that? We were in separate rooms full of bloody strangers in a police station while they asked if Dad had ever touched me, hurt me? Can you imagine? My head was totally fucked. One minute I was at a barbecue with my mates and the next my whole world had turned to rat shit and there’s this bloke asking me if Dad had ever…’
Dominic breathed deeply, to slow his heart and stop the tears of frustration that threatened to fall. He wasn’t done.
‘Dad never laid a finger on me or Lydi; he would never have. He was a brilliant dad, whether you like it or not. He was brilliant and I loved him. He was smart, funny, clever and I used to hope that one day I’d get married and have kids and be just like him! How funny is that? Imagine wanting to be just like him…’
‘Dominic, I can only imagine—’
He didn’t allow her a response, wouldn’t stop until he had exorcised it all.
‘We weren’t allowed anything from the house, nothing. Did you know that? They took my computer, my photos, my phone, clothes, everything. Everything I had ever owned or known was wiped out. My home became a crime scene and the crime that had been committed wasn’t burglary or assault, it was murder. My father was stabbed – not by some nameless attacker, but by my mum. By you! I lost my school, my friends, my possessions, my home, my parents, everything! I lost my whole fucking life. Can you imagine that? And worse still, it wasn’t some stranger that did that to me, it was my own fucking mother! You took it all from me, from us!’
His tears fell freely now and Kate felt a strange sense of relief, his tears cathartic.
She reached across the table top – a matter of inches, but to mother and son it represented miles and years. Kate took her son’s large hand and encased it inside both of her own. She felt the flex of his fingertips as they curled to sit against hers; a small act of enormous significance.
They sat in silence until his tears abated and his breathing had steadied. They had all the time in the world.
When he next spoke his voice was calmer, quieter.
‘You did that to us, Mum. I’m not only blaming you; it was you and Dad. You were both liars and you made our whole existence, our whole childhood, into one big lie.’
Kate remembered Lydia’s painful words, across the miles via a telephone wire. ‘My whole life and the people I trusted, it was all pretend.’
Dominic wasn’t done.
‘I think of all the times we sat at the breakfast table, Dad making jokes and chatting and you smiling while you cooked bloody bacon; and yet only an hour before… Who was the best liar, Mum? I’m not sure. I know Dad started it, he was a shit to you. But you finished it and I can’t decide which is worse. It’s okay for you, you have become Kate Gavier. I can’t do that, I can’t become Kate Gavier. I am stuck being Dominic Brooker. I give people my name and I watch them mulling it over, trying to work out why it’s familiar… and then their eyes widen as they place me. Ah yes, Brooker. Spawn of bastard Mark and psycho Kathryn. And you ask if I have a girlfriend? What do you think? How would the “meet the parents” conversation go? It’s a fucking non-starter.’
‘I’m sorry, Dom.’ It was an inadequate, automatic response.
‘And then you disappeared. Firstly prison and then here, to immerse yourself in other people’s problems so that you wouldn’t have to deal with ours. Like we didn’t count any more, like we didn’t count enough.’
‘Dom, you have always counted; you have been the one thing that does count. You are the reason I keep going. I love you and Lydia more than you can imagine, more than you will ever know. I haven’t been hiding from you! I’ve been waiting for you. Every minute of every day and with every breath in my body, I think of all the possible ways I might be able to see you or be near you or contact you without causing you more distress—’
He cut her short again.
‘I think about that night, Mum. I think about it a lot. I wish I didn’t. We were in the room next door; we were only in the fucking room next door! Just metres away from what