She said she couldn’t fully rest until they caught the culprits responsible for sending her parents’ car hurtling over a cliff edge into a freezing stream below. I’m just not sure the knowledge is going to give her as much peace as she originally hoped.
It’s the biggest shock I’ve received in years, yet it made perfect sense of everything that occurred ever since. Our rapid departure. My father’s drinking. His emotional outbursts. His anger at my fame. His inability to find peace, no matter how luxurious a lifestyle we provided him.
The man’s been tormenting himself so excruciatingly for the last ten years, he would have been better handing himself in at the time.
The way he relayed the events of the night, so clearly, I felt like I was watching a horror movie unfold in slow motion. The illegal deal he’d been cutting spiralled rapidly south. He was speeding away when he collided with Mr and Mrs Sexton at one of the tightest coastal bends in the county.
He had no idea Victoria was in the car. When I told him that she was, but she’d survived, he bawled like a baby.
The one person in this life you have to be able to live with is yourself. And he couldn’t do it, no matter how inebriated he got. His self-loathing grew to a point that the drink failed to take the edge off.
Even bound in cuffs he looked more content than I’ve seen him in years. He’d been running for so long, it seems it’s a relief to finally stop.
So even though I’m devastated my father’s likely going to spend the remainder of his life behind bars, it’s the right thing. By him, by Sasha and by the word of the law.
He said seeing Sasha and me photographed at the concert together in Vegas served as some sort of an epiphany. He recognised her immediately, in part at least. What he didn’t apparently recognise was the haunted sorrow lurking in the depths of her eyes, a far cry from the bubbly teenager we all knew.
Seeing her further fuelled an increasing desire to confess.
I know the precise look he means. Sasha can appear detached sometimes. It was the exact expression she greeted me with in the atrium all those weeks ago. Desperately trying to demonstrate cold, soulless eyes, but if you get close enough the irrepressible energy exuding from her body gives her away. Not that my father would know that.
I’ve come to realise, for her, it’s an act of self-preservation. I think her glassy expression was aimed at Jayden that night in Vegas, though he’s still to tell me what passed between them in that box.
But either way, however Dad interpreted the situation, it brought him to this definitive closure.
The question is, will it bring closure to Sasha and me?
How could she possibly continue to love me, knowing what my family did to hers? Knowing that if it wasn’t for us she’d still have her parents. Her life could have been so fucking different. All her struggles have directly resulted from my family. All her losses, even the baby she’d mourned was a result of me.
I’m not optimistic about the situation. It’s not exactly the Christmas gift I’d planned to give her.
‘I need to do this.’ Taking a deep breath, I barge through the castle doors into absolute pandemonium. Louise and four other receptions attempt to placate around fifty or sixty women who are shoving and pushing like they’re in a school playground or a very badly organised netball tournament.
Where the fuck are James and the other porters?
The atrium’s squashed tight with fur coats and designer clothing. The sickly scent of floral perfume supersedes even the smell of pine from the sixteen-foot tree, which looks in serious danger of toppling over. Women jostle painfully close, carelessly knocking baubles in every direction.
‘Where is he?’ one woman shrieks, yanking the shoulder of the woman in front of her to force past her towards the front of a very loose line.
‘We paid a ridiculous amount of money for these tickets. I demand a refund.’
‘We saw him at the airport. Who is supposed to be the star guest now?’
We hover for a second, assessing the escalating situation and heads begin to turn. The deafening disturbance falls to a stunned burst of gasps for about three seconds before they lunge for me.
‘Move!’ Pierce shouts, his shoulder bouncing into mine as he rams me forward. Like pilgrims on a witch hunt, the crazed crowd begin to run after us, stampeding through the castle halls, knocking into the smaller trees lining the corridor.
The office door isn’t far but fevered women nip at our heels all the way.
‘Ryan, can you sign this for me?’
‘Ryan, can you pose for a photograph?’
‘Ryan, are you still performing tonight?’
I haven’t missed this.
The senseless fanatical way women get in my presence.
