relaxed into sleep. When I lift him to my neck, he stirs and sleepily pushes his nose under my chin.
After counselling and psychotherapeutic intervention, Alice is beginning to accept that she was not to blame. She admits that her understanding of events preceding and around the abduction were both delusional and hallucinatory, arising from psychotic depression and related anxiety at the time. As events recede she understands that she had and has no knowledge of why/how her brother went missing.
Despite grasping elements of the Setswana language, this would not have been sufficient to allow Alice to comprehend the conversations she claims she had with Teko; and it is currently unclear whether auditory hallucinations or delusional beliefs account for Alice’s belief that they were able to communicate fully. Psychotherapeutic work is ongoing to try to distinguish this as it has prognostic implications.
Treatment
Supportive psychotherapy
Julie Edwards, child psychologist: two sessions a week
Paroxetine; 10mg o.d.; monthly review with Dr Harnham
After a while I settle Kodi in his basket by the stove; he turns and falls in a soft heap, nose to tail; his back rises and falls under my hand, his skin twitching. I put the report on Adam’s desk for him to read when he comes home. The polished surface is empty; his orderliness has become fierce.
The rest of the day passes. Washing the floor and making the beds is something to cling to: when I smooth the sheets with my hand, I feel calmed, as if I’m smoothing out my mind.
I check the street through the blinds; journalists often lie in wait outside the house. We’ve been on television three times, holding hands. Adam co-operates with the press but I avoid them.
There have been reports of sightings in Africa, in Kenya and Nigeria, all false and each one seeming to push Sam further away. I’ve had my own sightings too. Across the aisle in front of us in church at Christmas, Teko became a tall stranger when she stood up. Only three weeks ago I followed a girl with hair just like hers right up to the checkout in Sainsbury’s until she turned to face me, her face full of fear. What Teko would have been doing in a north London supermarket was a question I didn’t think to ask myself. I’m unsure why I’m compelled to do this because, unlike Adam, I know we have lost him.
We have lost each other too. We walk around at home silently, ghosts in a dead marriage, saying almost nothing. There is an unspoken pact about the girls. They mustn’t suffer any more so we are polite. No one would know, though now I recognize other couples, like us, who don’t talk or touch, who walk one behind the other in the street.
Megan phones halfway through the day. ‘Hi, Emma.’
‘Hi.’
‘You okay?’
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‘Mmm. Clearing out a cupboard. You?’
‘It’s just … Hear me out. Mrs Ridley Scott talked to Adam this morning and he’s asked me to call. Apparently she wants to know –’
‘No. Not yet.’
I can’t return to work. Not now, not ever. How could I deliver babies, watch them being held? It’s not only that: before I finish a sentence I’ve forgotten the beginning. I could probably operate safely but I can’t hold a conversation.
We exchange a few more words, then she has to go.
The girls return from school. Zoë plays with Kodi, and Alice hands me a brass pendant she’s made in art. A step forward.
Adam comes home later. He reads the report and lays it aside. I see him thinking there’s nothing really new in it. The facts don’t hit him afresh each time as they do me. He wants to talk about the press conference in Gaborone in a couple of months’ time: the one-year anniversary. ‘Alice is better,’ he says. ‘She’ll be fine without us.’
‘Without us?’ I stare at him. ‘I’m not going, Adam. She’s not ready. We can’t possibly both leave.’
‘The message will be stronger if we go together,’ he says.
‘Go without me.’
‘I bumped into Dr Harnham in the car park today.’ He carries on calmly. ‘He thinks a short break from us could do Alice good. She’s ready to be trusted with a little more independence. We’ll only be gone a week.’
‘Who would look after them?’
‘Can’t they board? I thought there was provision for day girls to board, if necessary. They’d be together. We can phone every day. Kodi can go to my registrar – his wife is nuts about dogs.’
He makes it sound so easy. Alice would be fine. Zoë would be fine. Even the dog would be fine. All we have to do is the journey, then the arrival at the airport, though the last time we did that I’d had Sam in my arms. We’d meet Goodwill and Kopano, other policemen. The Met have long gone, and so has Adam’s private detective; after all, they were no more successful than the police already on the ground.
Then we’ll go back to the house in Kubung, along with all the journalists. We’ll be photographed in the garden. I walked past Highgate cemetery in the rain last week on my way to the library; the fresh scent of pine brought back the garden, the first night of searching and all the nights after that. I had to lean against the railings until the giddiness passed. Returning will be beyond me.
We go up to sit on the children’s beds and talk. Alice tells us a little about her day. We don’t talk about Sam: the psychiatrist told us to wait till she’s ready. Zoë now says her prayers, kneeling by the bed and whispering into her fingers. She never used to pray. None of us did. I wonder who she is talking to and if she’s asking for her brother. Sometimes when I watch her, the memory of my own whispered prayer and the cold bones in my hand floats for a moment in the pretty bedroom, unreal, like a dream or the memory of a dream. Adam watches her too; I think he’s pleased. I think he secretly says his own prayers, too, but we don’t talk about belief or anything else that might disturb the flat surface of our lives.
Sometimes I remember my father’s voice as he called from the boat and the feel of his hands as he pulled me in, but there is a silence where his words used to be. I can’t remember how he sounded – I can’t feel his hands, I can’t even bring his face to mind. He has vanished completely and I am on my own.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
London, February 2015
Gulls lift and slide in the grey sky above the Post Office Tower. It must be rough at sea. The wood of the bench is dark; wet seeps through my jeans. There is a scrabble of dogs on the grassy slope below me: an Alsatian, spaniels, a thin greyhound. They bark and run and skirmish, same as a school playground, the leader, the sycophant, the small one on its own. Kodi is the class clown: he rolls on his back and jumps at the others, eager to please and mostly ignored.
Around the pack, women are chatting as they watch the animals. They have prams and pushchairs and children clinging to their legs. Standing well apart, two middle-aged men tuck their chins into their coats and shift their weight from foot to foot, glancing at me; they recognize me from somewhere but can’t place where it was. One of the women follows their glance then nudges her friend. They stare and whisper. I call Kodi. It’s time to fetch Alice anyway. He bounds over, a typical Labrador, sweet, obedient. Halfway down the hill, one of the pram-pushing women passes me. She is almost running, pulled along by the German Shepherd. As the pram moves ahead, all I can see are small white fingers curled on the cover. They must be icy. I want to tell the mother to put the little hand safely under that cover, but she’s too far away now.
Later, in the kitchen, Alice wants a second doughnut. I try not to look too pleased; Dr Harnham says act normal but I can’t remember how.
‘So, Ally, how did it go today?’ When I picked her up earlier, we’d talked about Kodi and the dogs he’d played with; giving her time.
Her head bends over her plate, her shoulders shake. I feel sick. Perhaps Dr Harnham upset her. When she lifts her head she is laughing, not crying. Zoë is staring with surprise so I laugh too, keeping Alice company. If it sounds real it is, a laugh of relief.
Zoë pokes her sister, smiling. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing,’ Alice says, her face growing still, eyes watchful.
But it was something, along with the second doughnut. Another sign of repair.
‘What about you, Zoë? Did you have a good day?’
Zoë is colouring, leaning close to her paper on the table, her breathing loud. A slip of tongue protrudes between her teeth. Before she can answer, Alice says, ‘Dr Harnham asked me how I was getting on at school.’
‘Yes?’
‘I told him it was okay.’
‘That’s great, Ally.’
She picks up her bag. ‘Think I’ll do homework in my room.’ The bag swings as she walks to the door.
The kitchen is quiet. The February wind is spattering rain against the window. I love that sound. I used to long for rain in the heat.
As if on cue, Zoë says, ‘We’re doing Africa in assembly tomorrow.’ Casually, like any piece of school news.
‘Right.’ My heart is instantly racing.
‘They asked me to say something.’
‘Fine.’ But it isn’t fine. How could it be? How could they ask?
‘I can say anything I want.’
‘Okay.’
What could she talk about? Not the animals. She lost the ones she’d collected. The scenery? Those desolate spaces would be too difficult for a child to describe. Maybe the people, but she only really got to know three or four. What if she talks about the day we lost Sam?
Zoë bends closer over her picture, pressing hard with a yellow wax crayon. ‘I’m going to say it was hot. Look.’ She holds up her picture of a yellow sun; it takes up the entire page.
‘Brilliant, Zoë.’
The heat at Kubung hurt your skin. Grass withered; donkeys died of thirst by the road.
‘We’ll go to her assembly, of course.’ The children are in bed and Adam is eating supper. I’m leaning against the stove, watching the rain still falling on the grass outside. They would be glad of this rain in Kubung. ‘We have to support her.’
‘Of course,’ he replies. I wonder what the other parents will say when they see him again. He’s always been thin but now he’s skeletal. He moves more slowly.
‘Talking of Africa …’ He looks at me hopefully and I look away.
‘Maybe.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Botswana, March 2015
It’s not just the smell of pine. The dusty scent of the bush reaching through Gaborone and into the hotel garden is instantly familiar. I needn’t have worried about what it would be like, returning to the same place. It’s as if we have come to another country; any country where it’s hot and labour is cheap. The hotel is new since last year, a five-star monster. It has efficient air-conditioning, muted lighting
and thick linen tablecloths. Beyond the plate-glass windows of the dining room the swimming pool glitters, surrounded by ranks of sun-loungers. We could be hundreds of miles distant from Kubung or maybe thousands of years. Compared to this opulence, the village had been medieval. Little running water, electricity or Internet. Not many goods in the shops or shoes on the children. It’s only when I hear the warm tones of the Motswana chef and catch the smile of the young girl bringing our tea that I can begin to connect the two worlds.
We came straight to the hotel in a taxi. No one knew we were arriving at the time we did, apart from the police. We want to use the journalists this time, not the other way around. We were caught in the media headlights before. Adam booked three days here for us to acclimatize and prepare for the press conference.
On the first day I’m restless. By breakfast on the second, I’ve Skyped the girls and swum in the pool. As I’m towelling myself dry, a chameleon on the branch of a jacaranda tree catches my eye. The same colours as the lichen markings on the wood, its eyes gleam as the lids close and open.
At the breakfast buffet the plates around us were piled high with layers of food, eggs and bacon on pancakes, haddock on top of that. Oiled bodies stretch out around the pool, iced drinks alongside. Children bicker in the background.
‘I can’t stay here, Adam. I’ll go mad.’
He’s been making notes since breakfast, anticipating the media questions and trying to craft replies that strike the right note between hope and being prepared. We mustn’t look like victims, but we must be grateful to the police. Now the notebook lies on his face; we had both forgotten the heat.
‘Can’t you relax?’ His voice is muffled. ‘We need to rehearse soon.’
‘I have to escape this place.’
The book slides off as he raises himself up on one elbow, studying me. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’