“Happy birthday!” Gran swept him up in a hug. “Twenty-one years old. I can hardly believe it. Where has all the time gone?”
It had gone in a drawn-out slog of years that felt like fifty instead of twenty-one. The only saving grace was that her and The Man weren’t here to spoil it for him. They’d been sent packing last year, their bodies discovered and the resulting murder inquiries now cold cases that most likely sat in files gathering dust. He’d never worried about being discovered. He’d used gloves, had covered his tracks well with alibis, and he’d played the distraught son as best he could. His tears had been ones of relief that it was all over, but the police hadn’t seemed to realise that. All they’d seen was a young man upset, an orphan.
Such a tragedy.
Except he wasn’t an orphan. His father was still out there somewhere, and one day he’d find him. Turn up on his doorstep and receive the love he’d been denied from a parent so far.
“God, I remember the moment you arrived clear as day.” Gran sighed, tears in her eyes. “You were so small, and oh, the smell of you. All newborn and wonderful. I was there, you know, at the hospital.”
He didn’t know that. Didn’t know anything about himself prior to his own first memory, which was of him playing with some lad in the park and she’d dragged him away, her cheeks red and her fingernails biting into the soft skin of his inner wrist.
What had he been then, about four?
“The day you came made up for everything,” Gran went on, hands clasped to her chest. “Your mum, she’d been through a difficult time, but you made it all better.”
“For you maybe, but not for her. I made things worse in her eyes. She wasn’t a nice mother,” he said, finally feeling he could be more open now there was no fear of reprisals. “She…she didn’t love me like you do.”
“Oh.” The sunshine fled from Gran’s face, replaced by clouds of doubt—or was that guilt? “She did the best she could, I think. I hope.”
“It wasn’t good enough, Gran, you know that. There was no excuse for how she treated me. But still, you tried to make up for it, didn’t you?”
“I did, but I wasn’t good enough either. I should have… There were so many things I should have done. Said. And I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut when—”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
He lowered his head so he didn’t have to look at her. He hated seeing her so upset. She’d had such a hold on Gran that the poor old dear must have been scared of her, that was why Gran had behaved as she had.
“She threatened to give you to your father once, you know.”
He snapped his head up at that. “Why didn’t she? Fuck, why the hell didn’t she? I’d have had a better life, no doubt about it.” Had he just heaped another pile of guilt onto Gran by saying what he had?
“Um, it was…difficult. Impossible.”
“Why? Didn’t he want me?”
Gran’s face whitened. “He had his own family when you were born, a wife and child. The wife didn’t know about you at the time. He…um…he had an affair with your mother, see.”
He imagined his face went as pale as Gran’s. “Oh. For some reason I was under the impression that because she was so young when she got pregnant that it was some crush she’d had on a schoolboy and they’d…done things and whatever.”
“Unfortunately not.” Gran wrung her hands, still holding them at her chest. “He was older than her. Much older. She lied to him about her age. It was all such a big mess. He was afraid of his wife finding out.”
“So he was an arsehole then, to have had an affair. No better than her in my book. Look at how she behaved, sleeping around with anyone and everyone until that husband of hers came along.” The Man. The horrible, horrible man.
“Things have a way of happening, love. They get out of control. Life gets out of control. I think she slept around because her head was fudged up. You’ll maybe understand more given time, life experience.”
“So are you condoning what she did? What my father did?”
“No, but I can see how things can spiral. And your mother was a… She had her own way of dealing with things. I think she was in love with your father, and once he ended their affair, she couldn’t handle it. She had a way about her. She could get whatever she wanted, usually, so when he cut her off, she didn’t understand why she wasn’t good enough for him, why she wasn’t enough to take him away from his wife. And as for her going with him in the first place… Your mother…like I said, she had a way about her. I don’t think your father stood a chance.”
“He could have walked away from her, like he did with me. Why was it easier to walk away from a child than her?”
It had him feeling not good enough, not important enough—again. Anger built inside him—not at Gran, it wasn’t her fault she’d been made to keep such a secret—but at his parents. A mother who, it seemed, had used her charms and body to lure a man away from his wife for a few fucks, and a father who’d succumbed, weak-willed and ruled by his cock, one he hadn’t been able to keep in his pants, then hadn’t faced up to his responsibilities.
“He didn’t know about you, I don’t think,” Gran whispered.
Oh. That changed things. Not changed that his father had been a bastard by shagging her—he was still a bastard for doing that—but if he hadn’t known
