JD
Doctor, actually. And I reverted to my maiden name, Davitt, after the divorce.
POLICE
Dr Davitt, your ex-husband formed a sexual relationship somewhere around November 1995 with one of his students, Miss Roberts, is that right?
JD
Technically speaking, she wasn’t one of his students. He was her academic advisor. But yes. They were fucking.
POLICE
And do you know how long they were – how long the relationship continued?
JD
I wouldn’t call it a relationship. It happened maybe three or four times.
POLICE
Did you know about it?
JD
Not until Roger tried to end it.
POLICE
Why did he do that, do you know?
JD
I imagine he got bored. Fidelity isn’t his strongest suit. It certainly wasn’t because I’d found out, though I gather that’s what he told his girlfriend.
POLICE
Your husband broke it off with Miss Roberts sometime in January 1996?
JD
Yes.
POLICE
And then what happened?
JD
The girl rang me. She told me they were having an affair, she said they were in love, and begged me to, quotes, let him go. Roger had told her I’d threatened to go to the college and expose him if he didn’t go back to me. [Pause.] He’s not a very nice man.
POLICE
This was the first you knew of the affair?
JD
I’d suspected Roger had been unfaithful before, but it was the first time I knew for sure.
POLICE
So what did you do?
JD
I told Roger the affair had to stop, or I’d leave him. It was humiliating. She was one of his students.
POLICE
And did he stop it?
JD
He said he’d tried, but she wouldn’t listen. She kept ringing the house, though after the first time I didn’t answer her calls. Then she started sending letters. They went on for pages and pages, dozens and dozens of them. She must have been writing two or three a day.
POLICE
Did you keep them?
JD
No, of course not.
POLICE
What did she say in the letters?
JD
The usual. [Pause.] She and Roger were soulmates, they were meant to be together, soap-opera stuff. She even turned up at my college rooms, and the porter had to ask her to leave.
POLICE
Did you notify the police?
JD
At that stage, she hadn’t done anything illegal. She was infatuated with him, obviously, but I didn’t think she was a danger to anyone. I assumed it’d burn itself out, given time. [Pause.] Tell me, how many times have you gone to a bar or a gym because you were mad about a girl who went there? Or joined a club she belonged to so you could chat her up?
POLICE
[Laughs.] I spent two months learning how to salsa because my wife taught the class.
JD
We’ve all done it. There’s a very fine line between the normal behaviour, if you can call it that, of someone in love, and criminal stalking. I wasn’t about to call the police because a nineteen-year-old girl with her whole life in front of her had had her heart broken by a man who wouldn’t know the truth if it punched him on the nose.
POLICE
So the first time you met Louise Roberts in person was when she came to your house, the night of 4 February 1996?
JD
Yes.
POLICE
Can you tell me what happened?
JD
I’m sure you’ve seen the police report.
POLICE
Your story and hers conflict, as you know. I’d rather hear it directly from you.
JD
I was in the middle of cooking dinner. Roger had a late tutorial, but as soon as I answered the door I knew who she was.
POLICE
Did you let her in?
JD
She took me by surprise. She just came in, and I didn’t stop her.
POLICE
Did you have a conversation?
JD
Not really. She said something about setting him free, or whatever, the same kind of thing she’d written in her letters. And then she just grabbed the knife out of my hand—
POLICE
You were holding a knife?
JD
I’d been getting dinner ready. I was paring apples for a new recipe, a sweet-and-sour sauce – God, it’s funny the things you remember.
POLICE
What did she do after she seized the knife?
JD
It all happened so fast. She grabbed it and just stabbed herself in the stomach. I mean, hard, not just a superficial cut. There was blood everywhere.
POLICE
What did you do?
JD
Well, for a moment I was in shock, and then I grabbed my apron and tried to stop the bleeding, and called 999.
POLICE
At the time, she claimed you were the one who stabbed her.
JD
If you know that, you must also know her version of events did not stand up to scrutiny, and I was later granted a restraining order against her. If I recall correctly, she spent some time at an in-patient facility.
POLICE
So she lied?
JD
It’s not that simple. As I’m sure you know, memory is a very unreliable narrator, Detective. We all think memories are stored in our brains just as they are in computers. Once registered, the data are put away for safe-keeping and eventual recall. The facts don’t change. But the truth is, every time we remember something, we are reconstructing the event, reassembling it from traces throughout the brain. We also suppress memories that are painful or damaging to self-esteem. Our memories reshape themselves to accommodate the new situations we find ourselves facing. Memory is flexible.
POLICE
I’m not sure I follow.
JD
Put simply, Louise Roberts was so plausible because she believed everything she said. It’s how she remembered it actually happened. She’d have passed a lie-detector test, trust me.
POLICE
Are you saying she didn’t know the difference between truth and fiction?
JD
In a manner of speaking.
POLICE
You’re a psychologist, aren’t you? Did you think she was mad?
JD
I think she was in love. Which is a kind of madness, don’t you think?
Five days before the party
Chapter 30
Caz
I know it’s a Hail Mary pass, but if I don’t ask, I’ll never forgive myself. Patrick’s a shrewd operator with an eye on the bottom line, but he’s a decent man. If I’d been here last Friday, instead of chasing Andy, maybe I could’ve spoken up for AJ and stopped this happening in the first place.