‘What answer do you honestly want to that question?’
‘The truth.’
‘What good is it going to do you to hear “the truth”?’
‘I just want to hear stuff about him.’
‘But what if it’s hideous stuff that you can’t ever unhear? You say you kind of understand why your mother left him, but I’m not sure you’re ready to hear all of it. The fact you’re here suggests you’re not ready to hear it. Because, as I’ve found out recently, you might think you want to know something but when you find it out, it changes you. It haunts you. You’re stuck in the present as the world travels to the future and all you’ll want to do is get your hands on the past and reshape it.’ I shift in my seat, the memory of what Vee told me: the quiet, insidious way Logan Carlisle brutalised her on so many levels floods my mind. I want so much to get my hands on that past and erase it. Reshape it. Change it. Anything that would mean she didn’t go through all that. And isn’t still going through it because of his lies. ‘I promise you, sometimes you hear things and you’ll wish the other person had lied to you. And if they do lie to you, more than anything, you’ll want those lies to be true – even when you know they aren’t.’
‘Have you come here to lecture me?’ he replies after a few moments of silence. ‘Because I’ve got a mum and aunts and uncles and grandparents for that.’
‘Why don’t you ask them about him, then?’
‘My mum . . . she hated him and she made no bones about it. Every bad thing about him she would recount at length. But I was only small so I only vaguely remember the venom she had towards him. Then he died and no one would say a bad word against him, including Mum. She would either not talk about him or talk about how much he loved me. Same with my aunts and uncles. They only had good stuff to say after he died. And I know that wasn’t the case. I mean, if it was, then why would she leave him? Why did I barely see him after we left?
‘In recent years, Mum’s not been doing too good, health-wise. Emotionally she’s quite fragile, too. She’s been through some serious bouts of depression. She’ll suddenly start talking about my dad, as though he’s on her mind. Then she’ll stop. It’s like she wants me to know about him, she can’t keep the stuff in any longer, and then changes her mind and remembers what he was like and how she doesn’t want me to know anything but the good stuff about him. So she’ll either change the subject completely or she’ll start talking about how much he loved me. It’s really difficult sometimes.
‘And I don’t really remember what it was like to have him as a dad. Like I say, Mum made it difficult for me to see him, not that she’ll admit that. I just want him to be a real person. Not this saint who used to be the Devil if you heard tell.’
I’ve tried. I’ve tried to protect him from himself and he doesn’t want my help, not like that. He’s determined to find out all the ugly, terrible things about his father. I probably shouldn’t have come, but like when I used to meet Poppy, I do want to help. I came because I thought I could be ‘doing something’ and that ‘something’ was convincing him he didn’t want to hear about his father.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘What was he like?’
‘I only really know what he was like to me.’
‘Which was?’
I only know what he was like to me. I don’t even know what he was like to Poppy, not really, even though we spent a lot of time together. He was horrible. And he was amazing. He was a terrible, terrible human being who did many horrible, terrible things. I still have the scars from what he did. And not all of them are physical.
I often thought he would kill me. He told me often enough. He showed me often enough. He was unyielding in his structures and rules. If he said something, you followed it to the letter or there would be consequences. I felt sick all the time. I was scared all the time. And I was very aware that he could finish me off at any point and no one would be able to do a thing about it. Once I was gone I would be gone and no amount of handwringing and punishing him and dissecting what went wrong was going to bring me back. When I was with him, death constantly stalked my mind.
And I loved him. I felt sick when I wasn’t with him; I felt like I couldn’t function and I wasn’t real and I didn’t exist if I wasn’t by his side. And I felt sick when I was with him. He defined who I was for so long. And I thought I couldn’t live without him. Even the night I went there to finish it I knew I was going to be left without purpose in life without him.
I know now that isn’t love. I know now because I have someone who loves me properly, and even in the years before my husband, I had worked out that what I had with him wasn’t anywhere near love. And I still . . . I found it hard to untangle that from my brain. He had done that. He had managed to get me so brainwashed that when I was an adult, when I was married and had children, I almost let my husband walk away because I was ashamed to talk about him and confess that despite everything I loved him. So that was what he was like.
‘So that was what he was like. Poppy would probably tell it differently; he was different with her, I suppose, but it wasn’t easy. He wasn’t an easy man and even now I feel like I’m glossing over what he did to me. To make it more palatable for you, and also to make it easier to remember in my head.’
Jack Halnsley has bowed his head after listening to me speak. I saw him do it halfway through and even though I wasn’t talking for very long, what I said is still working its way through his mind.
‘Is he real enough for you now?’ I ask. Probably unnecessary, but what is it he expected to hear? How did he think he would feel afterwards? I tried to warn him, but even what I said, without details, without a blow-by-blow account of what went on, it is still dreadful. ‘Is that what you wanted to hear?’
He raises his gaze and our eyes meet. And for a moment I am looking at him. Marcus. Marcus. For this moment in time I am looking at the man who took my teenage years, who helped to create the Serena who lied to her family, who lied to doctors at various hospitals, who tried to tell the truth when it was too late. For a moment I am staring at the man I loved more than life itself and I’m tempted to step back there. To go back to being with him. Giving my whole being to this person I can’t untangle myself from.
If this man leant forward and kissed me right now, I would not stop him, I would not resist; I would most likely kiss him back.
Because he is Marcus. Him. Sir.
And in this moment I am Serena, love-struck teenager.
The moment elongates itself, stretches and stretches the reality we’re living in and brings me closer and closer to . . . one kiss wouldn’t really hurt, would it? It wouldn’t really mean anything so it wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Anyone except everyone.
I break eye contact, stare over his shoulder at the bar. I watch someone come in off the street and march up to the large wood-brown bar and order a drink as though their life depends upon it.
Stop being silly, Serena, I tell myself.
Marcus isn’t here, is he? And teenage Serena isn’t here, is she?
Jack Halnsley, who I can see from my peripheral vision, is still staring at me. ‘I’m not . . .’ he begins. ‘Look, what do I say to make it better? What do I do?’