Page 51 of Glasshouses

“Life, and her processing of it. Her parents weren’t warm and placed a lot of demand and expectation on her. I suspect that her father was emotionally abusive to her mother and to Lily as well, and he favoured his sons, and Lily blamed Amanda for not protecting her and herself, I suppose.” She paused, letting silence fill the room.

I held off filling it.

“Lily was mute when she was admitted, and she didn’t say a word for nine months, until after the trial, at which she was unfit to plead, and it was a trial of the facts. Once she was sentenced, she started to talk.” Doctor McKay turned back to her computer and started to type, the privacy filter on the screen stopping me from seeing.

“What did she talk about?”

“There were a lot of contradictions, and she hallucinated a lot, especially at night. We treated her for acute psychosis and prescribed risperidone, which she tolerated well. She engaged with therapy and the programmes in the unit really well, a model patient, and she was always so grateful for everything.” She stopped typing. “Yes, I made notes about concerns regarding witnessing domestic abuse, and potential emotional abuse from both parents.”

“Do you think she was grateful because she was being looked after finally?” I had a theory that Lily had wanted to be somewhere she’d be looked after; she’d needed an escape from her family home and a secure unit didn’t always have to be a horrible place.

Doctor McKay nodded. “I do. She never asked about being discharged, and when we were coming up to reviewing her case, she’d start to display signs of psychosis again. It’s not that uncommon for patients to do that, especially with patients like Lily, who’d been in the system from such a young age.”

“Institutionalisation.”

“Indeed. She was discharged when she was twenty-five, so she spent eleven years in secure. That’s a really long time.”

“It was too long, and in my opinion, she could’ve been discharged at twenty-three, with support, but instead it was decided that we’d support two years of rehabilitation, where she had more and more time out in the community. She had no family to support her, which made things more difficult, as she had no connections other than to those people who were paid to support her. It’s a very lonely life.” She sat back again in her chair, carefully picking up her coffee.

“Did Lily mention any names in connection to her parents or a group called The Holding?”

“She talked about The Holding, but it wasn’t negatively, apart from the fact that she was made to do work she didn’t want, and a lot of it. She wasn’t encouraged to have friends and her dad wasn’t bothered about her going to school because he thought she was more use at home. He’d mentioned her getting married at sixteen, so she wouldn’t be his problem anymore; being forced to marry someone was something she’d have hallucinations about. I don’t know how true that was. I tried to speak with her mother when she was out of hospital, and several times after that, but she refused to have anything to do with Lily.” A clock on the wall chimed the hour, then carried on with its rhythmic tick.

“That must’ve been hard for Lily.”

“You’d have thought, but she said she was relieved. She didn’t want anything to do with her. I don’t think Lily is capable of having a relationship with anyone without it being professional. She never made a connection with any of the other patients when she was a child, and it was the same here. The only people she spoke to were those with a job title.” She moved the chair slightly closer to me. “I have a session with Lily once every two months. I still prescribe her medication. She turns up on time and never misses an appointment; bringing a list of things she’s achieved since I’ve last seen her. It’s all about her gardens, or taking herself to the cinema, which is a big thing for her. She’s been having weekends away in new cities, although never abroad, but she never mentions a friend or a romantic relationship.”

“Do you find that surprising?”

“No. Do you?”

“She’s afraid of rejection. I’m guessing one of her nervous system responses is to fawn. Her list every time she sees you is her trying to gain your approval.” Which was interesting in terms of thinking of her as a murderer.

“I take it you’ve studied psychology, or maybe criminology.” She looked pleased.

“To masters level. We know she freezes – the situational mutism is aligned with that, and I’ve seen her literally freeze when she is stressed as well.”

The doctor didn’t answer me, just watched.

“I haven’t seen fight.” I looked at her, trying to read what she thought about it.

“Neither have I, Detective. So to go back to your original question; do I think Lily could’ve set the fire that killed her father and brothers? I don’t know. Based on her stress responses, no. But having seen her presentation afterwards, yes. I think what she’d experienced as a child could’ve led to her setting the fire, and her not recalling it. Either way, that girl needed help and will continue to do so for the rest of her life.” She shuffled slightly in her seat, having surprised herself with her summary.

I didn’t respond straight away, realising that the doctor’s insight had me right back where I started; we didn’t know what happened that night and were no closer to finding out.

“Could she be responsible for the fire earlier this week? Do you think she would have had the capacity?” I tried a different way to explore Lily’s psyche.

“Not unless she’s had a psychotic break and there was no suggestion of that happening the last time I saw her. There would’ve needed to have been a trigger of some sort. I saw her ten days ago, and thought she was doing well. She was religious with her meds, didn’t drink or take drugs, and she had plans to visit Edinburgh which she was excited about. She was also very scared still; every day was a challenge for her until she got to work and started in someone’s garden. That was when she was at peace.” She pushed her chair back and looked at her phone. “I don’t know of a reason why she would want to harm her mother or even have any contact with her. I think in Lily’s head, Amanda had died in the fire as well.”

“That’s useful to know. You haven’t seen her since? Lily mentioned having gone to see a therapist more recently.”

“It’s possible she sees a psychotherapist too, she did mention exploring that. Of course, there may be a side to Lily I’ve not seen recently and she could’ve been calculated in how she was in front of me. I saw that side to her a couple of times. She can be highly manipulative when she wants, but it’s rare for that side of her to appear.”

“What would trigger that behaviour?”

“In my experience of working with her, over attachment to a couple of key people. We had it when she was about sixteen with one of the nurses; Lily struck up a real attachment to her that at first gave us a bit of a breakthrough; she started to laugh more, engage with activities and open up in sessions. Then this nurse – she was called Petra – started to work with another patient as well, and Lily didn’t like it. It was typical teenage control with bargaining, ‘I won’t do this unless Petra helps me’, and the other child started to refuse to work with Petra. We never found out why exactly, only that they thought Petra should only be with Lily. There was a similar incident when Lily was in her early twenties with a social worker, who started to advocate for Lily to have a mobile phone and unsupervised internet access, things that we didn’t think she was ready for. The social worker eventually asked for the case to be reassigned. There was a lot we never found out about with that.” She finished her coffee and glanced at the machine, but didn’t go over there.

“Why do you think Lily was happy for you to discuss her case with me?” It was either because she had nothing to hide, or because she did; one was more conniving that the other.