Page 73 of The Mercy Chair

‘I called Alice about it and she said Bethany never swore as she hadn’t wanted Aaron to copy her. And Snoopy said that whether they liked it or not, some of Grace and Noah’s values had imprinted on their daughter.’

‘Had she been writing daily entries?’

‘No. Which isn’t surprising considering she had to keep her journal at Alice’s house. Sometimes there were one or two a week; sometimes there was a month-long gap.’

‘What did Cumbria Police make of this new evidence?’

‘The cop in charge of the original investigation was called Ian Gamble and he’s long retired. Superintendent Nightingale is in charge now and she thought the same as me.’

‘Which was?’

‘That they’d finally found their missing motivation.’

‘For the Bowman family massacre?’

‘And Cornelius Green’s murder. We didn’t know what the link was at that point, but everything seemed to start with Noah Bowman contacting Cornelius Green about whatever it was that Aaron had done.’

‘We have a young girl undoubtedly suffering from rejected child syndrome and her brother, the only person in the family she has any real attachment to, is forced to go away for some real or imagined transgression. She must have been terrified.’

‘Why?’

‘Children are tough and adaptable, Washington. In situations like Bethany’s, they develop coping mechanisms. Bethany had Alice and her temper and her rebellious nature. I would imagine it’s why she was never physically beaten. I suspect her parents knew there was a line they couldn’t cross with her. But if they had threatened her brother with something, well, that could have been a psychological tipping point.’

‘It was threatening Aaron that sent her over the edge, not the abuse she suffered. That seems . . . counterintuitive.’

‘That’s because you’re thinking like an adult male, not a fourteen-year-old girl. You said she saw her role as Aaron’s protector. That she defended him from bullies at school and she bore the brunt of her parents’ ill behaviour at home. If something horrible happened to Aaron, in her eyes, she had failed him completely. And when she tried to internalise that, it could easily have manifested as violence towards him. She might have blamed him for putting himself in a situation in which she was unable to protect him. That might have been why they rowed.’

‘You said she would have suffered from rejected child syndrome?’

‘Almost certainly.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s where children are rejected by the very people who are supposed to love and care for them. And it goes beyond favouritism, it feels like parents actively dislike a child. Biologically, as vertebrates, the mother’s bond with the child is supposed to become unbreakable within the first three years of life. It used to be essential for survival. If that bondisn’testablished, the rejection can continue well into adolescence. The child will never feel like part of the family and, as feelings of security and stability are fundamental to emotional development, getting through adolescence without making unfortunate decisions will take a great deal of luck. And, as it was in Bethany’s case, when the child has siblings, the emotional trauma can be even more profound. It will feel like their brothers and sisters can do no wrong, while they’re punished for minor infractions.’

‘Bethany wasn’t even allowed to eat with the family,’ Poe said. ‘I suppose if she’d been an only child she might have been able to rationalise what was happening as the norm, but when her rejection was so blatant, socruel, it was perhaps inevitable she became who she did?’

‘And recent studies have confirmed what we therapists have always known – that the anterior cingulate cortex, the cortical area of the brain that registers physical pain, is also involved in the detection and monitoring of social and emotional pain. An Australian study even showed that remembering physically painful events is less traumatic than remembering emotionally painful events.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, if a child was physically tortured for fourteen years no one would be surprised if they subsequently developed behavioural problems. Now we understand emotional trauma a little better, we should not be surprised to learn that things such as rejected child syndrome lead to similar problems.’

‘Tell me what the long-term effects might be.’ He already knew some, of course, but it was interesting to hear a professional’s opinion.

Doctor Lang considered this carefully. ‘In cases like Bethany’s, I would expect the child to suffer from type-two post-traumatic stress disorder,’ she said. ‘And, as the reasonyou’resitting in this makeshift office is trauma related, you’ll know that comes with a whole range of symptoms.’

‘I suffer from nightmares,’ he said. ‘I assume that’s one of the milder ones?’

‘The long-term effects have primarily been studied in the US.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because of their mass shootings. Although lots of countries have what we would consider lax gun laws, the US is the only country to regularly suffer from this phenomenon.’

‘Extreme violence is one of the long-term effects?’

‘A rare one, but yes.’

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