Page 91 of Murder in the Family

MAURA HOWARD

But how the fuck did he get away with it? How did nobody evennotice? Not us – not the kids – but the adults? Like bloody Rupert, for a start?

CUT TO: Rupert Howard, in his study this time. He’s in an open-necked shirt and a cable-knit cardigan.

RUPERT HOWARD

You’re saying that when I met him in Assos he was really32? Trust me, there is no wayon earththat that guy, whatever his name was, was as old as that.

No way.

No. Fucking. Way. There must have been some sort of mistake.

NICK VINCENT (Producer) – off

It doesn’t look like it.

RUPERT HOWARD

Oh come on, he was behaving like a bloodystudent– getting pissed, sleeping on other people’s floors, generally making an arse of himself. Why would anyone in their thirties evenwantto go through all that shit again? I bloody wouldn’t.

NICK VINCENT (Producer) – off

He was living on someone else’s passport – he didn’t have a choice.

RUPERT HOWARD

Yeah, but trust me, he wasenjoyingit. If what you say is true, this bloke wasn’t just faking it, he was bloody certifiable.

CUT TO: Diana Moran, sub-captioned ‘Consultant psychiatrist’. She’s pale-skinned, with dark shoulder-length hair and glasses that are slightly too heavy for her face. She’s sitting in a low settee in what is clearly a clinic environment: muted colour schemes, functional furniture, banal inoffensive artwork. Camera pans back to show Guy sitting alongside her.

DIANA MORAN

What we could be talking about here is a condition known as ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’, but I need to stress that it’s not a recognized mental disorder, though the term is in fairly wide use in therapeutic circles. As the name suggests, people who exhibit this pattern of behaviour basically don’t want to grow up.

It’s a much more common phenomenon in men, and shows itself in ‘adolescent’ characteristics such as a refusal to take on responsibility, a reluctance to be tied down to specific plans or goals, and the tendency to use drugs or alcohol as a means of escape. Such men are often hopeless with money and leave a string of bankruptciesin their wake, while blaming everyone but themselves for the fact that things have gone wrong.

The flipside of all this is that they are often very charming – their ‘childishness’ can come over as playfulness and emotional accessibility, which women can find very attractive. A breath of fresh air, you could say. Until, that is, it becomes obvious that these appealing qualities are almost always accompanied by an inability to commit in the long term. Like children, these men are very easily bored.

GUY HOWARD

Is this something you’re born with, or is it the result of your upbringing or some sort of trauma or what?

DIANA MORAN

As I say, it is not a formally recognized condition, but some documented cases do seem to have sprung from a particularly strict childhood. A father with a military background, for example, may find it hard to express his feelings, making the child feel no one is ‘looking after him’, which leads him to seek that kind of attention and nurturing from other people later in life.

GUY HOWARD

So you think ‘Luke Ryder’ was suffering from this syndrome?

DIANA MORAN

I didn’t say that – it’s always very dangerous to offer a diagnosis without seeing the patient. But there are some characteristics you describe in him which I think could be suggestive.

But others you’ve mentioned seem to diverge quite markedly from typical Peter Pan behaviour. For example, from what you say, this man functioned perfectly adequately as an adult, at least after he began the relationship with your mother –so much so that her friends commented on his apparent maturity. Likewise he had no problem making a long-term commitment to her, though again, as you yourself pointed out, there could have been a significant element of self-interest at play there.

It’s also unusual for Peter Pans to go for women older or the same age as they are – they tend to target much younger women – in part to prove to themselves and others that they’re still ‘young’. So ‘Luke’ definitely did not fit that particular pattern.