Strange Sally Diamond

by Liz Nugent

They said I was autistic, even though my psychiatrist dad had told me I definitely wasn’t.

I think the villagers see a forty-two-year-old “deaf” woman walking in and out of the village and occasionally driving an ancient Fiat. They must assume I can’t work because of the deafness and that’s why I get benefits. I get benefits because Dad said I am socially deficient.

Thomas Diamond wasn’t my real dad. I was nine years old when he first told me. I didn’t even know what my real name was, but he and my mum, who was also not my mum, told me that they had found me in a forest when I was a baby.

“If Santa Claus doesn’t exist, does God, or the devil?” Mum looked to Dad and he said, “Nobody knows.” I found that concept difficult. If they knew for a fact that Santa Claus didn’t exist, why didn’t they know for sure about God?

In the outside world, you will find more people who are kind than people who are not. Seek them out.

“Your mother, your real mother, I mean, she… died.” “What did she die of?” “She was kidnapped by a man when she was young, when she was… a child.” I had seen films and dramas about men who kidnapped young women. “Did he lock her in a cellar?”

“Yes—well, no, it was an extension at the back of his house. He lived in a large house on a half acre of land in South Dublin. He kept her there for fourteen years.”

Your mother took her own life in May 1981 after you had spent one night in a separate room with Jean. We made terrible mistakes, but there was no intention to harm either of you. Until my dying day, which will shortly come, I will feel responsibility for your mother’s death. There was a brief hospital inquiry and I was cleared of medical negligence, but I do hold myself accountable, Sally. I should have found another way.

It is because of your very early experiences that you are sometimes socially and emotionally disconnected. Your tendency to take things literally is a hangover from your early years of social isolation in captivity. It is most fortunate that you have no memory of that time before we brought you home. I would strongly advise you to do nothing at all to try to revive those memories, as I know they could only be traumatizing.

Conor Geary was forty-five years old when he fled Ireland in 1980. Thirty-one years old when he kidnapped my eleven-year-old mother in 1966 and about thirty-nine when I was born in 1974. He would be eighty-three years old now. He had a sister, Margaret, who was technically my aunt. The police told me she was living in the Killiney house where Denise and I had been held.

“I’m not racist, but Ireland is for Irish people.” “But Abebi and Maduka are Irish. They were born here.” “They’ll never be Irish,” she said. “It’s not good to be racist, Caroline,” I said. “You don’t understand a lot of things, Sally, and this is one of them.” “I understand racism.” “Stop calling me a racist.” “Stop being one.” Her face was getting redder.

“Look, you fucking weirdo, in the beginning I felt sorry for you, even after what you did to your poor father, because you were on your own, but now everyone feels sorry for you because of what happened when you were a kiddie. How do we know you’re not exactly like your real father? You fucking psycho. Get out of this shop and don’t come back!”

“Hey, are you okay? I saw what happened there in the Texaco. What a cow. I gave her a piece of my mind after you left. You should report her to the manager.”

“She left me. She wasn’t ready to settle down. End of story.” “You deserved that,” I said.

A dentist who had spent years in Ireland and had lived not far from where a young girl was abducted in New Zealand in 1983. But he was a Kiwi citizen and died decades ago. And he had a son, older than you.

Why did it take me so long to realize that my father was a pedophile?

“You kidnapped her. You took her from her family and imprisoned her in that room next door to mine. You starved her and beat her and punished her, and you raped her. You’re beating and raping Lindy, knocking her teeth out. Do you do it with extraction forceps or pliers?”

“She didn’t tell me anything. I worked it out. I think I always knew, but I didn’t want it to be true. I can’t believe a word you say, Dad. You ran away from Ireland and you dragged me with you and now I’m complicit in kidnapping Lindy.” The water from the glass was dripping onto the floor. He snarled at me, “And what do you want me to do about it? Let her go? What do you think would happen to you? Who will protect you like I have? Like you say, you’re an accomplice.” He shoved his chair back and stood up, facing me. The toppled glass rolled sideways off the table and smashed on the wooden floor. I was terrified at the thought of being imprisoned, I was terrified at the thought of being left alone, I was terrified of dying an agonizing death. But I thought I knew right from wrong. “Dad, you have to leave her alone. You’re a pedophile and that’s the truth.”

“You can’t do anything without killing yourself, you stupid boy!” I took the car that night and drove for hours, but where could I go, and who could I tell?

“You have control,” I interrupted him. I wasn’t prepared to let him paint himself as the victim. “You chose to take my mother out of her garden when she was a child, you chose to kidnap Lindy from the lake, and worse than that, you pretended that you were doing it for me.”

“I’m never going to feel like you’re anything other than my jailor, and you’re an idiot if you think differently.”