Striding into the hall, I halted upon finding Sarah standing beneath my mother’s portrait.
She turned as I approached. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, taking her hand. “It felt good to be the one in control for a change.”
Her smile was soft, tinged with a little sadness, as she turned back to stare at my mother. “Is this her?”
“Yes. This is Mum.”
“She was beautiful, Theo. You look like her.”
“He didn’t deserve her.” The painter, a famous artist called Raphaella Forbes, captured the warmth and kindness in my mum’s eyes. “She was so good to everyone. Even him. He didn’t deserve her,” I repeated, wishing like hell she’d had a better life.
“No, he didn’t.” Sarah squeezed my hand.
“I worry I don’t deserve you,” I confessed hoarsely. “That everyone will agree because of my past.”
She turned to me, expression solemn. “You have done nothing but take care of me while empowering me at the same time. Do you know how rare that is? To hell with everyone else.”
Warm gratitude filled the hollowness in my chest. Relief too. I brought our clasped hands to my mouth and pressed a hard kiss to her knuckles. “My mum would approve of you.” I looked up at the painting, into Mum’s soft eyes. “Wouldn’t you, Mum?”
A beat later, I looked down at Sarah. “She says yes.”
She laughed softly, eyes still filled with an understanding of my grief that made me love her even more. Pressing a kiss to my fingertips, I rested them against the painting. “Miss you, Mum.”
Swallowing hard, I stepped back, tugging on Sarah’s hand. “Let’s go, my love.”
As we turned to leave, my feet stuttered at the sight of my father standing beneath the archway of the library. For just a second, he wore a stricken expression that shocked me.
However, he quickly covered it, smoothing his countenance to that blank expression I was more familiar with. I knew that blank expression. I’d worn it many times myself to cover up my true feelings.
I realized then that perhaps my father was human after all. That maybe he did experience remorse and guilt. But he was too scared to admit those feelings, too afraid to reveal he was fallible. Terrified, perhaps, to let those emotions in, in case they swallowed him whole.
And in the end, my father’s fear would leave him with nothing and nobody but one son who stuck around out of duty.
It hit me then, as we left the house on Wilton Crescent, with more clarity than ever, why Sarah asked me to do this. I couldn’t lock my feelings away like my father did. I’d only lose everyone who mattered to me. And there was no way in hell I’d ever risk turning out to be just like Stephen Cavendish.
I wanted to be better.
Not just for Sarah.
For me too.
Thirty-Four
THEO
In an effort not to come off as a suffocating, overprotective Neanderthal, I hadn’t expressed my concern about Sarah heading out into the city. It was the day before New Year’s Eve and London would be teeming with visitors. I had to trust Sarah would be safe, however, meeting her agent for drinks at a bar near Charing Cross.
Thankfully, morbid distraction came in the shape of an encrypted file sent to my email by DCI English’s team. They’d agreed at our visit to let me read the fan mail that had been sent to me in case there was a clue that perhaps only I might pick up on.
I poured myself a whisky and sat down on the couch with my laptop and exhaled slowly before opening the file. My stomach churned as I read the scanned letters in chronological order. The first few praised and marveled at how I’d brought his story to life on-screen. Though he never signed the letters, I thought of him as Quinn Gray. He shared how he’d been raised by his father and stepmother after his mother committed suicide in front of him when he was seven years old. The similarity to Gray’s story and Charlie King’s was uncanny and alarming. Charlie hunghis victims after he murdered them because his mother hung herself. All his victims looked like his mum.
I shuddered, rubbing at my tired eyes, before continuing. The letters began to read like a son seeking approval.
I know only you can understand these dark desires that drive me. Somehow you know me. You sent Charlie to me as a message. Charlie and I are one and the same. I am Charlie. And you give me permission. You give me permission to do the things I need to do, things other people will never understand.
Nausea swarmed in my gut, guilt rising as I reached a letter that coincided with the first murder.
