The homecoming

Cyrus

Monday morning, at a quarter to 10, and I’m sitting in the reception area of Rampton Secure Hospital, an hour’s drive north of Nottingham. In 15 minutes, a panel of three people – a judge, a consultant psychiatrist and a layperson – will hear an application from my brother to be released. It has been 20 years since my parents and sisters died. I am now 33. Elias is 38. The boy is a man. The brother wants to come home.

For years I have told people that I want what’s best for Elias, without knowing exactly what that means and whether it extends to setting him free. As a forensic psychologist, I understand mental illness. I should be able to separate the person from the act – to hate the sin but forgive the sinner.

I have read stories about forgiveness. People who have visited killers in prison, offering sympathy and absolution. They say things like, “You took a piece out of my heart that can never be replaced, but I forgive you.”

One woman, a mother in her 60s, lost her only son, who was stabbed to death outside a party. After the jury convicted the killer, a boy of 16, she forgave the teenager. Doubled over in shock, she kept repeating, “I just hugged the man that murdered my son.” In the next