The Psychopath: A True Story(20)

So in January 2006 I had wanted Ross to tell Robyn that he was moving to Japan, but although he promised to, he just never did. I finally had to tell her myself, two weeks before he left. She wasn’t particularly bothered but it was just the first ‘hit’ of the year.

Robyn adored Will Jordan. He had been her stepfather since she was a one-year-old baby, and made a big fuss of her whenever he was home. They played games and he would pick her up and swing her around. To her he was far more of a ‘father’ than Ross had ever been.

When the truth of what Will Jordan had done emerged, Robyn was only seven years old and in the second year of primary school. When I made the decision to talk to the children, I told her and Eilidh everything that was going on, including the fact that he was in jail. Robyn took the news that Will Jordan was married to someone else on the chin and seemed to understand that he was in jail because that was where he should be after committing a crime.

When Robyn’s school peers heard the news, they tried to use it against her – as children often do – but she already knew and so didn’t react.

They taunted her with, ‘Your dad’s in jail!’

She just shrugged and replied, ‘Yes . . . And?’

It stopped them in their tracks because they didn’t get the reaction they wanted. I was so proud of her.

It was a tough few months but we got through it day by day together.

Then her lovely grandmother died. The three most important adults (other than me) in Robyn’s life were gone within six months of each other. She had been deserted, betrayed and bereaved, the trilogy of hurt, all at the age of seven years old.

Robyn was terrified that I was going to disappear too. Whenever I dropped her off at school she would become anxious that I wouldn’t be there to pick her up again. I had to stand and wave as she walked past two separate windows, and I had to be in the same exact spot to greet her once school was over. Whenever I went away to do a TV interview or promote the book she worried that the plane I was travelling in would crash and/or that I just wouldn’t come back.

I felt so bad for her, to lose so much at such a vulnerable age. We just kept talking through it all. I told her how I felt about things and she told me how she felt, and gradually we grew stronger together.

As my three children grew up, I wondered if there was any chance that psychopathy was genetic. I read a book called Just Like His Father? by Dr Liane Leedom. It was fascinating and did indeed show that psychopathy can be passed from parent to child but that the environment, how a child is brought up, also matters. A child might have a predisposition for psychopathy but doesn’t have to turn into a psychopath even if they have no chemical empathic response. I learnt that it is important to watch out for tendencies towards antisocial behaviour so I could take action to counteract it quickly if it occurred. Being aware and informed is the key. So is teaching them a strong moral code – in my case the most basic of principles, that lying was not only wrong but completely unacceptable. So I watched for signs of psychopathy in my children. However, it was clear relatively quickly that my children all had emotional response and empathy for others which was a massive relief. Being aware and keeping my eyes open made me feel more in control.

I’m not saying that being a single parent was all plain sailing. There were (and still are) huge challenges in being a parent, not least having to do everything myself. Generally I just got on with it and didn’t think how much I had to do but I remember one incident that brought my situation into sharp focus.

My lovely friend Mandy came to stay with me for a few weeks because she was between jobs and flats. It was an absolutely delight to have her there and although she thought I was doing her a favour by putting her up, in fact it was the complete opposite. She was doing me the favour just by being there to provide me with company. Being another woman, she just got on with things that needed doing like tidying up or making the children something to eat. I remember the first day she was there very clearly. I had just finished bathing the children and getting them ready for bed and Mandy had tidied the kitchen and done the washing up. More than that, she had heated up Zach’s bedtime bottle. I burst into tears. It might sound ridiculous but at the time I had no one to do anything around the house but me, so even that small gesture was enormous to me. It was lovely having Mandy live with us and I think it really kept me sane over those difficult early months.

I cried buckets when Mandy moved into her own place, though I made sure she didn’t know at the time. Obviously she had to move on with her own life but I missed having her around for adult company as well as for all the help she had given me. (Even though she now has three children of her own, I still jokingly ask her to marry me every so often.)

My mother had once given me a huge piece of advice about my children – she reminded me that they are adults far longer than they are children and that I would want to have a relationship with them long beyond them reaching maturity. My job was to get them to adulthood strong, confident, self-sufficient individuals who were ready to face the world, and by the time they were adults to see them as equals.

I knew that in the end children will always copy what we do, rather than what we say, so we have to teach our children by example. I had decided that however I reacted to the situation with Will Jordan I was showing my children how to deal with adversity, and ultimately I could choose to let it destroy me or make me stronger and launch me into something new. Which of these two options did I want to teach my children? If in the future one of them came to me with a similar problem, what would I advise them to do? Because whatever I did was setting that benchmark and showing them the way.