They All Fall Down

by Tammy Cohen

  Corinne had the files of the three patients concerned, all women ranging in age from twelve to twenty-three. She’d been through their case notes thoroughly, looking for evidence of malpractice, and had bristled at how, in the margin of a transcript of a young woman describing how her uncle used to call the abuse ‘being nice to each other time’, he’d written, ‘Sounds rehearsed,’ and on another one ‘Therapy-speak?’. Her heart ached for these broken girls who’d already been through so much and then were disbelieved by the very person who was supposed to be helping put them back together.

  There was a registration form for each patient on which Geraldine Buckley had carefully blacked out the address and phone number, together with a small photograph. Corinne studied the face of each girl, looking for anything that might be of help to Hannah, but there was nothing. When it came to the youngest patient, whose name was Catherine Pryor, there was a momentary flicker of something, but it disappeared on closer examination. Corinne found she could hardly look at Catherine’s trusting grey eyes, in her plump, still-unformed face, without her own eyes filming over with tears.

  There was a newspaper cutting in the files from 1998 in which Professor Dunmore talked about being on a mission to reconcile families ripped apart by the ‘torpedo’ of false memory. It was accompanied by an anonymous boxed-out account of a woman whose family had been destroyed when her adult daughter made false allegations of abuse against her husband after consulting a therapist for depression. The woman, who appeared in a photograph with her face pixellated, had been forced to choose between her husband and her daughter, and had been cut out of her daughter’s life when she stood by her husband. She’d despaired of ever finding a way out of the nightmare they were plunged into, until her sister had read about Professor Dunmore and persuaded her niece to visit the clinic. ‘It’s no exaggeration to say that decision saved us,’ the woman said.

  Corinne was torn. This woman had clearly suffered terribly and, by debunking the false memory, Dunmore had transformed her family’s life. Yet at what cost to the genuine survivors of abuse who came after?

  For a brief moment, she felt a warm glow of gratitude that her own little family had emerged from the maelstrom of the girls’ adolescence relatively unscathed.

  Then she remembered where her older daughter was, and felt sick all over again.

  31

  Hannah

  Now that I’m not far from the date I’d decided Emily would have been due, I think I might finally be ready to let her go.

  We have the easels out today and we are painting a chair on which Laura has draped a piece of fabric with a beautiful blue-and-white fleur-de-lis print.

  ‘Look at the way it hangs, the way the pattern changes around the folds in the material. Look at the contrast between the restrained colours of the chair itself and the vibrancy of the print. What about the textures? The hard, polished wood and the soft weave of the material. Switch on all your senses. This is the moment. Right here, right now. This glorious blue-and-white print. This earthy chair.’

  Laura is in full flow this morning. It’s something she talks about a lot, switching on our senses. It’s a form of mindfulness. If we ground ourselves in the here and now and focus on what we can see, hear, smell, touch, all the blessings that surround us, there won’t be room in our thoughts for the things that have brought us here, the dark shadows that lurk at the edges of us.

  I find I enjoy the limitations of our still life. The world honed to a point where only the chair and the fabric exist. I am so engrossed in my painting I don’t notice Laura is behind me until I feel her warm breath on my neck, her hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Well done, Hannah. Your work has come on so much since you arrived. You seem so much more alert to the world around you. Remember how dark your palette was when you first started? How everything ended up a mixture of brown?’

  ‘That’s because it took me ages to judge just how potent even a drop of black paint could be?’

  She looks at me, and I pre-empt what she is about to say: ‘Please don’t tell me how that is a metaphor for the human condition.’

  She smiles. ‘You know me too well.’

  ‘Laura, can you come here a sec? I’m having trouble with my perspective.’

  That’s Odelle, of course, needing attention. She’s very possessive over people, but particularly Laura. The first time Laura invited me into her office for a chat, Charlie said, ‘Odelle’s not going to like that.’ And she was right. Whenever she can, Odelle disrupts my time with Laura, suddenly requiring urgent help with a self-generated art project, one time bursting into Laura’s office in tears because Joni had caught her guzzling water from the tap in the bathroom before her morning weigh-in.

  I glance over to my left, where Katy is chewing anxiously on the wooden end of a paintbrush and staring down at her still-virginal paper, not daring to start in case with the very first brushstroke she commits some fatal error.

  As this is a Strong Day, as opposed to one of the days when I wake up to find I have deconstructed during the night and lie scattered in little pieces all over the mattress like toast crumbs, I allow myself to think of Charlie.

  It’s in the art room that I feel closest to her. She loved coming here, experimenting with chalky pastels and colour washes. One time I came in and found her bent over her paper, painting a self-portrait with the brush in her mouth.

  ‘Why not?’ she answered when I asked her the obvious question. ‘If we don’t try everything, what’s even the point?’

  She didn’t kill herself.

  The conviction is a weight I cannot shake off.

  Sometimes I’d come here looking for Charlie and find her deep in conversation with Laura, talking about art or politics or just gossiping about Joni’s latest faux pas or whether or not Dr Chakraborty was hot. Or they’d be in the back office and Charlie would be curled up in the armchair with her eyes closed and Laura would be talking to her in a low, rhythmic voice and I’d back out because Charlie only wanted hypnotherapy when she was feeling tense and needed talking down.

  She still didn’t kill herself, though.

  After art I take my laptop to the day room. Darren glances up at the dinging sound when I turn it on. He’s scribbling notes in an A4 notebook. I remember he has exams coming up but can’t remember what they are. I wonder if his new girlfriend is distracting him from studying at home.

  I check my emails, impatiently deleting all the junk. There is an email from Becs, filling me in on all the office gossip, and one from my mother telling me she’s still ‘running background checks’ on the clinic and Dr Roberts to ‘set my mind at rest’.

  Out of habit, I look for Meg’s name in my inbox, before remembering that we’re all but estranged. She wanted to come and see me when it all first happened, but I told Mum she couldn’t, not until she’s ready to apologize for the things she said about Danny. But I know my sister. She won’t apologize, because she still thinks she was right.

  Maybe she was right, says a voice in my head.

  Clicking abruptly off Hotmail, I consider for a moment logging in to Facebook, even though we’re not supposed to. Darren is clearly preoccupied with his studying and I’d love to catch up with what my friends are getting up to. Then I remember the last time I did that, when I’d only been in here a few days, and the shock of realizing that other people’s lives were going on just as before, even while my own was shredded beyond recognition. Instead, I call up Google. Charlie has been on my mind since I allowed myself to think about her in art earlier. I feel I’ve let her down by not taking any more steps towards finding out exactly what happened to her.

  Taking her to-do list from my back pocket, where I always carry it, I smooth it out on the leg of my jeans. Book flights to Croatia.

  This was not someone courting oblivion.

  Then I gaze for a long time at that third entry. Google WK. The last time I’d tried to search for William Kingsley, it had thrown up so many returns I’d given up after page
one, but now I resolve to persevere.

  Checking to make sure Darren still has his nose buried in his notes, I put the name into the search engine. My spirits drop at the sight of the 3,750,000 results. Still, I begin to work my way through, skipping over the entries about the nineteenth-century politician and the estate agents in Missouri.

  It’s not until page five that I find an entry that piques my interest. It’s a link to an article in the Daily Mail about medical misdiagnosis, highlighting various infamous cases where physicians have made catastrophic errors. And there at the bottom, almost in passing, is a line that reads, ‘as was the case with the now largely discredited evidence given by Dr William Kingsley in two misdiagnosed cases of Shaken Baby Syndrome’.

  Shaken Baby Syndrome? I dredge my Diazepam-dulled brain for the information I know is in there somewhere and come up with a memory of a blonde woman standing on courtroom steps, having been freed from prison after evidence proved her baby most likely died from natural causes, and not because she’d lost control and shaken him.

  I add ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’ to William Kingsley’s name in the search box and instantly get pages of results. The first few are newspaper reports from the mid-1990s, all with one-word headings like ‘FREED!’ or ‘INNOCENT!’, with a photograph of one of two shell-shocked women, and a report of how their convictions for shaking their own babies to death had been overturned, casting doubt on the evidence of key medical experts such as neurologist Dr William Kingsley.

  These are followed by earlier factual newspaper reports at the time of the original trials one or two years previously, and a long in-depth feature about one of the women, illustrated with a smiling family photograph of Mum, Dad and baby, and headlined, ‘SHE WAS THE PERFECT MUM – UNTIL SHE SNAPPED’. Towards the bottom of the feature there’s a photograph of the same woman taken just after her conviction for her baby’s murder, looking blank-eyed and slack-jawed.

  Studying the photograph more closely, I give a start of recognition. There on the woman’s face is the same look that greeted me in the mirror when I first arrived here. The shell-shocked stare of someone whose world has just given way under their feet.

  The search engine throws up a couple of links to websites set up by the families of the women and others in the same position protesting their innocence, and also a site advocating the reintroduction of hanging for women who murder their own children as well as one that links to a blog called ‘Baby-Killers’.

  I still can’t be sure that this William Kingsley is the one Charlie was researching on the morning she died, but he is the right era, the right country at least. I scroll impatiently through, looking for anything that seems like it might throw more light on Dr William Kingsley and find, tucked away at the bottom of page six, a link that looks promising – ‘The Doctors Who Play God’, but before I can click on it a hand lands on my shoulder, causing me to gasp out loud in shock.

  ‘Why so jumpy?’

  Stella has her head on one side, so her hair, which is swept up into a high ponytail, swings around her ears, and is regarding me quizzically.

  ‘You startled me.’

  I click the little red circle on the screen so that the Google page disappears, leaving just my screensaver, a picture of Danny and me on our honeymoon, sitting under a palm tree on a white sandy beach in Costa Rica. It was taken by one of the hotel staff who’d just brought us cocktails and we are smiling as if we can’t believe our luck.

  Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe Danny’s smile means something different. Maybe his smile just means ‘This beats being at work.’ Or ‘This’ll do nicely. For now.’

  ‘What were you doing? You looked completely engrossed.’

  ‘Just reading the papers.’

  ‘Well, turn it off then and come and talk to me. I need saving. Judith says she’s going to teach me to play chess. I don’t want to play chess with Judith. She’s too intense. Sometimes she stares at me as if she wants to turn me inside out to see how I work.’

  Stella reaches across me and clicks the sleep option so that the screen goes dark, and I don’t know why but I get the feeling she just doesn’t want to look at Danny.

  As we get up, I imitate Judith’s death stare and Stella giggles but, inside, a question is troubling me.

  Why don’t I trust Stella?

  32

  Corinne

  Corinne was in the shower in her little upstairs bathroom with the sloping ceiling when the doorbell went.

  At first she ignored it, sure it would be a charity collector thrusting their lanyard in her face or a sombrely suited group determined to find out her feelings on the Second Coming.

  But when it sounded a second time, she started to worry. She’d left her phone charging downstairs. What if the clinic had been trying to get hold of her? What if Oliver Roberts was even now standing on her doorstep because of some emergency with Hannah?

  She stepped from the shower and wrapped herself in a towel. Her hair was dripping on to the wooden treads of the stairs as she hurried down and then on through her living room. But when she flung open the front door there was no one there.

  She craned her head to the right, towards where the overhead wires of Alexandra Palace station traced a silver line through the watery blue sky. Nothing. To the left, her leafy street was empty of life.

  ‘Bugger.’

  She was about to close the door when a flash of red caught her eye. Bending down to pick up the object that had been left on her step like an offering, she didn’t at first realize what it was. When she did, her heart constricted with pain.

  A tiny red knitted hat.

  Just the right size for a newborn baby.

  33

  Hannah

  ‘How do you think you’re getting on, Hannah?’

  Dr Roberts does this a lot. He tries to get me to rate my own progress. I think it’s to do with trying to instil a sense of empowerment.

  ‘How about you tell me. You’re the expert.’

  ‘I think you’re getting stronger all the time. When you arrived here, almost twelve weeks ago, you were this shell of a person, and it’s like restoring a painting: each day, I see a bit more of Hannah returning, which is wonderful news.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Interesting that you should sense a but.’ Roberts leans back in his chair. He has one leg crossed over the other in his usual fashion and he bounces gently on the ball of the foot which is in contact with the floor so his swept-back hair gently quivers.

  ‘So there’s no but?’

  He smiles. But his ice-chip blue eyes don’t look amused.

  ‘No. You’re right. There’s a but. The thing is, I’m alarmed by certain reports that have reached me. I remember you were upset by a cuddly toy, and by a picture of a baby in your colouring book?’

  The way he says it makes me sound mad.

  ‘I think that was someone’s idea of a sick joke.’

  Not a joke. A message, a reminder of how messed up I am. And I know who from. Steffie. Who else? The colouring books come in plain envelopes from Becs’ assistant. I don’t even look at them. Steffie could have sent one with a page already filled in. I wouldn’t have noticed it was any different from the rest. I don’t have enemies. I’m not that sort of person. Steffie is the only one. It must have been her.

  Dr Roberts gazes at me without speaking. The moment stretches between us, taut and strained. He strokes his beard with the fingers of his right hand. His nails, I notice now, are perfectly shaped. Finally, he speaks.

  ‘It could be someone’s poor idea of a joke,’ he agrees. ‘Or could it be that you’ve misconstrued the situation? The toy arrived unpackaged, didn’t it? So the note had been lost. Couldn’t it just have been a well-wisher, trying to cheer you up?’

  ‘And the ears?’

  ‘Damaged in transit? It happens.’

  ‘And the colouring book?’ I ask him. ‘How can you explain that?’

  He waves his hand, as if I’m splitting hairs.
<
br />   ‘All I’m saying is that there are always other possibilities. And it might be healthier if you explored those first, before jumping to the very conclusion that is most harmful to you.’

  ‘When can I go home?’

  The question comes out in a rush, making me sound, to my own ears, like an anxious child on her first day of school.

  ‘We’re not your jailers, Hannah. There’s nothing stopping you leaving, if that’s what you really want.’

  ‘So will you tell Danny I’m ready? I feel so much stronger.’

  He bounces harder on his foot. It’s starting to make me feel queasy.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he says, his foot coming to a sudden stop. ‘I’ll talk to your husband once you’ve had a couple of days in a row without incident.’

  I don’t ask him what he means. I don’t need to.

  As I get up to leave, he puts a hand on my arm to stop me. I look down at those perfect nails resting on my old jumper with the moth holes in the sleeve.

  ‘I know you’re in a rush to get back to your old life, but what you have to ask yourself, Hannah, is whether that old life really exists any more. And if it doesn’t, what are you going to put in its place?’

  After I finish my session with Dr Roberts and go downstairs, I don’t head to the day room, which is where Stella will be waiting for me. I don’t feel like being sociable. There’s a heaviness to everything, my legs moving as if pushing against a weight of water, my thoughts slow and sluggish. I feel myself dipping backwards towards the person I was during my first few days here, when everything I looked at was tinged with black. The person Charlie helped to save.

  The door to the music room is closed and I can hear Graham, the part-time music therapist, encouraging someone to play a minor scale on the piano. ‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘That’s the sad note right there.’ Sometimes Graham lays mats down on the wide oak floorboards and we all lie down and close our eyes while he plays us Schumann or Handel, and when the music finishes almost all of us will be crying. We cry a lot in here. There are boxes of tissues everywhere.