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All through the long weekend she had tried to get through to somebody, made countless calls to the apartment in the hope that Bill had finally decided to go home, but he never did. Scott Velie had been unlocatable. She’d tried to coerce the operator into divulging Judge Langley’s unlisted phone number - claiming it was a matter of life and death, which it was - but all her passionate pleadings had been met with softly courteous refusals, first by the operator and then, maddeningly, by her supervisor.

When she did finally get to Langley early this morning after waiting two hours in the frigid, wind-whipped hospital parking lot for his rented limousine to arrive and did, at last, get to register her objections to the test in her strongest, most earnest, yet respectful tone, his response, rattled off to her as they sprinted across the treacherously slick parking lot, had all the spontaneity and sincerity of a prepared statement committed to memory.

‘Madam, I understand your objections, and I feel very deeply about them. You have every right to make your feelings known, and under normal circumstances, I would give every consideration to your wishes. However, your husband and the defence both have equal rights of consent in this matter and, I am told by Dr Lipscomb, your daughter has also consented and not only is willing to undergo the test but wishes very strongly to do so. What we are doing is, no doubt, highly unusual, but this is a criminal case. The charge is a very serious one, and should the defendant be found guilty, he will be subject to very severe penalties. In the consideration of that and in the interest of justice, I must deny your request. But rest assured, we have taken every precaution to ensure the safety of your child. We have brought in the best psychiatrists, and the test will be conducted as if in the privacy of a hospital room.’

Langley had been her last rational hope.

Her only option left was the irrational.

The test was scheduled to start at ten. At nine five, she’d sought out Dr Webster. Found him in the lobby. Talking with reporters. Freshly starched smock, shining stethoscope around his neck, fully prepared for the occasion. Janice caught his eye. He joined her in the vestibule, which was cold and deserted.

Was Ivy well enough to go home? she’d casually inquired.

‘Sure,’ he’d agreed. ‘Soon as this test is over.’

Her next stop was Ivy’s room. She’d found her sitting on the bed, chatting amiably with the three psychiatrists. Their conversation was light and general, no doubt a calming exercise. Relaxing the patient before the operation. They’d hardly noticed Janice. She’d waited patiently for them to leave. When, after two or three minutes, they didn’t, she’d interrupted with a slightly hysterical ‘May I please have a few moments alone with my daughter?’ The psychiatrists eyed her with professional interest and silently left.

Pulling Ivy’s overnight bag out of the closet, she’d quickly started to pack. Ivy watched her with suspicion. Finally asked, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Get your coat,’ Janice ordered. ‘We’re getting out of here.’

‘What?’ said Ivy, in shock.

‘I’m not letting you go through with this thing!’

‘Mom!’ The word exploded in a rush of tears. ‘Mom, I’ve got to! I’ve got to! Don’t you understand?’ she cried in panic. ‘I’ve got to do it! Please! Please! Please!’ Her voice dissolved into great heaving sobs.

Janice went to her, frightened. ‘Easy, baby, easy—’ and tried to take her hand, but Ivy jerked it away and gripped the sides of the bed.

‘I won’t let you take me away! I won’t!’ she shouted, her reddening face consumed with anguish. ‘I won’t I I won’t! I won’t!’

The door opened. Nurse Baylor stuck her head in.

‘Can I help?’

Janice remained standing by the bedside, staring blindly down at the tearstained, contorted face, unable to speak, paralysed by the aching effort it cost her mind to absorb the fact that there was no help for Ivy, no possibility of mortal help left for her child - that Audrey Rose was not to be stopped. That now her will would prevail.

‘I want you to relax,’ continued Dr Lipscomb in the soothing, regular voice. ‘I want you to relax. Let yourself fully relax. Lean back and be very comfortable.’

The friction of pens against paper, of charcoal against sketch-board formed a counterpoint of sound to Dr Lipscomb’s voice as he produced a pencil flashlight and gradually held its beam aloft in his right hand.

‘Look at the light now, Ivy. Look up and keep watching the light. Keep watching it. Keep watching. Now, as you’re watching the light, you’re beginning to feel your eyes growing heavy. Your eyelids are getting heavier and heavier, and you’re finding it harder and harder and harder to keep them open. Finding it harder and harder to keep watching the light. Harder and harder … And slowly your eyelids are feeling so heavy that they want to close … want to close. And slowly your eyelids are feeling so heavy that they begin to close … begin to close …’

The position of the light, well above her level of vision, was so placed to cause her eyelids gradually to feel heavier and heavier from the strain of constantly looking up, and the suggestibility of the repetitive, metronomic voice slowly worked its effect on Ivy.

‘Your eyelids are beginning to get so heavy, so heavy, they’re getting heavier and heavier … so heavy that you cannot keep them open at all … and your eyes are beginning to close, beginning to close, even though you don’t want them to, they’re beginning to close … so heavy you must close them, must close them, close them, close them …’

Janice heard her own pounding heart join the counterpoint of sound as she watched her daughter gradually relinquish her will to this stranger spiriting her off into an endless night.

‘Your eyelids are so heavy now, so heavy, that they must close and remain closed, remain closed. Now your eyes are closed. They’re closed so tightly that you cannot open them. You cannot open them. Try! Try to open them, Ivy!’

The television camera zoomed into Ivy’s face as she tried to open her eyes, strained hard to open them, but could not.

The view from the observation booth was not so fortunate. Not only was the one-way glass an impending factor, but Dr Lipscomb’s chair had been imprudently placed at an angle so that his body blocked more than half the subject. The people on Bill’s side of the room got only a partial view of Ivy. Those on the other side got no view of her at all. Which caused Judge Langley to testily demand that someone go tell the doctor to move aside.

‘Patience,’ Scott Velie’s voice counselled respectfully. ‘Wait till she’s fully under.’

‘There, you cannot open your eyes, they’re so tired, so tired, they simply must stay closed. Just relax, Ivy, relax - nothing bad is going to happen to you. You are safe and snug and fully asleep now. Fully asleep. And now your right arm is beginning to feel lighter and lighter. It’s feeling so light that it wants to lift away from the couch. So light it just seems to want to float in the air.’

It did.

‘And now your arm is beginning to feel heavy again, so heavy that it wants to fall back onto the couch, fall back onto the couch and rest itself.’

It obeyed.

‘You are fully asleep now. Fully asleep. If I wish to awaken you, I will count to five. At the count of five, I will say, “Awaken, Ivy!” and you will awaken promptly. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was weak, pallid.

‘At my command, you will awaken, and you will feel rested and well, as if you had taken a nap. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

The scraping of a chair, followed by a stumbling footstep, preceded the appearance of Scott Velie’s silhouette at the window. He tapped lightly on the glass and caught the attention of the doctor, who, turning about nervously, quickly grasped the problem and obliged by shifting himself and chair off to a side, permitting the court an unencumbered view of the subject. The slight disturbance in no way seemed to affect or elicit a reaction from the sleeping child, and once settled, Dr Lipscomb renewed the hypnosis.

‘Now, as your eyes are closed, and you are deeply asleep, and you are completely relaxed, you’re gradually moving back in time. Back, back, Ivy … back in time. You’re moving back in time to your eighth birthday. All right, Ivy, I will count to three, and you will be at your eighth birthday party. You will remember every detail of your eighth birthday party. One, two, three…’

In the next instant, an expression of joy appeared on Ivy’s face - an inner, contained joy that seemed pure and natural and genuine.

‘You are now at the party, among-your friends. Do you see your friends, Ivy?’

She nodded, still smiling.

‘Tell me about them, Ivy. Who is at the party?’

‘Bettina, Carrie. Mary Ellen. The twins. Peter.’

‘Tell me about your presents. Do you love your presents?’

‘Oh, yes. I love my Terry doll with travel wardrobe. And the game of Clue that Bettina bought me. And the roller skates …’

Janice winced inwardly when the roller skates were recalled. The memory of the ear-shattering, head-splitting sound of Ivy clopping around the apartment on them in tears after falling every third step, and Janice’s decision to bury them away in a closet and pretend that they had either been lost or stolen, came crashing back in alternating waves of guilt and sadness, knowing that the skates, still haunting that closet, would remain there now, unused, for ever.

‘Now we will leave this birthday and go back in time to an earlier birthday. Just relax and move back in time to your fourth birthday party, Ivy. I will count to three, and you will be at your fourth birthday party. Ready? One … two … three …’

Her look turned suddenly grave, taking on the plaintive expression of a much younger child, a child who has just sustained a keen and humiliating disappointment.

‘You are now at your fourth birthday party. Your friends have brought you presents, Ivy. Do you see your presents, Ivy?’

Her cheeks flamed with hurt and resentment. She turned petulantly away from the doctor’s question, chin quivering.

Noting her reaction to this area of remembrance, Dr Lipscomb gently led her away from it.

‘What a grand birthday cake your parents bought. It’s got four lovely candles for you to blow out and make a wish on, Ivy.’

‘Five candles,’ she sullenly corrected. ‘Didn’t buy it. Too offenspif. Mommy made it from a magzadine, and I helped her.’

Tears sprang to Janice’s eyes at the sound of the voice, the sweet, simple voice of her four-year-old, making all those charming mistakes in pronunciation. ‘Offenspif’ for ‘expensive,’ ‘magzadine’ for ‘magazine’ - wistfully recalling the times she had hesitated to correct her, waging war with the years to preserve her exquisite naivete, reluctant to let go of the child.

Janice’s mind was suddenly wrenched back to the present by the sound of sobbing, as she watched Ivy, huddled in the couch, hands covering her face, surrender herself to heartbreak in wave after wave of sobs so intense as to cause her body to shudder. Why was she crying? Janice asked herself, probing her memory for some clue to her grief. It had been a joyous birthday, hadn’t it? And then Janice remembered. There had been a moment, a terrible moment when that boy - what was his name?—

‘He broke it!’ Ivy sobbed. ‘Stuart broke my monkey!’

Yes, Stuart - that was it - the wind-up toy - a monkey on a tricycle. Stuart Cowan, a boy from the nursery school Ivy attended, had wound it up so tightly that the spring broke.

‘Damn rotten little boy!’ Ivy wailed.

Bill swallowed as the scene shot vividly back to him. It was a melee. Ivy screaming. Stuart laughing. Bill mollifying, telling her that Stuart was just a damn rotten little boy.

‘Damn rotten little boy!’ Ivy repeated in a singsong of sobs.

‘It’s all right, Ivy,’ soothed Dr Lipscomb. ‘It’s all right. You’re going to move away from that bad memory. You’ll leave it now and move back in time even farther. You’ll move back in time to your third birthday. One … two … three … You are now at your third birthday party, Ivy…’

The tears stopped. The expression became remote, then softened. A smile hovered at her lips, followed by a tinkling, childish giggling, which then exploded into a burst of laughter -harsh, raucous.

‘I win! I win! I win!’ she screeched in the wild, hysterical manner of a three-year-old. ‘I win! I win and you lose! You all lose ‘cept me!’

‘Very good, Ivy,’ praised the doctor. ‘Very good. Now, move back in time a little bit farther. A little farther back in time. You’re two and a half, and you’re having trouble sleeping. Go back to the night when the bad dreams began. You’re dreaming now the same dream you had on that night…’

Her expression gradually tightened. She began to fret and tremble. Her breath came in quick, shallow bursts. The whimpering came next. ‘Mommydaddymommydaddyhothothot—’ And began to build.

Bill heard sharp intakes of breaths and a general nervous stirring in the observation room.

Janice sensed a deep hush around her as pencils paused above pads and attentions riveted on the screens.

‘DaddydaddydaddyhothotHOTHOT—’

‘All right, Ivy! Leave the bad dream!’ Dr Lipscomb commanded. ‘Leave the bad dream! It’s morning, and the dream is over!’

The whimpering abated. The face lost its tension, began to relax.

‘Good, Ivy, good … Now just relax, relax, calm. I want you to slip back farther and farther in time now. Go way back in time, Ivy. Way back to a time when you can see and hear and feel and think but you cannot say things. You’re a little baby in Mommy’s arms now, and Mommy’s putting you in your carriage …’

Once again, tears rushed to Janice’s eyes as Ivy began to chortle and smile and express the small, scattered discomforts and pleasures of early infancy. The utter sweetness of this recollection came back in full force, bringing with it the very feel and smell of the tiny bundled body in her arms and a stab of pain to her heart for all those treasured, precious moments forever gone, forever lost to her, some even beyond the rescue of memory.

‘Very good, Ivy,’ Dr Lipscomb told her, his voice so soft, so caressing in its gentleness. ‘And now, we are going even farther back in time … farther back … farther back to a time before you were born … before you were born … before you were born…’