She works to disguise, then recover from, her fluster at this news. ‘Has it helped you retrieve any positive memories from your forgotten childhood?’
I wish I could say yes, that seeing Mum again has given me something I thought I’d lost all those years ago. But how she died and the state she is in upsets me. So I shake my head.
‘Just because I don’t like what I remember doesn’t mean you should have kept it from me. Is there anything else you’re not telling me? Like who that little boy is who Mum holds?’
‘I can’t help with that one, I’m afraid.’
‘What about why Dad killed Daisy Barber? Or if he murdered Callum Baird? Is that why I keep seeing him?’
She shakes her head and breaks eye contact with me. It’s only for a second, but long enough for me to register it. Is she hiding something?
‘What do these kidswantfrom me?’ I ask in desperation. ‘Are they punishing me because of what Dad did? Are they trying to tell me something about why he killed them?’
‘They’re not trying to tell you anything, because none of this is real.’
Not her too. I sit back on the sofa and let out a long breath. Silence fills the room as she patiently waits for me to gather my thoughts. I change direction.
‘So when did Dad die? Because I’m confused by the timelines. I assumed it was way before Mum. I remember him not being around for ages, and then something about him being killed in an accident at work.’
I recall someone telling me this very matter-of-factly. Mum, perhaps? He had been such an irregular presence in my life that it had the same impact as being told a neighbour had passed away.
I continue. ‘So I assume he died after he was sentenced?’
Helena grips the arms of the chair and pushes herself up. She carefully shuffles across the floor to join me on the sofa.
‘Damon,’ she says as she clasps my hands in hers. ‘Your dad isn’t dead. He is still very much alive. And he’s a free man.’
Chapter 48
Helena
‘What have I done?’ Helena says aloud, a small part of her hoping the empty room might offer her reassurance.
She reminds herself she had no choice but to tell Damon about his father. That he wouldn’t have needed to dig much deeper to discover the truth by himself. And where might that have left the two of them? Damon would likely never trust her again. At least she can manage him, now he’s heard it from her. Well, as best she can. Sometimes she forgets he’s a grown man and no longer that quiet, confused little lad who came into her life a decade and a half ago, with only the clothes on his back. Then, she was in control and he did what she asked of him.
Helena recalls how she rejected him outright when he first turned up on her doorstep.
‘Absolutely not,’ she said firmly, and crossed her arms. ‘He can’t stay here. It wouldn’t be right.’
She had always maintained a distance between her personal life and her job. Taking Damon in wouldn’t so much blur the lines as erase them. However, she allowed herself to be talked into it. To take him in, to take him on. But she agreed only on the provisionit was her way or not at all. And she meant it. She gave them no choice but to accept.
And her way proved to be in the boy’s best interests. By the time Damon left her care a couple of months later, he was a different child. The transformation surprised all involved. In the years that followed, he checked in with her less and less often, but she didn’t take that personally. It only meant she had done her job. And while the strokes then did their best to ensure the demise of her fostering career, she could take comfort knowing Damon turned out to be the best version of himself any of them could have hoped for.
But today, the ill wind she’s harnessed for so many years is threatening to develop into a storm. And there are going to be casualties, now he knows Ralf Lister is still alive. Before Damon left, she tried talking him out of tracking down his father. She hopes she made a persuasive argument, warning him of the irrevocable harm he might do to himself to meet a man like that. A man who had admitted to such brutality.
‘I know how introspective you can be, how much you question yourself,’ she’d told him. ‘How you can dwell too much on the negative side of your character and how that can impede your progress through life. I worry that confronting your dad might make you question yourself and who you are. Remember: he hasn’t shaped your personality.Youhave. DNA is all you have in common. And you are so much more than that.’
As Damon bade her farewell soon after, Helena was still trying to convince herself she might have succeeded in persuading him to let the past lie. But if Damon is willing to literallydie, again and again, in his search for his truth, then why would her words make him stop now? Not when he is closer than ever.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have got involved. Not asked an old colleague of hers to redact the report to hide the facts.
The stress of the unknown, of what is to come next, aggravates her. Her head pulses and she pushes her forefingers into her crown. It’s become a more common occurrence since Damon came back into her life – and she can’t keep blaming it on a migraine. It’s more than that. When black spots interrupt her vision, she can do nothing but shut her eyes tightly in the hope they will go away. But she knows they won’t.Because this is what happened before.
Chapter 49
Damon
I recognise my dad immediately, despite not having seen him in God knows how long. He’s in the aisle of a DIY store, loading a pallet of paint on to a shelf. His hair has receded, leaving a fluffy tuft at the front and short-cropped patches across the top. He is attempting to make up for it with a beard that hangs at least six centimetres from his chin. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, and as he lifts four cans at a time, the purplish veins in and around his broad biceps snake down his tattooed arms. His shoulders are wide and his waist is narrow. I guess that’s what a third of your life in prison does to your body if all there is to do is exercise.
