For days after we’d been to see her in jail, her dead, blank eyes haunted my dreams. How did a mother do what she had done?
‘It could be acute Post Natal Depression Syndrome,’ Ed had suggested as we drove away from the prison building. ‘Left untreated, she would have had major problems bonding with the child, and might even have experienced strong hostility. The child is responsible for the death of the person she was before. The child has in a sense killed her. Or she could have experienced massive guilt feelings about her own inadequacy as a mother. She might have felt that sooner or later she would end up damaging the child, but by doing it first, she was somehow pre-empting her own worst self.’
I didn’t believe that’s what had happened to Noelle. Without Peter Egan’s influence, she might not have been antagonistic towards her baby, but she’d still have been indifferent. Of that I was convinced. Peter hadn’t had to change her mind, or even reinforce a course she’d already set upon. He’d just planted a seed in a void. My secret fear is that, deep inside, I’m just as emotionally lazy as Noelle Egan, just as open to corruption – wide and shallow as a Petri dish. Only my love for Shannon marks me out as different. That’s why I structure my life around book deadlines and departmental meetings and lectures and my weekly writing group and my twice-a-week swim. The more strictly I timetable, the less space I leave for the bacteria to thrive.
By the time we met with Laurie for the fourth time, it was common knowledge that Noelle was going to enter a plea of diminished responsibility, claiming that her husband had a Svengali-like hold over her. She was hoping to get a lesser sentence by turning state witness against Peter. He had refused to comment at all. Those who’d dealt with him said he considered himself above the normal rule of law. Meanwhile witnesses were emerging from his past. An ex-girlfriend he’d left with a metal plate in her cheekbone, a half-sister who claimed he’d always been the black sheep. No criminal record, just a string of people who would be very happy never to see him again.
Whatever the outcome of the legal case, it seemed certain both parents would be behind bars for a very long time, if not the rest of their lives. Laurie was now officially a ward of the state. Our recommendation on her future was critical. Was she so damaged that she needed intensive ongoing treatment, or did her best hope for a normal life lie in adoption somewhere well away from all this, where she could start again, forge new memories, forget about monstrous goings-on in dark cellars? Forget she had a brother.
‘I think maybe it’s time to start probing,’ Ed said when I arrived upstairs at the medical centre. ‘If we decide adoption is the best course for Laurie, time is of the essence.’
‘But obviously we need to be sure,’ I said as he went through his now familiar routine of checking the tape recorder was working and straightening the blinds. ‘I mean, the last thing we want is to decide she’s OK because that’s what we want to believe, and then a year down the line or two years or even five years, something happens and it all comes back to the surface, but she hasn’t got the support network around to help her deal with it.’
‘I hear what you’re saying, Anne.’ Ed had now sat down in a chair next to me, and was stroking his chin. There was a patch of hair he’d missed while shaving and I found myself riveted to it. ‘And absolutely we won’t recommend on Laurie’s case until we’re satisfied about the appropriate course of action. But I have to say that so far I’ve been impressed at how resilient she seems. And seeing the house and talking to her mom actually made me believe there might be cause for some kind of cautious hope. She grew up believing she was loved – that counts for a lot.’
‘And the fact that her little brother was kept chained up in the basement?’
‘With luck that will just start to seem like one of those weird images that flash into your mind and which is just too bizarre to be a true memory so you put it down to a movie you’ve seen. She’s only four years old. How much of what happened to you before you were four can you remember, Anne?’
I tried to think back. There was an image of being swung between two adult hands. Higher. Higher. Another of sitting on a chair gazing awestruck at my own bleeding knee while my mom knelt on the floor in front of me gently swabbing it with a tissue.
‘Yes, but I think something that traumatic would stick with me.’
‘But that’s just it, Anne. It wasn’t traumatic to Laurie. It was normal. She didn’t know anything else.’
‘And the bite mark? Her involvement in the punishment programme?’