Strange Sally Diamond

It was Mum’s idea that they should adopt me. They had been married for five years by then and Mum had fertility issues. She would not be able to have children of her own. Dad saw a chance to redeem himself with me. He said in his notes that raising me might go towards ‘assuaging the shame’ he felt over Denise’s death. In consultation with the Eastern Health Board and the Adoption Board, it was agreed that Mum and Dad could formally adopt me. ‘It was pushing an open door,’ Dad wrote. ‘Jean and I were the only adults Mary had responded to, and despite my handling of her mother’s case, I was still a senior psychiatrist and kept up my licence. Jean was a medical doctor. Who better to manage such a damaged child?’ That’s what he called me. A damaged child.

Mum had applied to take over a GP practice in Co. Roscommon and Dad would opt out of practice and instead work on research from home. The adoption papers were signed on 30th November 1981. I was given a new name: Sally Diamond. I was reborn and moved to Roscommon town with my new parents.

I wished I had Mum’s notes from that time. I scoured the house looking for anything she had written, but I remember Dad destroying a lot of stuff in the incinerator after Mum’s death.

I gave Angela Dad’s notes to read too, after I had read them. She said she found them deeply disturbing. I was fascinated by them. It was like reading or watching a documentary on somebody’s life in a faraway place at a faraway time.

I wanted to know where Conor Geary was. ‘S’ had to be him. ‘S’ knew who I was and where I was and he had been in my life from birth to age five. The guards had compared the writing on the short note signed ‘S’ with Conor Geary’s handwriting in dental files they had from nearly forty years ago and found no comparison but who else could it be? I knew he must be alive.

I wanted nothing to do with Toby now.

In February 2018, I began intensive therapy with Tina, a psychotherapist in Roscommon. She was a little older than me, with dark hair greying slightly at the temples. She wore orange lipstick and white nail polish. We sat in matching armchairs. From the first session, she insisted that I look at her face when I talked to her. The first few appointments were difficult. How did I feel about this, that and the other?

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘Fine is not an emotion.’

I began to explore my emotions. I found that I was angry, resentful, hurt and anxious as well as grateful, warm, kind, considerate and lonely. Tina said that trust was my number-one issue, but that given my background, it was entirely reasonable. I liked that. I was reasonable.

Sometime in March, the guards got in touch. The Director of Public Prosecutions was not going to proceed with a prosecution over my illegal disposal of human remains. I had no case to answer. I’d not been worried about it. Detective Inspector Howard was shocked when I said this to her. ‘You weren’t worried that you had criminal charges hanging over you?’

‘Not really. I mean, it was a simple misunderstanding. Thank you very much.’

‘It wasn’t my decision. You should thank your lawyer.’

‘I will write to him this evening.’

Howard also informed me that the bear had finally been forensically examined. Despite our cleaning, they were able to find pollen spores in the seam on its back. The pollen had been found to be indigenous to flowers only grown on the North Island of New Zealand. The shoebox came from a shop in Wellington. The box was somewhere between eight and ten years old. The guards were reopening the cold case of Conor Geary’s disappearance and Interpol were now involved in the search. A forty-three-year-old photograph of my birth father was circulated and published in newspapers in New Zealand and Ireland.

All my dad’s files and tapes were taken away, though I was given copies of everything.

A further flurry of media activity ensued. More phone calls and letters from international journalists. I hung up or closed the door in their faces. Martha started a local WhatsApp group to deter journalists from finding me. And to give them false leads as to where I was and what I was doing.

I completed my computer course by the end of June 2018. There were five people in my class. They all knew exactly who I was, but they were a lot older than me. When they asked me questions, I became anxious. Tina suggested that I should tell them the truth: I had no memory of the abduction or anything of that time. That worked. My fellow students lost interest and treated me normally. They took it in turns to bring cake every week. I made brownies from my Delia Smith recipe book. Everyone said they were lovely.