Melissa laughs. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Daphne hadn’t moved in when these were taken. In 1978. That’s Rose. I should know what Rose looked like.’
A cold hand clutches Lorna’s heart. She dashes to the box that is still in the corner of the living room, the one they still haven’t finished sorting through. She retrieves the photos and shows them to Melissa, her hands shaking. ‘That other woman, in those photos …’ she says.
‘This one?’ Melissa says, pointing to the tall one with a dark elfin haircut and pale skin. Her mother.
‘Yes. Who – who is that?’
Saffy is by her side. ‘Mum, I don’t understand. You know who that is. It’s Gran.’
Lorna grabs her daughter’s hand and squeezes it. ‘Who is that?’ she asks Melissa again, stabbing the photo with her finger, her voice urgent, nausea rising.
‘Why, that’s Daphne, of course,’ says Melissa, looking at them both as if they’re stupid. Oh, so, so stupid. ‘That’s Daphne Hartall.’
Part Four
* * *
49
Daphne
My name is Rose. That’s how I think of myself but this damned illness makes me forget things, makes me confused, distorts things in my mind. All I have is my memories and they’re fading like a picture left too long in the sun. I’ve been Rose for nearly forty years. I’ve been Rose longer than I’ve been anyone else.
But this past year things have become foggy. Faces I once recognized have turned into strangers. And when I forget the present, I think of these other identities as separate people, like they aren’t part of me at all. Jean, Sheila, Daphne. Particularly Daphne. I liked being her the best because she had love.
I had a terrible childhood. That’s no excuse, I realize that. Lots of people have terrible childhoods but don’t go on to become killers.
I was born Jean Burdon on 3 August 1939 in Stepney Green, London. The only child to two parents who hated each other – and couldn’t give a shit about me. My father was a drunk, my mother a prostitute, and I knew too much too young about men and sex. Most of the time I was left to my own devices, roaming the bomb-shattered East End streets, trying to keep out of my father’s way or I’d get a beating just for breathing. My psychologist at the secure unit said that the bullied often turned out to be bullies. And that was the way for me.
Susan Wallace was my first friend. My only friend. She was pretty and sweet, and for one glorious summer we were inseparable. Her parents were kind to me: they let me stay for tea and, even though Susan’s family were also poor, they tried to help me by giving me a jumper that Mrs Wallace had knitted, or an extra piece of bread and jam or an apple when they had it. And then one day Susan decided she didn’t want to be friends with me any more. She had found a new best friend, she said. A little girl who had moved in next door to her. The rejection was like nothing I’d ever experienced before and I was filled with a white-hot rage. I hadn’t planned to kill her. I just wanted to stop her leaving.
The judge at my trial was hard and unfeeling. He ruled me a psychopath. But I don’t think that’s true. I’ve read up on psychopaths since leaving prison and they are incapable of love, of compassion, of empathy. I feel all those things. My problem has always been that I love too much.
Yes, I was Jean Burdon for nearly thirty horrifying years. And, yes, I couldn’t wait to escape her, to become Sheila Watts. I left prison, rehabilitated and armed with a new identity at the age of twenty-eight. And I tried to turn over a new leaf. I really, really did. I kept away from other people, tried not to form relationships or attachments, tried to remember all the things my psychologist had warned me about. And it worked for a while. I moved to Broadstairs, in Kent, and lived there quite happily for a number of years. But then that journalist started sniffing around – had somehow worked out who I really was. And I could have told the truth to my probation officer and they would have rehoused me, given me another identity, but I found that faking my death and taking Alan’s sister’s identity to be the much simpler option. That way nobody would know who I was, not the prison service or the probation officers. I’d finally be free. Finally be the person I’d always wanted to be – fiercely loyal, free-spirited, feminist, don’t-take-any-shit Daphne Hartall.