just as quickly subsided. Suddenly I felt tired, so very, very tired. I didn’t know if I could actually take anymore; what he’d already told me had been more than enough, way, way more. But fine, whatever. What does it matter, now?
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m assuming you’ve met someone else, Danny, and do you know what? I don’t care. I really, seriously, don’t give a flying shit. But go on, if you must. I’ll keep your tawdry little secret. Let’s just get it over with,’ I said, wearily. I turned to look at him, my stomach twisting with misery.
‘Promise? Is that a promise, Gemma?’
‘Bloody hell. Yes, it’s a promise,’ I spat the words at him.
‘OK. OK. Thank you. Well, here we go.’
He clenched and unclenched his fists once, twice, three times, staring down at his hands. Then he looked back at me.
‘I lied to the police, Gemma. I made up a cock and bull story to explain why I needed to disappear. I told them my life was in danger, and yours too, because I’d got myself in trouble with a dodgy client, and they believed every word. But that wasn’t true, and I want to tell you what really happened. And it’s not that I’ve met someone else I want to be with, by the way. I wish I had, I wish that’s all it was. It’s … well, it’s something different. Something … something awful, Gemma.’
He stopped talking, took a deep breath.
‘OK, here we go. So, when I was a kid, my dad … well, he was a bastard. And I mean a real, nasty bastard. He drank, heavily, and when he was drunk he’d come home and beat up my mum. Beat her up badly, you know, hospital bad. For no reason, other than he liked to be the big man, to keep her at his beck and call. He hit me too, any excuse. He’d batter me black and blue, for things like dropping toast crumbs on the floor at breakfast or bringing mud in from outside on my shoes. There was rarely a day when one of us didn’t get punched or slapped. Rarely a day, for years and years.’
For a moment, puzzled, I didn’t reply, the unexpectedness of this change in direction taking me by surprise, and trying to reconcile this description of Donal with the frail pensioner in the armchair I’d met on the one occasion I’d visited the family home. I mean, I hadn’t liked the man at all. He’d seemed cold, hard, deeply unpleasant. But violent, really?
My scepticism must have shown on my face, because Danny said: ‘Oh, he wasn’t like that in his final years, obviously. Too old, too ill, thank God. But back then … he was an animal, Gemma. You can’t even imagine.’
Maybe I can, though, I thought. Yes, Donal had been frail when I’d met him. But he had still been very much in control of that household, I remembered suddenly. Bridget still scurrying around, doing his bidding. Still scared of him, even then? Was that why she was how she was? If what Danny was saying was true, it must have been dreadful, for all of them, to live like that. Still not understanding why he was telling me, what his childhood had to do with any of this mess, I said quietly: ‘I’m sorry. That’s awful,’ because it was.
Danny didn’t respond, his eyes fixed on the table in front of him.
‘And he was unfaithful to Mum too, over and over and over again. He’d stay away night after night, shagging other women, and then he’d come home and brag about it, tell her a good lookin’ fella like him didn’t have to settle for a frumpy little woman like her, he could have anyone he liked. She was there to cook and clean and iron his clothes, nothing much more than that. I can remember maybe three or four times in my whole childhood that they went out together for a dinner or a party. It was toxic, the worst possible atmosphere to grow up in. I spent years being afraid, waiting for the next blow, the next fist in the stomach, the next row.’
‘Shit, Danny.’
He was staring into space now, his eyes glazed, as if watching his childhood play out in front of him, and I had a sudden urge to cross the room and take him in my arms, to comfort him, to take some of the pain away. Then I remembered