‘What?’ I said. I was absolutely horrified. He had been out there all this time waiting for information on me so he could . . . ‘This is not OK. This is horrible. Absolutely horrible.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any harm,’ he pleaded. ‘I just wanted to find out about my father.’
‘But you’ve been stalking me and my family for more than a decade.’
‘I haven’t. I’ve just kept an eye out to see if anything happened that might give me a chance to talk to you.’
He took his hands out of his pockets and I darted back a little further, my heart like a frightened bird in my chest, fluttering and fussing, trying to escape: I was arguing with someone who wore the face of the man who would have hit me by this point of the conversation.
My reactions to Jack Halnsley were based on what he looked like, what that face and that physique – lithe but solid – wouldn’t usually hesitate to do to me. I couldn’t shake that memory. It might as well be him in front of me. It might as well be him speaking to me because my body and mind were terrified. Scared witless of what he was going to do.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said, alarmed at my moving even further back from him. ‘It’s just . . . I never knew my dad. My mum left him when I was six, and she never went back. She made it as difficult as possible for me to see him. Which, when you find out what I found out, I understand. And then he was gone. Dead. No chance of a reunion. But I basically wear his face without any real concept of who he truly was. You and Poppy Carlisle are a connection to him. It might not be the most positive connection, but it’s something. Anything. I just need anything that will help me feel connected to him.’
‘I have to go,’ I said.
I understood his words – the passion, the need and the craving for history behind them, but I couldn’t say anything to him that would be a comfort. I couldn’t tell him what his dad did, I couldn’t tell him that it took me years to come to terms with the fact I had loved someone who was, essentially, a monster. Jack Halnsley needed to speak to his friends. Not me. Not Poppy. How would the victim remember their abuser to his son and not feel pressured to rewrite history? I still found it hard to say anything negative about him thirty years later.
‘My daughter is about to be— I have to go.’
‘I’m staying at the Queens Hotel, down near the Pier, for a few days. Call me if you want to talk.’
I shake my head. ‘No. Absolutely no.’
‘I understand. Just . . . good luck with your daughter.’
I raced back into the court building, grateful that Evan hadn’t come looking for me, horrified that this man was walking around, another person trying to destroy my life.
And now, because of him, because of the fear he’s ignited in me, I’ve missed it. I’ve missed the important part of what will happen next because Verity isn’t coming home.
Verity isn’t coming home and the younger version of the man who started all of this is outside this very building trying to stir up even more trouble for me.
Verity turns and looks at us over her shoulder. She attempts a small smile of reassurance. I’ll be OK, she’s telling us. Don’t worry.
She’s five again. Five and about to walk in through the school gates for the first time. She’s excited but also frightened. Absolutely terrified. Just as she crossed the threshold, she turned, and gave me the same look. A look that I was meant to understand as this: I have to do this. I’m scared, but I have to do this. So don’t be scared, I’ll do it. I’ll totally do it.
I nodded at her back then. Smiled and reassured her with a look that I wasn’t scared. I had every bit of faith in her ability to do this.
I nod right now. I don’t smile, but I do tell her with my face that I understand; that I know she can do this. And I’ll be waiting for her.
‘It’ll be all right,’ Evan says to me without a note of hope anywhere in his words.
‘I know,’ I tell Evan, for the first time in as long as I can remember, lying to my husband.
poppy
Now
The family liaison and the officer in charge of the case, DI Brosnin, both agree that this is a classic case of an abusive person turning violent when they see themselves losing control.
‘She says that she only hit you twice, and only really got you once, and that you tripped and hit the fireplace first, then you hit your head again when you fell down,’ DI Brosnin says.
Logan shakes his head. ‘No, no. She came after me with the award. It’s heavy, she really had to heft it up to use it. I went down after the first hit and then she hit me a few more times. I did hit my head on the fireplace when I first went down, though.’
When they leave, Logan looks exhausted, like the life has been sucked out of him. Remembering it tires him out, talking about it looks like it snatches away huge swathes of energy.
‘I don’t want her to get into trouble,’ he says to me. ‘It’s crazy, isn’t it? I hate the thought of her sitting in a prison cell. I know what it did to you; I hate the idea of the same thing happening to her.’
In response, I fold my arms across my chest. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to that. How I’m meant to respond to my brother linking her and me in that way, like we’re the same.
‘Did you . . . did you go to the hearing? How did she seem?’
‘I didn’t go. I couldn’t face going anywhere near any court. It took pretty much everything I had to take your USB stick into a police station, court wasn’t happening.’
‘Yes, of course, sorry.’
‘But it’s good news that they say you’re recovering quickly. You’ll soon be able to go home. Mum and Dad are gagging to have you back under their roof so they can take care of you.’
‘You see this face? Can you see the unbridled joy at the prospect of it?’ he says with a small smile.
‘Oh please, their golden child at home again? They’ll be over the moon. And you’ll love being waited on every second of the day.’
‘Yeah, and I’ll be treated to Mum’s finest cooking efforts.’
I smirk. ‘It’s not that bad.’
‘It wasn’t until you went away that we realised just how bad her cooking was. I mean, once you weren’t around to rescue it or to make the food it was clear how awful . . . urgh. Dad tried, but he was too devastated to cook.’ Logan shakes his head. ‘You’d think for someone as obsessed with cookbooks as she is and who used to watch all the Delia programmes, that some of it would rub off.’ He shrugs. ‘But nah, still can’t do it. I could weep for the effort she puts in, though.’
‘Was it really awful when I went away?’
Just like they never really ask about prison, I never ask about this. We all act as though it was a mutual decision, we all behave as though the years didn’t happen; like a pause button was pressed and nothing really went on between that and the play button being hit again.
‘Yes,’ he says simply. ‘It was hell. In ways we couldn’t articulate. Dad was like a zombie. We couldn’t talk to him about anything for the first few years. He would just fly off the handle. Shout at us. He took us to and from school every day. Even when we were old enough to get there ourselves he’d still take us. He just didn’t want to let us out of his sight. You’d think it would be worse for Bella, but no, he was obsessed with keeping the pair of us exactly where he could see us.