a little surge of guilt. My husband had been in so much pain, so much torment. How had I not known, how had I not noticed? All of those times, after Donal died, when Danny would go off on his own, disappear for hours. It was so much worse than I had thought, grief of a totally different kind, I suddenly realized. Not grief because he loved his father, grief because he hated him. Grief because he despised the man so much, and wanted revenge, and grief because he’d lost the chance, forever. If only I’d known, if only I’d realized back then, maybe I could have helped him, maybe we could have avoided …
‘And then one day, something weird happened.’
He was talking again.
‘Something so feckin’ weird, Gemma, that it seemed like fate, seemed like it was meant to happen. I’d just joined that dating site, Elite Hook Ups … I know, I know, and again, I’m so, so sorry. Anyway, I was flicking through profiles, trying to work out what to write for mine. And then I saw him.’
He paused again, looked at me, looked away.
‘Saw who?’
‘I saw a man who looked like Dad. Who looked just like him, when he was younger, when he was my age, when he was hitting us and beating us and whoring …’
His eyes had narrowed, his voice low and angry now.
‘… and suddenly, it was as if the sun had finally come out, and I knew what to do. I knew what I had to do, to make it all better. To make it all go away, finally. To heal myself. Except, of course …’
A small laugh, bitter and hoarse.
‘Except, ironically, that’s when it all started to go wrong.’
He paused, took a breath, and his eyes were suddenly bright and shiny with tears. A little ripple of unease ran through me.
‘What did? What went wrong, Danny?’
He was staring at me, clamping his lips together, looking at me with a sudden intensity, a slight frown on his face.
‘Tell me! Danny, please.’
There was a long silence, both of us motionless, him still sitting, back rigid, hands clasped in front of him on the table, me standing, leaning against the hard edge of the kitchen worktop, waiting, a cold creeping sensation sweeping up my spine.
‘Danny?’ My voice sounded too loud, too shrill.
He swallowed.
‘I started to kill them,’ he whispered.
Chapter 43
My stomach rolled. What?
‘You … what?’
What had he just said? I couldn’t have heard that properly, I thought. He couldn’t mean …
He was standing up now too, walking around the table, moving closer to me. He was still talking, talking faster and faster, the words spilling out of him.
‘I saw the first one on the app, like I said,’ he said, and his voice sounded hoarse. ‘I didn’t think the cops would work that bit out, you know, about the app. Thought I’d covered my tracks. They’re not as stupid as I thought. Anyway, I saw him, and I knew I had to meet him. This guy, his face … he looked like Dad, Gemma. And like me, of course, in retrospect, but isn’t it strange, how that never entered my head, at the time? I just saw Dad. I just saw my father’s face. And it was easy, so feckin’ easy. I just set up a fake female profile, picture of a beautiful woman, set up a date. Simple as that. It was the night of my stag do, so I went along early, before I was due to meet the others at the pub, you know? And as soon as I saw him, standing there at the spot we’d arranged to meet at in Richmond Park, all unsuspecting like …’
His eyes were glazed again, and a terrible fear was beginning to grip me.
No, Danny, please, please no.
‘There’d been a storm, branches down all over the place, and I just felt this rage, this anger, like nothing I’d ever felt before, and I just bent down and picked up this fallen branch and I just hit him, so hard, and … I just knew, straight away, that I’d killed him. It was that easy. And I stood there, and looked at him, looked at him for ages, and I just felt this wave of … of peace, and … and relief. It was like a release, you know? As if somehow the healing process had begun. I’d never felt like that, like I did in those few minutes, Gemma. It was as if I’d killed