The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel (13 page)

‘Can you think of any specific events or experiences that might have led her to change?’ I asked.

‘Well, possibly, I don’t know... Obviously we’ve thought about this question, over and over and over again, haven’t we, Rose? Darling? Perhaps all the responsibility she took for Amy at such a young age was simply too much. Perhaps we should have intervened, insisted that she act more selfishly at that age, enjoy her carefree years more fully. I don’t know. We were always very close, Julia and I, but she did seem different, more distant, when she decided to drop out of Edinburgh and during and after her travels. I felt that I’d lost touch with her and that she didn’t really share things with me anymore. Not the way she used to, in any case. It was a real shock for us that Julia should have decided against an academic career. You know, she was predestined for it. But she gave it all up, more or less overnight… I never quite understood why. She didn’t bother explaining.

‘When she came back from her travels I still saw her fairly regularly. I really tried not to lose touch completely. I felt she was slipping away from me. We’d meet in town after work at least once or twice a month, and we’d have dinner, just the two of us. But our discussions had become more abstract, more political, less personal, somehow. She didn’t really tell me much about her private life. In the last two years or so, we always ended up debating
ideas
. Or rather, she did. I mainly listened.’

Timothy paused, stared at the wall, and then continued. ‘I believe she encountered some bad people on those travels. Or even before then, in Edinburgh. Radicals, disaffected types. She did seem so different after her return... Yes, I suppose we can say that with some certainty. We didn’t care much for the friends she made when she got back to London, did we, Rose? Darling?’

His tone had become pleading, but Rose continued to sit silent and motionless on the edge of her chair.

‘They seemed so coarse, so unkempt in a pathetic teenage-rebellion kind of way, and, if you don’t mind me saying so, so
stupid
. I just couldn’t understand how someone with Julia’s intellectual abilities could tolerate, let alone seriously believe in all the utterly unoriginal and simplistic anti-globalization guff they were spouting. You know, she was a much more refined and complex thinker than the people she socialized with. That she, with all her talents, with all her idealism, had chosen to work in a run-down vegetable shop populated by resentful, dirty types with dreadlocks and piercings and no sense of humour whatsoever... ’

Here I interrupted Timothy. ‘What vegetable shop?’ I didn’t know anything about a vegetable shop.

‘Well, when Julia came back from South America she lived on her own for a while, in a small flat in Camden that we paid for. But then, about a year or so later, we cut her allowance. We didn’t do that lightly, I can assure you. But you know, she simply wasn’t doing anything. She just seemed to be frittering away her time and talents, and went to all these demonstrations and occupations and gatherings... She wasn’t working and she wasn’t studying. It went on for far too long. We felt that funding this phase any longer than we already had was counterproductive. We felt it would just allow her to continue to drift. So we cut her allowance. She obviously didn’t like that. But then she started to work in a dismal little organic vegetable shop. And she moved in with one of her colleagues – I can’t remember her name, a pale, morose girl.’

I asked him for the address of the vegetable shop, which he still knew by heart.

‘Mind you, they won’t be very welcoming there,’ he warned me. ‘They don’t have much time for people like you and me. They think we’re the enemy. When we found out that Julia had a job, we went to see her at the shop a few times. Obviously we wanted to support her in any way we could. Although we didn’t like the kind of job she’d chosen, at least she had chosen to do
something
… We even made an effort to buy our vegetables there for a while, although it was at the other end of town. But we were so clearly unwelcome in that place that we soon stopped trying.’

And then Timothy, whose voice had been sad but calm until that point, became agitated.

‘Do you want to know, Clare, what I really think? I think someone must have corrupted Julia, someone must have incited her, someone must have turned her into this…
monstrous thing
she’s become. She must have met some terrible characters on her travels and then fallen in with the wrong crowd when she came back. I’m convinced someone made her do it. She wouldn’t ever kill anyone. Not Julia. There must have been others, radicals, terrorists, fanatics, lunatics… She can’t have planned and executed that pointless carnage all on her own. It’s impossible. My beloved child building a bomb and setting it off in the full knowledge that it would kill all those innocent people? People who were doing nothing other than
drinking coffee
? No, it’s simply not possible.’

Timothy had risen from his seat and begun to pace up and down.

‘How anyone could have convinced her to do that I don’t know. I just don’t know. We’ve both done our very best to teach our children the difference between right and wrong. We thought Julia, of all of them, had the strongest defences, the strongest ethical convictions and values. I can’t even begin to imagine how someone could have turned her into a killer. She can’t have been well. Perhaps she had some mental problems we didn’t know about. God, I so wish she’d let us see her. It’s
hell
not to be able to see her, not to be able to help her! It’s hell, Clare! She needs help. She needs our help badly.’

And when he addressed Rose once again, there was a desperate fierceness in his plea. ‘Rose, say something. Please. I can’t do this on my own. Can you just say
something
? Please, darling!’

But Rose just sat there, her gaze sliding across the room unable to fix on anything, as though all surfaces had become slippery. Timothy took Rose’s lifeless hand and pressed it. He looked utterly despondent for a moment. Then he got up and filled her empty glass. Having sat down again, he turned back to me.

‘Rose isn’t well. She isn’t coping with the situation. Forgive her,’ he said.

Shaken out of her stupor by the remark, Rose burst out: ‘Of course I’m not well. Of course I’m not coping. How could I? How could anyone? We’ve raised a mass murderer. Julia killed twenty-four people! Obviously, we must have done
something
wrong.’

Then she started sobbing. It was a dry, hard and fast kind of sobbing, unaccompanied by tears. It lasted for about a minute. I didn’t know where to look. It was painful to witness. When she spoke again she addressed Timothy.

‘Just yesterday I dreamed that dream again. I’m in front of a tribunal, hundreds of men and women in white who are standing on a platform, and everyone is staring down at me, full of contempt. I feel like vermin. Then a small woman with round glasses reads out a list of my crimes and the verdict – I’ve breached the Hippocratic oath by raising a monster. My licence to practise medicine is revoked, and I’m chased away by angry shouting and hissing and seek shelter in the nearby woods.

‘I mean, the bitter irony of it all. I’ve dedicated my life to saving and protecting the lives of others, but have brought up someone who took twenty-four lives without even blinking an eye. I’ll never forgive her. Never! She destroyed us. Everything we’ve lived and worked for: our lives, our family – all is in tatters. All is lost. And you… Of course I’m not well!’

Timothy looked pained. ‘Don’t say that, Rose, darling, don’t go there, please. We’ve been through this so many times... It’s
not
your fault. It’s not
our
fault. Don’t you remember what our counsellor said? We’ve loved and supported each one of our children to the very best of our abilities. That’s all parents can do, and we did our job as well as anyone else I know. In fact, I’d even say better. You’re a fantastic mother, you always have been. Our children lacked nothing. They’ve had the most loving and privileged upbringing anyone can dream of.’

Rose laughed. ‘Violence doesn’t come from nowhere, Tim – you know that just as well as I do. People from happy homes don’t turn into killers. They just don’t. We must have done
something
wrong. All of us. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen to normal families. But what?
What
on earth can we have done to have caused
this
?’

She got up and poured herself another drink. Nobody said anything for a while. Then I asked: ‘You must have thought a lot about this question. Do you think there might be something – anything at all, even if it is tiny and might seem unimportant – that could have adversely affected Julia’s development?’

Timothy and Rose looked at each other. He very gently shook his head. Then he stared again at the discoloured patch on the wall, and responded: ‘Well, there’s one episode that I keep mulling over in my mind, over and over and over again, actually. I just can’t help it. It’s a bit like that dream you keep having, Rose. Forgive me for talking about this to a stranger, darling, but… I feel I need to share it. It was many, many years ago. Julia was six. She’d started school the previous year, and she was taking violin lessons at that time. Rose is very musical, aren’t you, darling? She has the most beautiful singing voice, ethereal, light and airy, and yet incredibly powerful… We used to sing a lot when we were younger. Anyway, Rose always believed that learning an instrument was important for the development of children. Jonathan learned the piano, but he was rather hopeless at it. He really doesn’t have one musical bone in his body. He gave up after just two years.

‘Julia, however, had her heart set on learning the violin – she’d seen a beautiful woman in a long, black dress perform Bach’s violin sonatas in our local church one evening when she was four or five, and this image had made a lasting impression on her. When we thought she was old enough, I made some inquiries, and a friend of ours recommended a Ukrainian concert violinist who was teaching other pupils at Julia’s age. She was called Alina Abramovich. She, too, was beautiful, a bit like the woman Julia had seen perform in church – I hope you won’t mind me saying that, Rose.

‘Alina came to our house every Tuesday evening before supper, and she and Julia practised together in our living room. Julia was a very gifted student and made rapid progress – I believe had she set her heart on it she could easily have become a professional musician. You know, she had such talent, such drive; she excelled at everything she did. I always tried to get back from work early on those days, so that I could stand in the door and listen to the two of them. It gave me such pleasure. Their duets made my heart sing. Alina did of course notice my enchantment, and we started to talk after her lessons, about Julia’s progress and music at first. We were both ardent admirers of Bach and of Beethoven’s late quartets. Then we started talking about other things. It soon became a habit that she and I would have a glass of wine after the violin lessons. Rose was working very hard at that time, and often returned late from work, just in time for a late supper. A few times Alina stayed to eat with the entire family.

‘One evening – I still don’t know what possessed us – Alina and I drank more than usual. You were late that day, Rose, very late. Too late... If only you’d arrived earlier. Alina became drunk and sentimental, and she talked about the friends and family she had to leave behind in the Ukraine when she came to the UK to pursue her career. She remembered her parents and how frail they’d looked when she last saw them, and she suddenly started to cry. I took her hand, just to comfort her. But she misunderstood the gesture. She pressed my hand firmly and then she leaned forward to kiss me. She kissed me on the lips and put her hands around my head and interlocked her fingers so that I couldn’t withdraw as quickly as I’d have liked to. I was terribly surprised. Perhaps I hesitated just a moment too long before I gently began to loosen her hands and pulled away from her mouth.

‘“No, Alina, no,” I said. “Don’t, please.”

‘But at that moment, I noticed Julia. She was standing in the kitchen doorway and looking at us. I still remember everything so vividly… Julia was wearing a blue cotton dress with a small white collar, white tights and ballerina shoes, and her hair was braided in two pigtails. All colour had drained from her face, and before I could get up and catch hold of her and explain the situation she ran away and locked herself in the upstairs bathroom. I knocked on the bathroom door for at least forty minutes. I used all my skills to persuade her to open up and to let me explain, but she was as stubborn as a mule. I could hear her crying hysterically behind the door, and got increasingly worried. It was only when I started to try to force open the lock that she finally let me in.

‘Rose had arrived by then, and understandably wasn’t very happy about my explanation of what had happened. But she hid her anger for Julia’s sake. You know, Rose is always very professional about everything, including mothering. Anyway, we tried to talk to Julia and to reassure her. We talked about how much Rose and I loved each other, and we tried to explain that Alina had misunderstood something and was terribly lonely and unhappy, and so on. Julia seemed to grow calmer and eventually appeared to accept my explanation. We felt confident that all was well again when she finally went up to her room, tired out by all the crying. I helped her change into her pyjamas and tucked her in and kissed her goodnight before I switched off the lights in her bedroom.

‘Once Julia was in bed Rose and I had an argument in the kitchen that lasted for a long time, probably two or three hours. You know, Rose didn’t quite believe my version of the story, and it took me for ever to convince her. It was well past midnight when we heard loud crashing sounds from the living room. When we rushed over to see what was happening we found Julia with the broken neck of her violin in her hand. She must have smashed it repeatedly against the grand piano until it was in pieces and all its strings had snapped. She looked at us with her big green eyes, and her pale, small face radiated a strange calmness that I found almost more unsettling than her destructive act. Then she said: “Dad, Mum – I’ll never play the violin again.” And she didn’t. She never touched any musical instruments again in her life.’