The church itself seems too stifling. We leave in search of caffeine.
Starbucks is crowded so we order and take the drinks outside and start walking back down Victoria Street. The faceless office buildings give way to gothic splendour. A helicopter hovers near Downing Street for an aerial shot of the Prime Minister’s motorcade.
I am struck by how much Anna has missed since she fell asleep. Downing Street was home to a different occupant. Building sites have become new office blocks. The world has altered in the last four years.
Emily breaks her silence. ‘What, may I ask, do you have that the others didn’t?’
The question is forensic, the sort of gotcha line flung out on parliamentary committees.
‘Well, for one thing, I believe the mind is more powerful than the brain. Most other clinicians would believe the opposite.’
‘That sounds like a grand but ultimately meaningless statement.’
‘Not at all. The ancients knew it, so did the pre-moderns. Blame the Enlightenment. Only in the last few centuries have we ignored the idea of the mind and concentrated so narrowly on fixing the brain. Anna, like most patients with resignation syndrome, has been stuck in a medical setting with no stimuli. My method is to overwhelm her senses – sounds, smells, voices, touch – that evoke safe memories of her past. I want her body to kickstart her mind into thinking it is safe to emerge again.’
Emily looks solemn, reaching for something. ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.’
‘Milton wasn’t wrong.’
‘He wasn’t always entirely right either. I studied Paradise Lost at university. It seems like another world now.’ Emily finishes inspecting me, as if finally accepting my bona fides. ‘What is it you want to know? Did we deprive Anna of sweeties when she was little? Did my husband tap her on the bottom when she put her fingers in sockets? Are early bedtimes the cause of Anna’s sleeping problems?’
I decide against giving my usual speech on hope. ‘I’ve seen the case files. That’s not what I’m worried about. I know about the site map, the Forest, the Hunters versus the Survivors, the WhatsApp message, the forensics on the knife. What none of the files tell me is why.’
‘Who says I will?’
‘If you can’t, then no one can.’
‘You have a rather naïve view of mother–daughter relations.’
‘At the age of twenty-five your parents still know you best. For a child, it’s their entire lifespan. For a parent, it’s one season among many. I think you know more than you let on.’
‘Your ex-wife was the first officer at the Farm that night, am I right?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
Emily looks mournful suddenly, weighed down. ‘I’m sorry for her, really. Getting dragged into all this. I read all that stuff in the tabloids, the gutter comments online. Conspiracy theories about police involvement and her colluding with Anna just because they both went to Oxford. I know what it’s like better than most.’
I remember the rows Clara and I had about my book, the way in which publishers and agents wanted me to put the Anna O case front and centre. I am rewriting history, though. Our marriage was already in freefall by then. I’d become more distant. Clara had found solace elsewhere.
‘I want to know what Clara and her team didn’t find out,’ I say. ‘The deeper, emotional truth. It’s been four years since it happened. Enough water under the bridge.’
We reach Parliament Square and stop by the Supreme Court building. The Palace of Westminster shadows the entire scene. We sip our coffees.
‘The media focused on Anna’s success,’ I say. ‘The clean-sweep GCSEs, the three A stars at A level, the congratulatory first at Oxford. Then the start-up success with Indira and Douglas, a media entrepreneur in the making. But resignation syndrome doesn’t happen because of success. It happens because of failure. A lack, an absence.’
‘Is this on the record?’
‘I’m a psychologist, not a police officer. There is no record.’
Emily sighs, as if building up to something. ‘The first thing you must know is that Anna always was a girl of extremes. If you understand that, you have a hope of understanding the rest. Not many do. But it’s ironic, I suppose, given what’s happened.’
‘Ironic how?’
‘As an adult her eyes are never open,’ says Emily. ‘As a child they were never shut. That’s how the nightmare began.’