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“He killed me,” she said. “Dad just killed me.”
Now, at last, I had something to work with. Something I knew about—the emotional effects of psychological wounds on children, and how they manifest themselves later in adults. Imagine it— hearing your father, the very person you depend upon for your survival, wishing you dead. How terrifying that must be for a child, how traumatizing—how your sense of self-worth would implode, and the pain would be too great, too huge to feel, so you’d swallow it, repress it, bury it. Over time you would lose contact with the origins of your trauma, dissociate the roots of its cause, and forget. But one day, all the hurt and anger would burst forth, like fire from a dragon’s belly—and you’d pick up a gun. You’d visit that rage not upon your father, who was dead and forgotten and out of reach—but upon your husband, the man who had taken his place in your life, who loved you and shared your bed. You’d shoot him five times in the head, without possibly even knowing why.
The train raced through the night back to London. At last, I thought—at last I knew how to reach her.
Now we could begin.