Chapter Fifteen #2
Jansen closed the file. ‘We know that, Jack. I asked you how she died, and you didn’t want to answer me, remember?
But Miriam killed herself, didn’t she? You must have known we’d find that out.
’ His voice was gentler now. Almost sympathetic.
‘I’ve read the report. You came home and found her dead in the bath, with her wrists slit. Your baby crying in his cot.’
Jack felt like he’d somehow slipped out of the world he knew and understood, that he was in some upside down universe where nothing made sense.
In this alternate reality everything felt heightened and slightly unreal.
For a moment he was back in that room, the shitty one-bed he and Miriam had rented five kilometres from the university.
He could feel the cold in the flat, smell the cooking oil from the fast food place downstairs.
He could smell the blood. He could hear Cam crying in his crib.
Jack tried to make himself focus. He was shivering, he realised, even though the interview room was warm.
‘If you know that she’s dead, then you know that Miriam couldn’t have told me about this Robert Walker guy.’
‘Did it make you angry?’ Jansen asked.
‘Did what make me angry?’
‘That she left the baby in his cot all alone.’
‘Angry with Miriam?’
‘Angry with Miriam. Angry with Walker.’
‘No. No. I never blamed Miriam. It was my fault.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
Jack shook his head. He was screwing this up. He had to pull himself together before it was too late.
Jansen repeated himself, his voice steely. ‘What do you mean by that, Jack?’
‘I . . . look, I was twenty. So was she. We were in uni. Miriam got pregnant when we’d been dating for three months and she wanted to keep the baby. We barely knew each other.’
‘So you left her?’
‘No, I didn’t leave her.’
There was silence. For once Jansen kept his mouth shut. Jack was still shivering. It really wasn’t cold in the room. He must be in shock. He took a deep breath. He had to get his shit together.
‘Miriam was my first girlfriend. I loved her, okay? We were crazy about each other. We both came from messy backgrounds, and then we found each other and that was it. I was sure that I’d found everything that I’d been missing in her.
I think she felt the same way. But then she got pregnant.
I thought we were way too young to have a baby, but there was no way she was going to have an abortion or give the baby up, so we told each other we could make it work.
We were both in college. She was on a scholarship, and I just had my HECS loan and a part-time job. I mean, I was already living on fumes.’
‘You said it was your fault. What did you mean by that?’ Jansen asked.
‘Look, we had no support,’ Jack said. ‘My parents are . . . not available. Miriam’s parents died in a car accident when she was just a kid.
We only had each other. Then we had Cam and then we were back in the flat together and everything started to go wrong.
She couldn’t sleep, at all. She worried about Cam all the time, and he was crying a lot, and then she was crying a lot.
I guess she had postnatal depression, but I didn’t know anything about that at the time.
Which probably seems pretty stupid to you. ’
Lucy Phillips nodded in agreement. Jack couldn’t even argue with that judgement.
He’d been twenty years old, but he hadn’t been an idiot.
How could he have moved through the world, even at twenty, and not known about something like postnatal depression?
How could you not figure out that, when your girlfriend couldn’t stop crying, there might be something more serious going on than a touch of the blues?
‘I tried talking to her. I tried cheering her up, you know, bringing her stuff. Flowers or chocolate or whatever. Stupid shit like that.’
‘It didn’t work?’
Jack shook his head. He was slumped now, in his chair.
‘We had no money. I’d stopped going to college.
I was working at a café and a service station and I took on more shifts.
They offered me a manager job at the service station, and I took it.
I told myself it was because we needed the money, but really I just didn’t want to go home. ’
‘You gave up on her, so she went somewhere else for help.’
It took Jack a moment to process what Jansen had said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m saying that Miriam went for help to the college. She went to the health centre, and she saw a counsellor.’
‘Did she?’ Jack asked.
‘She did. But I think you know that, Jack. Because Robert Walker was a counsellor, and Miriam went to see him, three days before she died.’
For Jack, it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. He opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out.
‘Miriam went to see Robert Walker three days before she died,’ Jansen said again, gentle, insistent.
‘She had postnatal depression, she was suicidal, you couldn’t help her, so she went to an expert.
She went to Robert Walker because she desperately needed help, but he failed her too, didn’t he, Jack?
Three days after she saw him, she was dead.
And that fact has been festering inside you all of these years.
All of these years while you’ve been raising your child on your own.
A college dropout. A dead-end job. No love life.
No fun. No future. All Robert Walker’s fault.
If he’d been a better counsellor, if he’d helped Miriam, she’d be alive today, right?
You’d have figured out your problems, and you’d be happy now. ’
Jack said nothing. He just sat there like an idiot, shaking his head, trying to deny the barrage coming at him.
‘You dropped out of college and while your friends were partying, you were stuck at home with a baby who didn’t sleep.
And for all the years since, your life has been compromised.
I can understand how that could build up inside you.
It’s not like this is something you get to move past. It’s a life sentence, isn’t it? ’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘You just can’t get ahead, can you, Jack?
You can’t catch up. Your friends, they got their degrees.
Their parents didn’t cut them off. They’re out there in the world, working good jobs, getting married, buying homes, having kids.
But they’re doing it with help. And you’re still stuck in a shitty granny flat.
Still raising your kid. Ten years in, and your sentence is still running.
And Robert Walker, he’s just fine. He’s living in a mansion, right? ’
‘Listen to me. Listen to me, all right? I didn’t know Miriam went to see Walker.
She never told me. We were barely talking by the end.
But even if she had told me, I would never have blamed him for her death.
That’s insane. You’re telling me that he saw her once, right?
He saw her once. And I’m supposed to blame him for the fact that she killed herself?
It was my fault, don’t you get it? We lived together.
She was my girlfriend. Cam was my baby. And I left it all to her. She was alone all the time.’
‘You’re going to try to tell me that all of this is a coincidence? That someone murdered Robert Walker, the psychologist who failed your suicidal girlfriend, and the gun just happened to end up in your house?’
‘I told you about the gun! I told you it came by post just that day, all wrapped up with a red velvet bow and that weird bloody letter. Isn’t there some other test you do?
Where you like, check for gunshot residue on my hands, or something?
Why aren’t you doing your job? Why aren’t you trying to find out who the real killer is?
I have a son, don’t you get that? He’s ten years old. For god’s sake.’
There was a moment of silence. Jack searched Jansen’s face for empathy, for understanding, and found that it was entirely wiped clean of both. The interview ended. Lucy brought Jack back to the holding cell and closed the door behind him. He sat on the bunk.
Time slipped by.