by Rebecca Heap
Her action ceased halfway.
Her hand dropped.
Her face took on a strange, struck expression. Sean? No. It was impossible.
There were two bodies recovered from the bomb blast, if you could call bodies burnt beyond all recognition “recovered”. It was believed that these were Sebastian and Sean. It was assumed that her father had escaped in time and, in doing so, had escaped justice. She never saw him again but she hadn’t wanted to. The information Sean had sent to Scotland Yard had blown the lid off her father’s sickening operation, selling vulnerable women as personal sex slaves. Many respectable and prominent figures had been identified as customers and publically vilified and prosecuted. The fallout from it all had devastated her life for a second time. She had seen a therapist for years but in the end she’d had her child to thank for seeing her through. If she hadn’t had Timmy to love, to fight for, to focus her mind on, she wasn’t sure she would have found the willpower to carry on.
When she’d discovered what had happened to Sean’s sister and seen how lovely she had been, she began to understand what had driven him and had ultimately cost him his life. Sean was dead. He was dead. There was no way he could have escaped the house, especially not as hurt as he was. But she looked at the steely bleakness of the man’s eyes and knew. She must at last be going mad.
“Can…can you take your helmet off for me please?” she asked again, her voice faltering and her sanity threatening to slip along with it.
He didn’t argue with her this time. He saw the knowledge of who he was already evident in her face. He reached up and slowly removed the helmet.
His entire face came into view. It was older yes, somewhat battered looking, yes, but no doubt about it, it was the face of the man who’d died in her arms, the man she still saw in her dreams. It was the face of the man she’d loved. She backed away, her own face contorted. “No. No!”
Her instant recognition spurred him into sudden action. “Katie! Please!” he shouted and reached out to grab her arm.
“No!” she screamed. “Don’t touch me, you bastard! I thought you were dead! You’re dead! You’re dead!” She tried to wriggle out of his grasp and began to flail wildly as his grip simply became tighter.
“Katie! Calm down please!”
Timmy looked on, aghast, his own interests forgotten.
Eventually, Kate stopped struggling. She looked at him, eyes shimmering with tears. “You’re real aren’t you?” she stated rather than asked.
He nodded.
A sob escaped her. Then she was in his arms, clinging to him, as though she was drowning. Timmy had had enough of this crazy turn of events.
“Mum? What are you doing? What the h…” He was about to say “hell” and then thought twice about it in front of his mother, even in these inexplicable circumstances. “Do you know each other?”
Sean caught Timmy’s eye and remorse swept through him. He should have left before she recognised him. She had rebuilt her life and here he was turning it upside down again. And what about the boy’s father? Had she finally achieved some measure of security and happiness? He couldn’t jeopardise that.
He prised Kate away from him and looked at her. “I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t be here. Pretend this never happened. I’m dead to you.”
“No! You can’t mean that. Please, Sean, please. ”
He glanced across at Timmy. “It’s good to see that you’re getting on with your life, but it’s a miracle that I didn’t destroy you…I’ve done enough damage already just by talking to you. Goodbye Kate.”
“Sean!” She grabbed his arm. “Don’t you dare!”
“Can someone just tell me what’s going on here!?” Timmy exclaimed.
Sean turned to him. “I’m sorry son. This is your day and you don’t need this. Do you know anything about your mother’s life before you were born?” He looked questioningly at Kate. She shook her head mutely, eyes wide with alarm. Before he looked away, he read something else more subtle in her eyes but couldn’t interpret it.
“Well I knew her but I hurt her very badly. And for that I’m very sorry. But sorry isn’t enough. It will never be enough. She thought I was dead and it is better if she continues to think that way.”
“No!” Kate contested. “How can you walk away now? Now, when we’ve found each other again?”
“Are you a masochist or something?”
“Please, let’s go somewhere and talk. You owe me that much.”
He looked at her and his heart faltered in his chest. How was it that she could still affect him like this? It occurred to him, with something like dismay, that time had not diminished his feelings for her. They had remained there all along. In stasis but still there, like water behind a dam. And now the dam was breaking.
“OK,” he agreed slowly, “just for a while though. Just to give you some kind of explanation.”
He reluctantly led them both back to the canteen. It was deserted. Everyone else was long gone. Timmy recognised that they needed some time to themselves. He retrieved his bag from where it had been stored and occupied himself with his handheld game console.
Kate procured two coffees from the vending machine. She felt strange and unreal. She sat down at a table but couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She was certain that if she did so, he would disappear like a figment of her imagination.
Sean wanted to disappear. He was agitated. Why hadn’t he just left while he could? He didn’t sit but paced around like a nervous animal.
He eventually spoke “Kate..look..”
She raised her head and gazed at him, a part of her still unable to believe what she was seeing. “Why did you let me believe you were dead?” she whispered, her voice filled with reproach.
“I thought it was for the best. God knows how I managed to get out of that place. As it was, I was in hospital for months and, physically, they say I’ll never make a complete recovery.” He looked at her. Christ. Now he knew it wasn’t only his body that had never recovered.
“All I could think of, all that time, was you.” He gazed at her wrenchingly. “I hurt you so much Kate. I decided I deserved some pain. I needed to let you get on with your life. I should never have been a part of your life in the first place.”
“But you were a part of it! And you can’t turn back time and erase that. I understood, later, why you had to do everything you did. I know now that you only meant to punish those who had hurt your sister. I may have blamed you once, but I don’t blame you now.”
He sat down opposite her. “Oh Kate. But I am to blame. I should have let you go from the beginning. Then, as soon as I met you again, I should have made sure I never saw you again. What did I do instead? I began a relationship with you! I …” his face twisted in anguish.
Kate opened her mouth to say something. He raised a hand. “No! Don’t say that you were partly responsible. That you encouraged me. You were ignorant.”
He ran his hand through his hair now, in an achingly familiar gesture. “I deceived you! I deceived myself. I was carried away by my own infatuation. From the very first moment I saw you, I wanted you.” Kate’s eyes widened slightly.
“When I saw a chance to get to know you, to try and show myself in a different light, I selfishly grabbed it. Only it went too far, and I ended up hurting you, hurting you even more than before.”
He stared at her beseechingly. “Don’t you see then Kate? Don’t you see? If I let you believe I was dead then I couldn’t possibly hurt you anymore.”
She stared back at him and he was stunned by the stark pain he read in her face. He bowed his head in shame. “And even there I was wrong, wasn’t I?”
Kate put her hand on his. She was amazed by the current that passed between them, as disturbingly strong as it had ever been. “Can’t we salvage something from this?”
“Can’t you see it’s too late? We’ve both been through too much. How could a relationship that began with violence and was always based on lies ever surv
ive?” Even as he argued this though, his hand took on a mind of its own, clinging yearningly to hers.
“I was a mess; a bitter, pathetic excuse for a man carried away on his own insane desire for justice. And I allowed you to get caught up in all that. I knew what I could be doing to you, but everything else came first.”
“Oh Katie…,” his voice broke. “I’m a sorry bastard. I still love you. I always have… if you can call what I feel for you love. But if I love you enough, I should leave you alone. I mean, look at me, I’m a walking disaster. And look at you. You’re still so beautiful, so incredibly beautiful, and you’ve a whole new life…”
She pulled away and stood up. “It’s not a life! It’s not been a life since the day I thought you died!. You simply being here, being alive, is like a miracle to me. Don’t you understand that? I forgive you. I forgive you for everything but, if you walk away again now, I’ll never forgive you.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying! Look, I’ve given you the best explanation I can and hopefully you can carry on with your life without this hanging over you any more, without me hanging over you anymore. Please, just give me this chance to leave, knowing this time I’ve done the right thing.”
“No!” She was glaring at him now. “You can’t keep running away. I’ve never even known who you really are. You’ve always hidden behind some kind of façade. I want you to stay, goddamn you. I want to know who the hell you are!” She stared at him defiantly now, her body shaking.
He just stared back, open-mouthed, taken aback by this outburst.
“Look.. Kate..”
“No, you look! I’m sick of you telling me how I’m supposed to feel. You think you can just stand here and give me some kind of “explanation” so you can leave this time without a guilty conscience? Well, I’m sorry but I’m not going to let you off that easily! Do you have any idea what it was like for me? Not being able to decide whether I loved or hated you? Seeing you tortured and then having to cope with your death?”
She paused, gulping, “Having to carry and bear your child, not knowing what on earth to tell him about his father?”
Sean gaped at her, stricken. He looked at Timmy and found the boy staring back at him with an equally stunned expression. He had been feigning interest in his game when really he’d been hanging on to their every word. Sean looked back at Kate. “Timmy is my son?” he asked, already knowing the answer, remembering their first impetuous time together, but unable to believe it. “You knew, didn’t you? When I came back, you knew? That’s why….” His words petered off.
“Yes,” she replied. “I suspected I was pregnant and I was happy about it. Timmy is your son, Sean.”
He bent his head. Tears began to flow unheeded down his face. He mumbled through them, “But after all I’d put you through? When you knew who I was? You didn’t get….” He choked on the words, simply overwhelmed. “You kept…..
She interrupted his stammering rather crisply. “Why would I destroy another life? An innocent life? He was the best thing that could have happened to me. He was all I had left. He got me through. I don’t know what I’d have done without him. He’s everything to me.”
Sean was still half destroyed by the knowledge she had gone through a pregnancy and raised a son, his son, alone, and after such trauma.
Timmy stood up and went over to him. He put his arms around him. “Dad,” he whispered with awe. “My Dad!”
Sean stroked the boy’s hair but couldn’t bring himself to speak. When he’d eventually brought himself under control, he looked over at Kate. His eyes were bright with self-hatred. “Katie, honey, Katie…what can I do now? What do you want me to do? Do you want me to try and be a father to him? Is that why you want me to stay with you?”
Kate walked over to them and put her arms around them both. “I love you, Sean. That’s why I want you to stay with us.”
Sean gazed at her incredulously. “But surely there’s someone else in your life now?”
“Only Tim.” She touched his head, lovingly. “As he grew up, so many things about Timmy reminded me of you. He helped to erase any lingering anger or animosity I felt towards you. How could I do anything but love the man who had given me this wonderful child, whose characteristics were reproduced in this boy, whom I loved above all things?”
“But like you said, you don’t even know me! I’m not sure even I know who I am anymore.”
“Well, isn’t it about time we all found out?”
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
