The Silent Patient

Remember, love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.”

“A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”

I mustn’t put strangeness where there’s nothing. I think that is the danger of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you are on the lookout, and you continually stretch the truth.

That’s the truth. I didn’t kill Gabriel. He killed me.

All I did was pull the trigger.

Once you name something, it stops you seeing the whole of it, or why it matters. You focus on the word, which is just the tiniest part, really, the tip of an iceberg.

That’s the truth. I didn’t kill Gabriel. He killed me.

All I did was pull the trigger.

“Alicia, answer me, Alicia—oh, God—”

I remained silent. How could I talk? Gabriel had sentenced me to death.

The dead don’t talk.

“I don’t want to die,” he said.

I watched his wife through the windows. As I watched, I felt increasingly sure I had to do something to help her. She was me, and I was her: we were two innocent victims, deceived and betrayed. She believed this man loved her—but he didn’t.

No one is born evil. As Winnicott put it, “A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”