‘There’s more to your story than you’re telling me,’ I reply. ‘I don’t think Daisy Barber was the only person you killed. I think Callum Baird keeps coming to me because you killed him too.’ I know the answer to my next question, but I ask it anyway. ‘The third kid was my brother Bobby. Is he dead, too, because of you?’
‘No! Of course he’s not.’
‘He comes to me like the others.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I told you before, I hallucinate them. All day, every day. In fact, he’s behind you right now being held by Mum.’
My dad turns quickly, but of course he sees nothing. This time neither do I. I just wanted to catch him off guard. He turns back to me and puffs his chest out again, but his eyes give him away. He’s either scared of what he thinks I’m seeing, or of his own son’s madness.
‘You need help,’ he says.
‘You don’t know the first thing about what I need. Because if you did, you’d tell me the truth. What did you do to Callum and Bobby?’
‘I’d never have hurt Bobby. You boys were the only good things in my life and I loved you both. And your mum,’ he adds in a sudden moment of emotional vulnerability.
‘But you killed Callum, didn’t you.’ I don’t pose it as a question but as a statement of fact. It’s almost imperceptible, but I think he nods his head. Or am I imagining it? Was it only a casual movement? ‘How many others are buried inside me waiting for me to find them?’
‘None.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘And I don’t care.’ He takes a step forward, the sliver of sensitivity he allowed me to witness now swallowed by his shadow self. ‘Now are you going to leave by yourself, or am I going to drag you out of here?’
But I’m not yet ready to back down, no matter the consequences.
Chapter 62
Damon
‘You don’t randomly hit your thirties then suddenly start killing kids,’ I press. ‘There must have been more. And, FYI, if you can’t be honest with me, I’ll get myself killed again tomorrow and come back with the truth anyway.’ I can tell by his expression that my statement of intent has once again wrongfooted him.
‘I’m going to drown myself again,’ I clarify. ‘Each time I’ve done it before, I learn more.’
His jaw drops. ‘You ... you can’t. It’s insane.’
‘You almost sound like you care.’
‘This is not worth dying over. Nothing is. Please, don’t.’ He runs his fingers through his beard then tugs at it.
‘Then spare me the trouble.’
He moves swiftly from bravado to exasperation. ‘There were no others,’ he insists, his voice rising.
‘Did Mum know what you’d done?’
He says ‘No’ too quietly for me to believe him.
‘You’re lying. She found out, didn’t she?’
And then a sudden, unsettling thought appears from nowhere.
‘How did that fire start in our flat?’ I ask. Dad doesn’t reply. ‘Was it deliberate? Did you do it? Did you kill Mum too?’
‘I absolutely did not hurt her.’
‘Then what does she want from me? Because I know she’s trying to tell mesomething.’
