Matilda Wren (9 page)

Maureen and Mick had raised the child since Maisy gave birth; she had never shown any interest in the girl.

Maisy never said who the father was and Sean saw to it that the girl wanted for nothing. He spoilt her rotten and that made Maureen feel uncomfortable.

She didn’t know why, it was just a feeling that rooted itself in her mind. As she watched the child now playing in the sand pit, in her newly landscaped garden, she counted her blessings the innocent thing had no idea just how fucked up her family was.

She saw Maisy standing at her bedroom window looking down at them. Maureen waved up at her but Maisy didn’t wave back. She didn’t smile or even acknowledge her mother or her daughter. Another deep sigh engulfed her. Perhaps Sean’s visit today would cheer the girl up, she thought, although Maisy seemed distant from him too, since she had the baby.

Back in Maureen’s day, they would call it bad nerves.

Nowadays it was termed mental health problems. Whatever it was, Maureen knew there was something seriously wrong with that girl. Her head wasn’t well. She knew Sean saw her as a stupid old woman but she bore the girl for nine months.

She knew when something wasn’t right with her own flesh and blood. Just like she knew there wasn’t something right with him. Still, she kept her own counsel on that.

Maisy had been such a sweet natured child. She was always smiling and laughing. She had long fair hair, so shiny and glossed it could illuminate the ocean on a dark stormy night; her natural grace and beauty possessing the ability to light up a room whenever she walked in.

Everybody wanted to be in her company, even Sean, especially Sean. Maureen had encouraged it, finally grateful that he was forming an attachment to someone. Then she just switched off the light around her one day and it never came back on.

She looked back up at the window, where her daughter was still standing. An old, matted brown, dressing gown hung off her waiflike figure. Her wrists bore the evidence of past attempts of self harm.

The long shinning hair that was the colour of sunshine, now hung limply around her face. She had such a vacant look in her eye and once again Maureen felt anxious for her daughter.

Sean may not want intervention from outsiders but Maureen knew she wasn’t equipped to deal with her daughter’s flare-ups. At seventy-three she was a tough woman but looking after her granddaughter full time was taking it out of her and what with Maisy’s outbursts, Maureen called them her paranoid, rambling episodes, occurring more frequently, she wasn’t sure how much more energy she had with it all.

What had she done in a past life to have borne two such complete loony-toons? She wondered. No surprise they had a bond between them; they were both as barmy as each other.

Sean interrupted her thoughts. She heard him come through the side gate.

“Bit nippy out here aint it mum?”

He strolled across the patio, to where she was sitting, under the huge canvas canopy that he had arranged to be erected.

“The baby needs fresh air Sean.” Maureen said bluntly, nodding over at her granddaughter. “She has her coat and boots on. She is wrapped up warm.”

Sean turned to look at the small girl, who was playing away with the buckets and spades in the sand. “Where’s my favourite angel then?” He boomed, as he walked over to her Katie squealed with excitement, as her favourite uncle scooped her up into his arms. She was so delicate, such a tiny fragile perfect little being. Sean looked at her with so much love. Maureen saw it and was up like a flash, despite her heavy load.

“Give us the baby, eh?” She reached to take Katie. “Go up and see y’ sister. She’s ‘aving a bad day today.”

Sean held onto Katie for a second and looked over at the house. Then he gave her a gentle kiss on her cheek and let his mother take the child from him. He stroked her hair once she was settled with her granny.

“Son, go up and see Maisy… yeah?”

Sean looked at his mother like she was a stranger. It seemed like he was only just registering what she was saying.

The boy had such peculiar ways about him. He got stranger every time Maureen saw him. Without saying anything, he walked past her and into the house.

Maureen cursed under her breath and hugged Katie a little tighter towards her. What had she bought into the world and what would become of this little girl. Maureen herself knew she didn’t have forever and Maisy was in no fit state to take care of herself, let alone a small dependent child. Especially one she had taken no interest in since the day she was born.

Alice wouldn’t want to take her. She was far too selfish for that. She had ambitions and dreams and would by no means be saddled with a child that wasn’t hers. Maureen was not expecting any grandchildren from Alice and Benjamin any time soon. Alice was career driven and determined to make sure her dreams happened.

That left Sean and Maureen swore to herself then, it would be over her dead body that he got his hands on this girl.

* * *

Sean opened the door to Maisy’s bedroom. He didn’tknock, he walked right in. He closed it behind him and turned the key in the lock. She watched him warily, still standing by the window. Despite her appearance, she was a pretty girl, slim and petit.

“Mum says you’re having a bad one today?”

He folded his arms, as if he was bored of this already.

Maisy looked down at the floor. She linked her fingers together. It was something she used to do as a child, when she had been caught with her hand in the biscuit tin. It was a disguised innocent gesture that annoyed Sean.

“I don’t need mum calling me up fretting about you, do I? I am a busy person Maze; I don’t have time to run around after you. Do you want to be put in the loony bin? That’s where the old girl wants to put ya? She wants to pump you full of chemicals and let the doctors do experiments with your mind.”

Maisy shook her head fervently. She didn’t want to be sent away.

“Come away from the window.” Sean ordered. “Sit on the bed.”

Maisy hesitated for a split second before complying and doing as he had asked. He knelt down on the floor in front of her and took her hands. He traced the scars than ran up her wrist. Maisy looked away from him. She tried to go to the place in her head where she felt safe. Where she could block everything out but he wouldn’t let her. He dug his nails into the newly formed skin tissue, bringing her back into the room.

“These are healing well.” Sean reached to her bedside drawer and opened the top one. He pulled out a pair of kitchen scissors. Maisy started shaking violently.

“No… No… No… No…” It was more a whispered stutter than a repeating of the word. She stumbled to get it out.

“Sshh… good girl. You’re my good girl, aren’t you Maze?”

He stroked her hair to calm her. To Maisy it was more of a warning. She nodded intently at him once more. She just wanted to please him.

“Then you know what I want you to do.”

Maisy looked at Sean through bleary eyes and then looked down at the scissors he was holding. She slowly moved her hand and took them out of his. She opened them up to the widest they would go and then with one of the points she stuck it into her wrist.

She watched the blood pour out around the blade. It surprised her every time, what a dark colour it was. She always expected it to be bright red, but it’s not. It’s almost black at first, until the oxygen gets to it, and then it becomes a deep red.

“Not too deep.” Sean warned. “We don’t want to cause any damage love, do we?”

Maisy closed her eyes but Sean shook her until she opened them. “And again… let the badness out. You know it’s the only way.”

Maisy sunk the blade into her arms again and again making small criss-cross incisions. She didn’t stop until he took the scissors from her. He then pulled out a first aid box from the drawer and opened it up, taking out the bandages he begun to dress her wounds.

“I don’t know why you do this to yourself Maisy. I really don’t.” He said, as he wrapped the clean white fabric around her sliced up wrist.

“It’s not normal behaviour you know, maybe mum is right. Maybe you do need to go to a hospital. I mean…

cutting yourself for attention…”

Maisy never spoke a word the whole time he attended to her. When he was finished, he pulled back the duvet and helped her into bed. He gave a sleeping pill and a glass of water and helped her to take it. Laying her down, he kissed her gently on the top of her head and tucked her in.

Although, Sean possessed a general lack of empathy and was austerely incapable of understanding the emotional states of other people, he did accept, purely in a detached and intellectual sense, they existed. All the same, people were little more than objects for his personal gratification.

There was no discrimination, the callousness extended to everybody, family and strangers alike.

He neglected other people’s needs and desires and casually inflicted cruelty as and when he chose. Regular, ordinary people, experience distress when they observe another human in pain, but the callous psychopath, like Sean, feels nothing. It was why he was capable of dramatic performances of cruelty, because he was not restrained and controlled by the horrifying reaction to his prey’s suffering.

“No more dramas, Eh Maze. Let’s stop being selfish.”

He unlocked the door and opened it, then he turned towards her and said “And how about you start taking a bit of an interest in your daughter downstairs. She really is a beauty.

Would be such an awful waste, if she fell into the wrong hands.”

* * *

While Sean was driving back to his house, he reflectedon the last couple of days. He thought about Rachel, who was still currently in his house. He had left her sleeping while he had been to see Kenny.

That was a meeting he had not expected to unravel the way it did. He had thought Kenny had found Rachel so they could be together. He had no idea that Kenny felt resentment towards her.

Rachel was his purity. The only one who made him question his behaviour. The one that made him feel emotions which he thought he was incapable of.

Sean had rested in the belief that his behaviour was innate. He was convinced that his destiny and everything that it contained was pre-ordained. It was why he found it so easy to conform to the stereotype he had become.

Only when he was around Rachel did he feel some form of humanity about his past actions.

She made him question whether there was an alternative version of himself. One that she seemed to see, that she believed in, that she loved. If Rachel could see this version of him, then maybe the appalling form could be stopped, eliminated. She had seen it in him nine years ago and still saw it now. Was there hope for him?

Kenny was so wrong, Sean thought. He no longer abused Maisy out of some sexual or power thrill, it was to make sure she did not tell anyone what had happened and what he had done to her.

For the first time in his entire life he felt, to some extent, a little worried. He knew that Rachel would not accept what he had done and this bothered him.

It bothered him more than he cared to admit, which told him that what he was doing to Maisy and what he had done to people all his life was wrong. It was a new feeling to Sean and he didn’t like it.

Many psychopaths are superficially charming. They have a great ability to show displays of emotion and manipulate others. Fred West, a prolific psychopath, was described by his neighbours and friends as charming, amiable, charismatic, convincing and persuasive. He murdered ten women and buried them under his patio.

Sean had the ability to display all of those attributes but never genuinely meant any of it. They served a purpose that was all.

Sean however was glib, he possessed an offhand fluency of speech that was often insincere and superficial, he had few social inhibitions, was extroverted, dominant and confident.

He was not afraid of causing offense, being rejected, or being put down. If these things happened, he would tend to dismiss the charming approach and adopt a role of intimidation, coercion and violence to get his way.

Ultimately he was always going to succeed in his objective, so the means of how it was achieved really wasn’t of great bother to him. It all depended on what his current mood was.

He was deficient in the ability to be aware of what life actually means, the ordinary and universal emotion or purpose that gives rise to the various personal and social goals and responsibilities that normal people have.

Sean never spent much time weighing up his actions or their consequences, often due to his seeking of immediate satisfaction for his desires. This resulted in short lived relationships, changing plans and committing crimes, all apparently on a whim. He was very reactive to perceived insults and responded aggressively.

There are lots of different personalities. Some are of a sunny disposition, whereas others adopt a more negative vibe and there are various different mediums in between.

Ultimately, personality is made up of aspiration, authority, supremacy and control. The level of how much or how little of each of these a personality contains is variable between people.

Sean possessed high quantities of each. He aspired to be important; to be a somebody. He wielded authority, supremacy and control, as his own personal weapons against humanity. The degree to which these owned him, he decided, explained his abnormal and immoral behaviour.

He saw himself in the third person a lot and it helped him to justify the things that happened. Sean believed it all just happened. He wasn’t responsible for anything, he just dealt with what life dished out to him.

People are pushed by desire and pulled by conscience.

However, Sean was deficient in the latter. He was only pushed by desire and did not have the equilibrium between the two. Desire comes from the part of the personality that contains the basic animal and primitive impulses which demand immediate satisfaction.

They are unconscious aspects; dark, inaccessible parts of the mind. It’s the Mr. Hyde revolting from the reserved Dr.

Jekyll; that little devil that sits on your shoulder, whispering enticement and prompting you to be driven by a pleasure seeking libido.