He nods towards a few chairs set in a corner by a window. ‘Can you take a seat over there?’
As Cath and I do as he says, she looks at me anxiously. ‘You OK, Jess?’
‘Yes.’ There’s no point in saying I’m anything else. But how can I be, when I’m here instead of in Falmouth, with my mother being held on suspicion of committing a crime. It’s nothing other than a living nightmare.
Only a few minutes pass before a policewoman walks over to us. Instantly, I recognise her. ‘Hello, Jess. I’m PC Page. We spoke before, at your house.’ Questioningly, she turns to Cath.
‘I’m Cath Bowers. We spoke on the phone.’
A flicker of recognition crosses the policewoman’s face. ‘Yes, of course.’ She turns back to me. ‘Before you talk to your mother, do you think you and I could have a chat?’ She glances around as if looking for somewhere.
Not sure I have a choice, I shrug. ‘OK.’
‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Beside me, Cath sounds uncertain.
I shake my head. ‘I’ll be OK.’
‘Right. Shall we find somewhere quieter?’ As PC Page starts to walk along a corridor, I follow behind, then she shows me into a small room, with white painted walls and a small window. ‘We shouldn’t get disturbed in here. Have a seat, Jess.’
The plastic chairs remind me of uni classrooms. Pulling one out across a table, I sit down opposite her. After organising the papers she’s holding, she gets out a pen, then looks at me. ‘I know we talked before, just after Mr Roche disappeared, but I wanted to ask you more about his relationship with your mother. Can you describe how they were together? From the beginning?’
I try to cast my mind back to a time when my views were untainted, to when Matt was new in our lives. When my mother was the same as she’d always been – before I’d noticed things change. ‘They seemed happy together, to start with. He used to pick her up and take her out for dinner. But after he moved in, I missed quite a lot of what went on because I started uni. She never said anything to me, but when I came back that first Christmas, things seemed different.’
‘In what way?’
I try to work out how best to explain it. ‘Her excitement had definitely gone. It was like they’d skipped a couple of decades and had turned into a middle-aged couple who sniped at each other. Except …’
‘Go on,’ she says quietly.
‘It was always Matt who did the sniping, like she irritated him. It was like he looked for reasons to criticise her. It didn’t make sense, because they were still planning to get married.My mother almost seemed blind to it. She was convinced he loved her. She was always saying love was about compromise.’ I pause, knowing I should have seen how bad things had got, how warped her perception had become.
‘This is difficult to ask …’ PC Page hesitates. ‘Your mother seems fragile. In the circumstances, it’s understandable – the events since his disappearance have clearly caused her immense distress, let alone anything else. I didn’t know if she’d had problems in the past?’
I hesitate, not wanting to say the wrong thing. ‘I know she suffered from depression – a long time ago. But she did tell me she’d recently been seeing her therapist again.’
PC Page’s pen hovers above her notebook. ‘Do you happen to know her name?’
‘Sonia.’ I stare at her as she starts writing it down. ‘Sonia Richardson.’ Adding more urgently, ‘Will you talk to her? She’ll be able to vouch for the kind of person Mum really is.’
For a moment, PC Page doesn’t reply. ‘Was it depression that led your mother to start seeing her the first time?’
I shake my head. ‘I’m not sure. It was when I was quite a bit younger. It may have been, but Sonia would be able to tell you. I think it was after my dad left her.’ I watch as she makes another note.
A frown appears on her face. ‘There’s another thing I wanted to ask you about your mother, because I’m not sure Mr Roche hasn’t been playing mind games with her.’
‘That’s exactly what he does,’ I say angrily, feeling my hands curl into fists, relieved she understands. ‘We’ve been studying psychopathic behaviour at uni. He ticks all the boxes. Matt definitely plays – or played with her head, I’m sure of it.’ An example comes back to me, which at the time, I hadn’t known what to make of. ‘It happened when they started planning theirwedding. Mum had this dream of getting married on a beach and Matt had completely gone along with it – or at least, that was what she told me. She and I went dress shopping and bought the perfect dresses for a beach wedding – without shoes, because we were going to be barefoot … Mum had it all planned out. She was so excited, but when she told him, he convinced her they’d discussed it the night before and changed their minds. He couldn’t believe she’dforgotten.’ I shake my head. I hadn’t been able to work out if he was making it up or if she really had forgotten. ‘She was sure she’d provisionally booked it. She said they’d confirmed over email, but when she went to check, the emails weren’t there.’
‘It hardly seems likely she’d have forgotten a conversation about their wedding.’ PC Page frowns. ‘The only other explanation is that he deliberately deceived her.’ She pauses for a moment, looking thoughtful. ‘Actually, there’s a name for this sort of behaviour, where someone is consistently undermined until they reach a point where they question their own sanity.’
‘What is it?’ I ask her. ‘Because that describes exactly what he’s been doing to her.’
‘Gaslighting.’ She looks at me. ‘It looks as though Matt’s been gaslighting your mother.’ Sitting back, she speaks quietly. ‘It explains so much about how she’s behaved and what she’s said to us about him. It’s a form of emotional abuse. A constant wearing down as a means of control. Psychopaths are often very smooth operators. From what you’ve told me, it sounds as though Matt would have known exactly what he was doing to her.’
As she speaks, I feel myself shiver, thinking of the way Matt used to talk to my mother. It wasn’t just his words, but the way he used them – to manipulate. Like when I learned about Walker’s cycle of violence in one of my uni lectures. About thebuild-up, explosion, remorse, denial, that keep people caught in relationships they’ll never leave. The way love breaks down, becoming abuse, leading to unimaginable consequences. My eyes stare into hers. ‘I’m sure he knew what he was doing. Sometimes, it was like he wanted me to share the joke, behind her back. Except there was no joke.’
‘For whatever reason, it seems you managed to see through him when your mother couldn’t.’ PC Page shakes her head.
Mystified, I nod. ‘But it still doesn’t explain why he was doing it.’
