Page 37 of Guilty Mothers

Katie frowned and stared at the table. ‘I remember wanting to. I really, really wanted to.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t believe you. I must have killed her.’

‘Tell us what you recall, and remember we’re not here to trip you up.’

‘No, you’re trying to trick me. You’re trying to get me to say something you can use against me.’

‘I swear I’m not. You have no legal representation, you’re not under caution and you’ve been deemed unfit for interview. You could tell me you murdered a house full of folks and I wouldn’t be able to do much about it.’

Katie looked to Bryant, who nodded his agreement.

‘But I must have done it. I was angry. I went to the house…’ She paused, and the frown deepened. ‘I was on the floor, covered in blood, with the knife in my hand. I killed her.’

And there it was: the confession she’d been after for almost twenty-four hours. Except it wasn’t true.

‘Katie, you blacked out. Your mother was already dead. You saw that and it was too traumatic to process. You blacked out and lost time, but you didn’t kill your mother.’

‘Oh God,’ she said as her head fell into her hands. ‘I didn’t kill her. It wasn’t me.’ The relief in her voice was obvious.

‘You’re sure?’ she asked, lifting her head before reaching for a bottle of water. As Kim had suspected: guilt-induced self-denial. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for hours.

‘We’re sure,’ Kim said as Katie chugged half the bottle in one go. ‘We know you had serious issues with your mum, Katie. You spoke to Judith Palmer about it.’

‘She helped me understand that it wasn’t my fault, that my mother was a narcissist who held me in a twenty-five-year guilt trip.’

‘Go on,’ Kim urged.

Katie finished off the first bottle of water, and Kim pushed another towards her.

‘Nothing I did was ever good enough. Every day she would tell me of the sacrifices she’d made for me. Her love was conditional on how hard I practised my walk or how well I smiled. She would mark my practise performances out of ten. Anything below an eight got a scowl and twenty-four hours of silent treatment. Above an eight I got cuddles and toys.’

‘Did you want to do the pageants?’ Bryant asked.

‘At first, when I thought it would be fun to dress up in sparkly dresses, but that soon wore off. I was weighed nightly and even a few ounces over was starved off me. I had no friends because I couldn’t play out. God forbid I’d get a bruise or a scratch that would mar my perfect appearance.

‘My mother controlled everything. She wouldn’t allow me to do anything. She was still cutting the fat off my bacon when I was nineteen years old,’ she said, staring off into the distance.

Kim coughed to regain her attention. She wanted Katie to remember it but not relive it.

‘She had no boundaries. She would walk into the bathroom while I was showering to check that I’d shaved my pubic hair.’

‘But you got out,’ Kim said, hiding her shock and trying to remind Katie of her own strength.

‘Yes, eventually, with Judith’s help, but the problem was that I didn’t know how to act. I found myself in my own home without knowing how to do anything. I’d never even cooked myself a meal.’

The empty cupboards were beginning to make more sense.

‘I’ve found cafés that cook the meals I’ve got used to. I don’t know how to do anything for myself. I’m useless. I don’t know how to make friends or make small talk, and now the only person that knows me is dead.’

The tears began to fall from her eyes, and Kim started to understand the complexities that had existed in this relationship. Only moments ago, she’d admitted to wanting the woman dead.

‘Did Judith advise you to cut your mother off completely?’ Kim asked.

Katie nodded. ‘She said it was the only way to heal.’

Either that or make it feel like being cast adrift in the ocean in a dinghy, Kim thought.

‘And yet you were going to see her, despite Judith’s advice,’ Kim noted.

‘I was angry,’ she said, glancing at the wall above Kim’s head.

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