But it wasn’t easy listening. Charlie rubbed his sweaty palms together. So far he’d learned that Leo’s father was a violent drunk—a story he’d heard before from various siblings who’d passed through the Poulton household—but there was something else lurking behind this tale, a god-awful punch line that Reg and Fliss had yet to reveal.
“How long did the authorities know about the father before the fire?” Fliss asked. “I don’t remember what it said in the file. I only skimmed it really, honest.”
“That was still a betrayal of trust,” Reg said. “I appreciate that you were only so curious because you care about Leo and Lila, but you should know by now that we only keep secrets to protect you and the other children in our care.”
“I’m not a child, Dad. You told Andy.”
“That’s different. Andy has parental responsibility for Charlie if anything happens to us, and as such needed to be informed of exactly what we’d taken on with Leo and Lila. If not for that, we wouldn’t have told him either.”
Fliss apparently had no argument for that. She huffed and turned her face to the window. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Reg sighed and activated the windscreen wipers to combat the drizzle that had begun to fall when they’d hit the motorway. “We don’t have all the details of the police case before the fire, only what came next, but we were told that a restraining order had been in place for a long time when their father returned to the family home.”
“Had he breached it before?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible that he had, but it wasn’t reported, or that the police didn’t act on it.”
“Idiots,” Fliss muttered. “What’s the point of a restraining order if no one enforces it?”
“Now, now,” Reg counselled. “We can’t judge a situation that we know so little about. Ignorance is no excuse for an unfair verdict.”
Fliss snorted. “Unfair on who? ’Cause it seems to me that Leo’s getting the worst end of it now.”
“Maybe so, but he’s not blameless in the trouble he finds himself in today. No one made him attack that boy.”
“Didn’t they?” Fliss shook her head. “Dad, he spent fifteen years with that man. How can we expect him to know any different?”
“Heisdifferent.” The words were out before Charlie could check them. “He’s not like that, Fliss. You know he’s not.”
Fliss glanced over her shoulder. “Of course I do. I told you that at home. I just mean that his behaviour doesn’t always match who he is, and that’s not his fault, is it, Dad?”
Reg said nothing, his eyes trained on the road. Charlie sat up and put his hand on his shoulder. “Tell me what happened next, then. If you think I’m wrong—that you know Leo better that I do—tell me why.”
“You’re not wrong. And your mother and I are so proud of the way you’ve both welcomed Leo and Lila into our home. It’s just—” Reg stopped, and Charlie knew that if he hadn’t been driving he would’ve briefly closed his eyes, centred himself, the way he often did when he was about to say something Charlie and Fliss wouldn’t like. “Leo is very damaged, Charlie, on the inside as much as his injured arm, and I don’t think we truly knew how troubled he was until today.”
Charlie wanted to scream. Reg was the master of discretion, but Charlie couldn’t handle another nonanswer from him. Not now.
And, finally, Reg seemed to sense that it was time to be frank. “The day of the fire was extremely traumatic for Leo and Lila. They lost their home, and their mother, and both of them continue to suffer the consequences of that fire.”
Charlie had figured that Leo’s mother was dead. He waited for Reg to go on.
Reg changed lanes and took his cue. “From what I understand, it was breakfast time when Leo’s father returned to the family home after a long absence. He got inside somehow, and things turned violent. Leo’s mother was killed in a struggle—with a knife, I believe—and the house caught fire in the aftermath, trapping Leo and Lila in a kitchen cupboard where their mother had hidden them.”
Charlie took a breath and steeled himself for what was coming next, though he already had a pretty good idea—Lila’s weak chest and Leo’s ruined arm had seen to that. “Did their father let them go?”
Reg shook his head. “No. Leo had to fight him to try and escape, and then—” He stopped again.
Frustration bubbled over in Charlie’s gut. “What, Dad.What? Just tell me. I live with his scars too.”
But Reg faltered, blinking fiercely at the road, and it was Fliss who turned to face Charlie. “The bastard barred the kitchen door, pulled a table across it so Leo couldn’t kick it down. He’d already pocketed the back-door keys.”
“He left his kids inside to die?”
“Yes.”
Charlie sat back in his seat, numb, save for the roiling beast in his gut. “But they didn’t die.”
His whisper was for his own sanity as much as the others, and Reg returned to himself and met Charlie’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “No, they didn’t die, but Leo was badly burned. The flames reached them before they could get through the only window that wasn’t locked. The firefighter’s report said that Leo’s T-shirt was on fire when he fell to the ground outside.”
