Free The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel by Schaffner Anna

companies were responsible.
    After five months, her very infrequent personal messages to me dried up completely. It’s probably fair to say that she broke her part of our deal. I think that compared to the sufferings she encountered in India on a daily basis, my own issues must have paled into insignificance. I can’t really blame her, I guess. I know that my problems are boring. But it still hurt really badly that she just completely ripped me out of her life, like a weed or something.
    When she returned after twelve months I felt she’d changed. She talked mainly about economics and political stuff. She reacted quite badly to the fact that I was still battling with my weight, and told me really brutally that I needed to get a grip and snap out of that phase. She said it made her incredibly sad that I, who had everything and all kinds of privileges, wasn’t able to appreciate my gifts, and that I should travel to India sometime to see what children who aren’t starving for fun but for real look like. It was a pretty horrible thing to say. I felt like she wasn’t really interested in hearing about how I was. When I tried to talk to her, she seemed distracted and impatient. Shortly after her return, she left home to study PPE at St John’s College, Oxford. And then I just didn’t see her very often anymore. Only at big family gatherings, really. She sent me birthday cards, but that was it. Even when I was hospitalized for five weeks – I was being force-fed against my will – Julia didn’t come to visit. Not once. I mean, that’s pretty extreme, isn’t it?
    She graduated, with a sky-high First, of course, and then went to Edinburgh to take up a scholarship to study for an MA. You probably know the rest of the story. About halfway through her programme, she dropped out and went travelling again, with someone she’d met up in Scotland, I think. We didn’t hear much from her during that period, apart from the odd postcard. Mum and Dad worried a lot about her, and so did I. After about two years, she came back to London. Again I only really saw her at family gatherings, and even then very rarely. I don’t know what she did all day here. She had weird friends – people in radical political groups, activist types. The one person who was still in regular contact with her was Dad, and he was under the impression that she went to a lot of demonstrations and occupations and anti-globalization gatherings, and that kind of thing. The last two times we saw her, on Christmas Day last year and on Dad’s sixtieth birthday, were strained. She was pretty caustic and seemed on the war path with everyone. During Dad’s birthday dinner she made a long, passionate speech against the consumption of meat that just about spoiled everyone’s appetite. I guess she thought we were all hypocrites or something.
    I don’t know what to say about the attack. I really don’t. I haven’t seen Julia since it happened. I still can’t believe that my sister is supposed to have murdered all those people. She must have been corrupted by someone. I don’t think she’s well. The person who came back from those trips wasn’t the Julia I knew and loved. Something must have happened to her abroad. Someone must have radicalized her. Perhaps it even started as far back as with that Jeremy guy. One bad friend after another, you know? I wish she’d stayed with me; I wish I’d never lost her. Together, we could have done anything. She only ever wanted to make the world a better place. I really don’t know what to say about the attack. She totally broke my parents’ hearts. And mine.

IV
    Amy seemed so starved of human contact, and so awfully thin, and so terribly fragile both physically and mentally, that I decided to contact her parents and her supervisor at UCL to alert them to her condition straight after our second meeting. Her supervisor emailed back right away and thanked me for my concern, but explained there was nothing they could do