Guilty (12 page)

15.

I remember one Hallowe’en, this guy at high school, jumped out behind me and my “mate” Hannah as we were walking down this pitch-black alley. She was startled, practically jumped out of her skin , her palms sweaty, hysterical screams. My hands stayed dry, I was not in the least scared.

So think about it, if I was made not to feel fear or distress, how can I emphasise with the fear and distress of others? Yes, I am according to this theory your original psychopath! Pleased to meet you!

I have no empathy apparently and empathy is needed for “normal” moral development.

When you hurt somebody, their distress becomes your pain, not so with me! You intrinsically see violence as bad. Then you help others and sense their happiness and you feel happy too. As I am devoid of empathy I have never felt that feeling. I am told you would feel distraught if you hurt others?

Apparently us psychopaths can empathise if we choose to but it’s not automatic like it is for you. That’s why we can be so charming and maybe manipulative.

You see, once somebody like me and Dan have seduced you into doing whatever serves our purpose, the effortful empathy will dissolve. As we aren’t constrained by innate empathy there is little to stop us from using violence. We need our empathy to be automatic like yours if we are to escape the curse of our births.

Us psychopaths are skilled. I can be personable; lots of people have begun to enjoy my company now I have grown up. I have learnt how to compensate for my emotional deficiencies, just like an amputee survives without a limb. That is why the social workers thought Molly was safe with me! That social worker, Lauren, well she really fell for my sweet anxious new mother role. I coined that one really well, even got a few parenting mags around the flat for when she came; she never twigged I had simply lifted them from the health visitor’s waiting-room. I always made sure my sterilising kit was on show when she came round and Molly always had a new outfit on. Mum was always supplying those, quite the shopaholic, my mum!

Lots of kisses on Molly’s head as I held her tightly as we sat chatting, lots of dreams expressed for her future.

But don’t judge me too harshly because it’s not my fault my brain processes things differently from those of other people. Surely I am as deserving of treatment as anyone with a mental illness; look at Josh; I bet you were all sympathetic to him!

Brain scans have shown that psychopaths possess significant impairments that affect our ability to feel emotions and read others’ cues.

You should tap into your empathy, you hypocrites. Try to imagine what it would be like never to care deeply for anyone or anything, to have shallow emotions. Imagine how it would be never to have regrets.

We’re tone-deaf, we “know the words but not the music” because we lack access to our own feelings and to yours. We can’t put the brakes on our impulses. You might have felt jaded, angered, irritated by Molly’s constant demands and crying but you would have stopped yourself hitting out or worse at the helpless, defenceless creature. Not me, no stopping me once I have started!

If you had been born with part of your physical body missing you would have all society feeling sorry for you. I was born with reduced volume in a region of my brain called the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and in another area known as the temporal.

Impressed! No problem, my psychologist liked to ensure I knew about my loose screw from a scientific viewpoint, check I knew without doubt I was wired wrong, couldn’t offer any solution, just broken!

If I was a toaster I could be sent back if I had been wired wrong; nope, nothing to offer me just condemnation for being born like this. Suppose I should blame God, if I believed in the arsehole!! Now mum would go potty if she heard me say that; she believes in him, at least she did but surely not now, surely not since he took her only grandkid. Actually, suppose she blames me for that one!!

Anyway, going back to me and my brain, these regions are essential for understanding one’s own thoughts and feelings! This damage, bad wiring, explains my lack of emotion and indifference to my victims.

I still reckon Dan deserved what he got and Molly, well Molly, I should have aborted her. You wouldn’t have thought bad of me then! You try coping with a screaming monster that just won’t shut up when you are exhausted.

So where’s your empathy for me? My mum once saw this little boy in a supermarket with no ears! Just holes where they should have been. She wouldn’t stop going on about it for months, how he could and should be helped. What about me? Born with this curse; born a devil! Why not feel sorry for me?

My lack of fear means I don’t worry about physical pain, that’s why I could tolerate all those homeless nights freezing on the streets. My lack of concern for the feelings of others means social punishments have no effect on me. I’m born not to care if I hurt or disappoint people. I have disappointed all my family as I did all my teachers and yep, two fingers up to the lot of them, well maybe not Mum!

I’m born not to be bothered by rejection . It doesn’t get to me that Bri couldn’t give a toss about me in his little snooty world and Oliver has skipped off to Australia, Dad ditched me, well, all of us but because of me. Mum didn’t. Mum has never rejected me!

I never feel ashamed or guilty. I have no embarrassment. Good job, the state I have been in over the years. I’ve embarrassed others so many times; it’s quite comical actually. So it goes without saying that I am not motivated either to avoid those feelings! What do I mean?

Well, let me explain! You will end up doing things out of politeness due to your inbuilt social graces. With me you get the real thing. I will shout out what I think, won’t conform, won’t obey silly little requests like, in a museum, “don’t touch these objects”. If I want to touch, I jolly well will, the things should be cased in glass if they don’t want you touching.

“Please don’t smoke”: if I want to smoke it’s my decision.

“Please don’t litter”: well, provide a fucking bin then!

I have no fear of social pain. I never did get Josh and his problems. Don’t get me going on charities, load of thieves, your money never gets to where it’s meant to and besides those “In need” well, they should do something about it themselves!

So then, after all my confessions, are you going to label me ill or evil? Do you have sympathy for me or fear? Would you feel sorry for somebody with a low IQ, with a lack of intellectual ability? Well I lack an emotional ability so feel sorry for me! If I had been born blind, deaf or unable to ever walk you would have understood.

Neuro-law! Do you have a clue what that is? It’s a controversial vision of a future when moral judgement of criminal behaviour will be replaced by the view that some criminals have diseased brains that need to be treated. Maybe then you will reconsider my sentence.

A tiny baby swaddled in the white, hospital towel, panic on the midwife’s face as she wipes it down, the blue face. The alarm button brings a multitude of racing feet. Everything possible is set in motion; all the cardiac team summoned, the hole in the heart which somehow escaped detection in all the scans.

Prayers, visits from the hospital chaplain, anxious grandparents visiting, no expense spared by the NHS, a lifetime of promised care and allowances if that precious babe can make it through the first few hours.

Newborn, I lay there, some sort of hole in my brain, nobody knew, years later nobody cared. Thrown to the scrapheap, somehow a fault of my own. Born an untouchable and they say the caste system was abolished in 1948.

I struggle to understand why people even care about what I did. Okay, I can give you the talk, I can talk about childcare and being a loving mum. If you’d met me in the days I did attend mother and toddlers you’d have been so impressed with my caring views. That’s what we psychos are good at, the talk!

You, no doubt, presume we all view the world in roughly the same way and that words mean the same things to you as they do me! I don’t suppose you can understand that psychopaths are so emotionally disconnected that we can see people as objects to be destroyed without any concerns. You would, however, understand how a colour-blind person might have difficulty understanding the colour red, so why can’t you see why I can’t understand emotions. They’re not suddenly going to start seeing colour. You wouldn’t expect them to! If they did, it would be pretty miraculous! I can know what you are feeling but I just never get to feel it myself. If my brain lacks the moral niceties that you take for granted, how is it my fault?

Back to your hypocrisy! You would claim that everybody standing in front of the judge’s bench is equal.

I remember a PSE lesson at school. The teacher was discussing free will, what shapes our personality? He talked about empathy and the lack of it in psychopaths and how they could pretend to have it, to manipulate and I found myself raising my hand and saying, “Why does that sound like me?”

I had realised from very early on in my childhood that I felt differently to the other children. And he said, “In what way do you think it sounds like you?” and I replied, “Because I sometimes pretend to feel sorry for people,” and he looked embarrassed as if he’d already slotted me into his little psycho book and he said, “Well, that’s your own interpretation of yourself, not mine,” as if he was trying to defend himself from any parental complaint that he was giving labels to his students. I couldn’t understand why he seemed so guilty. He covered up his embarrassment, babbling on, “Well of course some psychopaths manage their condition so well that they use it in their career to do jobs other more sensitive folk might find distressing.” He was making his little psychos sound like robots as he dehumanised them.

Politicians and world leaders take great advantage of our traits, especially a grandiose of self-worth, superficial charm, ruthlessness, manipulation of others, lack of remorse and persuasiveness. We could make brilliant neurosurgeons, we would be cool and focused whatever the pressure. Emotion is seriously bad for surgeons in whose hands hover life and death.

Not all of us are violent, not all of us are your axe murderers! Some of us are excellent in the stock market trading rooms as we are ice-cool under pressure. Bomb disposal experts are often part of our clan! They can maintain focus where the majority of the human race couldn’t. They are fearless. BUT, and I can hear you screaming it at me, BUT they don’t exhibit all your characteristics. They certainly aren’t impulsive and irresponsible. True, but my point is there are lots of “successful” people who exhibit many of our traits.

Anyway, going back to my teacher, he told me, “Religion has laws and duties which must be obeyed. A psychopath can force himself to observe these rules, use them as a guide for every situation so they can act morally.”

At this point my mind shut him out. What sort of beast was I in his eyes? Yes, a beast, I might as well have had 666 stamped on my forehead. I was doomed by the judgement, well, observations of my own teacher. He was preaching at me. I started to show him after that just how disruptive “psychos” can be! He was off with “stress” within three weeks, never to return.

But that’s where people get me wrong. They think I don’t think! There’s always a strand with every so-called mental condition, bit like a jack-in-a-box, a bit which just won’t lie down and conform to the diagnosis.

I did think. I mulled over his words when my rage had worn itself out. Actually I think he had hit on something there! I think maybe it is the only way for us psychos, born with no inbuilt conscience. Maybe we could become acceptable, conforming members of society if we did have vision, if somehow we could be encouraged to follow a set goal for life. Suppose it falls at the first hurdle. I can’t stand rules, regulations, planning, so yep, thinking aloud, it is a nonstarter but I have pondered it all. That must count for some merit in your judgement of me?

16.

He hadn’t known how to tell them. Caroline had noticed his far-away look on so many occasions but she assumed it was concern over Bri. She’d been aware of his constant texting, his apologies as he left the room to take and make phone calls but she knew that was quite natural for a banker. Oliver had surprised them all when he had entered the financial world. They had all been convinced he would have chosen a more vocational career. Materialism was very low down on Oliver’s list of priorities but Bri had network connections and Oliver had just slipped into the job. Probably because he was not ambitious, his chilled out approach had been seen as trendy and appealing. Customers felt relaxed in his presence. He was a conscientious lad and somehow he had just rolled into the position which had invited him over to Australia. The Australians loved his laid-back ways. Before he knew it, he was totally at home there.

Love had blossomed for him but it seemed wrong to announce their happiness when there was so much heartbreak.

Caroline wasn’t stupid. It was only natural that her handsome, blue-eyed, blond-haired son should have been snapped up. She easily put two and two together. Oliver was in love. She was overjoyed.

She took pride in the knowledge of how well she knew her offspring. Dear old Oliver, he wouldn’t want to share his ecstasy when they were in such emotional turmoil but he needed to know it was natural and in fact a joy to know there were still promises of futures of hope and happiness.

“What’s she called?” she prompted when he entered Bri’s room again after yet another long phone call, his eyes clearly glistening.

“Mum!” She was so embarrassing.

“Oliver, it’s okay to be happy even though all this is going on. It helps to know there is a future out there, still. Come on love, I know you inside out. I know you are in love. ‘I can feel it in my fingers, I can feel it in my toes…’” singing, trying to make light of it in order to coax out her name.

“Tell me what her name begins with,” she teased.

“F.” He was surprised that he hadn’t denied it.

“Fiona, is that a good old Australian name?” She made a guess.

“Mum,” he repeated, exasperated.

“Show me a picture,” she pleaded.

Should he? Was it appropriate, was it the right time?

He flicked through his phone. “Well, there’s one here with our dog.”

“Our dog?” Her voice squeaked with surprise. “You mean you live together?” Suddenly she was so disappointed that Oliver could have such an intimate relationship with a woman yet he hadn’t even breathed a word about her existence to them in any phone call or Skype.

He cursed himself under his breath. He had gone a step too far. “I’ll show you some other time, Mum. It’s just not appropriate now,” he nodded towards the lifeless Bri. “I’m just popping to the loo,” and he hurried off, leaving Caroline bewildered. Oliver had always been an open book. Did she truly know any of her children? How many more surprises did they each have up their sleeve? Wearily she promised to herself to give them more space.

“You’re coming over?” Oliver was gobsmacked! “How?”

“By plane, idiot!”

“I know, idiot, but how can you just walk out of the classroom like that?”

“They’ve agreed I can have a month’s unpaid leave. I’ve not had a day off in the six years I’ve been there and due to all the extra-curricular activities I’ve thrown myself into every second during those years, they reckoned they owed me a favour.”

Oliver was over the moon; at least, that was his gut reaction.

“When?”

“Tomorrow”

Tomorrow?!

“Well, tomorrow in Australian time but whatever it is your time. Will your folk be able to put me up or can you get me some accommodation?”

“Wow, tomorrow. I love you. I’ll ring you back in half an hour, love.”

This was it. He was thrown in at the deep end.

“Mum, Fran is coming over tomorrow.”

“Fran?”

“Yes, instead of a photo I’m flying in the real thing!” he tried to make light of it.

Caroline remembered her promise to herself just moments earlier. She needed to be less full on. Playing things cool didn’t come naturally to her. She liked to be so heavily involved in her family’s life.

“Well, Fran is welcome to stay with us, darling.” She managed to stop herself from asking if they would be sharing a room?

Should she ask what she did for a living? A host of questions were dancing on her lips. Bri had always berated her nosiness. She stole a glance at him for moral support. Maybe just a couple of questions would be appropriate!

“Who’ll look after Rover when Fran flies out?”

“We use kennels,” came an unusually abrupt reply from Oliver.

Steve tried to help out. “It’ll do us all the world of good, having a houseguest to keep our minds off things. If Fran isn’t too jet-lagged I suggest we all go out for an Indian. We’ve become rather tied to Bri’s bedside lately.”

Caroline was shocked. It had never entered her head to recommence any sort of life until Bri was on the mend. Was this Steve’s way of awakening her to the thought that he might not make any progress?”

“I’m sure Fran will want a romantic reunion just with Oliver alone, first night,” she protested.

“We’ll see, Mum,” and with that he left the room again.

“He probably feels bad being so happy when Bri is like this. You know what a sensitive, thoughtful chap he is,” Steve put his arm round her shoulders.

Caroline nuzzled his neck. “It’s so weird that he’s never mentioned her. He’s Skyped loads of photos of Rover, sent tons of photos of his amazing apartment, I feel like I am on first name terms with many of his work colleagues; he’s described them so much but Fran – there’s never been any mention of any Fran. Why the secrecy?”

Steve had to admit it was a bit unusual. “Maybe he wanted to wait till he knew it was the right thing before he mentioned her?”

“It must have been pretty serious for her to move in and now to be flying over.”

“Stop fretting, love. He’s bringing her to stay now, so what’s the problem? Plenty of time to catch up on the getting to know all there is to know about how and when they met, what makes her tick, who’s in her family, her hobbies, work, all the things you women love to know!”

“But Oliver’s always told me everything. It doesn’t add up.”

“You love to make a mystery out of everything,” he laughed. “It’s probably his way of cutting the apron strings. Lots of men don’t tell their mums about their love lives!! Face it, what does my mum know about us?”

“S’pose” she replied rather churlishly.

Oliver opened the front door to welcome them home when he heard Steve’s car on the drive.

“Kettle’s on,” he beamed as he left the door ajar and went back through to brew the tea.

“I’ve put clean sheets on my bed for when Fran arrives. The washer’s on, I’ve hoovered through.

“I’ve made a casserole – we can heat it up when Fran arrives. I thought a good old English meal would be welcoming.”

Caroline smiled; Oliver was so like her – just the sort of thing she’d have done. They were obviously comfy in their relationship. Suddenly she felt relieved; no doubt Fran would fit into their family so well; how couldn’t she if she was Oliver’s choice.

One gift from Bri was that his accident had brought Oliver and his girlfriend home to them for a while. “Girlfriend,” she pondered further, “maybe fiancée?” Oliver had turned into a bit of a dark horse. A wedding, now that would be something to lift all their spirits. Bri could be best man. They’d get him up and going for that!

Hope, joy filtered into her heart. There could be some sort of future for them after all. Dark thoughts snuffed it out. Sadie, how could she entertain a future without Sadie in it? Bri was right. They must do all they could, regardless, to lessen her sentence. If Sadie could be released in a few years’ time she could still enjoy participating in life with Oliver and Fran’s children.

“Rushing ahead a bit, aren’t you?” uttered a small voice in her head.

“Running everybody’s life for them again, then?” Simon’s voice, she realised. His cynicism was still alive in her mind. Cynicism, apathy, sarcasm, truth, she wasn’t sure which. Well, she’d take one step at a time.

“I’ll do the dusting then. Don’t want Fran thinking we live in a pigsty.”

“Fran will help with the housework,” Oliver assured her. “While you’re at the hospital so much. Fran wants to help – part of the reason for the visit – to help us all out.”

“She sounds so sweet, Oliver.”

“I’ll still be spending as much time as possible with Bri,” he added.

“Mmm,” Caroline nodded. “It might be just the thing Bri needs – an Aussie accent to bring him out of his coma.”

“Does she know about Sadie?” it suddenly clicked. Maybe Oliver had kept his girlfriend out of things at both ends? Maybe Fran knew as little about them as they knew about her?

“Fran wants to help us with Sadie’s appeal, Mum. I’ve emailed all Bri’s notes out.”

The hope was resurrected again. Caroline relaxed. How lucky she was to have Oliver and now his lovely sounding girlfriend. Steve was a huge blessing too. She silently thanked God.

Caroline took Steve’s advice to let Oliver meet Fran by himself. They’d let them get her settled in at home while they were at the hospital and then they’d all have that casserole at night as she got to know the woman who could quite likely be her prospective daughter-in-law.

The day couldn’t go quick enough for Caroline. She was the most relaxed she’d been at Bri’s side. Somehow the thought of a stranger helping her was comforting, almost symbolic, an angel sent to help them. She touched up her lipstick up as Steve stopped the car.

“They’re back,” Caroline breathlessly whispered, noticing her car back up the drive.

Steve caught a glimpse of long blonde hair as Oliver lifted the net curtain at the sound of their car. “A blonde,” desperate to satisfy Caroline’s curiosity.

She stroked the creases out of her dress as she hurried in. Oliver and Fran stood as Caroline and Steve entered.

“Any progress with Bri?” Oliver asked “Oh, and this is Fran!”

Caroline took his hand to shake it, to welcome him. Steve admired Caroline’s dignity, her finesse, not one falter.

Changes, how many changes could one mother experience in such a short space of time? She was now a professor of change!

“I’m so pleased to meet you, Fran.” She kissed him on both cheeks.

“Has Oliver shown you your room?”

“Yes, my bags are already up in Ollie’s room,” he reached out and held Oliver’s hand. Oliver’s eyes were still downcast, studying the brown swirls on the carpet.

Life had taught her so much lately. It just had to be allowed to go on following its own path. Her days of steering her children were long past. She had to allow each to spread their wings and take flight on whatever path they chose. She wanted them all to fly in the knowledge of her blessing and goodwill.

“I hope you will enjoy being part of our family, Fran,” she found herself saying.

“Oliver is a very lucky boy. Now where’s my cuppa, Oliver?”

His blond mop lifted and he smiled coyly at his mum. “I didn’t know how to tell you,” he tried to explain.

“What? Tell me what a handsome chap your boyfriend is?” She winked.