Strange Sally Diamond

by Liz Nugent

I missed him and I hated him and I loved him, but I could not forgive him.

In the superette, as I filled the shopping cart, they commented that I had a big appetite. They didn’t realize that I was shopping for two.

I stared at her. It had never occurred to me that she might want to leave now that Dad was gone. She was all I had. “You’re mine, Lindy. I’m going to keep you safe.” I swore I would never rape her, never hurt her. I told her that I’d let Dad die so that he would no longer hurt her, and that was true. I wanted us to be friends and that could never happen if I let her go.

I had been complicit in Lindy’s kidnapping for two years already, so there were two strong reasons for keeping her: I loved her, and I didn’t want to go to jail. The first one was more important to me.

I didn’t want anyone getting too familiar because I had Lindy. She was my secret. She wasn’t my girlfriend, not yet, but I knew she would be eventually. I was prepared to wait.

“I thought you’d be like her, but you’re like him.” “What are you talking about?” “Sally, you’re violent and aggressive.”

One of the first things he talked about was Toby. “He was my bear. I was four years old when Denise was abducted. I followed her around all the time. She would play games with me. Sometimes she would hide Toby in the front garden in a hedge.

I wished I’d had a sibling. Someone to share these feelings with.

If only you knew

“It was an anonymous tip-off, wasn’t it?” I said after a moment. “I think I know the answer to that one. It was on one of those true-crime websites. A guy who ended up in Mountjoy Prison claimed he’d made that call to the police to tell them where Denise Norton was being held. He’d discovered her while trying to burgle the house.”

Ok I was wondering what happened with that cuz the break in obviously lead to them being rescued by authorities.

“Mark, did you ever think that maybe I get my lack of empathy from your side of the family? How could your parents abandon me?” He looked anguished.

You could think of me as your sister?” “Like Denise?” This time I was emphatic. “No, not like Denise, not like Mary Norton, like Sally Diamond. That’s who I am now. Do

I love how she doesn't live in the past or try to change the essence of who she is. She accepts herself

I flipped open the lid and placed my hands on the keys. I played a number of soft pieces, orchestrations to calm my mood. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the music.

Maybe she can play herself into a job

I wondered if you would be available or interested in a little part-time work?”

Haha Called it.

On the way to the library, I leafed through the books, out of suspicion, and there I found her notes written in the margins of the pages and in the blank pages at the back, giving her name and my name and my father’s name, detailing what he had done to her, the date on which she had been kidnapped, and a haphazard description of the route from the lake to our house.

She looked up at me and I gazed down into her perfect face. She reached forward and kissed me on the mouth tenderly. I kissed her back. My first kiss.

It took six years, but by 1996 I was sure she loved me. I was 99 percent certain of it. By the time we consummated our relationship in 1992, I was twenty-five and she was twenty-four. She had been terribly traumatized by my father, so I let her set the pace and, though it was glacial, she slowly learned that I could not and would not hurt her, nor could I let her go. She trusted me with her life.

Well I'm glad he never forced her but their "relationship" is so toxic and sad because it's clearly some form of stockholm's syndrome.

When she told me she was pregnant four years later, early in 1996, I was taken aback.

I waited until Lindy and the baby were asleep, and then I lifted the tiny girl from her mother’s arms and crept out of the barn, locking it quietly behind me.

Aw he took the baby away. It's bitter sweet because he took Lindy's first child from her, but then he saved the child from being raised and growing up dysfunctional like himself or Sally.

The police tracked me down and questioned me, but I lied and denied everything. I was a coward. I am so sorry, but I did not want to be dragged into a public scandal.

I have taken three months’ leave of absence from my job as head of cybersecurity at Aotearoa National Bank.

Tina had advised that turning to alcohol in times of stress was not a good idea.

She said something about not letting go of you, because ‘he took my boy.’

“Oh God,” I said, doing the maths in my head. “She was twelve years old when she gave birth to him.” “You’re right. Fucking hell.” “I have a brother—” “But he sounds so damaged, he could be dangerous.”

He took my boy. Tom: What? Denise: It doesn’t matter. I didn’t want him.

Wonder if she means that she didn't want him after she concluded he was just like his father or she didn't want him because she was a child with a child and probably was scared and wanted nothing to do with a baby.

I was fed up with people disparaging my dad. He might not have done everything he should have, but what he did do, he did for the right reasons.

It took Lindy five years to forgive me for giving the baby away.

I hoped that Lindy might accept our circumstances now, but without uttering a syllable, she made it clear that our relationship was over.

She burst into tears. “I thought you were dead. It was like the last time, when your father died, but I… I missed you.”

This poor woman, in love with her captive. I guess it's easy too when he's always nice to you and tends to her needs unlike his father , the cruelest jailer.

She had lived here for sixteen years, and once Dad was gone, she felt safe here. She was thirty years old.

Wow

Times and attitudes had changed for the better.

one night in the spring of 2011, I did not lock the door. Then, for a whole weekend, I did not lock the door. “Why aren’t you locking the door?” she asked me. “I trust you. I love you. You can come into the house.” “No, it’s okay, I’m happy here.”

After years being conditioned to captivity her poor mind probably can't even comprehend trying to escape and face the outside word.

Eventually, I persuaded her to come into the house for dinner sometimes, but she was always nervous there. “It’s the ghost of your father,” she said,

No, Lindy was mine. I did not dare to share her with the outside world.

Her whole body stiffened, and then she went limp. I pulled to the side of the road and climbed over into the back seat. Her eyes were wide open in shock, but she wasn’t moving. I held my hand over her heart but could feel no heartbeat.

So frustrating that something so medically curable led to her demise. If only she hadn't lived such a reclusive life, she could have been alive and well in a hospital.

Three deaths on my conscience, Dad, Rangi, and Lindy, kēhua, and all three of them came out to play, both in my nightmares and in my waking hours.

I had promised Lindy that I would never read her notebooks. I tore them up and scattered them on long journeys in the middle of the night.

That had to take a lot not to be tempted especially since she'd never knew if he'd read them.

It is not public knowledge yet but it has recently come to light that Linda Weston had a daughter who was abandoned at a church in 1996 as a newborn baby. Linda’s daughter, Amanda Heron, has agreed to present our podcast,

“I’m not very good at talking.” “Oh well, we’re definitely siblings. It’s taken me nearly two years of therapy to get over that.”

Despite everything Conor Geary had done, Peter felt loved by him, as if that canceled out the horror he had visited on our mother, on me, and on Peter himself with this terrible story of a deadly disease.

“People aren’t one hundred percent anything.

That was another difference between us. He cried. I didn’t.

He didn’t seem to like it when I played the piano. As soon as I started, I would hear the front door bang. It was rude. But it was my house and if I wanted to play the piano, I would.

“I find it strange that a pedo who had been so active would just stop and change his ways, especially when he’d never been caught? Maybe he found a way to hide it from you.”

as I enjoyed getting to know my brother, his resistance to any change or progress frustrated me. I’m sure I had been that bad too before therapy, but I made an effort with people when Angela asked me to. He made none.

“Dad used to play the piano, you know? When we lived here, in Ireland. He was as good as you are. I’m sorry, but I can’t bear the sound of it.” I slammed the lid shut.

I was exhausted from the talking and all the withholding of information. I had to be so careful about what I said and what I didn’t say.

The connection I yearned for was not in Ireland. Neither Sally nor my uncle Mark could give me the feeling I craved. Sally was so happy to have me there, Mark less so, but I couldn’t relax. The tension in my head never dissipated, even for a moment. I needed Lindy, or someone like her.

Please dont kidnap someone, please don't kidnap someone

This time I was American and my name was Dane Truskowski.

your dad could be a tyrant. He could also be misogynistic. Jean’s opinions were never as valid as his.

“Jean was a lot more intelligent than your dad. She strongly objected to the way he treated you. She said that he never saw you as a daughter, but as a patient. He experimented on you, trying out different treatments and medications, evaluating everything.