Single (ARC)

by K. L. Slater

  ‘Of course,’ Opal said. ‘Mum would never have given me away. Thanks to her agreeing to become George’s housekeeper, I got to see Romy so much more.’

  ‘But I could only do so much,’ Maria remarked regretfully. ‘I couldn’t allow Romy to see Opal too much or George would’ve cottoned on what was happening. So I told little Romy that Opal was my friend and she accepted her as that, seeing her a couple of times a month.’

  ‘It’s been so hard to bear,’ Opal says softly. ‘There have been eating disorders, I’ve self-harmed… I’ve utterly hated myself for years. But through it all, I knew that the next best thing to Romy being with me was for her to be with my mum, her own granny.’

  What a terrible, heartbreaking choice Opal has been forced to make.

  I looked at Maria. ‘What a remarkable woman you are, facing that monster every day. Knowing that, on top of what he was doing to Opal and Romy, he had driven your son to suicide.’

  ‘Rufus was such a sensitive boy. His father had insisted on keeping him at home, he said it was the only way he’d let me take Opal and escape his controlling ways. Rufus had been twelve years old, old enough to decide who he wanted to be with and he chose his father. My husband was obsessed with sending Rufus to an independent day school but he sent us away virtually penniless.’

  A light bulb illuminated in my head.

  ‘Was it ever proven? That George drove Rufus to suicide?’ I asked. ‘Because he told me that Lucy, his wife, had also committed suicide.’

  ‘He treated that girl like a dog.’ Maria’s eyes flashed. ‘I didn’t know her for very long but George controlled her like everyone in his life. I never found out exactly what lies he spun her to explain turning up with baby Romy one day and telling her she had to pretend the child was hers. But I know she went downhill fast into a deep, dark depression, after he did so.’ Maria stares into space, thinking back. ‘I know her parents despised George. But they also turned away from Romy and I can never forgive them for that. But I have written to them and told them everything now and I’ve had a reply.’

  ‘They’re elderly, in their eighties, but they’re looking into challenging the suicide verdict of the inquest into Lucy’s death as Mum is doing for Rufus,’ Opal continues. ‘Who knows what will come of it? There’s no evidence as such but we have to at least try.’

  The doorbell sounds, rattling me out of my thoughts. Opal and Maria look up at me from their bead work with Romy.

  The time I’ve been dreading has arrived.

  ‘Good luck,’ Opal says.

  ‘Thanks.’ And with my head pounding and feeling like I want to hide more than answer the door, I leave them to it and walk into the hallway.

  Sixty-Nine

  The three figures standing outside merge into one blurry-edged shape through the coloured glass panels. I open the door.

  ‘Hello Darcy,’ Brenda says. ‘Thanks for letting us come over.’

  ‘Come through,’ I say, as they step inside. I hide my shock at Brenda’s hollow cheeks and Leonard’s pallor. Even in her padded anorak, Steph looks at least two dress sizes smaller than when I last saw her.

  I lead them through to the front room feeling relieved that Dave isn’t with them. This feels like a close, private family discussion and I’m glad they see it that way, too. They wave away my offer of tea and sit, side by side, on the large sofa.

  Leonard clears his throat. ‘We asked to see you today because we owe you a very big apology.’

  A few months ago I’d have dismissed Leonard’s attempt to take ownership of what has happened. ‘It’s fine,’ I’d have said, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s all in the past now.’

  But it isn’t fine they tried to take my sons away from me. They should worry.

  So I don’t dismiss his plea. I sit and wait to hear what they have to say.

  ‘I speak for all of us, Darcy, when I say we’re very, very sorry for what we did,’ Leonard continues, his face grey. ‘For all of it.’

  ‘We were getting genuinely worried about your ability to look after the boys but now we realise that really, we were just scared.’ Brenda says. She looks so frail and the hand that Leonard isn’t holding, her right hand, is shaking despite resting on her knee. ‘We were terrified your new life would swallow up our contact with them.’

  ‘I take full responsibility for getting Daniela involved.’ Steph’s eyes are cast down to the floor. ‘Once I’d spoken to her about our plans and she showed interest in helping our cause, it was like a juggernaut started rolling. I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t stop it.’

  I’ve promised myself I’ll stay calm and reasonable during their visit, but the thought of Steph and Daniela plotting behind my back is testing my resolve.

  ‘Why though, Steph? I thought of you as not just a friend but truly like a sister. We…’ I force myself to take a breath. ‘We were so close. I wanted nothing more than to share my new life with you but—’

  ‘I know.’ Steph looks at me. ‘You should have been able to do that but… I couldn’t handle it. You’ll never know how many hours I lay awake once you told us about George. I’d lurch from feeling ashamed, to battling the worst kind of jealousy and need for revenge.’

  Her candour is disarming. I’m not sure what to say so I remain silent.

  ‘Dave and I have split up,’ she says quickly. ‘What’s happened has been the push I’ve needed to re-evaluate my own life. I take full accountability for what I did to you, but Dave was a constant negative voice in my ear spurring me on, telling me I was justified.’

  I can’t argue with that. Dave seemed to enjoy repeating, to anyone who’d listen, that it was far too early for me to start dating. He reminded me of a barnacle; stuck on the side of the Hilton family, sponging off all the benefits but not really contributing anything himself. I’ll probably never know why he disliked me so much.

  ‘We’ll never forgive ourselves for what happened,’ Brenda blurts out. ‘We should never have trusted George, never got involved with his scheming.’

  In letters Brenda sent me before I agreed to meet, she explained that George had been in contact with the family without my knowledge.

  ‘He seemed to sense right from the off how worried we were about losing contact with the boys and he played on that.’ Leonard shook his head. ‘He convinced us you were losing your mind and that you were neglecting the boys. I’m ashamed to say we believed him. He made us feel we were completely justified in our fears.’

  In their own way, they’ve been victims of George just like the rest of us. He ingratiated himself to them soon after meeting them the first time, that day at their house, and then used his full charm offensive to gain their complete trust.

  There was a time I believed that George, despite being a brilliant surgeon, didn’t understand how the mind worked. I told myself that because of my obsession with Daniela, I understood patterns of behaviour in a way he didn’t. How wrong I was.

  ‘He was very clever, very manipulative,’ I say quietly. ‘You weren’t the only ones who misplaced your trust in him.’

  It was Daniela who fell for him hardest. I’ve read all the letters she’s sent from her prison cell. They’re upstairs in my bedside drawer. George convinced her he loved her, wanted to start a new life with her and Romy. Her eyes firmly locked on to the prize, she willingly lured Harrison away as per George’s plan, not caring what happened to my boy.

  In every letter, Daniela asks if I will visit her, speak to her… but so far as I’m concerned, Daniela is as dead as Joel and George are to me. She gained my trust that day after attending my yoga class, pretending to be my friend with the sole intention of setting me up to walk into George’s trap.

  ‘We should have seen through him,’ Leonard says, driving his fingernails into his palms. ‘At sixty-eight years of age I thought I knew all the tricks in the book. How wrong I was.’

  ‘None of us could have known that George’s master plan was to kill Opal and lay the blame at my door to get
rid of her once and for all,’ I say. ‘He didn’t care how many lives he ruined in the process.’

  George helped Kane that day at the park and I’d chased him down, flush with the possibility of a textbook romance with a handsome doctor. I did all the running in the beginning. But I believe he soon realised the opportunity I gave him; he understood damaged women far better than I ever gave him credit for. And, still reeling from Joel’s betrayal, I was certainly that: damaged and vulnerable. Ripe for George to use in his own warped agenda to finally get rid of Opal who’d proved to be far greater of a problem than he’d ever anticipated.

  ‘There’s something else, Darcy.’ Brenda clasps her hands in front of her. ‘I want to apologise for trying to hide our own shame and denial of Joel’s betrayal at the expense of your mental wellbeing.’

  She blows out air and I feel a twinge of pity. I know how hard this must be for Brenda to face up to and vocalise about Joel.

  ‘He was a good father to the boys but choosing to maintain the lie of two lives, he short-changed them too.’ Leonard pats his wife’s knee. ‘We were wrong to keep his secret quiet when he was alive for the sake of the children and wrong to try and gloss over it when he’d gone. We were lying to ourselves.’

  Steph clears her throat and looks at her parents before speaking.

  ‘We’ll never forgive ourselves for what happened. For everything,’ she says, her eyes shining. ‘We should never have trusted George, got involved in his scheming. We should have discussed our worries and fears with you and we’re so, so sorry that we chose not to do that.’

  I sit in silence for a few moments as I absorb their words.

  ‘As you know, as soon as we heard what had happened, that it was Daniela and George who had had abducted Harrison, we abandoned our custody bid,’ Leonard says.

  My solicitor had informed me of this.

  ‘Steph and I have cut all contact with Daniela,’ Brenda adds. ‘We kept in touch because she’d been Joel’s wife and we actually thought of her as a victim too.’

  ‘I suppose what we want to say is, it will be a long road but could you find it in your heart to ever forgive us, Darcy?’ Steph’s voice cracks and she swallows down a sob. ‘We’re willing to do anything to be a part of your and the boys’ lives again.’

  I look at Brenda and Leonard. They look wretched, far older than their years. Their complexions are sallow and Brenda’s once snug clothing hangs off her bony frame. They’re good people, essentially. Good people who’ve been led way off the path of decency and truthfulness.

  But they’re also people who’ve caused me and my sons a great deal of pain. And if there’s one promise I’ve made to myself after everything that’s happened, it’s that from now on, I’m going to honour my true feelings. Never again will I allow other people to tell me what I should think and how I should feel. I owe that to myself.

  ‘I appreciate you coming here to apologise,’ I say evenly. Inside I’m anything but calm and collected. I’m glad they’ve come over to the house to speak to me but there will be no big emotional reunion here today. That’s just not going to happen. ‘I can’t say how I feel about everything right now but hearing what you’ve had to say has helped. It’s a start.’

  Brenda sobs into a tissue. ‘Thank you, Darcy. Thanks for giving us the chance to speak to you today.’

  There’s banging in the hallway and suddenly the lounge door flies open.

  ‘Mum, can we get some crisps and… Grandma, Grandad!’

  Kane lurches across the room and lands in Brenda’s lap. She can hardly speak for crying.

  Harrison appears in the doorway. He too has lost weight and he’s been withdrawn and run down, catching every bug that’s going after his ordeal. But his face lights up now at the sight of his relations.

  ‘Come here, lads, let’s have a little cuddle,’ Leonard booms then looks at me. ‘Is that… OK, Darcy?’

  I nod. I can see the boys want this as much as they do.

  Leonard stands up and Harrison buries his face in his grandad’s chest.

  When I look at Steph, she’s sitting quietly watching her parents and nephews, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Can we go back to grandma and grandad’s house, Mum?’ Harrison says hopefully when he finally pulls away from Leonard’s embrace.

  ‘Please, Mum!’ Kane echoes.

  ‘Not today,’ I say softly and the boys groan. Brenda and Leonard visibly deflate in front of me. ‘But maybe next week I can take you over to see them for an hour. How’s that?’

  Brenda’s eyes fill up and she places a hand lightly on my upper arm.

  ‘Thank you, Darcy,’ she whispers. ‘Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.’

  Like I said, it’s a start.

  Seventy

  When Joel’s family have left and the boys have disappeared back into the games room for the last twenty minutes of their allotted time, I go back into the lounge and sit quietly for a few minutes to reflect.

  I pick up the brown envelope on the coffee table and slide out the piece of paper within it. My deed poll certificate from my name change back to the surname I had before meeting Joel.

  ‘Darcy Ann Sculley,’ I say out loud.

  That’s me. That’s who I am. I was never married to Joel and I’ve never been married. I took his name because I was so desperate to keep a piece of him, to attempt to convince myself and others that I meant something in his life.

  I stare at my name in print and find I like the feeling it gives me. I’ve stripped myself back to the bare bones and generally, I like what I’ve found there. I don’t know where I learned to get my self-value from a man but the game is up.

  I finally believe I’m good enough as I am. I always was.

  Since the day of terrible events, my learning curve has been very steep.

  The whole betrayal by George was a load too much to bear for me and I’m back on medication. I don’t see it as a weakness any longer, it’s a strength so far as I’m concerned. I’ve faced my demons and I’ve asked for help. It won’t be forever, I just need a bit of a leg-up, right now. My days of smiling through the hardest times and denying my true feelings are gone.

  I’ve suspended my yoga classes. Everyone has been so patient and understanding and I’m relishing the extra time I have to just be with the boys and enjoy the support of Opal and Maria as we travel our shared path.

  A press article referred to us as ‘recovering victims of George Mortimer’. That, we are not. Bad stuff has happened to us but we don’t use him to identify ourselves. We are three strong women, with three bright futures ahead of us. We all believe that and it gives us a shared strength on the darkest days.

  It has been a long, hard road, but finally we heard yesterday that the Crown Prosecution Service won’t be charging Opal with George’s manslaughter. Daniela, who suffered just mild concussion from hitting her head when I pushed her away from Harrison, has already been charged with a number of serious offences, including abduction and assault of a child and is awaiting trial in prison.

  Harrison is still getting help to deal with what happened, what George and Daniela did to him. He wasn’t badly injured and has been left with just a tiny scar. But that day, he truly believed George had cut off his ear and was about to hack off the other one, too. That’s the thing that still gives him night terrors. He gets angry and frustrated and I think he holds some resentment towards me for taking us to live with George in the first place.

  But with the help of his school counsellor, he’s working through his feelings and some days, I’m starting to see a slight improvement in his mood, I think.

  With no will in place and Romy being George’s biological daughter, his estate, once all the legal wrangling has taken place, will be held in trust for her until she is twenty-one. In the meantime, Opal and Maria are caring for Romy, living in the house and the lawyers say they’re hopeful they’ll be able to stay there. When the two of them offered me the chance to stay for a while too, it
seemed like the right thing to do.

  About a week after his death, I found a letter in his briefcase informing George he had been removed from the shortlist of candidates for the promotion he was obsessed with winning.

  I made a trip to the hospital to speak to Sherry, the ward manager. She agreed to meet me for a coffee during her break and to chat, if I could promise what she told me remained strictly off the record.

  ‘We’re all still reeling from the shock of everything that’s happened in and out of the hospital,’ Sherry told me. ‘A couple of week’s ago, George’s boss, Dharval, uncovered a critical detail George had tried to hide: two incompatible drugs he’d prescribed to a kidney patient, Mr Joseph Hill, that had exacerbated his kidney ailment and left him critically ill.’

  I recognised the patient’s name from George telling me he had to attend meetings about this particular case and I’d also seen his medical file on the table. Turns out that George was on the brink of being fired from his job in a scandal storm over Mr Hill.

  ‘He’d tried to hide his mistake,’ Sherry explained. ‘Dharval reported him and George was told he was out of the running for the top job. We all noticed the change in him. He went from being a personable guy to someone who seemed to be teetering on the edge of madness. We heard moves were afoot to suspend him from duty.’

  I shuddered when I remembered George’s crazed eyes on the day of his death.

  It was so hard to reconcile the kind, decent man George had seemed to be with the monster that was finally revealed.

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up because you didn’t see it in him,’ Maria told me. ‘George lived and breathed the truth he wanted to believe. He convinced himself of a story before he told it to anyone else. I never heard him speak about Lucy with anything but affection and yet he treated her terribly. He made his lies so real.’

  In some ways, Maria seemed to know him best as, in the house, she’d seen him at his most private.