TWENTY-FIVE

When I stepped into the court to give evidence, I looked over at Dan. He was unrecognizable. His hair was cut short. He wore a plain white shirt, gray trousers, and a navy tie. Whether he was Stephen Connolly or Dan Griffin, he looked nothing like my son. I stared at him, but he never once glanced in my direction. He kept his head still, his eyes fixed forward, gazing into the middle distance.

Frank had come to London for the trial; sitting next to him was a small gray-haired man. Julie’s father. He looked thin and papery in his grief. At times, during the most painful parts of the evidence, I saw him wince. More than once, I thought his frail body might crumble under the weight of those graphic witness statements.

A defense of diminished capacity placed considerable emphasis on Dan’s previous contact with mental health services. As the Trauma Unit had been his current place of treatment, my work as both the director of the unit and his therapist came under particular scrutiny. Understandably, much was made of my professional failings and the domino effect they had on the outcome of events.

When I stood in the witness box, the defense barrister began her cross-examination with my training, the history of my career, and the rise to director of the unit. She asked about the model of work. She wanted the psychodynamic approach explained for the court.

“Can you explain the importance of ‘the transference’ to the court?”

After a lengthy explanation, she clarified it for the jury.

“So, it’s the relationship between the patient and therapist that’s particularly significant in this type of therapy?”

“Yes. That’s correct.”

“This very relationship is the place where the patient can bring his or her issues from childhood, feelings about their own parental figures, and reenact them, as it were, in the sessions?”

“‘Reenact’ sounds a little contrived,” I say. “But yes, the relationship is the place where unresolved and difficult feelings around parental figures can be surfaced.”

“And for the court, can you tell us therefore, about the importance of boundaries and containment within this model of therapeutic practice?”

Afterward, she moved on to my family. To the breakdown of my marriage. Then to Tom and his difficulties. His suicide attempt. She asked why I didn’t tell people that he had gone missing. The court was referred to my email requesting leave for my “back surgery.”

“You lied to your employers?”

“Yes. That’s correct.”

“Can you tell the court why?”

For a moment, I didn’t know what to say.

“I was—” and I searched for the right word, “struggling.” I take a few moments. “Grief is not linear,” I explained. “Nor is it rational. I made the decision at the time to keep it hidden. Not to let my personal life contaminate my professional life.” I paused for a moment. “I felt it would be better for my work. Better for my patients, to keep it away.”

Better for your patients?” she repeated and couldn’t resist a smirk.

And that’s when I see it very clearly—by hiding it from work, I was hiding it from myself. My denial. My own undigested rat. Splitting it off was a way to keep going.

I didn’t say this. It wouldn’t interest her. Why would it?

When we moved to the likeness between Dan and my son, the jury were referred to a selection of photographs in their evidence packs. The woman on the end, with the cropped gray hair, studied the photos carefully. She looked up at Dan, shook her head ever so slightly, before shooting me a cold, hard stare.

“If a colleague presented you with a similar conundrum—a likeness between a patient and a member of their own family, a likeness that they thought could have a detrimental impact on the work, what would you do?”

“I’d advise them to refer the patient on to someone else. It would be in the patient’s best interest,” I said without hesitation.

The court was still.

The barrister looked around at her audience. “In the patient’s best interest,” she nodded, as she flicked over a page of notes. “Can you explain why you didn’t properly chase up the notes from the surgery in Hackney? Records show that you left messages, but failed to follow it up successfully. Can you explain why you didn’t speak to the Bristol GP yourself?”

I told her I had spoken to the Bristol receptionist, who had referred me back to Dr. Davies. I talked about the fact that Bristol was a single-handed practice. I listed my various phone calls, explained that my attempts had been thwarted by an administrator off sick. I said all the things I had been reminded to say.

She was nodding as I spoke, as if to hurry me along.

“Ordinarily, are a new patient’s notes transferred to their new GP?”

“Yes.”

“And when a patient is referred to your unit, is it normal practice to request the notes?”

“Mostly. Particularly if the patient is not known to the referrer.”

“And ordinarily, when the notes don’t arrive, what would you do?”

“I would follow it up. Ring the surgery. Look into what the holdup might be.”

“Did you do all of these things?”

“Yes.”

“Would you agree there was a significant delay in you obtaining the notes?”

“Yes.”

“If you had seen the notes, you would have known all about the defendant’s previous hospital admission.” A deliberate pause, for dramatic effect. “A three-month stay in a psychiatric unit in the north of England,” she said looking up, “two years prior to the defendant’s arrest. Might this knowledge have altered your work? The focus of your therapy?”

“I don’t know the details. But yes, quite possibly.”

Obtaining the notes from his previous surgery would have alerted us to his different birth name. And this, more than likely, would have alerted us to his complex past and his previous psychiatric admission. I did make a number of calls, but I didn’t follow them through with the rigor I ordinarily would have. I could say that following up the notes slipped to the bottom of a list of priorities. But that wasn’t the whole story, of course. Freud would say there’s no such thing as forgetting, and that, by then, I was too tangled up in my own web, my own version of the truth. The narrative I wanted to see. Somewhere, I think, deep down, I knew he was very disturbed. And somewhere, wrapped inside all of that, was my own omnipotence. However damaged he was, I felt that I could save him. I accepted the unknowability of him because I didn’t want to discover a reason to stop seeing him. In the void where once stood the trophy of my son, he was the small consolation prize I’d wanted to cling to.

After the recess, she moved on to the other dominoes that I had set in motion.

“Is it your usual clinical practice to lie to your patients?”

“No.”

“Is it common practice to cancel sessions with your patients?”

“No. But the session wasn’t canceled. It was rescheduled.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Have you rescheduled sessions in the past?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“A tribunal . . . a funeral, are two reasons that come to mind.”

“Can you tell the court the reason you canceled, sorry, rescheduled, the session with the defendant on the sixteenth of May?”

“To attend my grandson’s birthday party.”

The court was silent.

“Thank you. And for the record, please note this was the day after Stephen Connolly, the man you knew as Dan Griffin, was invited to spend the night in your house.” She paused.

The judge looked up. “Is there a question for the witness?”

“It was on the sixteenth of May that the defendant followed you to South London, and saw you with your grandson, and took a series of photographs of you holding the baby.”

Members of the jury were referred to the relevant pictures in the file.

“Can you confirm that this took place after the therapy session when the defendant told you about his dead baby brother, and had shown you a photograph of his own mother cradling her son?”

“That’s correct.”

I felt hot and dizzy. I reached for the water.

“Is it common practice to let patients stay overnight at your house? Are you operating some kind of therapeutic B & B?” she said, with another smirk.

“No.”

“Can you confirm that it was during this overnight stay when the photographs of your children on the walls would have made it obvious to the defendant that you lied to him?”

“That’s correct.”

“We put it to you, that it was your own trauma, the physical likeness of this patient to your missing son, Tom, that altered your professional judgment.”

There was a collective intake of breath.

The barrister was all puffed up when she said this. As if ready for some sort of combat. A war of words. These were the sort of moments they thrived on.

“Yes,” I said, nodding, “that’s correct.”

She looked momentarily deflated.

“So are you saying it was your own selfish need that swayed your judgment, and it was this that led to the tragic event on the twenty-third of May?”

It was shocking to hear it out loud. It was like a sharp slap against my face, but it also came as some relief not to try to duck away.

“That’s correct,” I said too quietly.

“I’m sorry, can you repeat your response?”

“Yes. That is correct.”

“Would you say it constitutes a serious clinical misjudgment?”

“Yes.”

The defense pursued this line, snaking her way to the impact of my own blurred boundaries on the therapy work . . . the lie . . . the overnight stay.

“You stepped out of role. Would you agree?”

“Yes.”

“I suggest that you became more of a mother figure to your patient, and it was this very confusion that became a trigger for his subsequent anger and jealousy. Anger and jealousy that you had already surfaced in therapy—that it was your job to contain.”

She was stepping from side to side now, her hands gesticulating in front of the jury.

“Is it possible,” she asked, “that the sight of you holding another baby, so soon after he had described the torment of his own childhood rejection, was difficult for him?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible that this, coupled with the altered appointment time, left him feeling rejected all over again?”

“Yes. It’s possible.”

“Then once you are suspended from work, he has yet another canceled appointment. It was reported that he arrived in an agitated state. Perhaps desperate to see you. And you were not there. He then went to South London, and it was precisely during your booked appointment time that the murder took place.”

I nodded.

“Perhaps,” she mused, looking around at the jury, “none of this would have happened if you’d done your job properly.”

I thought then of Robert. His quiet, wise voice. “It’s all in the beginning” is what he always said. And so it was. People who don’t do their jobs properly.

After the break, there was a long session that focused on my “fixation” about Dan’s suicide risk, and my belief he was likely to harm himself. When it was proposed that I may have been misled by the films he talked about, his barrister was prepared.

“But what about When Harry Met Sally? The Deer Hunter? The Godfather? Stephen claims he mentioned many films in the course of your sessions.” Then she peered dramatically down at her papers. “The Sound of Music?” she said triumphantly. “Where’s the suicide there?”

There was a murmur of laughter around the court.

It was suggested to the court that I was caught up in my own unprocessed drama, my own hypothesis of suicide and self-harm, to the detriment of everything else. Links were made to the Mark Webster case, and then to “the very shocking suicide attempt” by my own son.

Hayley was, of course, called as a witness. She looked small and terrified in the dock and I felt sorry for her. She kept her eyes from mine. Answered as quickly as possible.

“Did the accused tell you that he could see Dr. Hartland for as long as he needed?”

“Yes.”

“Did Dr. Hartland lose her temper?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Can you please describe what happened during your fifth session with Dr. Hartland on the fifteenth of May?”

Hayley’s words were hesitant, her hands holding tightly on to the stand.

The photographs were produced as evidence.

“Can you confirm that these are the photos you took? That these are the marks on your arms?”

And so it rolled on. The court felt airless. Tight. Things moved incredibly slowly, sifting over small, grainy details. It was an atmosphere very far from the image presented in the media or on a fast-paced entertainment drama. Mostly, it was tiny movements. Back and forth over the minutiae. It reminded me of the fairground slot machines I loved as a child, where a bar pushes back and forth, gently nudging a pile of money forward, until one or two coins eventually fall over the edge. On a daily basis, the biggest challenge was trying to find enough air to keep breathing.

There were many inconsistencies. Things I didn’t pick up. I was thrown many breadcrumbs by Dan. Some, I gobbled up eagerly. Others, ones that might have led me on a different path, I chose to ignore. What wasn’t in question was the fact that he was a deeply disturbed and troubled man.

There was a brother, Michael. He was eighteen months old when he died. Dan was three and a half. According to the records, Michael was in the living room, playing by an open fire in a polyester dressing gown that caught alight. The flames roared up his small body in seconds. He had 90 percent burns and died five days later in intensive care. Dan’s mother had left the two of them alone when she went upstairs. She was convinced the fireguard was in place when she left the room. How it fell away from the fire was unexplained. Did it fall? Was it kicked away? It didn’t really matter. Dan was only three. Such a little boy to be burdened with such a traumatic experience. It was reported that he had no recollection of the event. It was highly likely that the event had been “forgotten,” and was buried somewhere deep inside, leaving him with a scar of blame and shame.

As I listened, I recalled the session he told me about the rape. His fixation with the lighter. The flame next to his cheek. That smell. Burning. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was soon after that Dan had wondered if the attack had happened for a reason. Karma, he’d said. Because I’m bad. Perhaps there was an unexpected association. Perhaps the sense of smell had triggered a fleeting, but unidentifiable memory, some connection he couldn’t make.

There were lots of things that weren’t clear. The two different names. Two different NHS numbers. A false National Insurance number. Layers of truths and untruths. Some of what he told me was true. Some was expanded so far away from the truth so as to be unrecognizable. Whatever was true or untrue, it didn’t really matter. What I knew, beyond all doubt, was that the session when he talked about his childhood was real. The drive away from the fairground in the car, his memory of searching the kitchen cupboards for sharp utensils, whether they actually happened or not (and I suspect they did), they were real in his mind, and an accurate reflection of how he felt. The feelings of isolation. Of not being loved. Of finding ways to hurt himself to take away the terrible pain and emptiness. That was real.

A number of weeks into the trial, the faces of the jury had become as familiar as my own family. I knew the members of the public gallery who came in every day. The court reporters, the unruly quiff of hair on the usher’s forehead. I knew them all. It was amid all this familiarity that a new face came into the public gallery one morning. It was a woman about my age. She walked with purpose and precision, looking straight ahead. She had short, dark hair. The woman in the photograph. Her face was blank, cold, impassive. Dan sensed her presence as soon as he stepped into the dock. Like an animal, his eyes sought her out. There was a brief moment when they stared at each other. By lunchtime, she was gone.

Over the course of the trial, the barristers picked over the details of the case. In their long black cloaks and white shirts, they were like magpies swooping down on the glittering prize of murder over manslaughter. There were reports from clinical professionals who had treated Dan in the past. Expert witnesses with a litany of diagnostic terms that were leveled at him: psychopath, sociopath, and pathological narcissist. Different forensic psychiatrists, witnesses for the defense and prosecution batted the terminology back and forth. Most frequently mentioned was “borderline personality disorder,” the blanket categorization for those individuals who were undeniably disturbed, but seemed to evade any other specific diagnosis. One forensic psychiatrist referred to his “early attachment disorder,” and another’s theory was of an “acute psychotic episode” triggered by the “delusional transference” in therapy.

The experts were in unanimous agreement about childhood trauma, and his emotional deprivation. Loneliness. Neglect. Severe and long-standing attachment issues. Unresolved anger issues toward his mother, in a family that was broken by the death of a baby. It was accepted that the work at the Trauma Unit unearthed some of these very difficult feelings and failed to contain them. Instead, he was inadvertently given a platform to vent his anger.

Perhaps he was looking for someone like me. Perhaps I was looking to be found.

In her summing-up, the judge highlighted many contributory factors for the jury to consider, but the ones I remembered were the “errors in clinical judgment” and the “failure in due care and attention” by the Mental Health Trust responsible. It was acknowledged these issues were beyond the jurisdiction of the courts, but were a matter for ongoing investigations by the Trust and external professional bodies.

In the end, the verdict from the jury was unequivocal. The photographs Dan took, the planned break-in at the flat, the seizing of the knife from the kitchen. All were clear signs of intent, and indicated the premeditated nature of the crime. It wasn’t clear whether Dan was coming to the flat for Nicholas, or whether, because of my absence at the clinic, he somehow believed I, too, might be there, and he was coming for me. Or perhaps, in his deranged and distressed state, the three of us; his mother, me, Julie, had somehow all become one. We’ll never know. There was insufficient evidence to charge him for the attempted murder of Nicholas. Given the defense of diminished capacity, he was found guilty of the manslaughter of Julie, and was sentenced to life, with a minimum of twenty-two years. He was transferred to Rampton Hospital straight from the court.

Subsequent internal hearings for professional misconduct found me negligent in my duty of care. Incidents cited included the session with Hayley, the deviation from my normal therapeutic standards with Dan, and the decision to let him stay overnight in my house. The “complications in my own personal life” were seen to have contributed to my failure to make clear and informed judgments about the care of this seriously unwell patient. The adjudicator concluded, “It wasn’t so much what you did, but what you failed to do. On realizing the difficult feelings evoked by the similarities with your son, you should have stopped seeing this man. You should have referred him to one of your colleagues. You had the experience and knowledge to do so.”

All the character witnesses were kind, almost reverential in their respect for my career, my status and experience. Robert was especially helpful in his careful assessment of my expertise, outlining my skills in the clinical field. But all had to conclude that given my unresolved grief, and the complications arising from the likeness to my son, it was impossible to perform a high standard of therapeutic work.

My license to practice was suspended. My solicitor, with support from Robert, and Maggie from the unit, urged me to appeal. Almost before they had finished speaking, I was waving away the suggestion. I was aghast. They didn’t understand how wrong it felt. How utterly misjudged the idea was.

“No,” I said, “I won’t be working again.” And until I said the words out loud, I hadn’t quite realized the extent and clarity of my decision. The relief was palpable. Like letting go of a heavy weight I’d been clutching to my chest.

Maggie was frantic. “But all your work?” she said. “The unit?” She was tearful.

I tried to speak. “I—”

I glanced up at Robert. He nodded.

“—I can’t do it anymore,” I said, faltering.

Robert stepped forward. A small movement. A hand pressed lightly on my shoulder.

“I . . . It’s like other people’s pain,” I said carefully, “is a shield against my own.” I shook my head. “I have to let it go.”

“How will we manage,” Maggie wanted to know, “without you?”

“Exactly as you have been,” I said. “You will carry on.”

So, after more than twenty-five years of clinical service with hundreds of patients, I was stepping away. Like an addict going cold turkey. A life without the rush of helping. The itch to save and rescue and make myself feel worthwhile.

I was lucky enough to have an NHS pension that I could draw down in seven years. I had some savings. For the most part, I intended to scale back. Live a simpler life. The obvious solution was to sell the house. Neither David nor I needed a family house to rattle round in. But while I didn’t want to live in it, selling the house was inconceivable, at least for now. It was our only connection to Tom, and it was an anchor I wasn’t ready to pull up, if I ever would be. I told David that in a year or so, I’d look at getting tenants, maybe people we knew. Then I’d rent somewhere smaller. A flat perhaps, near the coast.

Carolyn did go to university, but she left after the first term, deciding to apply for an art foundation course instead. She spent hours working on a portfolio for her application and got a part-time job in an art shop in Bloomsbury. It was a beautiful place, old and wood paneled and stashed from floor to ceiling with specialist equipment and materials—leather-bound sketchbooks, paper, chalky crayons, and glass jars of powdered paint pigment in bright blues, reds, and oranges. We’d sometimes meet for lunch nearby, and then I’d go on to the British Museum, where I’d simply sit quietly in the courtyard, under the great white dome of a roof.

The weeks immediately after the trial, I slept a lot. In fact, I found it hard to stay awake. My body went into a sort of shutdown, almost like a self-induced coma. When I emerged, I spent my days in the garden, weeding and potting and turning over the flower beds. A friend of Maggie’s was taking a job abroad for eight months and asked me if I’d like to look after her allotment while she was away. I took it on readily. I grew vegetables—cabbages, leeks, and broccoli. I liked the feel of the soil under my fingers. The physical exertion of digging. Standing out in the sun, the rain and the wind felt somehow therapeutic.

Then, I saw an advert for volunteers for a charitable gardening project in the backstreets of Haringey. It was a beautiful walled garden that was owned by a charity, a small green jewel in the midst of an urban sprawl, called St. Margaret’s Secret Garden. It ran sessions for people with mental health problems, recovering addicts, the lonely and the isolated, kids from the local residential home. I began to volunteer three mornings a week. I worked the vegetable patches and one of my daily tasks was to keep the vase in the office filled with fresh flowers. I did it first thing, before the others arrived. I didn’t like to see people. I didn’t want their morning greetings, their nods of hello, or gestures of kindness. I wanted to keep all that away.

One day, Joyce, who organized the volunteers, asked me if I’d like to do more. “Perhaps be a group helper—help supervise one of the afternoon therapeutic groups?”

If she was surprised by my involuntary flinch she didn’t say anything. She must have been used to all sorts there.

“No, thank you,” I said. “Looking after the vegetables and plants is all I want to do.

“Besides,” I added, “I visit my mother in the afternoons.”

In the evening, I wrote letters to Tom about Nicholas. I wrote to him about his son—what he liked to eat, how strawberries were his favorite fruit, how he liked apple juice from a grown-up glass. I wrote about his favorite song at bedtime. How he liked to sit on the small window seat in the sun, his small hand pressing the book into my lap. I wrote about how I’d made the spare room into his special place, kitted it out with a digger duvet cover and a string of car lights over his bed. I wrote about how Nicholas loved to help me in the garden, on the morning after a sleepover.

His favorite food? His stuffed animals? The song he liked to sing at nighttime? Of course, I had no idea about any of these things. None of these details were available to me. But at night, or when I was weeding the garden, I allowed myself to dream, to imagine, and to make a picture that he and I were in.

I also wrote letters to Nicholas to tell him all about his dad. How sensitive and thoughtful he was. How he cared deeply for other people. Sometimes too much. How he worked hard. I wrote how he could carve beautiful things out of wood. And that one day, he would carve him his very own fishing rod with his initials on the handle. I wrote to him how his dad loved trees, the woods, the sea, and nature. How he loved to be free, out in the wild.