Wednesday's Child (23 page)

So I talked to Gillian about the possibility of doing some regression. Thankfully, she was in one of her good moods, and sat patiently with me by the stream that ran noisily along the south end of the park, listening to my suggestions. I did not tell her of our long-term plan to take her into care. She wasn’t ready for that yet. I framed the proposal, simply, as a way of helping Gillian to deal with her current problems: her self-harming, the anorexia she continued to struggle with and the impact of her rape. The plan was to try and regress Gillian right back. We would create a womb using a round survival tent, which
would be filled with warm pillows, blankets, duvets, whatever we could lay our hands on. We would set up gentle blue lighting and play soft, chordant, instrumental music (Maria had recommended whale music, but I thought this was just a bit too New-Agey, and would put Gillian off). During the sessions, which were to last forty-five minutes, I would bring Gillian through a series of guided relaxation exercises, many of which would involve visualisation and the use of her imagination. As the sessions progressed, we would bring her through infancy into later stages of development, using the same kind of techniques. I finished running through the plan with her, and awaited her response. She said nothing at first, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chin, tossing small pebbles into the stream.

‘So, what do you think?’

‘God … I don’t know. It seems kind of weird. I mean, to bring me back to when I wasn’t even born. Isn’t it just kinda like playing?’

‘It’s exactly like playing. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Playing is a fairly serious business, really. It helps us to learn about all sorts of things.’

‘Have you talked to Mammy?’

‘No. I thought we could ask her together. I’d like to do the therapy out at your place, if that’s okay. This shrink I was talking to reckons it will work better if it’s done there, because it’s where you grew up and where you live.’

‘Right.’ She nodded.

‘So? What do you think?’

‘Do you think I should do it?’

‘Do you want to know what I think?’

‘I just asked you, didn’t I?’

‘I think that you’re really, really unhappy at the moment, that you’re in a lot of pain, deep down inside. In here.’

I placed my hand on my chest, over my heart.

‘I believe that a lot of the pain goes back to when those boys hurt you, but I reckon there’s more to it than that. I think there’s stuff you don’t even know about, and maybe this will help us to find what that is and start to deal with it.’

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she let them run down her cheeks, making no effort to wipe them away.

‘I don’t like seeing you hurting, Gillian. I’d like to at least try to take some of that pain away from you. Shit, this might not work. I’m not making any promises. But we can try.’

‘Okay,’ she croaked, sniffing loudly. ‘Let’s go and talk to Mammy.’

Libby was, amazingly, in favour of the idea. She listened to my explanation of the process in silence, nodding occasionally. When I was finished, she showed me a room at the back of the house that was full, from floor to ceiling, with junk of every conceivable kind.

‘You can use this, Shaney boy. It’s my box room.’

‘Thanks. What are we going to do with all this … er … stuff …?’

‘I’m sure that the Health Board can stretch to hiring a skip.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Gráinne laughed cynically when I told her of Libby’s kind offer of the room.

‘I suppose it’s a win-win situation,’ she said. ‘You get a space to do the therapy, she gets a room cleaned out. She’s a very manipulative lady is our Libby.’

‘But oh so subtle.’

It was decided that I would begin the therapeutic work the following week, and would see Gillian every day from Monday through to Friday. Both Maria and I wanted to see if the methods we had settled upon would yield any fruit. The room had been cleared out, and I brought a vacuum cleaner and some detergents with me on Monday before Gillian arrived home from school to ensure that the area was as clean and pleasant as possible when we began. I set up the tent, lined it with the fabrics, put the coloured light bulb into the fitting, plugged in the portable stereo, lit some scented candles, and we were ready.

Gillian was very nervous and slightly embarrassed when she finally arrived. She was late, and I knew that she had purposely prolonged her walk from the road. She came into the room and giggled nervously.

‘You want me to go in there?’

‘That’s what we discussed.’

‘I don’t know. I feel stupid.’

I thought we had a non-starter. She really looked terribly uncomfortable with the entire affair.

‘Tell you what. I’m going to go out and chat to your mum for a bit. Why don’t you hang out in here. It’s
your room
. Your mum and me have made this special space for you, to do this work in. Spend some time here, maybe try the tent out – see what you think. I’ll give you a few minutes, and check in with you. Take your time. There’s no pressure at all.’

I went out to the living room, where Libby was watching
Murder She Wrote
.

‘Did you ever wonder, Libby, how all these murders seem to happen when Jessica Fletcher is around?’

‘It seems odd, all right.’

‘Maybe she’s actually a serial killer. She offs all these people, frames the guest star of the week and then writes her books about it.’

‘When the show comes to an end they’ll probably reveal that that was really happening all along. I wouldn’t be surprised.’

I made my way back to the therapy room. Gillian was nowhere to be seen, but the flap of the tent was half zipped up, and I could hear gentle rustling from within. I walked quietly over to the stereo and switched it on at a relatively quiet volume. Then I sat down on a beanbag by the door, which I left open so that Libby could keep an eye on things.

‘For today, Gillian, all I want you to do is breathe. You are in a warm, safe place. Nothing can hurt you. You have the sustenance you need. You are loved and wanted. You just have to
be
. Now, I want you to breathe in deeply, feeling the air fill your lungs…’

And the regression began.

When the first session was over, I told Gillian quietly that she could come out when she felt ready, and went back out to the living area, where I sat in front of the television with Libby.
Highway to Heaven
was playing.

‘Michael Landon is so
nice
,’ she said.

‘He’s nice. That’s for sure.’

‘I think he’d bug the hell out of me.’

‘I think
you’d
bug the hell out of
him
.’

Gillian came out of the therapy room fifteen minutes later, wrapped in one of the blankets, and lay down on the couch. She looked flushed and tired. I wondered if she had been crying, but she turned her face into the back of the couch so I couldn’t see.

I waited with them for another twenty minutes. Gillian didn’t stir. Maria had warned me about this. Children who live in emotional turmoil often find the process of being still and nurtured disconcerting. I went over to her before I left and knelt down at her head.

‘I’m going to go now, Gillian. I know you’re probably feeling kind of strange, and that’s fine. It’s normal. I’ll be here tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll do some more. Do you feel you’d like that?’

A slight shrug of the shoulders showed me she was at least semi-conscious, so I took it as an affirmative and had Libby walk me past the dogs.

‘So how d’you think it went then?’ she asked as we stood at her door.

‘We’ll see.’

Libby nodded and said no more. I was extremely suspicious of her role in all this, and was waiting for her to try to sabotage it. It was very out of character for her to co-operate with anything I did.

I worked with Gillian every evening that week, as planned. Her response was less extreme each time we met, and by Friday she was chatting with us as she lay on the couch after the therapy was over. The following week, we met four times, and the week after that three. We would leave the frequency of visits at three sessions for a month, and then review our progress.

At the end of the second week I met Maria McKinley and Gráinne Hartigan for a working dinner. I was tired and heart-sore from the two weeks of work with Gillian, trying all the time to walk on eggshells around Libby – and my other cases had not stopped existing either. I felt as if I was being pulled twelve different ways at once, and was having trouble keeping any perspective.

‘So how do you feel it’s going, Shane, I am like so curious I could actually burst I mean have the methods been working is the child showing any signs of improvement do we need to reassess our plans or what have there been any ill-effects you’ve noticed how has her mother responded?’

‘Maria – stop!’

She closed her mouth in mid-flow, blinking at me in embarrassment.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s Friday evening. I’ve had a long couple of weeks. Give me a second to get my head together.’ I ordered a beer and took a long drink. ‘Now, to answer your questions in the order I think you asked them, although where the question marks were, I’m not sure. I think that the therapy is going really well. In the two weeks we’ve been running the regression, there have been no mood swings or self-injuring at all. That’s the longest period of calm I’ve experienced since I began seeing her. Despite initial discomfort with the process, Gillian has engaged fully, and has shown no severe ill-effects other than moderate disorientation immediately post-therapy, which is normal. Libby seems to be still working with us, and is not trying to throw any spanners in the works. But I won’t be relaxing until the month is up. She’s an unknown quantity.’

‘What has she been doing while you’ve been working with Gillian?’

‘Watching television. She asked me how I felt things went after the first evening, but hasn’t enquired since. She seems mildly amused, but other than that totally disinterested.’

‘Has Gillian commented at all on how she feels?’ Maria asked. ‘Has she had any insights? Made any disclosures?’

‘No, but then I haven’t pushed her. As I understand what we’re doing, I’m a facilitator and she’s doing the work herself. I know Gillian. If she has
anything to say, she’ll say it. You’ve also got to remember that Libby is there all the time. I reckon the poor kid is as nervous of her as I am. The last time I made any real progress Libby ran off, taking Gillian halfway around the country to get her away from me. Why she’s enabling us to do this work is more than likely for some perverse reason of her own. I’m just praying that we can get the job done before she blows, and that we’ll have laid a firm enough foundation so that when the powder-keg goes off, Gillian can withstand it.’

Both women nodded. There was nothing much else to say.

‘Well done, both of you.’ Gráinne smiled, raising her glass to Maria and me. ‘We may be on the road to truly changing this girl’s life. Now, let’s eat.’

‘Amen to that,’ I said.

The date for the case review I had called for Connie Kelly fell in the middle of the month I was doing the regression work with Gillian. A review is a meeting of all professionals involved in a particular case, and the purpose of it is to assess whether or not that child’s needs are being met as efficiently as they could be. The young person who is the subject of the review, and his/her parents, if they are still living and can be contacted, are invited and are encouraged to participate fully in the discussion. The days where all decisions are made behind the family’s back are long since gone, thankfully. This being the case, a meeting
with the Kellys in attendance had the potential to be at the very least an interesting affair, and I was far from as focused as I should have been.

The meeting was held in the conference room in our offices. The week before, I made another visit to the file room and took more detailed notes. I wrote a report outlining all the events that had led me to have such serious concerns for Connie. I considered including my meeting with Selina Canning, but decided against it. As Josephine had so concisely put it, I had no evidence. I just hoped that the bare facts of Connie’s story would convince the assembled professionals that there was real cause for alarm.