by Susan Lewis
‘You’ve heard of her?’ Horowitz stated in evident surprise.
Phillip nodded. ‘He’s rambled about her, we’ve never known who she was. We didn’t know he had a sister.’
‘Not many people do,’ Horowitz said. ‘She’s been with me since 1985, when Fitzpatrick first brought her to England, before that she was in a private clinic in Ireland. Fitzpatrick never talks about her, at least I didn’t think he did, he never wanted anyone to know.’
‘To know what?’ Cristos asked when Horowitz paused.
Horowitz glanced at Radcliffe. ‘Siobhan Fitzpatrick,’ he said, turning back to Phillip and Cristos, ‘to all intents and purposes, died over twenty years ago.’
Cristos and Phillip stared at him.
‘She died inside,’ Horowitz explained, ‘because she could no longer face her life. You see, both she and Luke …’ He took a deep breath. ‘Siobhan and Luke were the victims of some of the worst child abuse it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.’
Both Cristos and Phillip looked stunned – this was the last thing either of them had expected to hear.
‘What happened to them as children only Luke has been able to tell me,’ Horowitz continued, ‘Siobhan no longer speaks. Their father, the main perpetrator of the abuse, served a jail sentence for his crimes – he was released in 1985, which was when Luke brought Siobhan to me. The old man is dead now, he died that same year.’
‘What about Luke’s brothers?’ Phillip asked.
Horowitz shook his head. ‘He has no brothers. There is only Luke and Siobhan. They grew up on their parents’ remote farm in Southern Ireland. Luke is eight years older than his sister, and as far as he can remember there was no abuse before Siobhan was born. It started, he thinks, when Siobhan was around five years old. He can’t be sure about her age, all he remembers is that she was very small when he one day caught his father touching her in a way Luke knew wasn’t right. When Luke tried to pull Siobhan away his father turned on him and thrashed him until he all but lost consciousness. After that the beatings became increasingly regular – it was something his father enjoyed, Luke could sense that even then, but the memory that lives most vividly in Luke’s mind is that of his mother standing by and watching.
‘Very quickly Siobhan too became a victim of their father’s violence and their undeserved punishments almost always occurred when the children were tied up with no means of defending themselves. They were tethered in the yard for days on end with leashes around their necks as though they were dogs. They were kept hungry all that time, being given only bowls of water from which they had to drink, again like animals. At the end of it they were forced into the most abhorrent forms of sexual relations with their father in order to eat. Their mother, I think, was too afraid of her husband to intervene, or even to stop him when he forced Luke to have sexual intercourse with her and with Siobhan. This would be anal, as well as vaginal intercourse. During these acts Phillip Fitzpatrick …’ He paused as Phillip’s eyes flickered at the mention of his own name. ‘Yes, it is relevant,’ Horowitz told him, ‘but we will come to it later. To continue … During these acts of intercourse Phillip Fitzpatrick would make either his wife or his daughter beg Luke to continue, using language which I don’t care much to repeat. Suffice it to say that every obscenity known to Phillip Fitzpatrick was passed on to his children – and the words hit a primal instinct in Luke which, despite his terror and revulsion, brought about an almost feral excitement thus enabling him to perform the degrading acts his father demanded of him. During my sessions with Luke he has told me that it is still often necessary for him, even now, to hear a woman say those words in order for him to be able to make love to her.
‘Luke endured this abominable state of affairs until he was sixteen, when he ran away. He went to England, to London. In a city that size he was certain his father would never find him. He got himself a job as a porter at the Savoy – he was a good looking boy, with, despite all that had happened to him, plenty of Irish charm, which was probably what secured him the position. It was without a doubt what gained him the attention of a certain lady who was then residing at the hotel while her London house was being renovated. Her name doesn’t matter, Luke professes not to remember it anyway, but what he does remember is the life this woman, who was at least thirty years his senior, introduced him to. It was the life of London’s high society – theatre opening nights, royal premieres, charity balls, Ascot, Glyndebourne and so on. They flew off on expensive holidays together to some of the world’s more exotic locations, and when she eventually moved back to her own home in Belgravia, she moved Luke in with her. She sent him to elocution lessons to smooth over his Irish accent and a journalism course to improve his mind. She spent the equivalent of a small fortune, dressing him and grooming him … and parading him proudly in front of her friends at their exclusive parties. It was at one of these parties that he met the twenty-three-year-old Octavia Farrington Denby.’
As Horowitz stopped Cristos and Radcliffe turned to look at Phillip, but his face was inscrutable. ‘Go on,’ he said quietly.
‘Well, according to Luke,’ Horowitz continued, ‘he and Octavia were attracted to each other instantly. He didn’t know she was married then, but admits that even if he had it wouldn’t have stopped him. Whether or not you were at the party yourself, Mr Denby, I imagine is a matter of irrelevance if, what Luke has told me about your wife, is true.’
‘Which is?’
Horowitz ran a finger around his collar looking, for the first time, uncomfortable. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that your wife’s morals are perhaps not …’
‘I think we have already established the fact that my wife has no morals,’ Phillip interjected tightly. ‘And do let me assure you, doctor, that nothing you can tell me about her promiscuity will surprise me.’
‘I see,’ Horowitz said flatly. ‘Well, so Luke tells me, he and your wife had sexual relations that night in the bathroom of their hostess’s home. By this time Luke was eighteen, but his only, shall we say normal, relationship with a woman had been with his mentor. He had never known a woman near to his own age and right from the start he was besotted with your wife. They met every day for the next three weeks, then the situation changed quite dramatically.
‘In the two years since Luke had left home he had never stopped thinking about Siobhan. The fact that he had left his sister at the mercy of their father was something for which he never could, and probably never will, forgive himself. And when, just a few weeks into their relationship, Mrs Denby started to illustrate her somewhat unusual sexual preferences, the whole nightmare of Luke’s life in Ireland came flooding back to him. Mrs Denby was asking him to do things to her that his father had forced him to do to his mother and Siobhan, and as a result Luke started to become confused and disoriented. At this point he still regarded himself as in love with Mrs Denby and for the first time ever he found himself confiding to someone what had happened to him as a child. Mrs Denby became so aroused by what he was telling her that she made him demonstrate as much of it as he could to her. In other words she started to make him relive it. And the longer he relived it the more confused he became. In the end, though he was still sexually obsessed with Mrs Denby, he came to hate her, and to yearn for Siobhan. When engaged in relations with Mrs Denby he would often believe himself to be with Siobhan, or indeed with his mother, and Mrs Denby did all she could to encourage this illusion. Should he regain his senses and discover that it was in fact neither Mary nor Siobhan Fitzpatrick he was with, Mrs Denby would laugh at him and mock him for his perversions, which invariably led to Luke beating her – which was exactly what Mrs Denby wanted. And as Luke thrashed her she would call him daddy and beg him to stop. This was so reminiscent of what had happened to him before that I believe it was during this time – all those years ago – that Luke’s sense of identity first started to merge with his father’s.
‘Anyway, as I said, his guilt over Siobhan was troubling him a great deal, so much so that h
e eventually forced himself to return to Ireland. He went …’
‘Excuse me,’ Phillip interrupted, ‘but when exactly would that have been? Do you know?’
The doctor’s face creased as he searched his memory for dates. ‘I believe,’ he said slowly, ‘that it was in the early summer of ’67.’
Phillip nodded then signalled for the doctor to continue.
‘Luke returned to Ireland,’ Horowitz said, ‘with the intention of rescuing Siobhan from their father. And it was what Luke found when he arrived back at the family home that I am now in no doubt was what was responsible for what he later did to the prostitutes.
‘He found Siobhan out in the yard locked in a tiny hutch with her pet rabbits. She was still speaking then, though rarely, but when Luke asked she couldn’t remember how long she had been there.’
‘What age was she then?’ Cristos asked.
‘Thirteen – in body if not in mind, and I’m sure you will appreciate that her mind was greatly disturbed by now. The only creatures in the world she had had to love since Luke had gone were her rabbits. The only words she ever uttered were to them …’
‘Wasn’t she going to school?’ Phillip asked.
Horowitz shook his head. ‘She never went to school. Phillip Fitzpatrick got rid of the authorities by telling them he was educating his children himself. Which, to a certain extent, he did. Anyway, as I was saying, the dearest things in the world to Siobhan were her rabbits and when Luke picked her up to carry her into the house she begged him to take the rabbits too. Luke believes that she didn’t know who he was, she didn’t even seem to care, all that mattered was that she had her rabbits with her. As Luke carried her and her pets into the house his father was watching them from an upstairs window. His mother was in the kitchen and when Luke came in with Siobhan, Mary Fitzpatrick behaved as though the two of them had just come in from playing. Luke was so angry with his mother that he lost control of himself and started to attack her. He couldn’t understand how she could have just stood by all those years and allowed her children to be so mercilessly abused. Mary Fitzpatrick did nothing to defend herself, it was her husband who pulled Luke off of her, and before Luke knew what was happening his father had overpowered him to the extent that Luke has no memory of being bound and gagged – all he knows is that when the catastrophic events that led to Siobhan being the way she is now took place, he was strapped to a chair with no means of stopping his father.’
Radcliffe, who had already heard this story once, ran a hand over his haggard face. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to hear it again. Cristos and Phillip were both very still.
‘Phillip Fitzpatrick,’ Horowitz continued, ‘ordered his wife to hold Siobhan down while he took each of her rabbits and, right in front of her, broke their necks. After he had done that he held their bodies over Siobhan letting their blood run onto her.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Cristos murmured.
‘I’m afraid that’s not all,’ Horowitz said. ‘He then made his wife cook the rabbits and forced Siobhan to eat them. Siobhan has never spoken since.’
His final words fell into a heavy, tragic silence as the four men tried to deal with the harrowing pictures Horowitz’s words had conjured up. Every one of them was experiencing the same impotent outrage combined with heartrending pity for the little girl whose soul had been murdered by her own father. It was only when a car alarm outside started to scream its ear-piercing cry, as though calling them back to the present, that Radcliffe cleared his throat and turned himself to face Cristos and Phillip.
‘There was a detail of the prostitutes’ murders we held back,’ he said. ‘It was that every one of the bodies, besides being covered in its own blood, was covered in rabbit’s blood. And the contents of each of the stomachs … Rabbit.’
Phillip said to Horowitz. ‘What happened to Siobhan after that?’
‘What happened,’ Horowitz said, ‘was that Luke informed the police. His father was arrested, Siobhan was taken into care and Mary Fitzpatrick committed suicide. Luke didn’t go to his mother’s funeral – he hated her for what she had allowed to happen and still does. Himself, he got a job with an Irish newspaper so that he could visit Siobhan regularly, and when she was sixteen he moved her from the care of the authorities to private care, which is where she has been ever since. Over the years Luke has tried everything in his power to bring his sister back to life. He even, with my permission of course, recently brought rabbits to the clinic in the hope of shocking her into a response. The failure upset him greatly. He stayed with me for a time afterwards, which is something I will tell you about in a moment. But knowing what I know now it is my belief that the anger and frustration he experiences at his inability to reach Siobhan has at times vented itself on the prostitutes. You see he wishes his father had killed Siobhan, he has told me frequently. He has even expressed his desire to release Siobhan from her private hell himself. But the truth is, nothing in the world could induce Luke to harm her again. So, in tying up the prostitutes, beating them then killing them, it is very likely that, in his troubled mind, he is imagining himself his father and going through the final act his father never wrought.’
Radcliffe took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Cristos. Cristos shook his head and turned to look out of the window, staring at, but not seeing, the triangular stretch of sea at the end of the street.
‘It seems,’ Phillip said, ‘that we’ve skipped a great deal of time. I mean, the prostitutes weren’t killed until last year.’
Horowitz turned back from the mini-bar where he had just helped himself to a mineral water and sat down. ‘When Luke took Siobhan to England in 1985,’ he said, ‘was when he started to pursue a career as a television journalist. As you are all aware he achieved a good deal of success in this – and, since I am the only one of us who knew him at that time, I can tell you that considering the traumas he had suffered as a child, he appeared relatively well-balanced. That is not to say that there were no manifestations of his inner turmoil – there were. He has, by his own admission to me, tried to blackmail many people over the years. He has never done this for personal gain, he has done it out of malice, something he at times finds impossible to control. It is as though he is trying to reap revenge on a world that has cheated him of a normal life. He also, in the past, had occasions when the rage inside him threatened to overwhelm him, but whenever he felt that happening he got on the telephone to me, or indeed came to see me in person. In fact it happened rarely, and usually it was as a result of visiting Siobhan, so he was at the clinic anyway. If it threatened at all during the normal course of a day, it would be because he had spent time dwelling on what happened – so his answer was never to think about it. But of course that just isn’t possible, besides which keeping so much emotion suppressed inside was not healthy. But for a while at least it seemed to work – and maybe it would have continued to work, had he not, by the cruellest twist of fate, met Annalise.’
Phillip stirred restlessly, his face had once again become very pale.
‘It was Annalise’s extraordinary resemblance to Siobhan,’ Horowitz continued, ‘that first attracted Luke to her. They met, as I’m sure you know, Mr Denby, in a London nightclub. Luke had had a lot to drink, so too had Annalise, but not so much that they forgot to exchange telephone numbers at the end of the evening. Annalise called Luke the next day. He went to her flat; within minutes they were in bed together and within days, for the first time in his life, Luke was in love.
‘He’d been seeing Annalise for almost a month by the time he told me about her. He was deeply concerned by her resemblance to Siobhan – afraid that it was Siobhan he was falling in love with and not Annalise. Over the following weeks we spent many hours discussing this, and by the end of it I was of the opinion that what Luke was feeling for Annalise was perfectly normal. Which it was, considering that neither of us at that time knew the truth. Anyway, with your help, Mr Denby, Annalise and Luke went ahead and set up TW productions and you may
remember, sir, that it was at the party following the announcement that TW had secured a network slot, that Annalise first introduced Luke to her mother. Luke recognized Mrs Denby immediately, and with the recognition came the horrific realization of why it was that Annalise looked so like Siobhan.
‘I am sure you recall, Mr Denby, the way Luke left the party so abruptly that night. He in fact came straight to me. His distress, as I am sure you can imagine, was immeasurable. He stayed with me for three days, by which time I had persuaded him to go and speak to Mrs Denby – though there seemed little doubt of his relationship to Annalise I felt it necessary that he should find out for certain. Mrs Denby of course confirmed it.
‘I don’t think I need to explain, gentlemen, that Luke’s entire world had been turned inside out. Everything he had striven to forget was once again staring him in the face. And the first love he had ever felt in his life to be totally pure, was of course anything but. Naturally, what tormented him most of all, was that he was doing the same to his own daughter as his father had to Siobhan. Not with the same brutality, of course, but nevertheless he was engaged in a sexual relationship with her. Not only that, Annalise’s mother, just as Luke’s own mother had, was allowing it to happen. In Mrs Denby’s case, she actively encouraged it. And on top of it all, your name, Mr Denby, was the same as his own father’s. The coincidences, the shock, the altogether tragic reflections of his own childhood meant that Luke’s grip on his sanity became severely jeopardized. He couldn’t, and how many of us could?, come to terms with the fact that life had played him such a monstrous trick. He was in love with Annalise, he didn’t want to give her up, but knew that he had to. He tried, and until this week I thought he had succeeded. I knew he had continued his affair with Mrs Denby, but only when he came to spend four weeks at the clinic recently, did he tell me what she had been putting him through all this time. Knowing how desperately he was suffering she had been stimulating his confusion over his identity to the point that he truly believed he was his father. The bastard Phillip Fitzpatrick Denby, was what she called him, using your name, Mr Denby, to confuse him all the more. She incited him to torment you or to blackmail you in any way he could. At first Luke resisted, but when Mrs Denby threatened to tell Annalise who he really was, Luke complied. And it didn’t take long for his mental state to deteriorate to the point that he no longer knew who he or anyone else was. Of course there were days, even weeks of clarity, during which he tried to break his relationship with Annalise many times, but never successfully. She was as in love with him as he was with her, and it seemed not to matter how cruel he was to her, she wouldn’t let him go. And he simply didn’t have the strength to let her go.
