Page 69

CHAPTER 69

OLIVIA – A FTER

For my father’s court case, they let me give my evidence by video link.

It’s impossible to explain how that felt because I don’t even understand it myself. The Olivia in that caravan and who travelled in the ambulance is sorry her father survived. She wishes him dead. Wishes the police had shot him in the heart and not the shoulder.

But there is another Olivia who creeps into my dreams uninvited. The girl who remembers when she was very little, when both her parents were around.

And this other Olivia has so much confusion, trying to figure out if her father was always bad. I keep remembering laughter from a very long time ago – mine and my mother’s too – and that haunts me. Makes me feel so bad about myself. My part in this whole story. So I try very hard not to think and not to dream about the past at all now.

I’ve changed my surname and that helps. Olivia Barnett. My mother’s maiden name. Sarah Barnett.

That first day in the hospital with Chloe, I still clung to the notion, the fantasy, that we might find my mother and live with her. I imagined she would see all the stories on the news and get in touch. Surely? I kept looking at the door of the high dependency unit and could see her arrive. There you are .

I pictured the reunion and wondered if she would look the same as I remembered. The hugs and the tears. I imagined her fetching food and drinks for us and making plans so that once Chloe was better, I’d see a path out of the nightmare.

But that isn’t what happened. Instead, I sat alongside Chloe’s bed, and watched on the television news all those white tents go up at our home. Forensic teams with dogs. It was surreal. And even before DI Sanders came to confirm it all, I think I knew deep down.

Chloe was so poorly. It was a viral pneumonia, triggering asthma. I had no idea she even had asthma. There had been no wheezing or other signs, just a bit of coughing at night which I thought was a cold. The doctors told me not to beat myself up. It can come on at any time.

Melanie Sanders tried so hard to be gentle about it all in the hospital. But I still puked. I didn’t even make it to the bathroom. I threw up in the bin right alongside Chloe’s bed. I remember a nurse came with some of those cardboard sick bowls and I sat with one on my lap while DI Sanders told me the rest.

They found three bodies in the footings of the decking of our house – a raised outdoor dining platform that my father built himself. DI Sanders had a lot of questions about that decking and I remembered it was extended in stages. My father told me it was to catch more of the morning sun. Now we all understand the truth.

My mother’s body was found beneath the first part of that decking. Julia and Daniel’s bodies were under the extension.

I was hysterical for a while. I shouted that my mother could not be dead because she sent me cards. She sends me cards . I tried to push DI Sanders out of the ward door. In the end they sent someone ‘special’ to help me. And I’m still seeing someone ‘special’ – may have to for the rest of my life.

The forensic pathologist said it was difficult to determine exact dates of death but my father, under questioning, filled in the gaps. Because the biggest horror is he is not ashamed at all. Not of any of it.

His psychiatric assessment, put to the trial at the point of sentencing, suggests a rare form of schizophrenia with religious delusions and dangerous psychotic episodes. Some call it religiosity. He believes he is some kind of prophet and hears the voice of God speaking to him directly. I’ve read so much about it since, trying to figure out when exactly it started and how it spiralled the way it did.

I wondered how he held down his job after his delusions got bad. Turns out he didn’t. That year off to support me when I was pregnant? It wasn’t his choice. He was suspended after parents of his A-level pupils complained. He was apparently fixated on finding an equation ‘to explain God’ to unbelievers and tasked his pure maths group with helping him.

HR asked him to get professional help and he lied that he was on treatment. He was allowed back part-time with close supervision but that didn’t work out either. So he was later put on part-time sick pay and benefits. I see now that we really were broke. That’s why he allowed me to work.

I have no idea where he went when he claimed to be going to his school. DI Sanders said he spent a lot of time in the local library, working on his mad equation. And he also went on trips to dupe me over the birthday cards.

Imagine? He sent the cards from faraway towns then hid them in the bin, knowing I would find them, adding a level of pure cruelty to his evil.

He said that God made him do all of it so he could carry out God’s work. Stop the police finding out what he was doing. Save Olivia. Keep her close . Every year he took trains to different towns to use my mother’s bank card and to post my birthday cards to keep the lies alive.

The police’s best guess is he killed my mother in a row because she was going to leave and take me with her.

He says that was why he killed Julia and Daniel too. They were going to take Olivia away from me. He strangled them.

He was tracking my phone messages, which is how he knew about my meeting with Matthew and followed me to Devon. He planned to force me back home. Had the chloroform that he used on me in the cellar with him. But first he found Matthew’s address from his agency details at Companies House and spied on his family. When he saw Sally and Amelie, he was struck by how much like me Amelie looked. So he followed Sally and Amelie instead of Matthew and he said God spoke to him, told him, ‘Take this child and keep her safe from sin .’ So that’s what he did.

He called Amelie to the canal path and said her mother had been taken ill. Had asked him to get her home safely.

Imagine how that makes me feel. His story that he abducted Amelie because of me.

My counsellor says – no, Olivia; he did it because he was ill. The rare but worst possible combination. Schizophrenia and high intelligence. It’s a clinical subgroup that isn’t well understood. Most patients with schizophrenia have a lower IQ and are not violent. But a minority of schizophrenics are very violent. And some do become killers.

My father still hears voices in prison, apparently, refusing treatment because the voice of God says the prison doctors are the devil.

I try not to think about Julia and Daniel. What exactly happened. We know now that my father had been tracking my phone for years. Using spyware to read my messages. And when he killed Julia and Daniel, he took their phones and sent false messages to throw me and their families off.

Daniel’s mother came to court. It was so hard to look her in the face but we’ve kept in touch. She dotes on her granddaughter Chloe. She said she had a message from Daniel’s phone to say that he had fallen out with the owner of the record shop and was going early to Morocco. That had always been his plan – moving on to Morocco. My father must have found that out from earlier messages on the phone. So Daniel’s mother didn’t report him missing for quite a while. And only with the police in France and in Morocco, not in England.

Daniel was her only child and she wants to be involved in Chloe’s life. I find that both difficult and nice at the same time. One of the many things I’m slowly trying to unpack with the counsellor.

‘How do I stop feeling guilty?’

That’s the question I still ask her every single session. I have her tick list. I have my journal and I have her strategies all burned into my brain. But still I feel it. Still it haunts my dreams.

Julia coming to our house en route to the railway station to run away to London. Demanding to see me.

Daniel in his studio flat, facing my father.

Amelie in that wood.

Two gunshots.