Medea's Curse (22 page)

But it was too early for that. Her denial, the first stage of grief, was falling
away and her feelings of guilt would now warrant Tiphanie being put on suicide watch.
She relayed what she had been told to Damian before heading out to see Tiphanie’s
parents.

The Murchisons were in the waiting area beyond security.

‘How is she?’ Jim asked.

‘Feeling guilty.’

‘She didn’t do it,’ said Sandra.

‘No,’ agreed Natalie looking at Sandra. ‘But sometimes
people feel guilty for the
things they should have done, and didn’t.’

Sandra looked away.

By 6 p.m. all Natalie felt like was a bad television show and bed, but she had her
appointment with Declan, as well as one with Georgia’s aunt. It was the only time
they’d been able to agree on. Virginia’s husband had died three years earlier, and
she liked to keep herself busy.

Virginia Parker would have been in her late sixties. Her long grey hair was pulled
into a plait and she was dressed neatly in the alternative clothing of an earlier
time: loose trousers and a long top, slippers and a necklace of bright beads. More
California than Melbourne. Her smile was tight as Natalie ushered her into her consulting
suite.

Natalie settled into a comfortable chair opposite Virginia, both with cups of herbal
tea in hand. ‘Tell me about Georgia.’

‘God.’ Virginia’s sigh bordered on theatrical. ‘Do you know how many times I’ve been
asked that? I suppose this is going to continue until the court case is finished.’

‘Only since the legal proceedings? Or earlier?’

‘Dr King, I, and everyone around Georgia, have been trying to understand her for
the last thirty-seven years. I gave up. Perhaps you’ll do better.’

‘So let’s start from the beginning, when you first took her in. She was not quite
three, is that right?’

‘Yes. We felt it was our duty. Understand, I barely knew Lee,’ said Virginia. ‘It
was my father’s second marriage. He died. And after Lee did what she did, killed
her husband, her mother wouldn’t take the child.’

‘So you were strangers to Georgia?’

‘Yes. We knew it would be hard. We thought, maybe
tantrums? Bed wetting or stealing
food? We read all the books. We were convinced that as long as we stayed steady,
we’d get through.’

‘Did you?’

Virginia looped the beads through her fingers. ‘There wasn’t anything to get through.
At least not the sort of things we’d read about and been told to expect. She was
an angel. A delightful little girl who was placid and obliging.’

Natalie sensed the ‘but’ before they got there.

‘We thought we were tremendously fortunate. We hadn’t ever wanted to be parents,
you understand.’

‘Until?’ Natalie prompted.

‘When we first took her the…blandness was a relief,’ said Virginia ignoring the question.
‘I mean, it wasn’t like we had to take her.’ She paused, Natalie felt, to emphasise
her civic-mindedness. ‘We never could understand what the earlier issues were about.
She did well at school, she had friends. And then she got married and cut us off
as though we didn’t exist.’

‘As a child, there was nothing that worried you about her?’

‘I guess we mostly saw what we wanted to see. That’s what Vernon told me. She was
hard to be close to I suppose, but we were private people. It didn’t seem strange
to us.’

‘How did she get on with Vernon?’

‘The same. He worked of course, but he helped her with her homework as she got older.’

‘So what problems did other people have with her?’

‘Nothing really…no more than any other teenager.’ Virginia looked at Natalie, perhaps
looking for signs of agreement. Natalie kept her expression neutral. Virginia reprised
the dramatic sigh and continued. ‘She was accused
of bullying once, but the other
family were so obviously jealous. Their daughter wasn’t getting anything like Georgia’s
grades, and was, to say the least,
plain
.’

‘Other things? Even little things?’

‘The teachers thought the other girls were friends with Georgia because they were
scared of her. I suppose she changed friends a bit, but really? We’re talking teenage
girls.’ Virginia looked at Natalie defiantly. ‘What would you make of that if it
was your daughter? She was pretty, got A’s, went to parties. Perhaps she was a bit
full of herself, but I thought she was covering up her insecurity about what Lee
did. We wanted her to feel confident enough to make a place for herself in the world.’

‘How about with boys?’

‘I thought she was putting too much emphasis on them,’ said Virginia. ‘We fought.
She could be quite vicious, but then I expect most teenagers can be.’

‘And Vernon?’

‘Left it to me. I think she scared him a bit. He was a quiet man, not fond of outbursts.’

‘You know her better, or at least for longer than anyone else I’ve spoken to.’ Natalie
paused. ‘Do you think she killed them?’

Virginia looked out the window. Her answer was clear and crisp. ‘Yes.’

Natalie let out her breath. ‘Mrs Parker, this may seem a strange question, but how
did you
feel
towards Georgia? I’m finding it hard to get a real sense of her; perhaps
because this was how she came across, I’m not sure. Was she affectionate, or more
remote? Do you think she loved you?’

Virginia looked at her hands and rubbed her wedding ring.

‘Have you seen the movie
We Need to Talk about Kevin
? Or read the book?’

Natalie had read it. A grim exploration of a pathological mother–son relationship
that ended in mass murder.

‘I couldn’t bring myself to go to the movie,’ Virginia continued. ‘But reading the
book I thought, for the first time in all the years I tried to be a mother to Georgia,
that I wasn’t alone.’

Natalie waited.

‘Understand,’ said Virginia, looking at Natalie with an unflinching gaze, ‘that I
read it before Georgia was charged.’ Natalie nodded.

‘What struck me was the inability of the mother to love. In the book she was his
biological mother, and I’d always put my problem down to the fact that Georgia came
to us late. That whatever happens when you give birth hadn’t happened for me and
maybe three years old was too late for us both. After the book, I wondered if maybe
it wasn’t me. Is it possible, Dr King, that some children are just not lovable?’

Natalie wished she had the answer, but Virginia was no more lovable than Georgia
had been. In the end, she had failed to rise to the occasion and remember that she
was the adult. Georgia, at the age of three, had already learned not to ask for hugs.
This woman hadn’t thought to give them.

‘Tonight is a two-glass night,’ said Natalie.

‘Work or personal?’

‘Both. But believe me there’s more than enough work shit to justify two glasses.’

Declan raised an eyebrow as he poured her first glass.

Virginia was freshest in her mind. ‘Do you think children
can be unlovable?’ She
described her interview and then without a pause moved on to Sandra. Eventually Declan
put a hand up.

‘Time to take a breath.’

Natalie stopped mid-sentence and took a gulp of wine.
No
, not manic.

‘You need to take some time out to think.’

‘About whether Georgia is the female version of Kevin?’

‘No, about the dynamics,’ said Declan. He was sounding irritable. ‘When Georgia was
young her mother didn’t measure up. You also need to look at the child’s contribution.’

He caught Natalie’s look.

‘I don’t mean the child was responsible, just that a relationship is a two-way thing.
Some children who have abusive childhoods survive without turning into monsters or
becoming psychiatrically unstable. So why? What resilience does the child have or
not have? It seems to me that both Tiphanie and Georgia have some survival skills.
Both left mothers who perhaps couldn’t nurture. Tiphanie’s sister is still there.
Why? How does it help inform you where Tiphanie and Georgia are now, or were at some
point in the past?’

Natalie mulled over Declan’s take on her patients and their maternal figures. ‘What
really matters,’ she said, ‘is whether the abused daughter—or son—repeats the pattern
or can shift the intergenerational repetition.’

‘So where does that take you?’

‘Doesn’t seem Tiphanie and Georgia have shifted far.’

‘Can they? Or others like them?’

Natalie thought of John Steinbeck’s
East of Eden
. Cathy was the mother from hell.
Worse than Sandra or Virginia, wilfully malicious and self-serving. But one of her
sons had come to the realisation that he could make choices about
his own destiny.
She didn’t think Georgia or Tiphanie were quite at this level of contemplation. Repetition
was driven by a deep psychological need to master the emotions, and insight was needed
for that mastery to actually be achieved.

She wondered for a moment about Lee, Georgia’s biological mother. Lee’s mother—Georgia’s
grandmother—sounded as cold as Virginia, given she had not supported Lee or taken
in Georgia. Lee must have gone to prison in New South Wales, where Georgia was born,
but she would be out by now. Natalie was going to be in Sydney in a couple of weeks
for a forensic conference; she made a mental note to ring one of her colleagues there,
to see if they knew where she was.

Declan topped up his glass. ‘I feel you still have a mindset against Georgia.’

‘I just want to know the truth.’

‘Natalie, you know better than that. I’m talking about your unconscious motivations.
Georgia has had to use a range of tactics to survive. I wonder if you recognise having
done some of the same things yourself?’

‘Hardly.’ What was he getting at? It wasn’t as if she’d had any babies to kill. Her
motorbike accident? Completely different. Her relationships, perhaps? No, she was
in control of those—she kept them strictly at a distance. Not enmeshed like Georgia
and Paul seemed to be. Repetition? She squashed the thought almost before it was
formed.

She didn’t need her second glass in the end. She was tempted to have it just to worry
Declan, though the way he was lining the pens up on the desk suggested he needed
it more than she did. Then she might be tempted to discuss her social situation and
she didn’t need to hear ‘I told you so’, however nicely Declan framed it. She liked
playing with
fire and if it meant she got burnt occasionally, what the hell. Worse
though, she might let out Tiphanie’s connection to Amber, or reveal that she had
seen Amber again and had another prison visit planned. Her recent hypomanic episode,
even though she had got onto it quickly, had put Declan on alert. But she had no
intention of pulling out of this case.

Amber was crying so hard that Natalie broke confidentiality —albeit in a minor way—and
assured her Tiphanie was coping and the police were looking at a new angle. This
mollified her a little.

‘I should have told her. I should have made sure she knew.’

‘There’s no “should have done” anything.’

‘But
murder
,’ she said, arms around herself and rocking.

Natalie recognised the problem. Amber was reliving her own early days in prison.

‘It’s Travis that should be in prison,’ said Amber, still rocking.

‘Why?’ The question was as much about Bella-Kaye as Chloe; she hadn’t entirely dismissed
Kay’s claim about Travis.

‘I bet he…drove her to it. You know what he was like.’

‘Tiphanie’s case is different to yours. Try not to read or think about it. You can’t
change anything.’

‘My family’s falling apart. Mum had to stop Cam from going and beating Travis up.’

‘Your mother is tough, Amber.’

Amber shook her head. ‘First me, then Dad. The farm is a struggle and she does a
lot of care for the kids. I should be there to help.’

‘Kids? Cam had another one?’

Amber put her head in her hands as she nodded. ‘Jed’s two and a half now. Bella-Kaye
would have turned two a few weeks ago.’

Poor Amber; the anniversary undoubtedly had added to her distress.

‘I haven’t even met their youngest,’ Amber continued between sobs. ‘At first they
didn’t want to upset me, then I couldn’t bear the thought of them bringing Sam into
the gaol to see me. The two of them run my mother ragged. Cam’s wife works full time.’

Both she and Amber knew that this was the sort of exhaustion Kay Long had dreamed
of. It had been denied her with Bella-Kaye, but it sounded like she was making up
for it with Jed and Sam.

‘You’ll be there to help out soon,’ said Natalie. ‘When is your parole hearing?’

‘Next week.’

‘Just focus on the questions you get asked. Your record here is clean, so the board
should regard the application favourably.’

Amber hesitated, then gave Natalie a quick hug. Natalie could feel her body trembling.

As Natalie manoeuvred her bike into the garage she became aware that she wasn’t alone.
She tensed, ready to hit out with full force. Then she saw it was Liam, standing
in the doorway.

Had he been there the other night, or was she just getting unnecessarily jittery?
No, I am not getting sick.

‘You’re not coming in,’ she said.

‘You’d best close the door, else Bob may disappear.’

‘I will. With you on the other side of it.’

She sensed his hesitation and uncertainty, and admonished herself only a little for
revelling in it. She’d never let him know how vulnerable he made her feel.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Hey,’ said Natalie turning, ‘I remember that line. The answer’s the same. I have
no need to talk to you.’

‘I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions.’

‘Okay, apology accepted.’

‘There’s something more.’

‘Not interested.’

‘I need your help to get justice for Chloe.’

She hesitated. She had to put Tiphanie ahead of her personal feelings. And her behaviour
at the ball had been appalling. ‘I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes at the Halfpenny.’
She swung the door shut in his face.