JEN
I don’t want to tell my therapist, Annabelle, everything I’m thinking, everything I’m feeling, but I do talk about what it was like to witness the murder of Victoria Da Silva and the suicide of Daniel Oliver. I take her through it, the whole ghastly business. As I relate what I saw I can tell she is shocked and appalled, not just about what happened – the murder of a young woman, the suicide of her boyfriend – but its implications for me.
‘I’m worried that this will bring up all sorts of issues for you,’ says Annabelle. ‘It could well trigger some unpleasant memories, causing you to relive some trauma from your past.’
I don’t say anything. The silence lingers, heavy in the bland, characterless room at the back of an Edwardian house between Archway and Highgate. I’m comfortable with the silence, though, and I let it embrace me like a shroud.
Annabelle has talked to me in the past about the roots of what she calls my compulsion for over-sharing. She has been keen for me to explore what she regards as the split between myself as subject and myself as object. It sounds like jargon, but she says I created a false self – myself as object – through which I could channel all sorts of emotions, feelings, fears, and desires. It is this object self, which I gave an alternative name, that of Hunter, that I’ve used over the years as a basis for my confessional journalism. I had to feed it like a ravenous dog. It was insatiable, as was my readers’ fascination with it. I became addicted to giving it more material – titbits from my life – knowing that to keep my readers’ attention I had to supply a steady stream of confessions, the more sensational and extreme the better.
The relationship between my readers and myself fit into a classic co-dependent model, she said. Those anonymous people out there, who gobbled up my column, acted as enablers, encouraging me to continue a dysfunctional existence. And it was hardly a surprise that I had turned to fictionalising my own experience. It was, said Annabelle, the logical conclusion in a cycle of abuse. On a positive light, she assured me, my lies resulted in the loss of that column, which in turn functioned as an escape from the damaging situation. I may be out of a job, but at least I’m still alive. If I had carried on writing about myself in this way there was every chance I would have taken up other forms of addictive behaviour: greater dependence on alcohol (my intake was already highly dangerous, said Annabelle), the use of other drugs, or a descent into paranoid or schizoid behaviour, possibly even self-harm, and ultimately suicide.
‘By bringing about the loss of your column you effectively killed off your false self of Jen Hunter,’ said Annabelle. ‘Your unconscious protected you by highlighting the fiction of yourself. You should thank it – it saved you. And perhaps you should start to think about using your real name again, Jennifer Hesmondalgh.’
The sound of my old name, with its ugly, clumsy mouthful of consonants, disturbs me. It reminds me of everything I tried to escape from.
We lapse into silence before Annabelle asks me if there’s anything else I want to share with her. I decide not to tell her anything of Laurence and his role in all of this, about his presence on the Heath and why he chose to lie about it. I do, however, talk to Annabelle about my arguments with Bex and Penelope. Initially, she does not interpret my actions, choosing to let herself serve as a sounding board for my experiences. I can feel her eyes on me, however, and as I speak I can sense a heightened level of concern.
Finally, she takes a sip of water and says, ‘So you’re intending to write about … about the incident?’
‘Oh yes,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve written a news story already and think that a larger piece might work well. It could also help me get out of the work rut I’ve been in.’
‘So you’re reporting on an event that you witnessed?’
‘Yes, and there might even be a book in it,’ I reply. I tell her about the weird messages from @WatchingYouJenHunter, and the claim that another person could be involved. ‘So you see it may not be a straightforward case of Daniel Oliver killing his girlfriend. Victoria Da Silva was pregnant when she was killed, probably by another man.’ Again, I say nothing about Laurence. ‘I’m going to interview the other witnesses again and follow up … some other leads.’
‘Do you think that’s wise?’ she asks. ‘I mean, Jen, you really do need to think about this. You know you haven’t been well. Witnessing a murder and then a suicide is bad enough. But reporting on it is another thing entirely. I would have thought you’d need some sense of objectivity, and even then, doing such a thing could have serious consequences for your mental health.’ She pauses. ‘You know I don’t make a habit of telling you what to do, but on this occasion I must advise you that I think you should stop, and stop right away.’
I want to ask her how else does she expect me to pay for these fucking therapy sessions, but I rephrase it as, ‘But what do you expect me to do? I need to earn a living.’
‘Have you thought about getting another kind of job, one that’s nothing to do with journalism? After all, you told me yourself that journalism, or print journalism at least, is on the way out. You said there’s no future in it.’
‘I’m not fit for anything else,’ I say. ‘Really, I don’t know what else to do.’
‘You’ve got a good degree. Lots of experience. You’re personable, you get on with people. You could retrain as …’
‘As what?’ The words come out rather more sharply than I want. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve thought about it, and nothing suggests itself to me as a natural way forward. I can’t think of a way out.’ I tell her about the horrible vision of myself I had, living alone in a strange town, without friends, surviving on benefits, dying without being found, a bloated corpse on a dirty mattress. By the end of it I have tears streaming down my face.
‘It’s a very powerful symbol of all your fears,’ she says, softly, passing me a tissue. ‘But that’s all it is. It’s not your reality. And it won’t become your reality. It needn’t be your future. You’re a strong woman, Jen. A survivor. And you’ll survive this – as long as you don’t continue down the route of reporting on this crime. You know we talked about the false self? Well, I think this could bring about the resurgence of that artificial identity.’
She doesn’t say the words, but I know what she’s thinking: that way madness lies.