‘She stopped short of telling them what you’d done to Daisy or Callum because no one wants to admit their kid is a fuckingpsycho,’ she adds. ‘You begged her to let you stay, but she’d washed her hands of you. She wanted rid of you completely, and who can blame her? So while she was asleep in her bedroom, you set fire to the sofa. Then you watched from outside with everyone else as that place burned.’
I hear my own breath being released in sharp bursts as the wind leaves my sails. Since visiting Dr Fernandez-Jones, I have felt like a cold, distant version of my old self. Unfeeling, untethered, but in absolute control. And constantly wrestling with the urge to harm those who don’t deserve it. But something about the way my grandmother tells me this with such certainty knocks me off that path. Suddenly, everything around me begins to blur and sway: the trees, the flowers, the cars – even her. It’s as if I am able to feel again, but now I feel everything at once. Sadness and remorse ... it’s overwhelming, and I’m forced to steady myself with a hand against the car window. Her stare strips me into pieces until she’s satisfied she has been able to deflect some of her suffering on to someone else.
‘You’re making it up,’ I mutter. ‘You can’t know any of this.’
‘I’m old and I’m mean and I’m fucking well vindictive, but I ain’t no liar,’ she says. I believe her.
She doesn’t need to say anything else. She has won. I slump in my seat before, once again, the crackling of electricity and a suffocating pressure inside my skull announce the return of the cold version of myself. It pushes to one side the remorse for what I did to Mum, and instead I want to hurt my grandmother. Take my pain out on her. And to keep hurting her until there’s no strength left in my body and every inch of saggy skin hanging off her wretched old body is black or bleeding. I even find myself drawing my arm back as if readying myself to act on my urges. It does not go unnoticed, but she doesn’t so much as flinch.
‘Be my guest,’ she goads. ‘You’ve already taken away everything I have to live for.’
She starts rolling another cigarette and continues to regard me, revelling in the wounds she’s inflicted.
Then I suddenly feel something warm trickling down my nose. I put my hand to my nostrils and examine my fingers. Blood. In a panic, I search my pocket for the handkerchief I always keep on me. I tilt my head forwards to stop it trickling down my throat and making me want to vomit, then pinch my nose. Now it’s as if I’m suffocating, but for once, it’s blood and not water filling my mouth. I wind down the window and spit it out. A long few minutes pass before it stops and I can pull myself together. I catch my reflection in the partition glass. I look as if I’ve been in a fight.
‘Finished?’ my grandmother asks without concern.
‘I didn’t know about Mum,’ I reply, aware of how weak I sound.
‘You weren’t supposed to know, were you? The only people who did were me, your dad and his girlfriend.’
‘His girlfriend?’
‘You didn’t know?’ she asks, surprised. ‘I wonder why she didn’t tell you. She was probably scared you’d kill her too.’
‘Who?’
There’s another dramatic pause as she prepares to deliver another big reveal.
‘Helena,’ she says.
Chapter 88
Helena
Helena drifts to a place where Ralf’s image emerges with such clarity, he could be in the room with her. She’s glad he’s not, though. She wouldn’t want him to see her like this. They haven’t been in touch for sixteen years, but it doesn’t mean she can’t remember his smile, his touch, his scent, his strength, his kindness, and above all, their connection. All these years later and a day doesn’t pass when she does not think of him.
Back then, and following a string of failed relationships, a happily single Helena had recently celebrated her forty-third year when she was introduced to Ralf at a conference about integrating rehabilitated prisoners back into their estranged families. She learned there had been many spells in his adult life that he had spent behind bars. But with almost a year of freedom under his belt, he was determined to remain on the straight and narrow. His honesty with regards to his flaws was as refreshing as his willingness to expose his vulnerabilities.
However, fearing someone with his criminal history might pose a risk to her foster carer status, they kept their relationship a secret from her employers. And out of respect for her vocation,he accepted his needs would always come second to those of the children placed in her care. There were weeks when they barely saw one another, either when he was working away or she was looking after a child who feared the company of men. Yet they made it work by keeping the channels of communication open, via text messages, handwritten postcards and notes.
A sadness washed over Ralf each time he spoke of the sons he had loved and lost. Of how his ex-partner Bobbi had irreparably changed after the death of their baby boy. How it had led to their permanent split and how she had refused to allow him regular access to their other son, Damon, for fear of permanently losing him. Ralf was aware of the part he had played in the estrangement of father and son. How long stretches behind bars for attacking the man who’d assaulted Bobbi, and stealing to help her financially, had fractured their relationship to the point where it was beyond repair.
Then, one early evening, Ralf turned up at Helena’s house unannounced and in a state of distress. She managed to maintain an impassive expression as he explained how, that afternoon, his ex-wife had died trying to escape a blaze in her flat, and as he’d comforted his son, he had felt something pressing against his leg. The boy’s only possession was a silver Zippo cigarette lighter he recognised as one he’d misplaced a year earlier. An emotional Damon couldn’t explain why he’d kept it or what had happened in the lead-up to the fire, only that there’d been another argument in which she’d ordered him to get out of the flat and never come back. He’d pulled the boy’s hand towards his nose. Did it smell of lighter fuel? He couldn’t be sure that it didn’t. But he did know the Zippo was now empty.
It wasn’t proof of his guilt, but it didn’t paint the picture of an innocent boy either.
Helena stepped out of the room and into the garden, taking in long gasps of fresh air as she tried to unpack all Ralf had admitted.It wasn’t only the revelation of what Ralf’s son was capable of that shocked her. It was that the man she could tell anything to without fear of judgement had been keeping Daisy’s murder a secret from her for a fortnight. It hurt, even if she understood why.
‘I know a solicitor who specialises in family law,’ she informed him on her return. ‘She can advise us on the best way to approach the police.’
‘No, please, I can’t,’ Ralf pleaded with her. ‘It’s not Damon’s fault, it’s mine. I fucked up. I wasn’t present when he needed a dad. He lost his moral compass.’
‘A quarter of all households in this country are made up of single parents,’ she argued. ‘Your absence isn’t the reason your son has done these awful things.’
‘It’s a huge part of it. If he’s arrested, he will be swallowed up by the system and that will be it for him. I know because I’ve lived it. Damon wouldn’t be able to cope.’
‘But if he’s done everything you think he has, he needs to face the consequences. They can help him.’
